Olympic postponement due to coronavirus has sporting, economic and cultural repercussions

Coronavirus cares not about an athlete’s four-year cycle.

A global pandemic that has got the world in a state of fear has no interest in the quest to determine who can run faster, jump higher or is the strongest male or female on the planet.

The decision taken on Tuesday by the International Olympic Committee to postpone the Olympics and Paralympics for a year until 2021 was the right call, even if it took a little too long to be reached for the liking of some.

But that is understandable.

For there is nothing quite like an Olympics for sheer scale and magnitude, and the consequences of the postponement are far reaching.

Athletes who have been building towards July for the Olympics and September for the Paralympics, suddenly have another year to factor into their training regime. Entire schedules must be ripped up and rewritten. Programmes that were designed to taper an athlete into the peak of their physical prowess for the biggest event of their lives, will now have to be redesigned.

“We will work with the relevant authorities and our funding partners to establish the team’s plan for the coming months at the earliest opportunity,” said Stephen Park, performance director for the Great Britain Cycling team.

In cycling alone, questions will be asked of whether Ed Clancy, that mightiest of Yorkshire Olympians, has another year of preparation left in his legs.

He will now be 36 by the time of the Tokyo Olympics, not 35 as had for so long been expected.

Athletes and governing bodies also now have to take into consideration funding cycles. All the money a national governing body receives from UK Sport via the National Lottery is apportioned in four-year blocks.

Reacting to the news of the postponement yesterday, Sally Munday, the chair of UK Sport, said: “We are working closely with government to ensure we can effectively support sports and their athletes through this distressing period.

“I’d like to take the opportunity to reassure sports that our guidance from last week remains in place that we will not seek to recover any financial performance investment or Athlete Performance Awards due to disruption caused by COVID-19.

“We also realise that today’s decision has significant financial implications for our high performance system and we are working hard to identify the wide ranging impacts and scenarios and are in close contact with government to establish how best to support our summer Olympic and Paralympic sports and athletes to be ready for the Games when they do take place.”

Beyond the sport itself, the Olympic Games has myriad stakeholders, from sponsors to television right holders, corporate ticket distributors to the thousands of accredited media who cover the Games.

Television will be hardest hit, as Kirstine Stewart, head of media, entertainment and culture at the World Economic Forum explains.

“The television sector – which has been challenged for a while by streaming video on-demand services – is the most obviously impacted,” she says.

“Live sports represent one of the most important programming opportunities for broadcasters in terms of ability to bring in advertising revenue and attract and retain subscribers.

“Already, billions of dollars of the most popular advertising inventory have vanished as a result of the suspension of the major sports leagues around the world.

“It is even harder for a TV network to replace the Olympics in its schedule. In the US, perhaps the most lucrative market, NBCUniversal has booked more than $1.25bn in ad sales against around 7,000 hours of content across TV, streaming and social media.

“And it’s not just broadcasters that will be looking for ways to respond, major brands are also going to be hit because sponsoring and advertising during the Olympics is their way of connecting with a global audience.”

The Olympics is the pinnacle of sport, but it is about so much more than just sport.

As we witnessed at London 2012, it is a force for good, and creates a chest-swelling sense 
of national and international pride.

Its absence from our sporting summer in 2020 is difficult to countenance on a number of levels.

Coronavirus has just claimed its biggest sporting victim.