Dai Greene: ‘Olympic chiefs need to listen to us about coronavirus... so far, they haven’t’

Team GB's Dai Greene
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Sport is in lockdown and, with this summer’s Olympics still scheduled to go ahead, athletes from Team GB are facing the prospect of their training facilities following suit and also closing.

The former 400metre hurdle world champion Dai Greene lives on a farm near his Loughborough training base, which for now remains open. But already he is eyeing up the straw bales in the barn to stack for step-ups or tractor tyres in an attempt to replicate his gym work.

Elsewhere on the same Loughborough campus, the defending 100m breaststroke champion Adam Peaty is still able to train in the pool.

For fellow Rio gold medallist Moe Sbihi, contingency plans are already in place at British Rowing for their Olympic hopefuls to take home a rowing machine if their Caversham base has to close.

And cyclist Elinor Barker, the defending champion in the team pursuit should Tokyo go ahead, is still taking to the Cheshire roads with her same small training group for five to six hours a day.

Peaty, who admits he would have liked to work as a biologist around disease control if not being a swimmer, said: “Patience is such a good quality in a sport that requires top speed. Coronavirus doesn’t change that aspect, as you just have to be patient to have the Games anywhere, anytime. As athletes, we have to watch how the world and the IOC responds and just be ready when our time comes.”

Of those destined for the Games globally, 57 per cent have already qualified, while Peaty, as a world record holder in his event, is assured selection.

For Greene, whose past few years have been littered with injury, Tokyo qualification is a different matter.

“It’s crude but, at the moment, I’m looking at tracks I can use,” he said. “There’s no harm in training on my own and I want and need to be able to work.”

As things stand, he is doubtful that Tokyo 2020 will go ahead.

For one, it lacks a level playing field in training terms. His coach, Benke Blomkvist, is in his 60s and has returned home to be with his family. Soon, he concedes, the gym and track where he trains will be shut.

“You want everything to be the same for everyone — some athletes can train, some can’t,” he said. “In South Africa, the season has already started and people are running fast times.

“For now, the Olympics is the one big sporting event that remains. Other athletes in my training group have been saying, ‘They won’t cancel it’. But if they’re cancelling football — and nothing’s bigger than football — you better believe they will cancel the Olympics.

“We might be in a situation come July time where not much has changed and still flight restrictions and half the world might be in lockdown. The IOC and sports governing bodies just need to listen to the athletes. So far, I don’t think they’ve been listening to us.”

In rowing, all this season’s World Cup regattas have been called off. For Sbihi, one of the senior figures in the British team, it means that if Tokyo does go ahead, that will be his next race.

Day to day, training is roughly the same as normal, but he knows there will come a time when it is just him and the rowing machine at home.

“I’m okay with that,” he said. “Some in the group would hate it and it would be a novel situation, but you have to make do with what you have. As athletes, we’re among the lucky ones here. And if I don’t race between now and Tokyo and it goes ahead, I know I’ll be ready. I trust in what the coaches and Team GB will put around us.

“And until the day an official statement might come from the IOC postponing the Olympics, I have to continue to live my life.

“You can’t have any room for doubt, as an athlete you have to be business- like and professional, focus and remember for four years you’ve had to miss family, weddings and funerals for this.”

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At British Cycling, where the mantra used to be marginal gains, they prepare for every eventuality. Barker has sat in meetings where they have pored over what happens if a rider punctures on lap six of the team pursuit, for example.

“But we never prepared for something like this,” she said, while admitting she tries not to allow thoughts of the Olympics not going ahead to enter her head.

“I’m aware there are far bigger problems for the world right now, but the Olympics not going ahead would be devastating. It’s a career-defining time and what happens if it shifts?

“I remember in Rio, I felt my body was losing form so quickly we’d peaked just right. If my final had been a day later, I don’t know if it would have been the same result. What if the Olympics is delayed by months or a year?”

In a bid to stay healthy on the bike, Barker admits to being something of a germaphobe. “That’s changed,” she said. “Now I’m the one worried I might make family members sick.”

As a precaution, the gym at the team’s base is reserved to just one team and their coach for every session, so, too, on the track. On the roads, she trains with the same group each day to further diminish the risk.

And she is fully prepared for when the roads might become a no-go area, instead consigned to plugging into a virtual world with Zwift (the online cycling videogame) to train from her sitting room. Hardly the ideal preparation for an Olympic defence.

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