Special Report: Final Countdown For Tokyo Games Underway In Bid To Save Olympics In Corona Crisis

As the final countdown to the Tokyo Olympic Games begins, Michael Pirrie, Executive Adviser for the London 2012 Olympic Games Organising Committee, outlines the scale of the challenge facing Olympic organisers from the coronavirus pandemic, and the key scenarios and decisions that will shape the future of the Tokyo Games. 

‘Tokyo organisers must proceed immediately with new biosecurity plans to corona proof the Olympic Games.’ 

The one-year countdown to the opening ceremony of each Olympic Games heralds a milestone on the international calendar – the bell lap for cities preparing to host the Games, nations and territories sending teams, and athletes in training for the world’s biggest and most elite sporting occasion.

After the rescheduling of this year’s Olympic Games, the new one year countdown to Tokyo will be unlike any prelude to the Games as organisers race to save the global mega event from a pandemic that has overwhelmed the planet.

As much of the world continues to review survival strategies on a daily if not hourly basis, the future of many sectors of global society, including international sport, remains as unpredictable as the virus itself.

OLYMPICS IN UNCERTAIN TIMES

The scale and severity of the pandemic have pushed efforts to get the Tokyo Games back on track into unchartered territory.

As executive adviser on the London 2012 Olympic Games Organising Committee, I vividly recall the challenges we faced in London, from the deadly terrorist attacks that crippled the capital to the global financial crisis.

These twin shocks required numerous extra layers of financial and security planning, including the installation of surface-to-air missiles around the Olympic Park to protect athletes and surrounding communities.

london_stadium

The challenges led some veteran IOC members and Olympic observers to describe London as the most difficult planning environment for the Games in modern times.

While the issues we confronted in London were formidable, no Olympic host city or committee has faced Tokyo’s challenges.

The skilful diplomacy of South Korean President Moon Jae-in and IOC President Thomas Bach helped to save the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics from the possible threat of nuclear missiles from the North.

It is not possible however, to negotiate with the coronavirus, also a weapon of mass destruction.

Amid fears the air of excitement that fills Games cities and venues will also carry corona virus, the pathogen, which needs no ticket or day pass to enter venues, has pushed safety concerns to levels never imagined before at the Olympic Games.

The most urgent race on the international calendar is the race to find a vaccine not the 100 metres sprint final.

The integrity of the Olympic brand, values and sport also depends on the safety of Tokyo Games.

THE SURVIVAL GAMES

Tokyo’s buildings and venues were constructed with materials and back up systems to survive earthquakes, typhoons, terrorist attack and cyber sabotage but not a crippling, socially transmitted virus.

This emergence of the pandemic in an Olympic year has shifted the world’s focus from sport to survival.

Now, the most urgent race on the international calendar is the race to find a vaccine not the 100 metres sprint final.

The scale of the challenge facing Tokyo organisers has come into sharper and darker focus since the virus began its killing spree. The virus thrives in the conditions of cities that often host major international events, exacting some of its heaviest tolls in places that have hosted or bid for the Olympic Games.

These include Moscow, New York, Rio, and London where the virus has conjured doomsday movie-like scenarios of death and disease.

The Olympic Games is the world’s biggest cultural, media and travel event as well as biggest sporting occasion, and was never designed to withstand a pandemic like this. Physical distancing, the only proven defence against the virus, is impossible in crowed venues, stretching Games preparations into new and extreme directions

These involve planning for the safe separation of thousands of spectators, volunteers, athletes, media, and support staff at hundreds of Olympic events across dozens of Games venues, requiring Cray supercomputer-like calculations.

PUSHING THROUGH COVID BARRIERS 

Organising the Olympic Games in the middle of an international public health emergency means organisers must plan like an international medical committee as well as an elite sports event organisation.

Olympic organisers have to plan Tokyo 2.0 around critical gaps in knowledge of how the virus spreads and randomly kills in ways that still puzzle the best medical minds.

With the help of WHO experts, Tokyo’s technical master plan, developed painstakingly over seven long years, has been overhauled in just a few months following postponement of the Games in an effort to isolate Olympic operations from the virus.

Venues for the Games have also been secured and the sports competition schedule confirmed as further declarations of progress and intent to stage the Games.

Sporting landscapes also look brighter for Tokyo as green shoots begin to appear. 

THE ROAD BACK FOR TOKYO 

After months of sport on Facebook, face-to-face competition has recommenced in several leading Olympic nations, including Great Britain, the United States, Germany, Australia, and host nation, Japan.

This includes the return of several of Europe’s elite furloughed football leagues, such as the globally influential English Premier League, inside largely empty stadiums in a unique sport and public health experiment.

Government leaders and medical experts have also indicated that spectators could return to live sport in larger but restricted numbers later this year.

Cities are also pioneering new crowd control protocols and dispersal methods to ensure social distancing requirements, including virus outbreak management squads.

The Premier League has resumed, but is an Olympics behind closed doors the same?

TOKYO’S GROUND ZERO 

Tokyo’s ultimate challenge is to prevent venue clusters from becoming infection clusters that could overwhelm the host city and beyond

While the world awaits a vaccine, Olympic organisers must proceed as quickly as possible with new venue operating and biosecurity planning, based on the latest available medical information and interventions in an effort to corona proof the Games. 

Venue health and pandemic plans must be completed, along with infrastructure modifications to curb virus exposure.

This includes reconfiguring venue seating and spacing for safe physical distancing, and air-flow and ventilation systems to filter out potential droplets of air carrying virus particles inside venues.

Reserve venues may need to be needed in case primary venues have to be locked down during competition for deep cleaning and sanitation pending the detection of Covid-19 cases during the Games.

Tokyo’s options have narrowed as the impacts of the pandemic have widened.

Special venue isolation, evacuation, and fever testing facilities may also be needed.

The Abe government also must demonstrate that Japan can further suppress community transmission to provide a safe environment outside as well as inside venues.

DECIDING THE GAMES

Tokyo’s options have narrowed as the impacts of the pandemic have widened.

The ‘One Year To Go’ milestone for the Tokyo Games has become a countdown into the unknown.

With the planet in turmoil from Covid-19, many Olympic nations are struggling with extreme public health, community, medical and economic challenges, ruptured supply lines, and limited access to resources and sports facilities and may not be ready for the Games.

The future of the Tokyo Games will be decided largely by the pandemic’s trajectory and international opinion in coming weeks and month.

Cut offs in planning for the Games will also be critical to deciding the the safety of the Games.

The pre-Games planning deadlines and lockdowns, necessary to provide enough time to set up for the Games, will limit opportunities for further changes to Games operations and venues ahead of the Games.

Much will depend on capacity and contingency in Games systems to anticipate and respond to a sudden worsening of the pandemic.

This will decide whether the Games can proceed with safety and any certainty.

Olympic athletes and sports, including debutants such as surfing, meanwhile, are riding a wave of uncertainty, unsure if the new planning pipeline will take them all the way to Tokyo, or whether the baseball dugouts in Japan’s popular Yokohama Park and other sports venues and settings will be empty again next year.

While public health experts find it increasingly difficult to see how the traditional Olympic Games model could apply if pandemic conditions persist, the world of sport and beyond is hoping that the Japanese ‘ganbaru’ spirit of perseverance can save the Games in the countdown ahead.

MICHAEL PIRRIE is a communications advisor on major international events, including the Olympic Games. Michael led the global media campaign for the UK Government’s Olympic Games bid committee, and was Executive Adviser to London Olympic Games Organising Committee Chair Seb Coe. Michael also liaised with the IOC Executive Office on Co-ordination Commission meetings that led high level planning for the London Olympic Games.

Moving Forward: Where Does Tokyo 2020 Go From Here? Michael Pirrie Evaluates The Situation.

As the Tokyo 2022 Olympic Games go into recess, Michael Pirrie takes a look at the issues and implications now being faced by the IOC and Tokyo following the postponement of the Games.

The Olympic Games do not exist in a vacuum, and each is influenced by world events.

From the black power salute for racial equality at the1968 Mexico Games, to the surface to air missiles on rooftops around the London 2012 Olympic Park to protect athletes and the host city, the delivery of the Olympic Games is shaped by its time and place.

After attempting to out run the coronavirus in a final sprint to the starting line of the Tokyo Games in July, the sudden decision by the IOC and Japanese Olympic organisers to withdraw the Games was dramatic, historic, and inevitable.

The medical, social, economic and political impacts of the pandemic tower above Brexit, the Hong Kong riots, US-China trade wars, and all other major events in recent world history.

While a final decision on Tokyo could have been made possibly in late May, still enabling Tokyo’s accredited staff time to bump into Games venues and roles, the earlier postponement has provided much needed clarity for athletes and national Olympic teams.

Japan’s high-speed bullet train from Buenos Aires, where Tokyo was awarded the Games, to the nation’s capital city has been side tracked but not derailed.

The sudden delay of the Games brought the Olympic production line in Tokyo to a grinding halt.

The Olympic show has gone into an enforced hiatus before a single performer could enter the main stadium for the Athlete’s Parade.

GAMES ON HOLD 

News of the postponement spread quickly around the world, much like the virus that has forced the Games into temporary recess for the first time in history.

The high tech future promised for the Olympic movement at the Tokyo Games has been replaced by an uncertain future as the world grapples with a new killer virus and ways to combat it.

IOC President had been bullish in recent weeks about the Games going ahead on schedule, however the situation has changed rapidly.

Initial statements by Games organisers that Tokyo 2020 would go ahead were made before the pandemic began to escalate, amid hopes the virus could be contained.

A WHOLE NEW WORLD

Doctors, scientists and relatives of victims however were beginning to experience a different reality as death and disease rates soared.

While a final decision on Tokyo could have been made possibly in late May, still enabling Tokyo’s accredited staff time to bump into Games venues and roles, the earlier postponement has provided much needed clarity for athletes and national Olympic teams.

It also avoided the recent debacle suffered by Formula 1 Grand Prix at the Melbourne Grand Prix, which was cancelled after all of the international drivers and crews had arrived for the event.

The decision to announce the postponement four weeks earlier than planned highlighted mounting concern in the Olympic movement about proceeding with the Games.

