IOC must postpone Olympic Games - says former Ghana athletics chief

Former president of the Ghana Athletics Association, Mr George Haldane-Lutterodt, has advocated the postponement of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics to 2021 or 2022 to enable the world to fully recover from the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic.

According to Mr Lutterodt, the safety of the athletes are paramount and must not be taken for granted hence the postponement of the competition to next year.

Safety concerns

“This is about safety of the athletes, it is about their health and welfare, this must be safe-guarded at all cost and we must not play with it,” he told the Daily Graphic yesterday.

The sports administrator noted that if officials went ahead and organised the competition as scheduled, the event would lack the thrills and intensity of such a global and once-in-a-lifetime experience.

“Even if they insist on holding the competition, athletes who have not properly trained for it due to the COVID-19 pandemic may not bring their full potential and talents on display and this will make the competition unexciting,” maintained Mr Haldane-Lutterodt, who was Ghana’s athletics chief from 2001 to 2004.

IOC communique

His call came in the wake of a communique by the Executive board of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to member National Olympic Committees last Tuesday that it was engaging with major stakeholders, including the World Health Organisation, on the COVID-19 pandemic, and saw no need for a drastic decision to change the agreed schedule for the July 24-August 9 Olympic Games.

Mr Haldane-Lutterodt urged the IOC to heed calls from some athletes for the postponement of the Tokyo Games for the safety and health of the larger citizens of the world.

While he lauded the suspension of social gatherings, including funerals and sports events in Ghana, he also called on the government to provide guidelines for sports athletes in relation to how to prevent the COVID-19 from affecting them and how to not spread it.