B12 O THEGLOBEANDMAIL| FRIDAY,MARCH27,2020
A
ny lingering hope Sarah Pavan
had about competing on this sea-
son’s professional beach volley-
ball circuit was crushed the day
city workers came to cut down the nets on
Hermosa Beach.
Canada’s reigning world champion,
with partner Melissa Humana-Peredes,
lives in the beachfront city just south of
Los Angeles. Nets were taken down Satur-
day to discourage large gatherings.
“I had been going out and practising
with my husband [Adam Schulz, a coach
and former player], just working on little
things that I wanted to get better at,” Pa-
van said.
“We have two of our own nets set up
permanently where we train. So my hus-
band had to boot it down to the beach to
grab them, and he honestly just got there
to take them down as the city was driving
up to cut them. He saved them, but it was
really, really sad.”
This week’s decision by the Internation-
al Olympic Committee and Japan’s orga-
nizing committee to postpone the Tokyo
Games to 2021 was a relief to Canada’s ath-
letes who weren’t going if the Games were
held this summer.
But the current shutdown of sport
worldwide means athletes aren’t earning
prize money from competitions, nor per-
formance bonuses from sponsors.
Pavan and Humana-Peredes would
have opened the season Thursday in Can-
cun, Mexico, but all FIVB tournaments
scheduled for the next few weeks have
been wiped out by the COVID-19 pandem-
ic.
Tournament wins come with a pay-
cheque of between $20,000 to $40,000,
plus crucial Olympic ranking points.
“It’s been really challenging,” Humana-
Peredes said. “Our FIVB season for 2020 is
pretty much done, which is kind of sur-
real. Prize money from tournaments was
my main source of income, and we no
longer have them. So hopefully some of
them will get postponed to a later time
this year. But again, there’s so many un-
knowns and I think everyone’s just in a
financial pinch.”
Calgary-based sports agent Russell
Reimer, who represents trampoline gym-
nast Rosie MacLennan and wrestler Erica
Wiebe among others, thinks of Olympic
athletes as entrepreneurs.
“They assume a lot of risk,” he said.
“When you think of the potential payoffs
for them for training in anonymity for four
years and having to adjust to maybe a fifth
year or an extended career, you wonder if
they’ve planned appropriately or they’re
financially in a position to do that.
“The younger you are, the less estab-
lished you are, the more likely you are to
get performance-heavy contracts. That
would typically impact young athletes go-
ing into their first quad much more than
established athletes.”
Some good news for Canadian athletes
is a disruption isn’t expected in 2020-21 to
their monthly Athletes Assistance Pro-
gram (AAP) cheques from Sport Canada,
also known as “carding” money, that cov-
ers living expenses such as rent and food.
Own The Podium (OTP) and Game Plan
leaders said former Olympic paddler and
Liberal MP Adam van Koeverden con-
firmed that Wednesday.
A senior card is $1,765 a month – $21,180
annually – and a development card is
$1,060.
The AAP also provides supplementary
money in the areas of tuition, relocation,
child care and retirement support with a
limit of $13,000 a year.
Athletes who win a medal at the most
recent Olympic and Paralympic Games, or
world championship, are eligible for an
additional $500 a month if their annual
income is less than $55,000.
Canadian sprint star Andre De Grasse
makes a good chunk of his money in meet
appearance fees, prize money and per-
formance bonuses built into his contracts
with major sponsors such as Puma.
But the first three legs of the prestigious
Diamond League circuit have been post-
poned, and the remainder of the season is
a big question mark.
“Just generally speaking, any of the
higher-level professional track athletes are
looking at five figures and, for some, six-
“The full narrative power of the Olym-
pics and especially Team Canada now to
build national identity and unity beyond
the Games window, has never been stron-
ger.
“We’ll see how brands respond to that.”
Numerous pre-Olympic campaigns
have already been filmed and photo-
graphed, and ones booked for the next
few weeks have been cancelled, Levine
said.
Those companies must decide: do they
shelve those campaigns entirely? Levine
suggested these unprecedented times pre-
sent a unique opportunity for sponsors.
