Field Street Forum

By John Frierson
Staff Writer

The inevitable happened Tuesday when the International Olympic Committee announced that the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, set to begin in late July, were being postponed to 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic. The news, which most everyone saw coming in recent days, affects elite athletes around the world, including many current and former Georgia Bulldogs.

Jack Bauerle, Georgia’s Tom Cousins swimming and diving head coach, said the postponement was “heartbreaking,” but at the same time it was “absolutely the right thing to do.” The disappointment felt by young and healthy athletes, he said, and the problems and challenges the postponement creates, pale in comparison to what’s happening around the world.

“This is the Olympics and its fixable,” Bauerle said Monday after word spread that a postponement announcement was coming, “but for so many others, this is real life and what’s happening is catastrophic.”

Bauerle isn’t able to work with any of his current swimmers since the NCAA suspended all athletic activities, but he has a group of 12 postgrads, professionals, some of them among the very best in the world, that he’s been working with every day, safely, at a pool in Atlanta.

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