Olympic sailing: Waiting for the Olympics - IOC decision postponed by four weeks

"Human lives take precedence over everything, including the organisation of the Games." With this and other key statements, IOC President Thomas Bach addressed the international Olympic athlete community in an open letter today. This latest official IOC response was preceded by many athlete actions over the weekend. They ranged from boycott announcements by well-known Olympians such as European fencing champion Max Hartung on Saturday evening's Aktuelle Sportstudio to harsh criticism of the IOC's hesitant response to the coronavirus pandemic and its drastic impact on the Olympic preparations and qualifications, which have been cancelled in series, to appeals to the IOC to urgently postpone the 2020 Olympic Games. The International Olympic Committee and its President have now explained their approach and announced that they will provide clarity on the organisation of the Olympic Games within four weeks. The IOC has ruled out a total cancellation. The postponement, which has not yet been decided, has become at least more likely with today's announcement.

Dirk Ramhorst, Head of Sport at Kieler Woche, had already taken a clear stance on this issue in YACHT online on Saturday. His arguments and the background to the early postponement of Kiel Week to September are as follows here to read. Well-known German Olympic sailors had also previously spoken out in favour of postponing the Olympic Games, including Laser world champion Philipp Buhl from Sonthofen. The 30-year-old keeps fit in the mountains in his home region of Allgäu with contactless outdoor sports or on the bike roller and told YACHT online: "If half of the athletes can no longer qualify properly and can no longer train effectively, these are more serious problems than event overlaps or media bottlenecks in the event of a postponement. The Olympics have a higher mission than just awarding medals. The Olympics should bring the world together, and even that is hardly possible at the moment. That's why I'm in favour of a postponement." The German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) is now asking its athletes for their opinions in order to get an idea of the situation.

For the international sports umbrella organisations and the national federations as well as the athletes, the wait for the final decision has been extended yet again with the latest IOC message. If the IOC makes use of the full month, a container load of national sailors will also be on their way to Enoshima. The German Olympic candidates will meet one after the other on Monday under the highest hygiene protection measures at the largely closed federal base in Kiel to prepare boats and material for loading. There will then be a maximum of two weeks until the packed cargo has to be shipped to Japan on behalf of the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) with the logistics company Schenker in order to arrive there in time for the World Cup regatta in the Olympic area of Enoshima in mid-June, which in theory could be the last qualification for the Olympic Games. "As long as we don't have any other reliable information, we have to act like this," said DSV sports director Nadine Stegenwalner, explaining the process, which is not yet certain whether it will actually make sense. The action is just one of tens of thousands of examples in all sports and around the world that show that every day of an earlier IOC decision on the almost unavoidable postponement of the Olympic Games would be a win for athletes, federations, the DOSB and many other stakeholders.

The final word on this world-shaking issue has not yet been spoken in times of crisis. But the one that concludes Thomas Bach's open letter does: "I wish, and we are all working on this, that the hope expressed by so many athletes, National Olympic Committees and International Sports Federations from all five continents will be fulfilled: that at the end of this dark tunnel, through which we are all walking together and do not know how long it will be, the Olympic flame will be the light at the end of this tunnel."

Here to read the letter from IOC President Thomas Bach.