An Olympic Summer Games is the world's largest event. It is prepared for years. Requires extensive investment and creates a huge global interest while it is ongoing. Moving it is no small matter and the consequences the move may not have yet to be seen.
Still, it is the symbolic importance of moving an Olympics, more than the practical ones, that is the most dramatic with today's decision.
The Olympic movement has always tried to live its own life. Claimed his independence. Outside - or perhaps above - politics, religion and economic realities.
Terrorist attack in MunichWhen Palestinian terrorists embarked on a bloody attack on the Munich Games in 1972 that cost eleven Israeli athletes and coaches, a German police and five terrorists, they chose to pursue the games.
Comprehensive boycotts against the 1976, 1980 and 1984 Olympics shook the Olympic movement but never stopped the planned games.
Bribery scandals surrounding the distribution of organizer cities have created a storm of criticism against the IOC - but never stopped the games.
The show must go onEven now, the IOC and the Japanese organizers have insisted in the latter that they have planned for the Olympics in just four months, despite growing criticism from athletes and affiliates. The show must go on.
But now that line no longer held. For the first time since the Second World War, the Olympic Games are being moved. If nothing else, it shows that what is happening in the world is something unique.
The ongoing pandemic costs lives; it causes healthcare in several countries to almost collapse, it threatens to throw the world into an economic crisis. It interferes with everyone's everyday lives.
Before the realities, even the Olympic movement has had to capitulate.
Jacob Hård: "A unique decision - only world war has moved the Olympics" (March 24, 2020)
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