Rapidly rising corona cases in Italy, Spain, the United States and other leading Olympic nations served as a grim reality check and proved a tipping point against the Games going ahead.

Doubts were fuelled by lack of a detailed road map outlining protections and precautions through the pandemic to the Games in Tokyo, and silence of the World Health Organisation on Games safety.

Former London 2012 Olympic chair Seb Coe, now president of World Athletics, the most important sport at the Games, would often tell his London Olympic teams that the role of organising committees is to ensure that planning for the Games does not detract from the performance and experience of athletes.

While most attention has focussed on Tokyo as the next city in the Games pipeline, this could be just the start of the pandemic’s impacts on the Olympics, especially with Games already on the assembly line.

The postponement was also inevitable amid fears that even with hospital grade hygiene, crowded sports venues in any city could become social suicide settings.

Queues for venues could join queues for scarce heart lung machines and respirators.

TOKYO’S LEGACIES 

Tokyo had given itself every chance of success leading up to the postponement.

As fireworks illuminated Tokyo’s skyline and crowds gathered at traditional shrines and temples on New Year’s eve, Olympic organisers had good reason to feel optimistic 2020 would be Tokyo’s time.

Most milestones on the master schedule had been achieved in the penultimate year, meticulously catalogued, announced proudly to the world, and quietly celebrated in organisers’ offices.

The main Olympic stadium was completed, and detailed integrated operational planning for venues, transport, accommodation, security, city programmes and other key Games services had been largely tested and validated.

Tokyo’s Olympic Stadium will have to wait another year until it sees the olympians enter.

Tokyo’s crisis planning teams had focussed largely on natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis and typhoons as the major threats to the Games along with terrorism

While several microbiologists had warned of coming viral epidemics, there were no immediate signs of a pending pandemic looming on the horizon.

Reports of a mysterious influenza like illness in mainland China were beginning to emerge late last year, but these initially appeared vague and more relevant for organisers of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games.

Preparations for Tokyo have already left significant legacies, serving as a catalyst for some of the biggest changes in decades.

Under the direction of IOC Olympic Games strategist, John Coates, Tokyo organisers have introduced and integrated a range of new Olympic sports ready for the Games.

Spiralling venue and overlay costs have also been curbed along with concerns of corruption in the bidding process and other issues that threatened to derail Tokyo’s preparations.

The early stages of planning for Milan-Cortina 2026 could suffer while Italy is recovering from the devastating effects of coronavirus.

Coates has also helped to evolve the Olympic Games model with innovations in organisation and funding, with a greater regional spread of venues making the Games less costly and capital city centric.

CURRENT & FUTURE GAMES

Some of the most far-reaching changes, however, may still be to come in the fall out from the corona pandemic.

While most attention has focussed on Tokyo as the next city in the Games pipeline, this could be just the start of the pandemic’s impacts on the Olympics, especially with Games already on the assembly line.

Italy’s complete lockdown and tragic death toll will impact on at least the early stages of planning for 2026 Milan Cortina, while Paris 2024 organisers will already be in high levels talks with French Health Department officials about the implications of COVID-19 for public health and athlete safety planning for the 2024 Games.

THE GAMES RETURN

The return of the Games – and all major sporting events – ultimately depends on the return to normal conditions for human life and society.

This can only happen if the viral pandemic is contained and controlled and a vaccine or antiviral drugs and treatments can be found.

The same government directives that have shut down national boarders, city limits and airlines worldwide and made the Games impossible to contemplate this year, appear to be reducing, but not yet stopping, viral transmission rates and could help to pave the way for a second attempt at the Tokyo Games.

MICHAEL PIRRIE is an international communications advisor and commentator with extensive experience on major events including the Olympic Games in Sydney, London and other host cities.

ANALYSIS: The Olympic Games and Politics in a Global Pandemic – Why Tokyo 2020 Changed Track

With news coming through over the weekend that the International Olympic Committee and Japanese government are finally considering possible postponement of Tokyo 2020 this summer, Michael Pirrie looks at why they may be coming round…

The lights have gone down on Broadway and the West End; the clapper boards have run out of applause in Hollywood; Big Brother has lost his voice and the dolphins have returned to the Grande Canal, but the world’s greatest sporting event was continuing its marathon run to Tokyo in late July.

The sporting world’s greatest show on earth had turned into its biggest soap opera. Every day the world is waiting for a new episode. Tokyo and Olympic leads were adamant the show would go on.

Theatres had been booked; tickets almost sold out; and the athletes were waiting for their call sheets, performance scripts, and the call to set.

Those call times, however, appeared to be changing by the day and now are yet to be finally determined.

The show must go on? Maybe not on this occasion…

The announcement of a possible deferment looks set to bring the curtain down temporarily on the world’s biggest sporting and cultural event.

As the world continues to shut down and retreat indoors from the pandemic, it will have to do so without its four yearly television binge on the Summer Olympic Games, and watch box sets of past editions the Games instead.

Reality Finally Breaking Down Optimism

While the massive scale of the Olympics made the Games a prime target for the corona virus, Tokyo organisers had been holding out hope in quiet desperation for a miracle cure or sudden change in the direction of the pandemic.

While Japan had remained outwardly confident the Games could proceed, a chorus of doubt and concern was building in the background as the virus rampaged across the world.

IOC members detected a dark and fearful mood in their home nations about the Games going ahead in the midst of a global health emergency.

Following years of preparations, athletes are also fearing that restricted access to training facilities and supports due to the pandemic would prevent them achieving their best performances in Tokyo.

World governing bodies were increasingly worried about conditions for the Games in Tokyo.

Those fears reached a tipping point in recent days as all major international sporting events were shut down or deferred.

Meanwhile, the toll of death and disease was reaching alarming levels in several of the top Olympic nations of Europe including Italy, Spain and France, and in the United States, the leading Olympic nation, further raising concerns amongst national Olympic committees, families of athletes and their communities.

A growing number of athletes were reluctant to leave loved ones behind in such dire circumstances.

Following years of preparations, athletes are also fearing that restricted access to training facilities and supports due to the pandemic would prevent them achieving their best performances in Tokyo.

The Olympic Games was becoming an impossible dream.

Prioritising Life Takes Focus

While Japan has shown extraordinary commitment in preparing for the Games, the primary responsibility of the Japanese Government in the current circumstances is to protect its citizens from the pandemic, especially the vast population of elderly residents for whom this virus poses an existential threat.

The primary responsibility of the IOC is to protect the Olympic athletes and integrity, heritage and values.

Senior figures in the Olympic movement, led by IOC president Thomas Bach, and Seb Coe, president of World Athletics, the most important sport at  the Olympic Games, stressed, like world leaders, presidents, prime minsters, and others, that sacrifices are needed to protect human lives.

Especially In a new world where staying alive means staying apart.

A final decision on Tokyo’s rescue package is still four weeks away while the IOC works with the Japanese Government, Olympic committee, world governing bodies, key stakeholders and athletes to lock down future options for the Games.

While Japan’ has indicated its preference for a “full form” of the Olympic Games, more than one date may be necessary for next year, along with a back up in 2022 given the many imponderables still surrounding the virus, especially its potency in large urban centres and cities, such as Tokyo, and whether there are more viral particles in the air of such places.

Some statisticians indicate that accurate assessment of risk may be difficult to gauge, and can be misunderstood and over estimated in the climate of hysteria and lack of knowledge surrounding the virus.

The coronavirus pandemic would cast a long shadow over the Olympic Games if it proceeded in July and cases continued to rise, rendering the medal tally irrelevant to the death tally

Public health experts warn however of the enormously fatal consequences facing humanity if the risks of this new and highly infectious killer disease are underestimated.

They fear in particular that there are several viral time bombs ticking away in Africa and some of Asia’s biggest nations, including Indonesia.

A Stain On The Games

The coronavirus pandemic would cast a long shadow over the Olympic Games if it proceeded in July and cases continued to rise, rendering the medal tally irrelevant to the death tally, especially in countries, cities and communities hit hardest by the pandemic.

While Japan organisers, athletes and Games fans will be looking closely at patterns of spread and infection over the next four weeks and hoping for signs the crisis is starting to subside, virologists believe the pandemic will get much worse before the situation improves.

While directives limiting movement in public places, shutting down national boarders, airlines, cities, communities  and gatherings around the world have made the Games impossible to currently contemplate, the cumulative impact of these measures, paradoxically, will help to contain transmission and fear of the virus and ultimately pave the way for the Games.

When the back lot lights are lit again, and the cast reforms for the next series, Tokyo will be set to star in the world’s first global spectacular post corona production, with rave reviews almost certain.

Stay tuned…

Michael Pirrie is an international communications adviser and commentator. Michael led the global media campaign for the London 2012 Olympic Games bid and was executive adviser to the London Games chairman, Seb Coe. Michael liaised with the IOC Executive Office on planning for the Co-ordination Commission meetings, the high level strategic and technical planning committee overseeing preparations for the Olympic Games.

If you have an opinion you would like to share via iSportconnect, please email ben@isportconnect.com to discuss further.

Special Report: The Difficulty Surrounding Tokyo 2020 And The Olympic Games In The Viral Age

Michael Pirrie evaluates how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting the IOC’s decision-making as they look to provide a safe and successful Olympics in Tokyo later this year.

The Olympic Games can occur at critical junctures in world history and in the history of host cities and international community.

One such moment occurred at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympic Games, delivered safely and peacefully on the highly nuclearized, divided and dangerous Korean peninsula.

We have now reached another flashpoint in modern global society and sport as preparations continue for the Tokyo Games in the face of a new modern plague.

It takes longer to plan and stage the Olympic Games than it does to build a space shuttle, and any decision to cancel an Olympic mission already parked on the launching pad and almost ready for take off would be unprecedented, and made only if there was a threat to the safety of athletes.

While political boycotts depleted the Moscow and Los Angeles Games, Tokyo could face medical boycotts in the new viral age for sport.

The global anticipation that surrounds the final countdown to the Olympic Games has been replaced by an atmosphere of fear and trepidation in the final stages of the journey to Japan.

