This vital pre-Olympic training takes place in Colorado Springs, less than two miles from the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Training Center (OPTC), a world-class facility that many sports’ officials rave about but still don’t have sufficient access to because of coronavirus restrictions.
“We have 1,100 boxing gyms that are boxing every day, and we’re successful there,” said Mike McAtee, executive director of USA Boxing. “The only gym in the country that we don’t have access to is the one at the Olympic Training Center — our home.”
In the lead-up to the Tokyo Games, some national governing bodies (NGBs) say their athletes haven’t been able to use the OPTC as it’s intended. Officials with the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, which operates the sprawling campus and training grounds for several Olympic sports, say the facility is open to every NGB that needs it but acknowledge the safety protocols have been met with frustration and resistance from some corners.
“There are some sports that have chosen not to be here,” Jonathan Finnoff, the USOPC’s chief medical officer, said in a recent interview. “But we’ve encouraged sports to come here because we believe we have the best environment for them to train in. It’s the safest; it has great equipment and sports nutrition — everything is taken care of here. So we want them to be here.”
In a normal year, more than 500 athletes and coaches at a time might access the space, which includes housing, training, dining and medical services for Olympic athletes. Because of the training center’s coronavirus restrictions, just 80 people can live on-campus, with an additional 60 off-site athletes permitted to visit the facility each day. Athletes currently training there include Tokyo-bound wrestlers, men’s gymnasts, triathletes, cyclists and several Paralympic athletes.
“We are getting utilization, for sure,” Finnoff said. “And there are others who’ve chosen not to do that for whatever reason. It may not work into their training schedule; they’re maybe traveling a lot, which makes it difficult going in and out of the training center.”
A delicate dialogue
Boxing hasn’t used the space in a year and has fully relocated its training operation, renting the department store space alongside USA Shooting. USA Volleyball hasn’t held national camps at the training center since last February, and USA Swimming has been unable to send its medal hopefuls to Colorado Springs for camps, testing and specialized instruction. None of the NGBs have been able to stage competitions at the center or host their youth and junior athletes on-site, and some fear the training modifications could impact Tokyo performances.
“When they restrict access, those national team athletes don’t have the same quality of training,” said Matt Suggs, chief executive of USA Shooting. “Then we’ve got our whole development pipeline — those have really been put on hold for nearly a year. It has a big impact not just on Tokyo but on Paris [in 2024] and [Los Angeles in 2028].”
The tension mirrors and highlights the struggle the communities and businesses across the country face as the coronavirus case numbers fall and many wrestle with how to safely resume normal operations.
The issue is especially delicate for the NGBs, which rely on the USOPC for some support and funding, and several NGB leaders either declined to comment or speak on the record for this story. Through a spokesman, the head of the NGB council, Pat Kelleher, the executive director at USA Hockey, said he did not have a comment to make on the matter.
Others say they can appreciate the tricky balancing act the USOPC faces but feel some of the organization’s decisions have been inflexible and hindered training, complicating efforts for athletes who have dealt with a year-long Olympic postponement.
“At a certain point, when you get into one of these big events that’s impacting people across the world, common sense takes a vacation,” Suggs said. “It gets shut down just like all the sports do.”
Prudent or paranoid?
The training center initially closed last March, as coronavirus fears swept over the globe, and athletes training there returned to their homes and scattered across the country. U.S. Olympic officials reopened it in June with protocols and reentry procedures in place.
Athletes coming to the training center first must undergo a quarantine period of at least five days, which includes coronavirus tests on Days 4 and 5. During that period, they are provided fitness equipment for in-room workouts and are allowed to do limited individual training outside their room. Some athletes and coaches have said this intake period can be disruptive to their Tokyo preparations, though, and requires them to scale back training during quarantine.
Once cleared to begin regular workouts, athletes are required to fill out online surveys twice a day monitoring symptoms, and if anyone has a temperature of 100.4 or higher, they’re not allowed at the training center. Coaches and staff must maintain a distance of at least 12 feet from athletes during workouts.
Those living on the campus are discouraged from leaving the site except “for essential activities only.” And going away for a competition or any other overnight trip means the athlete must undergo another quarantine period upon returning. When the community case rate is high, athletes living on-campus can’t co-mingle with those coming in from off-site. Because there aren’t enough beds on campus to accommodate everyone, this presents an insurmountable hurdle for some sports.
