ABC News(NEW YORK) — After four Olympics, 12 medals and another four years of training, Ryan Lochte will have to wait a bit longer to jump back into the swimming pool after the International Olympic Committee announced the 2020 Tokyo Summer Games have been postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
But the six-time gold medalist said this is bigger than any of the athletes and they will adjust their training and be ready to compete when the time comes.
“Training will never be perfect, and there’s always going to be something like a bump in the road, and that’s how us athletes train, and this is just another bump in the road,” Lochte told ABC News’ Good Morning America via Skype from his home in Florida on Wednesday.
“The Olympics are not canceled. They’re just postponed. So now you have to adjust your training for another year, and just — trust the process,” he continued. “Everything happens for a reason.”
The games, which were originally set to kick off in Tokyo on July 24, “will be held by the summer of 2021,” Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced Tuesday.
“As soon as I saw it I was disappointed. I mean, I have trained four years for this moment, and this is probably one of my biggest Olympics — that I have ever had in my career,” Lochte said. “But this is bigger than me, this is bigger than the Olympians. This is affecting the entire world. And right now our main thing is staying safe and staying healthy.”
Until the COVID-19 crisis is resolved, Lochte, 36, said he is spending lots of time “deep cleaning the house,” adding more dry land training to his routine and enjoying time with his family during this stay-at-home period.
“We’re going on family walks, and since all the pools are closed, I can’t be swimming right now, but I’m doing a lot of ab workouts and stuff like that,” he said.
The IOC said the historic first-time move to postpone the games was made to safeguard the health of the athletes, everybody involved in the Olympic Games and the international community.
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