Look at any Olympic Games in the past century and there’s bound to be a Trojan that has left their mark.
Since 1904, there have been 453 total USC Olympians. The Trojans have brought home gold in every summer Olympics since 1912 and the 309 medals they’ve won in total is more than any U.S. university.
With this history of success, the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo were going to be business as usual for the Trojans. USC alumna and 10K swimmer Haley Anderson was the first to be selected by the 2020 U.S. Olympic team for any sport with more names to be announced as competitions and trials were completed.
However, USC’s long tradition of brilliance in the summer Olympics will be put on hold this year as the threat of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) forced International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to postpone the games until sometime next year. Though no official date has been announced, both parties are aiming to have the games before summer 2021.
This announcement came on the heels of Australian and Canadian Olympic Committee’s stating that they will not participate in the Olympics due to COVID-19 unless the games were postponed.
Also, the four major sports in the U.S. - baseball, basketball, hockey and soccer - all either cancelled or suspended their seasons after NBA player Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19 on March 11, the first NBA player to test positive. A few days later, USC athletic director Mike Bohn decided to stop all USC sports in the face of the outbreak.
While the IOC refused to cancel the games, their decision to postpone was bound to come as more emphasis was put on “flattening the curve” - the message against having large crowds in one space to practice social distancing and to ensure that hospitals are not inundated with patients.
This may be for the better of everyone involved - including the competitors. An athlete’s schedule is often so strenuous, it could actually cause them to be more susceptible to the virus.
“When athletes are in a heavy cycle of training...their immune systems actually are slightly weaker,” said Kevin Sverduk, a full-time lecturer in the Department of Kinesiology at California State University, Long Beach.
Sverduk has worked with collegiate and Olympic athletes for years, and also believes that the Olympics being postponed has an effect on an athletes’ psyche. Because athletes aren’t able to train, he said, they lose a bit of their self and could potentially go into a state of denial.
“I think there is a lot of frustration and confusion and it’s akin to being injured,” Sverduck said. “Then it goes into maybe a level of depression when you realize that a lot of things are going to last longer than you thought and are going to be worse than you thought.”
For 23-year-old USC swimmer and Olympian, Louise Hansson, it’s hard to go back to a state of normalcy after the Olympics were postponed, especially since she was slated to go to Tokyo.
“I was really looking forward to the Olympic Games this summer, but I do think it is the right decision,” Hansson said in an email. “People’s health and safety comes first.”
As an Olympic athlete, Hansson says that she would rather see the Olympics postponed than cancelled, especially because she and other athletes have trained for years. The last few weeks were challenging for Hanson, as the pandemic forced her to go back to Sweden to be with her family.
Her hopes are still high, however, to return to USC in the summer to continue training.
“There are a lot of emotions, but I’m trying to stay positive,” she said. “Goals have not changed, so I will just do everything I can do to be the best I can be when the games do happen.”
Although the games have been postponed, it may dampen USC’s excellence at the Olympics.
“Some unusual things happen,” Alan Abrahamson, an adjunct professor at USC, said. Abrahamson has been covering the Olympics since 1998, and while he spoke to Annenberg Media before the games were cancelled for this summer, he still noted that anything can happen in the world of sport.
“Athletes have to be prepared for any eventuality,” he concluded.
But if the last few weeks have shown, there are more important things to worry about than sports - even for those competing.
Sverduk said that the Olympics has the potential to bring people together. One idea of his? Take the proceeds from the games and donate it to places that were hardest hit by COVID-19.
“I think, then, it could become something extremely special that every athlete would want to get involved in,” he said.