In March 2020, the President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Thomas Bach, and the Prime Minister of Japan, Abe Shinzo, held a press conference call announcing that the Tokyo 2020 Games would be postponed until no later than the summer of 2021. As we enter 2021 and the end of the Covid-19 pandemic comes into sight, all parties are still insistent that the Games of the XXXII Olympiad will go ahead.
The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games is due to start on 23rd July 2021
Positive news surfaced from the local organising committee last week that all 68 domestic sponsors have agreed, in principle, to extend their contracts to cover the year delay. This should ensure the financial viability of the Games in the face of additional costs associated with creating a Covid safe environment for thousands of the world’s best athletes.
While a number of professional sports have been able to return following postponements and cancellations, for Olympians, a delay to the Games has, in many cases, been difficult. The four-year cycle of the Olympic programme challenges athletes to be at their peak physically, psychologically, tactically and technically during the Games period. If it doesn’t all come together, they don’t have next week or next year. For many they don’t have a next Games.
Being an Olympian denotes a level of excellence that is revered globally. To qualify takes years of dedication and a plan that enables and establishes behaviours that allow for the maximisation of talent. Sleep, nutrition, recovery, readiness to train, competition planning, media and sponsorship commitments as well all personal issues are all evaluated to create a performance plan that suits each athlete. The plan goes beyond training and competition, extending into every aspect of an athletes’ life. In the world of elite sport this is often termed performance lifestyle.
Roughly 14,000 athletes will compete at the Tokyo Games. Only a fraction will win a medal. All of them however, will have their own elite performance lifestyle story to tell. Often the most interesting and relatable isn’t the multi medal winning phenom surrounded by a personalised team of performance experts. The challenges and adaptations athletes have had to deal with during this cycle provide an intriguing view into enhanced performance lifestyle difficulties on the road to becoming or maintaining world class status. For fans, being able to know more about the mindset needed to accept and cope with these challenges and therefore what it takes to be an elite athlete is tantalising.
Performance lifestyle aims to support the athlete personally and completely. However, it isn’t a concierge service. It puts responsibility onto athletes to take charge of key areas of their lives and helps them balance the demands of elite sport and the life they have around them. The postponement of the Games in 2020 didn’t just move the goal posts in terms of peak performance in the summer. Wider lifestyle issues will no doubt have arisen such as relationships, family, studies or jobs that may have had to be adjusted. For some, it may have put qualification into question, for others, the remainder of their career.
Normal competition schedules have been disrupted and for some, lockdowns have inhibited training during a crucial period. In the UK during the first national lockdown people were instructed to stay at home unless they were considered an essential worker. Elite athletes didn’t fall into this category. This meant that while potential members of Team GB had to improvise in terms of training, others around the world suffering less stringent regulations were able to maintain their schedules. For athletes stuck at home, watching rivals training videos across social media would have been excruciating. Subsequent rule changes have now allowed athletes likely to represent Team GB at the Tokyo or Beijing Games to continue training throughout subsequent lockdowns.
In the build up to any major Games, performance lifestyle becomes stricter as focus increases and the intensity ratchets up. Travel plans are put in place to support time zone adjustments. Logistics as to what is needed in the athlete village comes to the fore. Room allocation will try to match performance schedules and squad dynamics where possible. Larger Olympic teams send staff ahead of time to plan travel to and from competition venues as well as ascertain access to things like supermarkets and specialist shops/providers that could be useful once on the ground in an Olympic bubble. This information is all fed back to the athletes and in many cases they are expected to take responsibility and manage themselves. Some thrive in the atmosphere of heightened competition. Others, particularly first time attendees, can find the distractions difficult to cope with and are unable to reach performance expectations. At an Olympic Games, so much is going on, it's impossible for team managers to keep track of everything. Therefore the need for athletes to have the skills to manage themselves and take responsibility for their performance plan and lifestyle during the Games is imperative.
For many of the 68 local sponsors that have reaffirmed their support for the Games, and the 14 global IOC partners, building a team of athletes upon which to activate their Olympic marketing objectives is a sensible and well-developed strategy. The tendency to reach for high-profile stars in order to grab headlines and media attention is common. However, with such a potentially varied pool of performance stories due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this Games, more than any other, gives sponsors and fans the chance to see beyond the medals. By investing in lesser known, yet still elite Olympic talent, many brands could benefit from increased access to talent and reduced sponsorship fees which would allow their activation budgets to go further.
Approaching any Olympic Games, the famous names are frequently spread thinly across media and sponsorship portfolios. Therefore, working with a broader pool of athletes in terms of performance expectations, highlighting their stories of resilience and performance lifestyle processes can have major benefits. Access and cost are obvious, but cutting through to a public desperate to relate to their experiences during the pandemic and share in their Olympic success, whatever it may be could be the greatest benefit of all…
Sport Science Agency uses its insight and expertise to tell performance stories and unlocks their value for brands, broadcasters and rights holders. To see some of our work click here If you want to know more about what we can do for you, drop us a note via info@sportscienceagency.com and we can arrange to go for a healthy vitamin packed drink.