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Sunday, February 23, 2025

Lewis: Our athletes will not

be affected more than any other

by

Walter Alibey
1537 days ago
20201208
TTOC president Brian Lewis

TTOC president Brian Lewis

Bri­an Lewis, pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) said this coun­try’s ath­letes will be af­fect­ed no more than their in­ter­na­tion­al coun­ter­parts from the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee’s (IOC) de­ci­sion to lim­it the stay of ath­letes at the Olympic Vil­lage.

The Olympic on­line web­site yes­ter­day re­vealed that ath­letes will be ex­pect­ed to ar­rive in the Tokyo 2020 Ath­letes’ Vil­lage five days pri­or to their com­pe­ti­tion at Tokyo 2020 and de­part a max­i­mum of two days af­ter­wards.

IOC pres­i­dent Thomas Bach said: “The In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee (IOC) con­firmed it had re­quest­ed Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tees (NOCs) to adapt their ar­rival and de­par­ture plans to fit in with these new rules de­signed to re­duce the risk of coro­n­avirus.”

He not­ed al­so fol­low­ing an ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing, that the de­ci­sion was tak­en to min­imise the num­ber of peo­ple liv­ing in the Ath­letes’ Vil­lage.

“We think that this is ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary be­cause we need to re­duce and min­imise the num­ber of res­i­dents in the Olympic Vil­lage to min­imise the risk of COVID ex­po­sure,” Bach said.

But Lewis ex­plained that T&T’s ath­letes will not be af­fect­ed more than any oth­er, say­ing: “No one coun­try would have an ad­van­tage over the oth­er. The COVID-19 has re­sult­ed in the shut­ting down of sports and very strict pub­lic health guide­lines and lock­downs etc so it’s the re­al­i­ty of COVID-19.

“The T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee, we have been prepar­ing and look­ing at dif­fer­ent sce­nar­ios with our med­ical team, the Chef de Mis­sion Ms Lovie San­tana, and we have been hav­ing on­go­ing meet­ings so it’s not an un­ex­pect­ed sit­u­a­tion, at the end of the day the pri­or­i­ty of the Olympic Com­mit­tee re­mains the safe­ty of our ath­letes, coach­es ad­min­is­tra­tors, med­ical team etc, so we are  fo­cused on meet­ing what­ev­er counter-mea­sures that the Tokyo Olympic or­gan­is­ers put in place, along with the IOC ex­ec­u­tive.”  

Lewis and his team at the TTOC have been in con­stant con­tact with the lo­cal ath­letes and find­ing ways to en­sure they would be ful­ly fit and ready when the Games be­gin.

“We are look­ing at mak­ing the nec­es­sary ad­just­ments to our pre-Games train­ing camp, and we have to make the nec­es­sary lo­gis­ti­cal ad­just­ments, and we are work­ing close­ly with our trav­el con­sul­tant Denise Dy­er on that so no sur­pris­es there, we an­tic­i­pat­ed dif­fer­ent sce­nar­ios once the IOC con­firmed the Games are on.”

Though the IOC wants to re­duce the spread of the coro­n­avirus, Bach said they still want­ed to en­sure ath­letes gained the ex­pe­ri­ence and ac­cli­ma­tise: “At the same time, we want­ed to main­tain the ath­letes’ ex­pe­ri­ence. We want­ed to be bal­anced with the con­sid­er­a­tions about ath­let­ic per­for­mance and al­so with at­ten­dance at the Open­ing Cer­e­mo­ny.”

The guid­ance ad­vis­es that in cas­es where trav­el time to Japan and time dif­fer­ence is min­i­mal, the num­ber of days spent in the Olympic Vil­lage pri­or to the com­pe­ti­tion should be short­er.

Where pos­si­ble, ath­letes are ex­pect­ed to ac­cli­ma­tise to the time dif­fer­ences in pre-Games train­ing camps in Japan rather than in the Olympic Vil­lage. 


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