Editorial | COVID-19 protocol in sport

Noah Lyles’ revelation that he competed in the men’s 200 metres race at the Paris Olympics having contracted COVID-19 calls for a serious debate over the right of athletes to keep their health status secret when suffering from communicable or contagious infections.

While Lyles’ decision may have been of minimal risk to the health of the other athletes in the race – none of whom has publicly complained – his action, on its face, removed their ability to exercise agency; that is, their right to decide whether they wanted to compete with him.

Further, notwithstanding the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) protocols on the disclosure and management of COVID-19 cases at its games, the debate has to encompass whose rules should take precedence if the IOC’s codes are in conflict with the health regulations of host countries, such as a requirement for doctors to report infectious diseases, as is the case in France with respect to COVID-19.

Lyles is a highly talented, loud and braggadocious American who desperately wants to be the face of global track and field athletics. In some respects that is already the case. But he hoped to put the issue beyond doubt at the Paris games by winning three gold medals: in the 100 and 200 metres dash and for the men’s 4x100 metres relay.

He accomplished the first by a hair’s breadth, winning against Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson by five-thousandth of a second in the 100 metres. Both men were officially clocked at 9.79 seconds.

Thompson’s left foot was over the finishing line ahead of Lyles’. But Lyle’s torso, the photo-finish pictures show, was a smidgen ahead of Thompson’s. For Lyles and a fawning global press, it could have been a mile.

BOASTED

Lyles expected that the coup de grâce to his dominance would have come last Thursday, four days after his 100-metre victory. He boasted about it.

Instead, the race was won by the 21-year Botswana star, Letsile Tebogo, who clocked 19.46 seconds. Lyles was shocked into third place with a time of 19.70 seconds, behind his compatriot, Kenny Bednarek, in 19.62 seconds.

In the immediate aftermath of the race Lyles hugged some of his competitors. It has not been said if he was free of COVID-19 at the time.

Shortly after the race Lyles lay flat on the tracks before being wheeled off. He shortly afterwards revealed that he had tested positive for COVID-19 two days earlier, and was out of breath after the run. He rated his readiness for the race at “90 to 95 per cent”.

The revelation of his illness had the effect, intentional or otherwise, of taking some of the sheen off Tebogo’s victory. The question will linger: What might a fit Lyles have done?

“To be honest, I am more proud of myself than anything – coming out and getting a bronze medal with COVID,” he said.

Lyles, indeed, has cause to be proud of his achievement – as a personal triumph. But there are legitimate reasons, this newspaper believes, for debate over the IOC’s protocols that made it possible without anyone knowing.

Delayed by a year, the Olympics in Tokyo in August, 2021 was held in a nearly empty stadium. That was because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which during the period it was designated a global health emergency (January 2020 to May 2023) killed around seven million people.

STILL GET COVID-19

People still get COVID-19. Some die, but not anywhere near the numbers as at the height of the pandemic.

Last week, Thomas Bach, the IOC’s president said that the IOC and France treated COVID-19 “like every other respiratory disease”.

“It’s being treated like the flu now,” he said.

Which, apparently, is the posture of many other national sporting bodies. It is, however, not clear what protocols the Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association (JAAA) has in place for the management of COVID-19 among its athletes.

In Lyles’ case, when he tested positive two days before the 200 metres, there were two considerations: his personal determination to run, and to keep the diagnosis secret.

“The people who knew were the medical staff, my coach, my mum,” Lyles disclosed.

According to the athlete, he was “going to compete regardless” and he didn’t want information about his illness to give his rival “an edge”. So, a medical team worked aggressively on him for the next two days.

Lyles was not the first athlete at the games to contract COVID-19. A day after he won the silver medal for the men’s breaststroke in swimming, Britain’s Adam Peaty tested positive for the virus.

There, however, was a marked difference in how his case was handled. The British Olympic Committee disclosed his positive test result, while he was isolated and treated.

Five days later Peaty was in the pool, swimming in the heats of the 4x100 relay. The next day he helped Britain win the gold medal.

The bottomline: people knew that Peaty had contracted COVID-19.

Given the evolution of the virus, the circumstances in which it generally contracted, and the environment of athletics competition, maybe Peaty’s teammates and competitors didn’t care. But they knew.

The question now is whether such transparency should be universal.