While a sense of danger was present when the Olympic movement landed in Rio with the Zika virus, polluted air posed a visible danger in Beijing.

OLYMPIC SPORT GOES VIRAL

The invisible coronavirus however has raised doubts about whether air conditions in Japan, and across the planet, can safely support and sustain sporting activity and events.

A great silence has descended over the sporting world, its premier events, codes and stadiums.

The pandemic has already forced the suspension of entire seasons and elite sporting leagues and competitions, and forced games behind closed doors without a crowded house in sight.

The Olympic Games in Tokyo is the only major international sporting event and occasion still standing.

From my previous experience working with Olympic Games organising committees, I vividly remember the final months of preparations are always the most anxious and intense, concealed beneath a mask of calmness and confidence, which we would sometimes call ‘The Olympic Look.

This anxiety is driven by a deep fear of failure that after vast investments of time, money and painstaking planning the Olympic project could still collapse due to unforeseen circumstances.

The global anticipation that surrounds the final countdown to the Olympic Games has been replaced by an atmosphere of fear and trepidation in the final stages of the journey to Japan.

This is the deep fear that Tokyo Olympic organisers are now experiencing but in ways unlike any previous Games committee.

The enormous fear of failure that drives Olympic committees, like athletes and Opening Ceremony directors, has been heightened by the escalating toll of death and disease and doubts about the future of the Games.

While political boycotts depleted the Moscow and Los Angeles Games, Tokyo could face medical boycotts in the new viral age for sport.

SURVIVING THE GAMES  

The worst ailments that athletes have suffered at previous Games include injured pride, loss of future funding, positive doping samples, food poisoning, cultural disorientation, missed flights home, and fake hold ups.

The release of the latest Bond film has been pushed back (00)7 months to November.

Corona has made competition a matter of  life or potential death.

The mask of calm and confidence projected by Olympic committees has been replaced by protective surgical masks, gloves, and gowns as special sanitisation squads attempt to corona proof Tokyo’s Games venues and other key locations.

The virus has already put almost everything on hold in societies around the world, from local markets to the release of the new James Bond movie entitled ‘No Time to Die’ : art imitating life perhaps live never before.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

While filming of the latest Mission Impossible franchise in Venice was also halted, Tokyo has become the new location for a real life mission impossible in the battle to protect the world’s best athletes from an invisible killer virus that threatens the Games.

The MI reality drama involves many background locations across the world, and includes numerous laboratories in a vaccine race against time that is more intense than any event on the Olympic competition schedule.

The cast and crew includes some of the biggest players in the media, corporate, retail and technology worlds and some of the finest medical minds as well as a coalition of national and international leaders.

While major gatherings have become the new ground zero in the battle to contain spread of the virus, the prospect of staging the Games in a world full of empty public spaces and deserted communities resembling ghost towns from a Cormac McCarthy post apocalyptic novel might seem implausible if not impossible.

The nation has united around the Olympic Games as a symbol of Japan’s recovery and resilience following the devastating 2011 earthquake tsunami.

No other sporting event or world governing body has access to the global resources available to the Olympic Games, IOC and worldwide Olympic movement of nations and territories.

And few countries have Tokyo’s penchant for technology and perfection. Nor its capacity to endure -characteristics essential to the Games in the viral age.

Tokyo is wearing its determined look.

The quest to stage the Tokyo Games has become a national priority for Japan in its search for a project of geopolitical, cultural and economic significance for the nation at home and on the world stage.

Japan often expresses itself through sport in times of hardship.

OLYMPIC LIFE-LINE

The nation has united around the Olympic Games as a symbol of Japan’s recovery and resilience following the devastating 2011 earthquake tsunami.

Indeed, within a few months of the 2011 tsunami, Japan’s national women’s football team won the women’s world cup football final defeating super power USA, against all odds, on penalty kicks.

Reflecting on her team’s epic win and the impact of the earthquake, the team’s best players Homare Sawa, said: “We were exhausted, but we kept running…Japan has been hurt, and so many lives have been affected,” she said.

“We cannot change that. But Japan is coming back, and this was our chance to represent our nation.”

That same determination is driving Japan’s effort to stage the Tokyo Games, against almost all odds, again.

While the Olympics has provided a financial and political lifeline for the Abe government, Japan can’t be seen to be putting the nation’s significant national investment in the Olympics ahead of global health or its own citizens, especially the vulnerable elderly.

Despite the enormous challenges, there are fundamental concerns about the finality of cancelling the Games when the assessment of risk involved can be misunderstood and vary significantly in the earliest phases of a new pandemic, like corona.

The temporary halt to league or club competitions for players who compete on a weekly basis in careers that span several seasons is vastly different to the loss suffered by Olympians for whom the four year Games cycle can be a once-in-a-lifetime occasion and opportunity, after spending many years to just to get to the Games.

Reading and anticipating the world’s mood on the Games proceeding amidst a global health crisis will be critical to final decisions about the Games.

While the Olympic Games unites and almost stops the world for two weeks in a global celebration of sport and culture, the virus will stop societies for much longer, and any perception that Games events could endanger the fight against the pandemic could divide rather than unite the planet.

While the virus can’t be stopped, experts believe it can be defeated by taking relevant precautions when necessary.

Elite athletes already exist in a virtual medical and health bubble and are in the lowest at risk groups. The risks inherent in Olympic sport pose are far greater for elite athletes than catching the virus.

Tokyo ironically, would probably be one of the safest cities from the virus if the Games go ahead.

Mass pandemic cleaning, disinfection, biosecurity and sanitising programs would be implemented across the city and Games locations designed to eradicate traces of viral particles from all Games surfaces and structures that athletes and others are likely to come into contact with.

A small group of nations, including Australia, is playing an important rehearsal role for the Games as Tokyo’s off Broadway, staging spectator free performances of major sporting events, which are breaking television ratings records and proving there is a huge market and demand for crowd free elite sport.

These successes give hope and confidence to Olympic organisers that global audiences will tune into elite sport when it is available in new formats.

Importantly, there have been no cases reported so far of corona inflections amongst the players involved or in the communities surrounding the venues.

These successes give hope and confidence to Olympic organisers that global audiences will tune into elite sport when it is available in new formats.

Predicting and protecting the future of the world’s health, the athletes, Japanese society and these Tokyo Olympic Games from the coronavirus will require 2020 vision and the wisdom of Solomon in the anxious days and weeks ahead for the IOC, Games organisers and the international community.

While the world’s air may be dangerous in certain environments, Games organisers will be looking at unprecedented measures to insulate and isolate athletes from possible transmission with the latest and most comprehensive air and environment protection systems, creating a protective bubble around competitors.

This could include an expansion of  ‘clean-to-clean’ venues from previous Games, used to facilitate the movement of athletes through secure, barrier free pathways established in Games locations, connected also to transport and accommodation.

Staging the Games safely in the current global climate would be an unprecedented victory over the fear that has gripped the world and provided new ways of combatting the virus that can adapted to new settings for greater worldwide protection.

The Games would be a stunning demonstration of global cooperation in a time of growing social anarchy, with the elderly and disabled being neglected and treated in some communities as modern day lepers who have been left behind.

World leaders and scientists say we will rise above this new pandemic of fear and disease. The Olympic Games and the athletes could lead this rise.

Michael Pirrie is an international communications adviser and commentator. Michael led the global media campaign for the London 2012 Olympic Games bid and was executive adviser to the London Games chairman, Seb Coe. Michael liaised with the IOC Executive Office on planning for the Co-ordination Commission meetings, the high level strategic and technical planning committee overseeing preparations for the Olympic Games.

Special Report: From Australia With Love – How Tennis Superstars And The World of Sport Helped To Support A Devastated Olympic Nation

“It’s important for people like me who have a big platform to raise awareness,” US global tennis superstar, Serena Williams, on participating in the Australian Open during the host nation’s bushfires disaster. “For me in particular, as a player, it was incredibly devastating because I literally know people who have been affected.”

Following the terrible bushfires that have been engulfing Australia in recent months, Michael Pirrie explores the role of elite sport in helping a devastated Olympic nation during the Australian Open tennis Grand Slam and year of Olympic milestones. 

Something profound and unexpected has been happening in Australia twenty years after it hosted the iconic Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.

While Australia’s economic, cultural and international horizons have expanded since, events on the sporting field, and battlefield, have long helped to define Australia’s fighting spirit, its identity and destiny.

Sydney’s Olympic party atmosphere and spirit of friendship united Australia and the world in an electrifying celebration of sport.

The success of the Sydney Games reinforced images of Australia as the ‘Lucky Country,’ with a vibrant economy and an obsessive love of sport, which this once unknown great southern land has become synonymous with.

While Australia hasn’t felt much like a lucky country in recent weeks, with the nation battered by extreme weather events of almost biblical proportions, the sporting world is returning Australia’s friendship and solidarity in sport.

Sydney became covered in smoke due to the fires in the countryside

The superstars of world tennis began the return of service and love of sport to a nation in urgent need of solace and deliverance from harm and loss.

But this would not be sport as normal or anything approaching normal.

While the heat of the Australian New Year often challenges visiting tennis players, the smoke-filled skylines that greeted the world’s best tennis athletes on arrival this year presented a new and unprecedented challenge.

SPORT LIKE NEVER BEFORE

Never before have Australia’s much envied long, hot, lazy summers of watching sport on the television in the lounge, escaping to rural retreats, or lying on the beach under big blue skies turned deadly so quickly, or so widely, with firestorms spanning three states.

Even the Australian Open tennis television trailers proved ominous and prophetic, urging locals and visitors to “be open to anything.”

Significant stretches of Australia were devastated by fires, dust storms, drought, torrential rains, wild winds, power black outs and soaring temperatures.

The returning sounds of the Australian Open’s tennis commentary, polite, cheerful applause, post-match interviews, and umpire rulings helped to replace the sounds of stunned silence that filled a nation inflamed.

Naval carriers and planes were dispatched to evacuate coastal communities.

Thoughts of Dorothy MacKellar’s epic ode to Australia, ‘My Country’ came flying home, never so real or vivid, of “a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains, of ragged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains…her beauty and her terror …all tragic to the moon…”

Amidst the devastation and destruction, sport helped to provide some salvation to Australia at its time of greatest need in decades.

