Has the IOC lost all credibility with the coronavirus crisis?

• Japan and the IOC announced the official postponement of the Olympic Games on Tuesday, "no later than 2021".
• The announcement comes as the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread across the globe.
• The postponement decision seems late compared to the measures taken in the world of sport since the start of the global health crisis.

"Our house is burning and we are looking elsewhere". This shocking statement, made by Jacques Chirac at the Fourth Earth Summit in Johannesburg in 2002, could not be more in keeping with the position (or rather the non-position) of the International Olympic Committee with regard to the 2020 Olympics and the pandemic of coronavirus that strikes our planet.

While sport has been laid off all over the world for a long time now, competitions have been postponed one by one and all of humanity is hiding in their homes for fear of spreading the virus, no decision has been made. was still taken regarding the Tokyo Olympics, which are scheduled to start on July 24 and end on August 9. As if the Olympism had developed antibodies that would place it above science and the mere mortals that we are.

From "premature" to "on report" very quickly

It was therefore necessary to wait for Japan, the organizing country of the event, to officially ask the Lord of the Rings, the International Olympic Committee, to postpone the Olympic Games so that it finally deigns to assume its responsibilities. “In the current circumstances, on the basis of information provided by the World Health Organization, the IOC President and the Prime Minister of Japan have concluded that the Games of the XXXII Olympiad in Tokyo must be rescheduled for beyond 2020, but not later than the summer of 2021, "announced the IOC in a statement released Tuesday afternoon.

To safeguard the health of the athletes and everyone involved in the Tokyo 2020 Games.

The Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games will now take place no later than summer 2021.

A speech that contrasts with that made four days earlier by Thomas Bach, the patron saint of the IOC institution, who explained that it "would be premature to leave in speculation and to make a decision" about a possible postponement. Report which, given the situation of health crisis in which the world is plunged, was however no doubt. "They certainly hoped that the epidemic would not be as serious as it is today and thought that it would be brought under control in the more or less near future," says Armand De Rendinger, international sports consultant and in Olympism.

The IOC has not gotten very wet

However, it was believed that the time had come, Sunday, when the noise from the corridors suggested that the IOC was preparing to publish an official press release concerning the Games. An announcement that made "pschitt" since it explained finally leave four weeks to make a final decision. FOUR WEEKS ! "The IOC is the institution that owns the Olympic Games, it was up to it to set the course, but it only slalomed, procrastinated," explains the author of various works on Olympism. As always with the IOC in these cases, it asks the other actors to communicate. In this case, there, the WHO on one side and Japan on the other. Put yourself in the place of the Japanese who spent billions of euros on the organization of the Games, it was not easy for them to make the decision alone. They finally took it into perfect responsibility. And now the IOC communicates "oh the right decision that was made by all of us!" when he did everything not to have to do it himself… ”.

Report OJ 2020 of one year: Japan, so often tested, knew how to take its responsibilities. Congratulations to him and now let us demonstrate a real solidarity with him and that it is not limited to a simple facade Olympic communication.

“Thomas Bach's statement [the first when he announced that it was premature to make the decision to postpone] is completely off the mark. It is not acceptable ”, had already rebelled André Giraud, the president of the French athletics federation on the site of FranceTV Sport, Sunday. He is not the only one, far from it, to have stepped up to the plate.

This announcement had the effect of raising an uproar on the part of a certain number of heavyweights of world Olympic governance (Dick Pound for Canada, Pierre-Olivier Beckers, president of the Coordination Commission for the Olympic Games 2024, for Belgium), the most powerful national Olympic committees (Canada, Australia, Norway, the United States) and almost all of the athletes involved in the Games. Athletes previously forced to sail on sight and to train in precarious logistical and psychological conditions due to containment measures.

Thank you @ Tokyo2020 and @Olympics for listening to athletes from around the world and for thinking about everyone's health 🙌🏼
We extend the deadline to better jump sauter # tokyo2021 #stayathome pic.twitter.com/QZMEHIko6Z

"They completely underestimated the reaction of certain key players in the sports world, who could not bear the IOC to pretend it was outside the issues that now affect the entire planet. They are passed out as unconscious vis-à-vis the world political and health authorities, judge Armand De Rendinger. Unfortunately, the IOC will not come out of this business growing up. Even if it's more communication than Thomas Bach's thinking that was bad in my opinion. But in this world where the image prevails over the rest, communication is precisely the sinews of war. Therefore, it is a zero point for the IOC which will certainly not be without consequences.

Towards a rebalancing of powers in the Olympic world?

When hot, Armand De Rendinger is worth at least three. The first concerns the very credibility of the IOC with regard to all the players in the Olympic sports world. "These procrastinations of the IOC will undoubtedly affect the distribution of powers between the different actors (IOC, NOC, federations, athlete commissions, sponsors, etc.)," ​​he announced. The postponement of the Games to 2021 will have an impact on sporting calendars and a certain number of federations will have to postpone their own events. There will be a domino effect which will make it necessary to completely rethink the organization of the governance of sport itself.

"In the relationships, which until now have been pyramid-shaped between the IOC and all the key players in the international Olympic sports movement," continues the consultant, "we will find ourselves in a situation where many wagons of the IOC locomotive will come down, where each one will have recovered from the hair of the beast and could demand widened prerogatives. "

The second, more personal, directly concerns its President Thomas Bach, with a view to the next elections for the head of the IOC which will take place next year. His management, to say the least, cautious of the crisis "will surely put him in difficulty, he who had been elected as emperor in Buenos Aires in September 2013", advances De Rendinger. Finally, more generally, and to get out of the varnish of the communication around the announcement of this postponement, the current health crisis risks having an impact on the contracts signed by the organizing cities or the organizing countries with the IOC.

De Rendinger, always: “This is a very profitable contract for the IOC and which is mainly the responsibility of the organizing countries. But in the future, given the experience of this pandemic, it could be brought to be seen in great widths. Less to the advantage of the IOC, agrees. "If he wants to be credible vis-à-vis his partners," concludes our Olympic specialist, "the IOC and Thomas Bach will no longer be able to afford procrastinations of this nature. "

Sport

Coronavirus: "It frees us from a burden", Renaud Lavillenie relieved after the postponement of the Olympic Games

• Covid 19
• Coronavirus
• Sport
• OJ 2020
• Olympic Games
• CIO