Only those living on-site can access the dining hall, and there are thermal cameras in use to monitor temperatures. Sports medicine is widely available but not recovery services, including massage therapy. Sports psychologists are still on-site and check in with athletes.
Some NGBs found the restrictions untenable or too disruptive, but athletes in other sports started returning to train. Since reopening in June, the training center saw five positive coronavirus cases among the 300 athletes who had returned in the first six months. But as case numbers in the broader community continued to rise in the fall and winter, USOPC officials began adjusting their protocols, initially separating athletes who lived on-campus and then closing the facility altogether in December.
That decision sent some athletes scrambling for training and prompted NGBs to cancel training sessions and hunt for other arrangements.
McAtee says it was the right call to close the OPTC last March, amid the uncertainty and escalating infection numbers. But months later, he felt U.S. Olympic leaders were being overly cautious.
He said USOPC officials are “painting with a broad brush as opposed to being surgical,” and the USOPC wouldn’t grant him any exemptions from the rules.
“Nothing is 100 percent. Even vaccines are only 94 percent. We think we can do this safely with very minimal risk. I don’t think USOPC follows the same philosophy. They want 100 percent,” he said. “That’s their choice.”
NGB officials pleaded their cases both individually and on a group conference call in mid-December. The USOPC was concerned an outbreak on campus would decimate Olympic preparations across several sports and was also wary of overburdening the local hospital system in a worst-case scenario.
“As far as protocols, I have emails I receive from NGBs that are frustrated and wish that it was not a pandemic and they didn’t have to go through these different restrictions in order to keep the area safe for athletes to train,” Finnoff said. “And I have other NGBs and athletes who communicate with me and say we’re way too lax and we should have more measures in place and we’re not taking it serious enough.”
Finding their own way
With the training center closed to athletes just seven months from the start of the Tokyo Olympics, NGBs started looking for alternative arrangements. Many sought temporary solutions as they waited for the center to reopen.
USA Boxing started using a ballroom at a local hotel but also has traveled around, even sending some boxers overseas.
“We were able to train and live at the French Olympic Training Center,” McAtee said, “even though we weren’t able to get into our own.”
Boxing officials finally broke down their training center gym in January, packing up four rings and all their training equipment, and moved it 10 minutes down the road to the old Macy’s, which had sat empty for nearly a dozen years.
Both the USOPC and the NGBs point to safety in making their respective cases. The guidelines at the training center are more stringent than those required by the state and county governments. Suggs said none of his athletes in Colorado Springs have tested positive for the coronavirus. The only two infections he has seen were from athletes training elsewhere, including one shooter who had to return home to Los Angeles after the training center closed in December.
“I’m not complaining about the USOPC and the precautions they take with athletes and staff on the OPTC,” Suggs said, “but I do think it was silly to have NGBs move from the OPTC to a mall two miles down the street. That decision did nothing to improve the safety of our athletes.”
USOPC officials agree that the training center is safer than what many athletes might be facing elsewhere, and once the infection numbers relaxed, they reopened it in January.
The restrictions still make it difficult for some NGBs to take full advantage of the space. USA Swimming canceled plans for a March training camp with its national team members, and other sports that have resumed on-site training, such as USA Wrestling, are footing the bill for off-campus housing. USA Shooting can host a handful of its athletes at the training center, but the bulk of its shooters are at the makeshift Macy’s range.
“It’s frustrating, and everyone wishes things were different,” said an official with one governing body, who requested anonymity to describe a tenuous situation. “We felt we made a strong case for our athletes but just couldn’t really reach an agreement that made sense to everyone.”
What remains to be seen is whether the modified training conditions and fluctuating qualifying and competition schedules have any impact on performance in Tokyo.
“We’d be kidding ourselves if we didn’t acknowledge the challenges,” Sarah Hirshland, the USOPC chief executive, said on a recent conference call, “but we go into these Games incredibly optimistic and confident that the athletes will step to the occasion.”
Boxers returned from a competition in Spain this month and next week head to a training center in Chula Vista, Calif., where they’ll spend six weeks training alongside fighters from eight other countries. The boxing rings there have been constructed on tennis courts with tents stretching overhead. The American fighters will return to their Macy’s location in May and continue training there until the team leaves for Tokyo in July.
“That’s sports, right? You adjust on the fly,” McAtee said. “We could sit around and whine about it or we can do something. … I can’t wait around for the USOPC, and neither can the other NGBs.”