A DEVASTATED NATION TURNS TO SPORT

The annual international tennis migration to Australia for the start of the new Grand Slam season proved much more than a distraction – it provided a sense of stability and sanity to a country in fear for its future. Sport gave back some hope and semblance of normality.

The slap of the racquet, like willow bat on leather ball, are sounds that immediately evoke the joy of summer to all Australians.

The returning sounds of the Australian Open’s tennis commentary, polite, cheerful applause, post-match interviews, and umpire rulings helped to replace the sounds of stunned silence that filled a nation inflamed.

All along the nation’s precious sapphire coast, towns were crumbling and homes were burning. Tennis was sport’s first responder. Others would follow, including some of the biggest names of world football in recent times.

These include Chelsea legend, Didier Drogba, former Manchester United midfielder Park Ji-Sung and Juventus’ former striker, David Trezeguet, who will combine with a galaxy of other former international and Australian stars in the Football for Fires fundraiser in May. Organisers expect a crowd of around 80,000 in Sydney and to raise $1 million.

Didier Drogba will headline the #FootballForFires fundraising match

“The #FootballForFires match will harness the world game and its star players to draw attention to the Australian bushfires crisis and the crucial rebuilding of communities that will be required long after the fires have eventually burnt out,” according to event organiser, Lou Sticca.

“The images of these fires and the devastation they have caused to families, properties and our wildlife have touched so many people around the world and the international football family wants to help Australia,” he said.

The return of household tennis names, along with teams of support staff, umpires, broadcasters, media, and other service providers for the Australian Open gave comfort to the nation that it had not been abandoned nor forgotten.

The tennis stars stayed and competed, determined the Grand Slam show would go on, despite initial health and safety concerns in early qualifying rounds about potentially hazardous particles in smokey air from the fires.

While the titans of tennis live in a rarefied environment with the highest levels of service and prize money, this Australian Open was about more than appearance money and rankings.

THIS TIME IT’S PERSONAL 

For many elite tennis players Australia’s bushfires disaster was personal.

Several of the sport’s biggest stars have come to regard Australia as a temporary second home, travelling long distances to compete at the Open event, site of many career wins and highlights, witnessed, shared and celebrated in Australia.

These include Novak Djokovic, the new number one ranked player in the world and record eight times winner of the Australian Open, including this year’s title. “A tragedy for Australia,” is how Djokovic described his personal feelings.

“It’s really not pleasant to see this many people suffer the consequences of a big force that is hard to stop. At times, nature shows us how, in a way, insignificant we are towards her.”

The beach and bush, the building blocks of Australian culture, were at the epicentre of the fires, and some tournament players knew of coastal locations impacted and people affected.

Rafael Nadal, the top ranked men’s player for the tournament, shared a high five salute and jig with a local volunteer firefighter on court in a spontaneous piece of sports theatre that lifted the mood.

“It’s important for people like me who have a big platform to raise awareness,” said US global tennis superstar, Serena Williams.

“For me in particular, as a player, it was incredibly devastating because I literally know people who have been affected,” said Williams, who donated $43,000 of prize money from her singles title victory in New Zealand, prior to arriving in Australia.

The rituals of the Australian Open’s festive, summer holiday atmosphere include body tattoos of kangaroos, koalas, wombats or other varieties of much-loved wildlife favoured by visiting tennis team members and staff.

For them, the loss of so many rare mammals and marsupials, some of the oldest and most vulnerable creatures on the planet, unique to Australia, was also deeply felt.

Players shared these personal feelings about Australia as the horrific toll began to emerge through smoky, blackened ruins of twisted, melted metal frames and concrete foundations of countless homes and buildings that simply turned to ash or disappeared in the inferno.

SPORTS STARS RALLY FOR A SPORTING NATION

The players also shared Australia’s grief, temporarily setting aside practice sessions and preparations to participate in the “Rally For Relief” tennis fundraising exhibition.

Featuring four of the biggest names in world tennis and sport – Roger Federrer, Serena Williams, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic – all Australian Open winners – the unique event helped to raise more than a massive $6 million for bushfire victims.

Other players donated money for each ace served, or volunteered prize money, including seventh-seeded German Alexander Zverev, who donated $50,000 to the fire recovery effort, after initially promising all prize money if he won the event ($4 million), but lost in the semis.

The players’ personal feelings changed the personality of this Australia Open.

Sport was helping a stricken nation to slowly recover and rebuild, a process in which small gestures can mean a lot.

Novak Djokovic was one of many players deeply saddened by the devastation suffered in Australia

Some of the funds raised initially went to buy new tools and equipment for tradesman and construction workers so that they could resume work and earn money for their families.

Rafael Nadal, the top ranked men’s player for the tournament, shared a high five salute and jig with a local volunteer firefighter on court in a spontaneous piece of sports theatre that lifted the mood.  

This was an unprecedented show of generosity and solidarity with a sporting nation in pain.

This was sport standing side by side with a nation steeped in sport; a nation that has long engaged with the wider world beyond its distant shores through sport and the values of sport, sometimes in difficult situations.

Australia played a key role in last year’s global campaign that secured the release of a young Bahraini Olympic football refugee, wrongfully detained in a Bangkok jail after fleeing to Australia. 

TRANSCENDING SPORT

Sport was now helping to provide relief to Australia, a nation that sees and expresses much of itself, its character and its origins as a remote British convict colony through the rich and diverse tapestry of life and opportunity that surround sport.

It has also helped to overcome the tyranny of Australia’s distance from many world regions.

Australia, in the process, has helped to grow the Olympic movement, staging two highly successful Olympic Games in Sydney and Melbourne; developed Olympic sport, including tennis; and hosted numerous world championships.

No championship, however, has resembled the Australian Open, which proved that the sporting event was indeed “open to anything,” just like the trailer said. Australia’s world tennis spectacular transcended sport.

Rarely has a sporting event been so relevant to the communities beyond its competition zone, or so reflective of events in wider society.

Not since Australia’s Catherine Freeman held the hopes of a sport obsessed nation and its indigenous communities on her shoulders at the Sydney Olympic Games, has so much been expected of a young indigenous athlete as Ashleigh Barty. 

The Australian Open became an immediate outlet for a grieving nation in response to fires so terrifying they resembled scenes from a digitally enhanced natural disaster movie.

This was sport as a form of support and welfare for a host nation in mourning.

Both Australian Open finalists spoke about the devastating fires that killed dozens of people and millions of animals. 

A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE ON SPORT 

“…What we all saw before and during the tennis, there are way more important things in life, and it’s very tough what this beautiful country has been though and is still going through …I hope all the people and the animals affected, recover very soon, and that a disaster like this never happens again,” said Dominic Thiem, runner up to Djokovic, in his internationally televised concession speech.

The bushfire disaster was integrated into the production and roll out of the Grand Slam tennis event itself, with courtside commentary, player interviews, break out features and other broadcast and event elements containing references to the fires.

Information was also provided through the Australian Open on how help could be provided for victims of the fires so intense that farms, wineries, vast tracts of countryside, homes, streets, and tens of thousands of livestock were wiped out, creating empty, ghost communities like those encountered on ‘The Road’ in award-winning US author Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel.

The bravery of the emergency services, including the sacrifice of three US air firefighters who died when their air tanker crashed while fighting the fires, was also honoured.

Volunteer firefighters attended the Open as a tribute to those who battled the deadly fires, which closed interstate highways and isolated towns and communities. Their presence was regularly acknowledged and applauded.

The Open took the fighting spirit of Australia to the world, with organisers staging an almost faultless elite international sporting event – praised by the top players as setting the standard for world sporting events – with the nation in crisis.

The message “Australia is open” (for business) was stamped on court. 

BARTY’S PARTY  

Sport, remarkably, continued to play a role in Australia’s recovery process as a new national sporting hero emerged from the ashes of Australia’s bushfire catastrophe.

The rise of Ash Barty to the top of women’s tennis in time for her home Grand Slam, as her nation grieved, could have come from the script of a Steven Spielberg movie of personal triumph over national adversity.

Ashleigh Barty is the latest superstar of Australian Tennis

Australia needed something to cheer about, and Barty almost owned this Australian Open, referred to by legions of local fans simply as “Barty’s Party.”

The young and proudly indigenous tennis champion, who progressed deeper and further into the Open tournament than any Australian female player in decades, brought a smile to the beleaguered home nation.

While not winning the tournament itself, Barty won the admiration of her troubled nation, even winning an inspiring victory on Australia Day, the nation’s birthday. Just like the movies.

Not since Australia’s Catherine Freeman held the hopes of a sport obsessed nation and its indigenous communities on her shoulders at the Sydney Olympic Games, has so much been expected of a young indigenous athlete as Ashleigh Barty.

Barty’s announcement as the new Young Australian of Year during the Open tournament was also significant, at a time when the nation’s profile and performances in world sport have been declining since the golden Sydney 2000 Olympic era.

AUSTRALIA’S NEW OLYMPIC DREAM  

Twenty years after the Sydney Olympic Games highlighted Australia’s deep passion for sport and important community and business benefits from Games investment, the Australian Open of tennis has demonstrated what sport can do and mean for the nation in dramatically different circumstances.

The support from the Australian tennis and wider sporting world for the fire-ravaged host nation has been of Olympic proportions, bringing the case for a return of the Olympic Games to Australia into sharper focus.

Sport’s role in helping to support Australia through the early recovery phase of the bushfires crisis also highlights the enormous potential of the Olympic Games to unify and sustain communities in uncertain times.

The location of the Olympic Games in regions around Brisbane, Queensland, home state of Ash Barty, Australia’s new national sports hero, and natural successor to Sydney Olympic champion, Catherine Freeman, as ambassador and torch bearer for a new Olympic campaign adds meaning and credibility.

The case for the Brisbane Olympic Games is further strengthened by the experience of Australia’s senior IOC member, John Coates, mastermind of the Sydney Olympics, who is overseeing final preparations for the Tokyo Games, as a catalyst to help in the rebuilding of Japan after the devastating 2011 tsunami.

