On March 24, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee jointly announced that due to the unprecedented circumstances surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo, scheduled to begin on July 24, 2020, will be postponed. At present, it is officially rescheduled for the next summer, beginning July 23, 2021. While the Olympics have previously been cancelled on account of World Wars, this is the first time the Games have ever been postponed.
The contractual and legal implications are no doubt numerous: sponsorship agreements, ticket sales, hotel reservations, etc. will all have to be renegotiated – force majeure or not. But what about the most important stakeholders of the Olympic Games, the athletes? Each one, depending on their sport, has to meet specific criteria in order to confirm their selection to the Games. Some have already qualified, but many more have yet to compete at trials events or be selected based upon discretionary criteria.
One of the major decisions that International Federations had to make is whether those athletes who have already qualified for the Summer Olympics will remain qualified, or if they will have to qualify all over again. If an athlete who has already qualified for the Olympic Games were to be told that he or she is no longer qualified because the International Federations changed the rules for qualification, that athlete would likely have the ability to challenge his or her “de-selection” before the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). Similarly, an athlete or group of athletes who believe that an International Federation should be required to start its qualification procedure anew may file a challenge to the International Federation’s selection procedures before CAS.
On March 27, 2020, the IOC announced that all athletes who had already qualified and the quota places that were already assigned for the Olympic Games will remain unchanged, citing that “This is a result of the fact that these Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, in agreement with Japan, will remain the Games of the XXXII Olympiad.”
Is it then fair that the athletes who have yet to have had their chance to qualify might be at a disadvantage after weeks, and perhaps months, of quarantine? Will the quarantine and social distancing be consistent worldwide, or (more likely) will there be large disparity in athletes’ ability to train based on where they live or what sport they are engaged in?
In certain sports, individual athletes could find themselves at odds with their governing bodies. For example, USA Cycling’s Athlete Selection Procedures for the 2020 Olympic Games provided athletes with the opportunity to automatically qualify if they met certain criteria during the relevant qualification time period. If not enough athletes met that criteria to fill all of the quota spots allotted to the United States, then the remaining spots were to be filled based upon defined “discretionary” criteria, in which remaining athletes were to be evaluated based upon specific criteria such as head-to-head performance and medal capability. With the postponement of the Olympic Games, disputes over the proper application of those discretionary criteria seem inevitable.
If a United States athlete does not believe that his or her national governing body has appropriately followed its published selection criteria for the Olympic team, then that athlete can file what is called a “Section 9 Complaint” pursuant to the Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act, whereby an independent arbitrator will evaluate whether or not the national governing body followed its published criteria. Depending on the outcome of that arbitration, the athlete who filed the petition may or may not replace another athlete already selected to the Olympic Team. As the national governing bodies are forced to adjust their criteria to a new timetable, athletes and coaches may disagree over how the criteria was meant to be applied; and in such a case, the arbitrator will be forced to resolve difficult issues regarding team selection.
Whatever becomes of the Summer 2020 Olympic Games, one thing is certain: the athletes will have to wait for the answers to these questions, as the world waits for sports competition to resume. We can all hope that the 2021 Olympic Games will be a celebration as the IOC has predicted, but the process of getting there will be even more stressful for our elite athletes than usual.
Source: https://www.lawinsport.com/