He pointed to Nike’s recent “play in-
side” campaign that stated: “If you ever
dreamed of playing for millions around
the world, now is your chance. Play inside,
play for the world.”
“That was brilliant. Brilliant,” Levine
said. “And they were able to mobilize obvi-
ously, the roster of athletes that they have
under contract to spread that to share that
message.”
When athletes can finally return to
training and competition, indications are
financial support will be there.
Own The Podium pro-
vides technical expertise to
sport federations and makes
funding recommendations
to Sport Canada based on
medal potential.
OTP directs roughly $70-
million of Sport Canada
money annually to winter
and summer Olympic and
Paralympic sport.
“We’ve received confirma-
tion that the financial sup-
port will remain as was sig-
nalled previously for the
2020-21 fiscal year,” OTP
chief executive officer Anne
Merklinger said.
“That will give sport some
confidence, reassurance and
stability that they can go
back revamp, adjust and re-
vise their high-performance
plans and programs.”
The COC’s 26 sponsorship
contracts run into the mil-
lions of dollars. The COC prepares athletes
for Games and looks after their needs on
the ground.
“I was quite heartened to receive an
outpouring of support from our market-
ing partners. All 26 of them communicat-
ed with us in some way about how proud
they were of our decision,” COC chief exec-
utive officer David Shoemaker said.
Royal Bank of Canada and the COC put
out an ad Thursday pointing out the sacri-
fices Canadian athletes were prepared to
make if the Olympics went ahead this
summer.
“As a Canadian Olympic athlete, you’ve
trained and sacrificed all your life with one
goal in mind,” the ad says with written
words while video of athletes training is
shown. “And now you’ve had to put your
greatest dream on hold until athletes can
compete safely once again.”THE CANADIAN PRESSfigure losses for sure, based on the num-
ber of meets they would do in a season,”
said sports marketing agent Brian Levine,
who works with De Grasse and soccer star
Christine Sinclair among others.
Brittany Crew, the Canadian record-
holder in women’s shot put, said it’s “go-
ing to suck” if all the season’s major meets
are cancelled.
“Because that is definitely our income
for most of the year. That’s where you get
your security blanket, that’s a big loss of
income for a lot of us athletes,” she said.
Game Plan, an athlete wellness organi-
zation for Canada’s high-performance ath-
letes, has scheduled a financial webinar
for Friday.
“I do expect the amount of uncertainty
right now is similar to anyone in Canada
who is worried about their career,” Game
Plan manager Thomas Hall said. “They are
just trying to figure it out like everyone
else and uncertainty causes tension.”
Some athletes supplement their in-
come with off-season, short-term jobs,
which might not exist as the economy
shuts down.
“Those people are potentially the har-
dest hit by this, so athletes
will certainly feel it,” Hall
said.
The Canadian Olympic
Committee (COC) and Cana-
dian Paralympic Committee
drew a line in the sand last
Sunday in announcing they
wouldn’t send teams to the
Tokyo Games this summer.
Canada and Australia
were the first countries to
pull their teams out. Within
36 hours, the IOC announced
the Games would be pushed
back to 2021.
So if there’s something to
be leveraged from the Tokyo
Games postponement, it’s
that Canada led the way.
“What a great, pre-emp-
tive move by our Olympic
and Paralympic representa-
tives to take the stance they
did,” agent Lawrence Baslaw
said. “The Olympic and Para-
lympic brands right now, really as a
marketer, are standing out there proudly.”
Swimmer Aurélie Rivard, a five-time Pa-
ralympic medalist, had a commercial
shoot for Gatorade scheduled for last
week. It’s been temporarily shelved.
“We got such a nice note from [Gato-
rade] saying ‘Hey, we’re behind you 100
per cent, we’re going to figure this out,“’
said Baslaw, who represents Rivard. “I
know it’s hard for some companies be-
cause the balance sheets don’t look that
great right now. But we’ve all got to believe
that we’re going to get through this too,
and we just need to be strong right now.”
Reimer agrees Canada’s athletes im-
proved their marketing power for 2021 by
taking a bold stand.