This should all interest Australia’s central government as it grapples with the enormous economic fall out from the fires and countless burnt out communities, and looks for new, long term projects to rebuild, unite and push the nation forward.

** Michael Pirrie is an international communications strategy advisor and commentator who has worked and advised on several major international projects. Michael led the global media campaign for the London 2012 Olympic Games Bid Committee, and was Executive advisor to Seb Coe, Chairman of the London Olympic Games.

Australia Says No To Winning At All Costs

Sport has long helped to anchor Australia’s place in the world, and the nation’s cricket team has been its most successful sporting export in recent times, following a decline in performances by its Olympic teams in London, Rio and PyeongChang.

But if Australia’s world champion cricket team thought it was the Bear Stearns of world cricket and too big to fail, it did not reckon on the public’s growing intolerance of corrupt, incompetent or poor performing elite institutions and administrators, on and off the sporting field.

Few countries enjoy winning at sport more than Australia, but a plot involving members of the national team to manipulate the ball and alter its flight and movement through the air and on the pitch to gain an unfair advantage against South Africa’s batsmen was a step too far for this sports-proud nation.

The very public downfall of the players involved along with the national governing body, Cricket Australia, followed an unprecedented deluge of criticism in the media, and in homes, cafes, schools, office blocks, shopping centres, airports, construction sites, nursing homes, community halls and just about every location across the country.

The public anger flooded talk back radio, filled newspaper front and back pages, and editorial columns, led television news bulletins and dominated digital screens and devices of all shapes and sizes, all demanding those responsible to be disciplined and punished.

Elites Under Challenge

The public’s reaction to the cricket crisis shattered the elite sports caste system that has long elevated, isolated and protected sporting heroes, teams and governing bodies in Australia – and other nations – from the wider community and country.

The public outcry was also an expression of community anger against perceived elites and was dramatically different to almost anything seen in sport prior to Brexit and Trump.

While it was inevitable that momentum from these and similar other social and political movements would cross over into other sectors of global society, the common demands for greater accountability, equality, and responsibility from elite institutions, executives and others in positions of power and privilege became evident for the first time in elite sport in the cricket controversy in Australia.

Draining The Swamp

The community anger in relation to sporting elites is focused on a perceived lack of accountability and soft approach of governing bodies and authorities to corruption and incompetent administration in response to continuing doping, financial mismanagement among other concerns, including high costs of elite sporting events, programs and infrastructure.

This has hardened community opposition globally against hosting major sporting events, especially the Olympic Games and FIFA Football World Cup, which many cities and countries now consider too burdensome and costly.

While several highly strategic and politically motivated community campaigns have secured a string of successful public referendum outcomes against Olympic, FIFA and other major world championship bids in cities around the world, much of the emerging anti-elite sport activity has been spontaneous and largely unstructured.

This includes protests by sports fans at public venues against athletes who have participated at elite sporting events such as the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, and London 2017 World Athletics Championships after serving suspensions for doping.

Impact Of Corruption

The impact of corruption on a national sport, on a country, an elite governing body and on the public, however, has rarely been seen on such a scale as the cricket scandal in Australia.

A once and potential future Olympic sport, cricket is Australia’s national pastime, and the scandal was both an acutely personal and public moment for many Australians who feared the cheating controversy would reflect poorly on the country and its citizens.

Ironically, while Theresa May, the embattled Prime Minister of the UK, Australia’s greatest cricket rival, recently invoked the fighting spirit of a former English test cricket great, Sir Geoffrey Boycott, to reassure the British people of their capacity to survive the Brexit blues, Australia could find only despair in its national game.

The public and media reaction to the cricket scandal was pivotal from the outset in determining the fates of the players and administrators involved.

Observing the public’s immediate shock and anger to news of the ball-tampering, the incident also was immediately condemned by politicians and community leaders, led by Australia’s Prime Minister at the time, Malcolm Turnball, who did not hold back in describing the cricket ball conspiracy as an affront to Australia and its values.

Australia’s response to the crisis also revealed a yearning to return to its more traditional and cherished “Fair Go” values and image in the current era of rapid change and uncertainty.

Sporting Tragedy

Australians felt disappointed and even betrayed by the national cricket team, and expected swift sanctions against everyone involved, beginning with the players directly implicated – the nation’s top two batsman and a key strike bowler who received record 12-month bans – before focusing on the elite cricket bureaucrats responsible for management of the sport and team.

The subsequent review of the cricket scandal, commissioned by Cricket Australia itself, read like the script for a Netflix sporting tragedy, based on the seven deadly sins of modern sports administration and performance, including greed, ego, soaring ambition, deception, pride, poor governance, and stakeholder relations, especially with players.

The failings outlined in the review were of Shakespearean proportions, triggering an earthquake in the sport that centred on an obsession with winning driven by commercial interests, which corrupted the team culture and ended in public defeat and humiliation, precipitating an extended losing streak in Australian cricket.

Winning Without Counting Costs

The culture surrounding Australia’s premier sporting body had turned the cricket team into a finely tuned machine designed solely to win, taking the goals of modern sport into a new frontier.

This was not just about winning at all costs but ‘winning without counting the costs,’ according to the review report.

The cricket team and management had redefined the sport of cricket in Australia in their own image, but this was an image of cricket that Australians did not like or even recognise.

The landmark report, compiled by the Sydney Ethics Centre, revealed fault lines and connections to cheating in sport like never before, drawing lines of responsibility stretching from players on the cricket pitch in South Africa all the way back to Cricket Australia’s offices located, ironically, close to the iconic Melbourne Cricket Ground.

Sport In A Gilded Bubble

While events on the sporting field and battle field have long defined Australia’s fighting spirit and soul, references in the report to the “gilded bubble” of wealth and privilege in which the national cricket team and support staff existed, had rendered Australia’s elite cricket unit unrecognisable from the humble and rugged pre-and post- world war cricket heroes who inspired and united Australia in times of great adversity and defined Australia’s sporting traditions and values.

The anger in the community and media prompted a Trump-like chorus of calls to drain the sports swamp, triggering an executive neutron bomb that emptied Cricket Australia of almost all signs of high level executive life, evaporating the positions of some of the most senior sports executives in Australia who resigned and evacuated the headquarters of the governing body in a rush to limit damage from the fall out of debris from the scandal.

These included the chairman of Cricket Australia, the national team manager and coach, the high-performance coach, and others, including the commercial director, who all resigned or left their positions prematurely.

Masters Of The Cricket Universe

This was an extraordinary fall from public grace and favour for the masters of the cricket universe as the sports obsessed nation disowned the Australian team’s brand of ruthless win-at-all cost cricket, which had alienated many who felt cricket’s supreme decision-making body in Australia and national team had lost their way, and no longer represented the sport or brand Australia.

The Australian cricket scandal is one of the most significant developments in world sport for 2018; for what happened on and off the fields of play this year; and for pointing to circumstances that can give rise to corruption in elite sport, and steps that can be taken to curb such corruption.

New Wake-Up Call For Sport

The cricket controversy in Australia is a cautionary tale for other countries, sporting codes, federations and governing bodies where toxic cultures still exist hidden in plain sight under a mask of corporate respectability and conformity, which could break and shatter at any moment – just like Cricket Australia and its national cricket team.

With a number of national Olympic committees and sports trying to contain a range of serious misconduct allegations, from bullying and financial mismanagement to fraud, political activity and sexual abuse, the cricket scandal and review report are highly relevant to the Olympic Movement, especially the emphasis in the report on the responsibility of senior management for misconduct that occurs on their watch.

Several previous warnings from IOC President Thomas Bach urging Olympic sporting bodies to change and get their organisations into proper order before change is forced upon them, are even more telling in wake of the cricket controversy, which has highlighted the need for further urgent reform and modernisation in the elite sports sector.

Internal Rogue Culture

Australian cricket had developed its own internal rogue culture and vision for the sport, which was rejected by the wider community for whom the rules and traditions of sport still meant more than winning at all costs, especially in the current era of social disruption, in which the role and relevance of sport and the public’s engagement with sport is changing rapidly as society changes.

The lessons from Australia’s elite cricket breakdown indicate that sport governing bodies and teams must live and act according to their own corporate values, and that codes of conduct must explicitly ban bullying and other forms of threatening behaviour and apply equally to executives and Board members as well as support staff and team members and officials.

In this new and rapidly changing post-Brexit, Trump and #MeToo landscape,  human resource departments in sporting organisations are as important as high-performance divisions in order to ensure corporate vision and values are aligned with the goals and needs of sport and athletes.

Governing bodies also need more diverse sources of revenue so that finances and funding are not highly dependent on the ability of premier competition teams to constantly win.

Winning Is Not Everything For Everyone

The elite cricket establishment in Australia over-estimated the importance placed on winning in the wider community, especially in a society that still champions the underdog.

While sport must be commercially successful to survive, the cricket controversy highlights the risks of running sporting organisations as corporate enterprises, traditionally designed and structured for profit, but often lacking governance and accountability systems needed to protect the spirit and essence of sport.

If Russia’s surreal state sanctioned doping programme and cover up highlighted the lack of effective protocols and powers in the international sports system to detect deep covert doping and corruption activity, the Australian cricket scandal points to the rise of people power as an emerging new force against corruption in elite sport.

The cricket scandal has shifted the balance of power back towards sport and changed the relationship between the public and cricket power brokers, making sporting officials and teams more accountable to the wider community and public, the ultimate shareholders and investors in modern sport.

The author is a London based international communications and major events consultant and commentator on world sport and Olympic news and politics. Michael has held several senior communications positions on organising committees for major international events and projects, including the London and Sydney Olympic Games. 

Invictus Games: Saving Lives & Changing Sport

“Winning can be about a lot more than winning medals. Winning is about just doing better, and doing something that you have not done before – that’s when you see the spirit of sport,” Invictus Games ambassador and multi-gold medal Olympian, Ian Thorpe.

The recent announcement of pending parenthood by Prince Harry and new wife Meghan Markle at the start of their Australian royal tour has sparked a global guessing game of possible names for the next royal baby. While royal experts have nominated Albert or Victoria as among the most likely names for the royal couple’s first-born son or daughter, Invictus could be in with a sporting chance.

