Even so close to Opening Ceremony of Tokyo Olympics, there is time to avoid having fools rush into decision on their fate

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Even so close to Opening Ceremony of Tokyo Olympics, there is time to avoid having fools rush into decision on their fate


As of early this week, there were 3.3 million deaths worldwide attributed to the Covid-19 virus,

And yet the Japanese government and the International Olympic Committee continue to set the tables for a July global party that 59 percent of the Japanese population wants cancelled, according to polling done last Friday through Sunday.

In that poll, postponement was not an option. Another poll in April showed 70 percent of the population wanted the Tokyo Summer Games either cancelled or postponed again, as they had been from 2020 to 2021.

Make no mistake about it: the Tokyo Olympics are in essence a shindig, a giant, made-for-TV, ATM of a sports festival, sort of a wedding reception on steroids. And think of how many wedding receptions and family celebrations have been cancelled or postponed in the face of a pandemic still raging out of control in some of the world’s most populous countries, notably India and Brazil.

The preparations and regulations necessary in the hope of keeping the Olympics from becoming a feast for the coronavirus mean they will be essentially a joyless party, a wedding with no food or dancing, a festival without the cultural interactions that are supposed to make the Olympics more than just another sporting event.

No foreign spectators. Maybe no domestic ones, either. Strict distancing and masking rules. Little freedom of movement for everyone directly involved.

Is that the youth of the world assembling to celebrate the Olympics, as called for in the ritual appeal at the Closing Ceremony of the previous Games? Only if they stay two meters apart.

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Using new recognition from social media, Elladj Baldé champions skaters of color

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Using new recognition from social media, Elladj Baldé champions skaters of color

Figure skater Elladj Baldé and his fiancée, dancer-choreographer Michelle Dawley, were driving in their Calgary, Alberta, neighborhood in mid-December when they noticed a patch of open ice in a field. It was deep into the pandemic lockdown, when places to skate were hard to come by, and Baldé, who had his skates in the car, wanted to commemorate the find.

“Let’s make a video,” Baldé said.

As Dawley recorded on an iPhone, Baldé pulled on his skates, ran out of his car across snow-covered grass and onto the ice, did a celebratory backflip, then some hip-hop dance moves. His open plaid shirt flapped over a hoodie, and his enthusiasm poured out.

The recording took 10 minutes, from filming to laying in music by Rihanna. It became 20 seconds on TikTok, where Baldé said he had only a couple hundred followers at the time.

That – and Baldé’s life – would change quickly.

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Reality check: Audrey Shin is what’s happening in U.S. women’s skating

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Reality check: Audrey Shin is what’s happening in U.S. women’s skating

The first thing Audrey Shin asked her parents in Colorado when they spoke by phone after she skated the short program at Skate America in Las Vegas was, “Did this actually happen?”

The “this” in question was the near flawless, self-assured performance that had put Shin in third place, beginning two days in late October that ended with her as the surprising star of her first senior Grand Prix event. But even her parents’ reassurance that they saw how well their 16-year-old daughter had skated could not assuage all of Shin’s desire to pinch herself.

“It was already on YouTube, so I watched it a few times in a row right after we talked because I was really proud of what I did,” she said in an interview last week. “After a while, it kind of finally sunk in.”

The disconnect between what had happened – and how well Shin would do again in the free skate to win the bronze medal – and what she had envisioned was understandable.

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A taller Alysa Liu also hoping to show growth as a skater

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A taller Alysa Liu also hoping to show growth as a skater

Word on the street is Alysa Liu has grown.

The two-time reigning U.S. figure skating champion said that’s true… to a degree. The two inches of height she added between last season and her 15th birthday in August don’t change Liu’s perspective.

“I just went from really short to very short,” Liu said, wryly, via telephone after a training session last week in San Francisco. “I’m up to 5-0. I like the five-foot number, but it’s still short.”

Anyway, the more important measure will be how much Liu has grown as a skater since her successful 2019-20 debut in international junior competition.

As is the case for all skaters, especially those in North America, such skating growth risks being temporarily stunted by restrictions on training and lack of competition caused by the coronavirus pandemic. And physical growth, even if it is only two inches, can also be problematic.

In Liu’s case, issues related to the pandemic have complicated her sudden shift to a new coaching team in late June, when she announced a split from Laura Lipetsky, who had coached her since age 5. Cancellation of the Junior Grand Prix series is giving Liu more travel-free time to adapt to the new situation, although, ironically, travel restrictions are keeping her from having the two-country, three-coach arrangement work the way it was planned.

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Another Medvedeva stunner: pandemic sends her back to old coach after bitter split led her to Orser, who says her departure was amicable

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Another Medvedeva stunner: pandemic sends her back to old coach after bitter split led her to Orser, who says her departure was amicable

During the Russian Figure Skating test event last weekend, when Brian Orser and Yevgenia Medvedeva were bridging the 5,000-mile span between him in Toronto and her in Moscow via video chat, they laughed about how different the atmosphere seemed than it had been at the same event two years earlier.

Orser would tell me Wednesday morning he had no idea during those weekend conversations that the bridge linking them was on the verge of collapse under the weight of separation caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

A few hours before Orser called me, what Medvedeva had told him Tuesday became public: she was making the stunning move of returning to her previous and longtime coach, Moscow-based Eteri Tutberidze, whom she had left in an acrimonious split three months after the 2018 Olympics.

“She (Medvedeva) and I agree if there was no pandemic, we would not be having this discussion right now,” Orser said.

So, there was a bittersweet irony in Orser’s recollection of his earlier conversations with Medvedeva, 2016 and 2017 world champion and 2018 Olympic silver medalist.

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