COVID-19 delays Tokyo Olympics 2020

By Jesus A. Garcia, Jr.

LUZON has been on lockdown and no daily national newspapers arrive in the province. I just read some of the latest sports news through the Internet and TV, and the most talked about is the plan to postpone the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympic Games originally slated on July 24 – August 9 this year.

The International Olympic Committee headed by Thomas Bach, with Tokyo Olympic Organizing Committee president Yoshiro Mori and with the blessings of Japan’s Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and the World Health Organization (WHO) unanimously agreed to postpone, but not cancel, the XXXII Olympiad due to the very alarming global spread of COVID-19. Instead, the quadrennial meet will be held next year (but still no definite date) and will still be called Tokyo Olympic Games 2020 and the Olympic Flame will remain in Japan until the rescheduled opening ceremony date in 2021. In fact, the Japanese leg of the Olympic torch relay supposed to start last Thursday, March 26, was also postponed for the same reason.

And when it was reported that the first world countries like the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany, Italy, Spain, Brazil, to name some supported the postponement of  the quadrennial meet, it was very reassuring. It was also expected by many sports enthusiasts. Our world sports leaders made the right decision to safeguard the health and welfare of the world athletes, officials, spectators and everyone involved in the Olympics. I doff my hat to them.

Like the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games in 2016, the world’s oldest and most prestigious sporting event is expected to attract again around 11,000 athletes from over 200 countries led by defending overall champion U.S.A. to play in 33 Olympic sports. But being a former sportsman myself, I know that the athletes who have been in training for the last four years after the 2012 Rio Games are both worried and disappointed, if not disoriented in their training by the still to be decided dates. How do they pace their training so they do not over train by 2021? Nonetheless, while nothing appears certain with the shelving of the big games, we should praise the organizers instead of lambasting them.

Meanwhile, millions are wondering why the universe is suffering from this unseen virus. But this is really not a surprise. We have to remember that all-natural health calamities in the past like cholera, polio, dengue, AIDS, SARS, MERS, EBOLA, the present COVID-19, and the future were all prophesied in the Good Book.  I’ve advised friends to shift away from their cell phones and instead read the words of God in the Holy Bible. Read Exodus 15: 26; Exodus 23: 25; Luke 21: 11; Matthew 24: 7; Deuteronomy 32: 24; 2 Chronicles 7: 13-14; and chiefly Jeremiah 11: 11, to name a few and the answers are there. I’m not a pastor, not a priest, not a minister of any religion but a sinner like everyone, but I’m not a stranger to His words. Amen.

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “When I shut up heaven and there is no rain, or command the locusts to devour the land or send pestilence among My people, If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sins and heal their land. 2 Chronicles 7: 13-14.

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