Although not a traditional royal moniker, Invictus is already a Harry favourite given the prince’s role as father figure of the Invictus Games, the sporting phenomenon Harry created for war-injured military men and women, which has touched, transformed and even saved competitors lives.

Harry’s Games

While Harry and Meghan’s high profile visit to Australia has included many staples from previous royal tours such as school visits and meeting cute koala bears, this royal expedition was planned from the very outset to enable Harry to attend the Invictus Games in Sydney and participate in key events at iconic Games venues across the Harbour City.

While members of the Royal family are traditionally allocated areas of duty and responsibility, the Invictus Games is Harry’s by choice.

Invictus was conceived by Harry after attending the US Warrior Games for wounded members of America’s armed forces and later brought to life in London in 2014, with a little help from the old firm and some of Harry’s closest friends and advisors who shared Harry’s Invictus vision.

These included Sir Keith Mills in particular who is also in Sydney to help oversee the Invictus proceedings and brand for Harry.  A world leader in strategic marketing and a key London 2012 Olympic Games organiser and America’s Cup national yachting team manager, Sir Keith led the London team that delivered the first multi-nation Invictus Games event within the tight 6 month period that was available on the international schedule to plan and launch Invictus.

Sport In Turbulent Times

It soon became clear that Invictus would be an event for and of the times, using sport to help heal the physical, mental, personal and national wounds of war as experienced through the climate of terrorism, institutional failure, geopolitical uncertainty, and rapid technological change in modern society.

Prince Harry was involved in all major planning decisions and used his royal charisma and connections to mobilize political, commercial, celebrity, media and international support for Invictus stretching across more than 12 nations.

Harry settled on the all important name of Invictus, from the poem that inspired Nelson Mandela during his epic struggle against apartheid, in which sport played a key role. The omens were looking good.

Sport Like Never Before

Invictus would be a different international event, based on sport, hope, cutting edge biotechnology, and resilience of the human spirit.

I worked on preparations for the inaugural Invictus Games in London, and remember the extraordinary stories of bravery, survival and recovery in circumstances of almost incomprehensible injury and adversity that began to emerge as the first Invictus participants were registered.

These included competitors who had lost limbs, and often, almost their lives, stepping onto concealed explosive devices or while trying to dismantle activate bombs and suffered brain damage, extreme traumatic stress, depression, or personality disorders in the service of their country.

Despite such horrific injuries and setbacks, the Invictus competitors found the means and motivation through sport to somehow carry on, compete, and represent their nations again – on the sporting field instead of battlefield.

Competitors like British Lance Corporal Derek Derenalagi, who was pronounced dead after being blown up by an explosive device in Afghanistan. Miraculously, while a body bag was being prepared for him, a medical officer detected a pulse and saved Derek who went on to compete in the Invictus Games.

I also recall the memorable testimony about the power of sport given at the Orlando Invictus Games by Sarah Rudder, who lost one of her legs following an injury she suffered while in the US Marine Corps helping to recover bodies from the debris of the 9/11 Pentagon attack.

Sarah, who won the first gold medal in Orlando, said: “Sport saved my life. It showed me that I can do and be something, and that I can be part of a community again.”

The Invictus Games has also witnessed performances never seen before on the sporting field or thought possible in sport.

“I don’t think anything could be more inspiring than seeing a guy who lay bleeding to death in a ditch in Afghanistan now running 100 metres in Paralympic time,” said Invictus Games participant, Royal Marine Andy Grant.

Commenting on the Invictus Games, respected international sports commentator Rob Hughes said:  “If there is a single theme to their efforts, it is spelt out by the athletes themselves. They have no time, or inclination, for self pity.”

International Games Appeal 

The Sydney Invictus Games will involve more than 500 participants from 18 nations including Germany, France, New Zealand, Georgia, Jordan, Estonia, Australia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Romania, Ukraine, the United States, Georgia, United Kingdom, Italy, Poland, Canada, Denmark, and the Netherlands, making this the largest edition of the innovative Invictus franchise.

Many of the events are taking place at Sydney’s Olympic Park, the scene for one of the world’s greatest sporting events, the 2000 Olympic and Paralympic Games, largely delivered under the guidance of senior IOC member and current Australian Olympic Committee president, John Coates.

Since then however a series of doping, funding, administration, sexual abuse, and corruption scandals have rocked the sporting world, draining many major international sporting events of political and public support, and triggering strong community opposition against hosting such events, including the Olympic Games in particular.

The affordability, humility, and humanity of Harry’s new  international boutique model for sport by contrast has resonated strongly with international audiences, governments, community groups, sponsors and celebrities, enabling the Invictus Games to move almost effortlessly from one host city and country to the next.

In The Royal Spotlight

While images of Harry and Meghan are beamed around the globe as the world’s most photographed and popular couple come in and out of Sydney’s Invictus venues mingling with crowds,  competitors, and celebrity royalty – including Invictus ambassador David Beckham – some of Prince Harry’s most important work is taking place out of camera range, in more secluded settings and meetings with Invictus athletes, teams, and families as Harry urges on the Invictus community to “never underestimate the power of sport.”

Band Of Brothers In Sport

As I witnessed at Invictus in Orlando, Harry uses his understanding of the horrors of war, based on active duty in Afghanistan, to bond almost immediately with Invictus competitors from different cultures and war zones.

Harry does this with warmth and empathy and in ways that comfort, console and inspire. He communicates his message of hope and support through sport in ways that I have not seen a major sporting event figure or leader do before, other than London 2012 Olympic Games chairman and IAAF President, Sebastian Coe.

Despite the corruption of sport, Harry and his Invictus athletes have provided a much needed new narrative about the purpose and possibilities for sport as a potential source of change in people’s lives, even in the extreme conditions of modern society.

Poolside in Orlando, Invictus Games ambassador and multiple gold medal Olympian, Ian Thorpe, who understands sport, tellingly observed: “Winning can be about a lot more than winning medals. Winning is about just doing better and doing something that you have not done before – that’s when you see the spirit of sport.”

Prince Of Sport

Prince Harry is the first royal to start and lead an international sports movement, and seems to have inherited his mother Diana’s passion for taking on important causes, which, poignantly, included the removal of landmines, devices very similar to the IEDs responsible for much of the damage suffered by the Invictus Games participants.

Harry’s Invictus vision has drawn comparisons with that of the founder of the modern Olympic Movement, Pierre de Coubertin, and also Dr Ludwig Guttmann, father of the Paralympic Movement. While both were overlooked for the Nobel Peace Prize, neither has the impact of Prince Harry’s Invictus Games been widely recognised or appreciated.

Perhaps it is not too late to give the Nobel award to Prince Harry, as a surprise successor to these two great visionaries and father of the Invictus Games for placing sport back in the service of humanity.

***MICHAEL PIRRIE is an international communications and major events consultant and commentator on Olympic and world sport. Michael has worked on Olympic planning committees and on the London 2014 and Orlando 2016 Invictus Games.

Remembering Peter Norman – Forgotten White Athlete In Black Power Salute That Stunned World And Changed Sport

With the 50 Year Anniversary of the famous Mexico Olympic Games Black Power Salute looming, Michael Pirrie pays tribute to Peter Norman, the often forgotten white athlete in the iconic Black Power protest and photograph who has been honoured with a posthumous Olympic Order of Merit by the AOC in Melbourne, and explains why the Salute continues to move and fascinate audiences globally.

Fifty years on, the often forgotten man at the centre of one of the most controversial, dramatic and transformational moments in the history of the modern Olympic Movement and world sport and photography is finally getting the recognition he deserves.

The approaching anniversary of the Mexico 1968 Olympic Games is also bringing greater awareness of the impact and legacies of the famous black power salute that stunned the world, and the personal toll on the three athletes involved in a cautionary and inspiring story of the changing role of Olympic athletes and sport in modern society.

The Black Power salute has left a defining global legacy linking sport with human rights, and connecting the Olympic Games and sport with politics and social change in popular culture forever, including in more recent times the IOC’s own refugee athletes support programme.

The salute has also come to define the unique power of the Olympic brand, with the black US athletes involved, when questioned why protest at the Olympic Games, responded by asking ‘if not at the Olympic Games when the whole world is watching like a moon landing, then when.’

SALUTE THAT CHANGED LIVES & SPORT   

The salute heralded a new genre of sport and role for athletes as activists and advocates for change, and paved the way for sport-related campaigns and events associated with social justice.

Recently, these have included American professional footballers kneeling during the national anthem to protest against racial inequality and police brutality in the Black Lives Matter campaign.

While most attention has focussed on the two saluting black US athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carols, who finished first and third respectively in the Mexico 200 metres sprint final, the identity, role and impact of the white athlete in the salute, the Australian sprinter Peter Norman, who won Olympic silver, is still not widely known, publicised or appreciated.

FORGOTTEN OLYMPIC HERO  

While a landmark in sports photography, the Black Power Salute has also become an iconic image in wider popular culture, and would not look out of place on the sleeve of a Beatles album or cover of Rolling Stone magazine.

The black-gloved protest has also moved beyond sport to become a symbol of racial equality in popular culture, as reflected in the handwear of the late Michael Jackson and other cultural icons, entertainers and performers.

The image is radically different to the message and circumstances it conveys, like Norman, Smith and Carlos at the centre of the photograph.

Compelling and controversial from the moment it was captured on camera, the image threatened prevailing political, social and sporting conventions like no other in modern sport.

Norman’s presence as the white athlete gives the image balance, purpose, and perspective, spanning both sides of the racial spectrum – black and white athletes united in the common cause of human rights and equality.

In many ways, Norman also represented the silent community of athletes back in the Games Village and at sporting venues around Mexico – and around the world – who privately supported the growing human rights movement but were unable or unwilling to take the risk involved in such a public stand.

The salute photograph is in a moral league of its own, a compelling visual statement about social justice, personal responsibility, and moral courage and speaks to audiences and about issues beyond the world of sport as traditionally conceived.

