Summer Olympics and dreams at risk due to coronavirus

Competing and winning a silver medal with the U.S. women’s gymnastics team at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing is a moment Alicia Sacramone Quinn will never forget.

“It was such an honor to represent the United States and be there with my teammates and get to be on a big competition floor,” Sacramone Quinn told me Thursday. “It was a moment I will always remember.”

So the Winchester native’s heart breaks for her fellow athletes as the global coronavirus outbreak threatens to cancel this summer’s Olympic games in Tokyo.

“Honestly, it’s devastating for these athletes,” said the 32-year-old mother of three. “They have been working years, if not their whole life, to get to this one huge moment for them.

“They can be sympathetic to the situation and want to be safe but at the same time it’s so bittersweet because it’s a moment they’ve been waiting for for so long,” Sacramone Quinn added. “For that to be taken away for something that’s out of their hands, is probably an even harder pill to swallow.”

The rapid-spreading coronavirus has forced Japan to close schools and cancel Olympics-related events. But Olympics organizers expect the games to start as planned on July 24 and are encouraging athletes to continue to prepare for them.

On Tuesday, Japan’s Olympic minister, Seiko Hashimoto, said the games could be postponed, saying the International Olympic Committee has the right to cancel the games only if they are not held during 2020.  “This can be interpreted to mean the games can be postponed as long as they are held during the calendar year,” Hashimoto said.

Delaying the games, Sacramone Quinn said, could “mess with” training plans but a postponed Olympics is better than a cancelled one. “Most coaches and athletes have a very well-thought-out plan of when they want the peak,” she said.

In the few years leading up to the 2008 Olympics, Sacramone Quinn was training six days a week for seven hours a day. “It encompasses your whole life,” she said. “It’s a heavy load up until right before Opening Ceremonies.”

Cancelling the Olympics would also impact the families of athletes. “It’s not just you,” said Sacramone Quinn, who now lives in Florida. “It’s your family and loved ones too making all these sacrifices.”

Sacramone Quinn said she’s in talks with NBC, which has the broadcast rights to the Olympics, to do some work for them either in Japan or out of their Connecticut offices.

“I’d love to go to the Olympics,” she said, “but whatever works out is for the best.”

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/2vz7cgB