Coronavirus - no more Olympic heroes

Coronavirus.

So here we are again desperately trying to avoid each other, making sense of it all, diagnosing and self diagnosing. It's at times like this when your heart goes out to the ever benevolent National Health Service, the warmly compassionate and naturally caring NHS. Suddenly, every hospital and doctors surgery in the land has now become the centre of the universe. This is now a critical breaking point for those whose job it is to extend the warm hand of love, solicitude, affection and tenderness.

Yesterday we were informed of the latest casualty of coronavirus. To say we were distinctly unsurprised would be a understatement because we knew that it was inevitable and, to be perfectly honest, it should have been one of the first sporting events to be postponed until further notice. The International Olympic Committee, in its infinite wisdom, have called off this year's Olympic Games scheduled to be held in Tokyo. We celebrated the announcement if only because we knew that it would have been utter madness to even contemplate holding the Games when most of the globe is now suffering the worst medical crisis of, quite possibly, all time.

By now most of us should know everything there is to know about those traditional, well entrenched Olympian ideals: togetherness, unity, sportsmanship and fair play. The four rings that have always represented athletic excellence and physical virtuosity will now have to be briefly condemned to another place in history. Now the Games will have to be delayed and postponed until next year. The spirit of taking part coined by Baron De Coubertin all those decades and centuries ago now sounds quite hollow. Now commonsense should tell us that everyday health takes complete priority to the distance that a discus is propelled, a hammer is thrown or the speed achieved in a 100metres Final.

Of course we were looking forward to the middle distance athletes striving and straining to break every record in the book. We couldn't wait to see those phenomenal 800 and 1500 metres runners jostling together in a pack for the final back straight before the valiant pace setter almost politely allowed the more experienced performer the right to kick for the finishing line. We celebrated the gold, the silver and the bronze medals, the pulsating drama, the engrossing spectacle, the memorable cheering from the crowds, the thrilling accomplishment of it all.

There was the glorious crowning of the fastest men and women in the world, the sad recognition that Usain Bolt has now retired and we wouldn't be acknowledging Bolt's successor. We gasped with stunned admiration when Bolt sprinted like a cheetah, lengthened those basketball type legs and glided majestically over the finishing line at the end of a 100metres Final. We knew we were witnessing history since we were sure that here was one man who had so completely monopolised one sporting discipline for so long. We knew that although Bolt was ever so slightly sluggish out of the starting block he would still eat up the ground and win the 100m by several country miles.

Then we would think about the Olympic gymnasium hall where the supple, lissome and gracefully perfect Olga Korbut and Nadia Comaneci had once so enchanted an Olympic audience. We were wowed by their grace, their almost feline flexibility, their flip flopping, their acrobatic dexterity, their unique artistry on the mat, the poetic interpretations of their routines and those quaint finger gestures as they somersaulted magnificently, swung on the pommel horse and then executed miracles on the bars.

And then we realised that the Olympic swimming pool would not be occupied by its aquatic heroes with their all seeing goggles, those powerful shoulders, their ripped, muscular physique, that insatiable hunger and appetite for victory. We remembered the American Mark Spitz in the tragic 1972 Munich Olympic Games who mopped up seven gold medals and swum like the proverbial fish. We willed home Sharon Davies, Plymouth's finest, home to a gold medal, Duncan Goodhew and all those world beating British heroes of the Olympic swimming pool.

Now we recalled that astonishing Olympic Games of Moscow 1980 when sporting politics threatened its continuation. Then, in a bat of an eyelid, we rightly saluted the eye popping achievements of Steve Ovett and Sebastian Coe who were supposed to win gold medals in their event but then discovered that both had got slightly mixed up. Coe and Ovett won both of their middle distance conflicts in the wrong order. But who cared since we were just delighted that both had captured the nation's imagination.

Sadly though now this year's Olympics in Tokyo has to be completely forgotten for the most obvious reasons. Sport has been banished to the sidelines, an utter irrelevance, totally meaningless and just a historical footnote. Coronavirus has been relegated sport to the sidelines, a small and remote corner of our consciousness.

Yesterday Boris Johnson effectively shut down a vast majority of the nation's everyday life. Shops selling non essential products have been ordered to put the shutters up, libraries, gyms, churches and schools have now faced a similar fate and the society that had hitherto been functional, thriving and healthy is no longer the force it once was. We must wish and hope that sooner rather than later normal service will be restored and the world engage with each other with all the enthusiasm that most of us would have taken granted. Stay safe and keep well everybody.