The power of the image and the salute itself still resonate in sharp contrast to prevailing themes and issues in modern day sport including rampant cheating, corruption and consumerism, and the celebrity culture of sport.

Indeed, the image of the trio – Smith and Carlos, heads bowed and downcast, with arms outstretched and hands clenched and covered with black gloves, and standing alongside Norman with a faraway look in his eyes – conveys an almost religious solemnity that portrays the athletes as sporting martyrs about to be sentenced by authorities for a crime against the sporting establishment and society more generally.

At the pinnacle of fame, after years of sacrifice, training and preparation for the Olympic Games and after scaling sport’s highest summit – standing on the Olympic medal podium – Norman, Smith and Carlos committed sporting suicide by choosing to publicise a politically explosive human rights issue inside the Olympic stadium, the centre of global attention, for a cause they believed to be more important than their own careers or a sponsorship deal.

The image’s sombre expression reflects the great turbulence at the end of the sixties following the assassinations of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobbie Kennedy in the same year, while the student deaths in the countdown to the Mexico Games, following protests over Games costs, violently herald the central funding issue that still divides communities and eludes Olympic organisers.

Although hugely controversial at the time, the salute to black power also provided the perfect counterpoint to the most controversial and divisive salute in Olympic history – Hitter’s Nazi salute at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, designed to showcase white supremacy which was blown apart by black US athlete Jesse Owens whose 4 Olympic gold medals shattered the white superiority propaganda with possibly the single most memorable and important athletics performance of all time.

THREE OLYMPIC MUSKETEERS 

The 3 Mexico Olympic musketeers pierced the conscience of elite sport and paved the way for generations of athletes to support social and political causes in wider society.

Extraordinarily, many years later, these would include Norman’s Australian Olympic sprinting compatriot, Catherine Freeman, who draped herself in the Aboriginal and Australian flags in a powerful symbol of reconciliation between black and white Australia after winning the 400 metres final at her home Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.

TRUE BELIEVERS, LIKE LIDDELL

Norman was pivotal to the black power protest salute. Smith and Carlos needed the third athlete on the medal podium to support their cause or the salute would not work, and in Norman, they found a true believer.

Like the legendary Scottish sprinter Eric Liddell, immortalised in the Chariots of Fire movie of the 1924 Olympic Games, Norman was also a devout Christian, and like Liddell, believed in God and in running for a higher cause and in helping others, including his fellow athletes whose beliefs in human rights he also shared.

Although he did not salute, Norman was no protest prop, and even helped to choreograph the salute, suggesting that Smith and Carlos share the black gloves used in the salute after Carlos left his pair in the Olympic Village.

Norman’s strong Salvation Army family background no doubt played a key role in his stand, along perhaps, with unease over the White Australia immigration policy and his nation’s difficult relationship with indigenous aboriginal people.

Norman’s involvement in the black power salute was also groundbreaking for his home nation, helping to widen and deepen international perceptions of Australia beyond that of a passionate and powerful sporting country to one that also wanted a voice and involvement in the political and social revolution that was sweeping the west.

A NATION SAYS SORRY

The trio helped each other survive the fall out from the salute and formed an unbreakable bond of friendship and respect – Smith and Carlos gave eulogies and were proud pallbearers at Norman’s funeral service in 2006, and have since dedicated themselves to keeping Norman’s memory and legacy alive.

While Australian sporting officials have disputed claims that Norman was poorly treated, Australia’s Federal Parliament took the extraordinary step in 2012 of issuing an unprecedented posthumous formal apology to Norman on behalf of the nation.

The nation’s apology to Norman, in part, recognised “the powerful role that Peter Norman played in furthering racial equality,” and also apologised “for the treatment he received upon his return to Australia, and the failure to fully recognise his inspirational role before his untimely death in 2006.”

The storm clouds from the black power salute have also overshadowed Norman’s outstanding record as one of Australia’s finest sprinters – the US Track and Field Federation nominated the day of Norman’s funeral as “Peter Norman Day.”

A five times national 200 metres champion, Norman’s heat-winning time in Mexico (20.17 secs) was briefly an Olympic record, while his silver medal time (20.06) in the 200 metres final set an Australian and Oceania record – a record that still stands today as an enduring statement of Norman’s great speed and running ability.

The failure to celebrate and promote Norman’s Mexico sprinting achievements in Australian media, schools, sports centres and wider community may have robbed Australian sport of vital momentum, energy and profile needed to nurture sprinting excellence, and weakened Australia’s sprinting culture.

NORMAN’S LESSONS & LEGACIES 

While Norman’s many admirers will welcome the recognition from the AOC’s Order of Merit and other gestures of appreciation championed by AOC President John Coates, there is disappointment also that much more was not done much sooner while Norman was still alive to know of the high regard in which he was  held across the sporting world and beyond, especially in his own country.

There has also been talk of a statue for Norman, and perhaps the ideal location for such a tribute should be outside the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the site of the posthumous Olympic Order of Merit ceremony for Norman, and the main stadium for the Melbourne 1956 Olympic Games, where Norman’s Olympic dreams were born in the electrifying atmosphere that filled the host city, where Norman grew up and started sprinting in a pair of spikes borrowed for him by his father, according to local Olympic folklore.

If properly promoted and communicated, the ideals and goals that motivated Peter Norman and his band of athlete brothers can help to make sport more relevant and meaningful to the lives of young people in today’s equally turbulent times.

Michael Pirrie is an international communications strategy adviser who has worked in senior positions on Olympic and international events, and was Executive Adviser to the London 2012 Olympic Games Organising Committee and chairman Seb Coe. Michael also worked with Peter Norman on the unveiling of the medals for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games at the Sydney Opera House.

Revived British Sport, Reshaped London & Boosted Olympics – In Appreciation of Baroness Tessa Jowell

Along with the troves of planning documents and electronic files sent by the IOC to London 2012 Olympic planners for Bid and Games preparations, the London Olympic Committee also compiled its own check list of Games milestones although you won’t find these outlined in Lausanne technical guides or the London Post-Games report.

The alternative version of planning for the London 2012 Olympic Games begins with the euphoria of winning the Bid; includes successful delivery of the Games thanks to volunteers and the public; and ends with “glorification of the uninvolved, ” no matter how fleeting or distant the association with the Games might be.

In stark contrast, Baroness Tessa Jowell was involved in the London Olympic Games project from the very outset but received little of the glory even while at the epicentre of preparations as Games Minister.

After almost losing former legendary Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson recently to a brain haemorrhage, the UK is now mourning the death from brain cancer of Baroness Tessa Jowell, the visionary behind the London 2012 Olympic Games, the biggest and most successful event in the nation’s history and, arguably, in world sport.    

Coming less than six years after the London Games, the death of the popular politician at 70 has shocked and saddened the UK and her many admirers in cities around the world, where Jowell’s leadership skills and management of the Olympic Games project won her many fans. 

While the death of the dynamic and much-loved politician has been difficult for the UK and British politics, Tessa Jowell’s passing is also a great loss to the Olympic Movement where she was respected and liked by IOC leaders including former President Jacques Rogge and Executive Director, Gilbert Felli, and many others.  

Jowell was also respected as an architect of positive political and community change; she was in constant demand internationally, with regular invitations to speak and lecture at leading colleges and institutions of higher education and universities, including the Harvard Business School.

Jowell’s advice was also widely and discretely sought out by Olympic bid city leaders, politicians and governments around the globe, as well as by influential IOC members who respected her sharp political instincts, and enjoyed her friendly, thoughtful, and upbeat engaging company.

Tessa Jowell’s belief in the British bulldog – and in underdog causes – made her the ideal candidate to steer London’s Olympic campaign. 

Along with former British Olympic Association Chairman, Sir Craig Reedie, and Mayor of London Ken Livingstone, “Tessa,” as she was almost universally and affectionately known, was one of London’s three Olympic musketeers.

The trio formed an unlikely Olympic alliance and unshakeable bond as they embarked on the political and sporting challenge of a lifetime to bring the world’s grandest sporting and cultural spectacle back to London for a record third occasion. 

This Olympic quest would also define the reputations, futures and fates of all three well as London.

While Tessa would miss out on the Labour Party’s nominated candidate for London’s mayoral elections after the Games, her vision and political support for the Olympics have left an extraordinary legacy of unprecedented social, economic, community and sporting benefits greater than any previous mayor.

Jowell’s positive personality found a way to cut through the curtain of apathy that had engulfed the UK’s capacity to win major international events after recent failed attempts to secure the Olympic Games and deliver on other major sporting promises and commitments.

As Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Tessa Jowell provided the political platform upon which the enormous weight of the Olympic Games project was delicately balanced for almost ten long years of Games bidding, planning, and construction.

While Livingstone and Reddie imagined an Olympic Games infrastructure and funding led revival of London’s long neglected east end, along with a new golden era for British sport, Jowell was the visionary, the Olympic optimist who also saw other opportunities. 

When Olympic Games critics questioned Jowell’s Olympic mission, Tessa would adopt an almost Robert Kennedy-like philosophy that asked, ‘Why Not,’ and politely and passionately pointed to a Games masterplan designed to inspire a nation and a new generation of young people, break down disability barriers and stereotypes, and provide new jobs, skills, housing, schools, and community networks around the UK linked to the Olympic Games.

While Livingstone knew funding from the Blair Government for the Games would dramatically fast track the urban renewal of some of the UK’s poorest neighbourhoods located around the new Olympic park site and venues, Jowell saw change happening at higher national levels, according to Reedie.

For Tessa Jowell, bringing the Olympic Games to London and the UK was a once in a lifetime opportunity to reawaken and inspire more young people to think big and explore new horizons in sport and in life.

Jowell’s unrelenting optimism that London could succeed against an unprecedented line up of the world’s biggest, wealthiest and most advanced cities – Paris, New York, Moscow and Madrid – inspired and united Britain behind London’s Olympic bid campaign.

“I thought we really have got to do this,” Jowell said in an interview I conducted with Tessa for iSportconnect TV to mark the 10 year anniversary of the London’s bid.

“What is the point of being in Government if we can’t do this enormous transformational thing.”

Jowell was a lone Olympic voice at the outset in the Blair Cabinet. “There were no votes for this at all at the beginning,” she recalled.