“Just in the last four days we’ve seen so
many athletes step up and fill the leader-
ship vacuum outside the shadow of pros
and make really compassionate state-
ments about Canada,” Reimer said.Pandemicexposesthinfinancial
marginsofCanada’sOlympians
Worldwideshutdownofsportmeansbiglossesforathletes,
someofwhomneedtheexposureastheyworktowardlargerpayouts
LORIEWING
DONNASPENCER
Paralympicgold-medalistswimmerAurélieRivard,seenatthe2018CommonwealthGames,
hadacommercialshootforGatoradescheduledforlastweek.It’sbeentemporarilyshelved
amidtheCOVID-19pandemic.CLIVE ROSE/GETTY IMAGESThey assume a lot of
risk. When you think
of the potential
payoffs for them for
training in
anonymity for four
years and having to
adjust to maybe a
fifth year or an
extended career, you
wonder if they’ve
planned
appropriately or
they’re financially in
a position to do that.RUSSELLREIMER
SPORTS AGENTThe Tokyo Olympics need new
dates for the opening and closing
ceremonies in 2021.
Nothing much can get done
until those dates are worked out
by the International Olympic
Committee, the Japanesegovern-
ment and Tokyo organizers.
“We must decide this soon,
otherwise it will be hard to decide
on other things to follow,” Toshi-
ro Muto, the CEO of the organiz-
ing committee, told his 30 senior
directors – all men but one – seat-
ed in a large meeting room on
Thursday.
Two days after the unprece-
dented postponement was an-
nounced, the group gathered for
the first meeting of what is being
called the Tokyo 2020 New
Launch Task Force.
They must put the Olympics
back together after they were torn
apart by the coronavirus pan-
demic.
Muto and the president of the
organizing committee, Yoshiro
Mori, each gave pep talks. Mori,
an 82-year-old former Japanese
prime minister, drew on war me-
mories from his youth to sum-
mon the resolve to redo in a few
months what was seven years in
the planning.
He talked of his father going
“to the war in the Pacific” and
leaving a rugby ball and a baseball
glove behind for his young son.
“I’m sorry, I’m an old person
and I talk about the old days,” Mo-
ri said. Muto ran off a condensed
string of issues to be resolved:
ticketing, security, venues, mer-
chandise, accommodation, the
athletes village, transportation
and lining up unpaid volunteers.
He added he was looking at
“thousands of contracts” and the
interests of broadcasters, spon-
sors, the IOC, world sports feder-
ations and national Olympic
committees.
“I didn’t imagine at all we’d be
tested to this degree,” he ac-
knowledged.
He also voiced another reality.
“Additional expenses are going
to be quite massive we assume,”
Muto said.
The Japanese financial news-
paper Nikkei has estimated add-
ed costs due to the delay of
US$2.7-billion. This would go on
top of an official budget of
US$12.6-billion.
A Japanese national audit
agency, however, says the actual
amount of spending is about
twice that size.
IOC president Thomas Bach
said Wednesday that “all options
are on the table” for new dates. He
said next year’s Olympics don’t
have to be restricted to summer
in the Northern Hemisphere and
might occur sooner.
Two of the marquee Olympic
events – track and swimming –
have already scheduled their own
world championships for July
and August of 2021.
If the Olympics are moved into
spring, when it’s cooler in Tokyo,
they clash with the end of the Eu-
ropean soccer season.
In North America, they would
bump into Major League Base-
ball, the NBA, the NHL and pos-
sibly even college basketball.
That’s assuming normal sports
schedules resume by then.
“The postponed Olympic
Games will need sacrifices,” Bach
said.
Hidemasa Nakamura, the
games delivery officer, was
pressed again on dates.
“That’s something we haven’t
decided on yet,” he said.
“We have no idea when we will
be able to finalize the dates. We
don’t have a fixed plan how to
proceed from here.”THE ASSOCIATED PRESSOpeningand
closingdates
toppriority
forTokyo
Olympics
STEPHENWADETOKYOCORNERED BLISS SPEED BUMP BIZARRO| REPORTONBUSINESS