Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Now this is a ‘social distancing’ few would expect.
As athletes are packing their bags to reach Tokyo for the Olympic Games, starting next week, they have an additional responsibility: they will have to put their medals around their own neck to protect themselves against spreading the Covid-19 pandemic!
This “very significant change” to traditional medal ceremonies in the 339 events was revealed on Wednesday by International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach, media reported on Thursday.
“The medals will not be given around the neck,” Bach told international media on a conference call from Tokyo, where, amidst incomplete vaccination, rising infection numbers, and nearly-empty stadia, the Games are scheduled to be held from July 23 to August 8 amid a state of emergency.
“The medals will be presented to the athletes on a tray. The winner will take the medal himself or herself to wear.”
“It will be made sure that the person who will put the medal on the tray will do so only with disinfected gloves so that the athlete can be sure that nobody touched them before.”
The Olympic Games’ approach is different from the recent soccer matches in Europe where UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin personally hung medals around the necks of players at competition finals. In the finals, unmasked crowds of football fanatics, numbering about 60,000, packed the Wembly Stadium in London. Their unprotected behavior worried even the World Health Organization (WHO), which called it a “recipe for disaster.”
Ceferin also shook hands with Italy goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma at the Euro 2020 medal and trophy presentation in London on Sunday.
But Bach announced that in Tokyo “there will be no handshakes and no hugs during the ceremony.” Olympic medals are typically presented by an IOC member or a leading official in a sport’s governing body, media reported.
Moreover, IOC’s guidelines on Thursday said that the athletes, presenters, and volunteers will wear masks at all times and will not pose for group photographs and wear masks on the podium during the Tokyo Olympics medal ceremonies.
According to the new guidelines, additional podium modules will be placed between gold and silver medallists and gold and bronze medallists to allow for social distancing.
“All the presenters will be vaccinated, and there will be only one IOC member and one International Federation representative at each event.”
The IOC said that the athletes, medal presenters, and volunteers “will be clearly and thoroughly briefed before the ceremonies on the guidelines they will need to follow.”
Earlier, the IOC had said medallists and ceremony officials would have to wear masks.
With no paying spectators allowed to attend most Olympic events, what Bach described as an “immersive sound system” will try to create an atmosphere for the athletes in the stadiums and venues to keep them in a cheerful mood in the near-absence of audience.
Crowd noise recorded from each event at previous Games will be fed into the arena as one of several ways to support the athletes, he said.
Some athletes will be connected after their event via screens to their families, friends, and fan clubs at home, while fans will be able to send video clips of up to six seconds that can be displayed next to the field of play.