“This seemed like a sort of crazy thing to do…We were just facing at the time the possible invasion of Iraq, and we were undertaking as a Government a major programme of welfare reform and reform of public services. This (the Olympic bid) was nowhere on anybody’s priorities.

“It needed a systematic programme of persuasion that had to define benefits for everything we were doing as a Government.” 

The television close ups of Tessa’s face filled with tension and etched in anxiety in the final seconds before the IOC decision was broadcast to the world, also reflected the atmosphere of national anxiety about the bid’s chances, giving way to rare and spontaneous jubilation and celebration across the UK upon London’s announcement as the successful Olympic host city.

The celebrations turned to grief and fear just hours later when terrorists ignited a series of deadly tube and bus suicide explosions that killed dozens.

Jowell played a key role helping Mayor Livingstone to rebuild London after the suicide bomb terror attacks, while the successful delivery of the Games helped Britain to regain its own confidence largely under Jowell’s watch.

Jowell also worked collaboratively with new Cameron conservative government Olympic Minister Hugh Robertson – now BOA Chairman – ensuring that cross party-political support fundamental to the successful delivery of highly complex and time critical multiple venue, multinational, and multi stakeholder events remained strong throughout the long planning period for the Games

While a visionary and cause-related campaigner, Jowell was also a perfectionist but also practical and adverse to risk.

Indeed, before recommending the London Olympic Games bid to the Blair Cabinet, Jowell, made a low-key visit to IOC headquarters in Lausanne for a meeting with former president Rogge, seeking assurances that no view had already formed within the Olympic Movement that the Games should go to Paris or any other city in 2012. ,

Remembering the London 2012 Olympic experience, Tessa told iSportconnect: “I have so many memories and learned so much. I loved being part of the (London 2012) team, and that’s probably what I think I will take with me forever,” Tessa recalled.

“The people involved in this could have worked anywhere, and that’s a very exhilarating atmosphere in which to work.

“The second thing I loved about this project was the amount of loyalty to each other because of loyalty to the project. I come from the old world of politics where you can’t presume loyalty; you have to build loyalty.”

While Jowell personally convinced the two most powerful figures in the UK Government, Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chancellor Gordon Brown to back the Games bid, the importance of Tessa’s  enormous political skills can be seen by the succession of cities in recent bids that have collapsed due to a lack of community and political support, including Oslo,  Rome, Hamburg, Budapest. 

“No politician deserves greater credit for the Games,” said former London Olympic Games Chairman and current IAAF president Sebastian Coe.

Jowell continued to campaign with style and dignity until the end to bring better access and treatments sooner to others also suffering from brain cancer.

While it was known that Tessa was ill, her death has been difficult to accept at many levels, perhaps most of all because it is expected that someone so positive and life affirming as Tessa will always be there.

Tessa had a totally open mind towards every situation in her life, and made everyone around her feel better, important and involved in her campaigns.

Without Tessa Jowell there would be no London 2012 Olympic Games – it’s that simple. Tessa’s spirit of inspiration and towering legacy of achievements however will live on in the new facilities, venues and communities from the Games that have created a new London.

***Michael Pirrie is a London based international communications strategy adviser and commentator on Olympic and world sports news and politics. Michael led the international media relations campaign for the London 2012 Olympic Games Bid and was Executive Adviser to the London 2012 Olympic Games Organising Committee.

Controversial Games Ceremony Highlights Olympic Challenges & Lesson In New Protest Era Against Sporting Elites

The storm of controversy over the omission of the athletes’ closing ceremony parade at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games highlights key challenges facing Olympic and world sport, and could impact on a bid by Australia for the 2032 Olympics.

Major multi sport, multi venue, and multi nation events are as much a challenge of endurance and planning for organisers as for the athletes involved.  With viewers tuning in worldwide, and the host nation’s international reputation and billions of dollars of government funding and investment on the line, there is minimal margin of error for organisers, whose performance must be as precise as competing teams themselves.

After 10 days of successfully coordinating and completing hundreds of sporting events in dozens of venues for more than 5,000 athletes from more than 70 nations, organisers of the Olympic-styled Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast were almost over the finish line, but tripped at the final hurdle in spectacular fashion.

The arrival and reception of athletes in the stadium for the final farewell parade is a highlight for host nation and international viewers, but was controversially dropped from the Games closing ceremony, sparking wave of anger as intense as the sporting competition.

Never before has an error in judgement of such magnitude been made in the TV and digital screen experience era of global sporting events, and the decision not to include the athletes arrival in the Gold Coast closing ceremony is a major embarrassment for Australia’s reputation as a major events destination and sporting capital.

Competing for relevance and respect in the increasingly crowded international sports calendar, and coming immediately after Australia’s greatest contemporary sporting scandal involving the deliberate tampering of a cricket ball to gain an unfair advantage over opponents, these Commonwealth Games, the first to be staged in a regional coastal centre, highlighted key issues confronting world and Olympic sport.

These include the role of sport in geopolitically turbulent times; more cities questioning the value and cost of hosting mega sporting events; decline in public and government support and funding for such events; and the ‘win at all costs’ culture responsible for sports greatest scandals – from Russia’s covert state sanctioned and administered doping programme to the Salt Lake City IOC Olympic Games vote buying and Australian  cricket scandals.

The ongoing controversies in world sport highlight in particular the poor corporate governance and administration standards that continue to damage sport at local and elite levels.

This has important lessons for the Paris and Los Angeles Olympic Committees, with revelations that the international tender process designed to select the company that produced the Gold Coast ceremonies was mired in controversy from the outset, despite the central importance of such ceremonies as celebrations of the athletes and sport, and as once in a generation postcard promotion of host cities and nations.

The appointment of US-UK events branding and experience company, Jack Morton Worldwide, over several of Australia’s internationally acclaimed major events and theatrical producers – including Ric Birch, who has masterminded more Olympic ceremony spectaculars than any other director, and pioneered the Disney-style blockbuster special effects ceremonies that have become central to the Olympic Games experience – immediately triggered inquires into the selection process and criteria.

The public, political and media anger directed at Australian cricket team members involved in the ball tampering plot and at Gold Coast ceremony organisers, is part of a growing post Brexit, post Trump protest movement against global and national sporting elites, driven by disillusionment at perceived self interest, corrupt and incompetent management, and poor community outcomes and returns from sport, on and of field.

The increasing fallout from sporting controversy has created an unprecedented public relations crisis for world sport, which is reshaping government and corporate funding decisions and priorities – in the countdown to these Commonwealth Games, the New South Wales State Government of Australia was recently forced to abandon politically unpopular construction plans for a major new sports venue to replace the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games stadium, following public concerns that funding should be allocated instead to community infrastructure to help meet the city’s growing population needs.

The growing movement against sporting elites is demanding a harder line against corruption; better community legacies and returns from sport; greater accountability of sporting executives as well as athletes; and that justice is done – and seen to be done – and reflects the scale of the corruption.

Thus, the full impact of the IOC’s recent ban on Russian Olympic Committee officials and athletes from the recent PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games for doping, while also allowing the OAR Olympic Athletes from Russia contingent to compete as a neutral team, was too subtle for many, leading critics to describe the sanctions as too soft and lenient.

The Gold Coast closing ceremony debacle could also set back embryonic plans for a bid by Australia to host the next available Olympic Games.

With several world sports leaders and figures looking on and observing the Games, including WADA President, Sir Craig Reedie, IAAF President Sebastian Coe, Olympic sprint legend Usain Bolt, and IOC members, the $A2 billion Gold Coast spectacle provided Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates with a critical opportunity to test support for a possible bid to host the 2032 Olympic Games in Brisbane and surrounding regions, including the Gold Coast – in line with IOC Agenda 2020 reforms that enable Olympic Games costs and infrastructure to be better shared amongst multiple city and regional locations.

The overall success of the Gold Coast Games – driven by the home team’s top of the table medal haul – initially suggested that mega sporting events may no longer be the sole preserve of major cities, providing welcome news for the IOC as it seeks to expand the pipeline of possible Games hosts to include smaller city locations.

Despite growing opposition to expensive sporting facilities and mega events, the strong broadcast viewing figures, television ratings, ticket sales, and venues filled with atmosphere and crowds for the Gold Coast Games, also demonstrated continuing popularity for mega multi sport events.

Crippling transport delays suffered by spectators and visitors at the opening ceremony, along with the closing ceremony controversy however exposed gaps in planning, and cast doubts about the capacity of smaller regions to host such large-scale events, which could lead to support for a 2032 triple east coast Olympic Games cities bid, comprising Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.

The gaps in Gold Coast Games planning however are not insurmountable for smaller cities with the right international experience as demonstrated by the Manchester 2002 Commonwealth Games, which produced electrifying sporting and city experiences that served as the launching pad for London’s successful bid for the 2012 Olympic Games.

Often the victim of sports snobbery, the Commonwealth Games, which included many Olympic and world champions such as Adam Peaty, Chad Le Clos, the Brownlees, Johan Blake, Matt Horton and other big names of world sport – helped to provide a much needed new narrative that ran counter to the toxic win at all costs culture threatening sport.

In contrast to the aggressive, bullying, and self promoting culture of the Australian cricket team, the athletes who participated at the Commonwealth Games – which is a bigger international sporting event than both the European Games and Pan Am Games – performed with goodwill, humility, humour and demonstrated grace and courage under extreme pressure, win or lose, and again showed the unique power of sport to bring highly diverse nations and delegations of people together in uncertain geopolitical times.

For this, the athletes deserved to be properly recognised, applauded, and thanked in the closing ceremony grand finale of the Games. The fact that they were denied this unique honour, moment and memory is a tragedy for them and for sport, and will be discussed in the corridors and meeting rooms at the world’s biggest Olympic and world sporting conference at SportAccord in Bangkok this week.

Michael Pirrie is an international communications consultant and commentator on the organisation and marketing of major sporting events, including the Olympic Games, and served as Executive Advisor to London 2012 Olympic Committee Chairman, Sebastian Coe. He also led the international media campaign for London’s successful bid to host the Olympic Games in 2012.