The Olympic Games has survived world wars, a terrorist attack that took the lives of 11 Israeli athletes, Cold War boycotts and more.

Yet five months out from the Tokyo 2020 Games the COVID-19 coronavirus is proving the most challenging.

Kevan Gosper is a former vice-president of the IOC and a long-term chair of the now disbanded Press Commission.

He's been through many of the major dilemmas the organisation has confronted since first experiencing the Olympics as an athlete, winning a silver medal in the 4 x 400 metre relay at the 1956 Melbourne Games.

So when he told The Ticket this week, "If the situation doesn't improve, or vaccines aren't available, and it continues to escalate then the only possibility is that the Games will be cancelled — we're not talking postponed or transferred, it's cancelled", it carried weight.

Coronavirus a possible trigger for Tokyo crisis team

Neil Fergus, the founder and chief executive of Intelligent Risks, is one of the world's foremost security experts who's been involved in every summer and two winter Olympic Games since Sydney 2000.

He says every Olympics he's been associated with has had a crisis management plan and a crisis management team to deal with those issues that have the potential to severely impact the Games's delivery, finances and reputation.

British soldiers were used to augment private security so that the London Olympics could go ahead. ( Reuters: Neil Hall )

"You know there was a security issue in London 2012 when there was a complete failure of the contracted guarding service to provide the 15,000 staff required … just before the Games it was apparent they weren't able to deliver so the crisis management team brought in senior people from government," Fergus said.

"It was deemed so serious that COBRA, the Cabinet Operation Briefing Room, or if you like the crisis management team of the UK government, also met and it was determined that the Ministry of Defence (Army) would be deployed to augment the private guarding operations so the Olympics could proceed.

"Then-prime minister David Cameron was quoted as saying the reputation of 'UK incorporated' was on the precipice — if they failed to deliver those Games properly, they foresaw there would be massive reputational damage not just of government but to British industry.

"Given the potential implications for coronavirus on the Tokyo Olympic Games in July-August, and the subsequent Paralympic Games it would be an issue that might warrant the activation of the Tokyo crisis management team."

Infection questions a key to Games future

The issue for Japan is not just what is happening on the ground, as final touches are put to the seven years' worth of preparations, but the infections spreading around the world.

Should Tokyo be able to confirm they have eradicated the virus before the self-imposed April-May deadline being discussed by the IOC, who's to say the other 200-plus nations sending teams can make the same guarantees?

An Olympic Games host city is often described in terms of a city being overlayed by another city.

More than 11,000 athletes arrive with their coaches and support staff, there are provisions for 18,000 journalists, add sponsors, team officials, family and friends before you even begin to discuss workers required for separate transport routes, catering, cleaning and other services.

Mr Fergus says, "It's even possible that athletes and journalists going there will have to have been through a modicum of quarantine before deploying.

"It's one of the contingency plans that should now be under consideration."

He should know.

He prepared the Tokyo organising committee's security foundation plan after the city won the bid.

Athletes already caught up in virus fallout

Olympic athletes are already caught up in what's expected to be classified as a global pandemic in the next couple of days.

On Friday the final two stages of cycling's UAE Tour were cancelled after two Italian officials tested positive to the virus.

Race participants — including Australians and Olympic medallists, staff and organisers — were quarantined inside the team hotel to undergo tests and monitoring.

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The last leg staged began in Dubai on Thursday.

The Australian women's water polo team was in the same city, having been stopped en route to a training camp in Italy.

They returned home on Friday and will now prepare in Canberra instead.

The youngest member of the Aussie Stingers team is Matilda Kearns. Her father is former Wallaby captain Phil Kearns.

"Oh, she's pretty shattered, I think … when you're the youngest in the team your enthusiasm is just massive, you know, you're in the Olympic squad, it's so exciting," Phil Kearns said.

"I was trying to cast my mind back to when I was a 19-20 year old in the Wallabies and NSW team and when your that age you actually couldn't give a stuff, all you want to do is play, train, have fun … you have your goal in front of you and nothing gets in your way.

"It's lucky in some ways that decision is taken out of their hands.

"I think the hardest thing for all of us on this is just the uncertainty and what are the facts — on one level you could say 'this is just a bad flu, what are we all worried about?' On another level it could kill millions."

Olympic officials both here and overseas stress athletes should maintain their focus and prepare for the Games to open on July 24 as scheduled.

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But with daily press briefings given by the World Health Organisation, by presidents, prime ministers and other experts who naturally lead all the news bulletins, how do athletes block the reality of what's happening from the hope it will disappear before the Games begin?

"It's really difficult," Kearns said.

"The thing that I cast my mind back to is 1992 when we were in South Africa, and it was the first time ether Australia or New Zealand was allowed back into South Africa to play and our tour was nearly ended because the South Africans sang Die Stem (the former national anthem) at the New Zealand Test.

"It was forbidden by the ANC so we were told 'go back to your hotel, pack your bags and get ready to go home, but training's on tomorrow at 9'.

"You do try to put it to the back of your mind and just say 'it's just another day and everything will be OK' but when it's health, maybe it's not going to be ok.

"You'd like to think that at the Olympic level the athletes have developed a level of resilience that is much higher than most people and you just get on with stuff, and when the decision is made the decision is made — you get on with life and move on."

SOCOG chief Hollway knows challenges facing Tokyo

The uncertainty, while not uncommon before a Games begins, is most challenging for the organisers themselves.

Sandy Hollway was the chief executive of SOCOG, the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games ahead of the event in 2000.

He knows what his counterparts at TOCOG are now going through.

"I think it is in the DNA, to use that well-worn phrase, of organisers of Olympic Games to identify risk, to do contingency planning and practice contingency planning," he said.

"I would have no doubt at all that the organisers of the Tokyo Olympics are doing that also in relation to this particular problem and doing it in a very rigorous, analytical, unpanicked, careful way.

"I don't think either the Games organisers in Tokyo or anybody in the Olympic movement, from the IOC through the national sporting federations down to the National Olympic Committees, including the Australian Olympic Committee, would have anything other than the wellbeing of the athletes forefront in their minds."

Rio Olympics organisers had to deal with the zika virus, but it wasn't serious enough to stop the Games going ahead. ( Reuters: Sergio Moraes )

No Games are immune from controversy.

The last summer Games in Rio had the Zika virus to contend with; London had a security issue; Beijing had to relax strict internet laws inside the country so journalists could do their jobs; and Athens went broke after 2004 as a result of a combination of factors including an hyper-inflated security budget being the first Games after the September 11 terrorist attack in the US.

Sydney also had its challenges.

"By golly, we did think about risk and how it might be mitigated and contingencies were planned across an extraordinarily wide range of issues," Mr Hollway said.

"You'll remember the Y2K for example, that was focussed on; venue safety, another example; medical incidents; bad weather; utilities failures; venue evacuation possibilities; hazardous materials problems; technology failures; problems at the airport with arrivals and departures; the ceremonies — all of these and other areas were ones where we not only planned to accomplish what needed to be done but thought long and hard about where we might be blind-sided, what might go wrong and what plans B, C & D we needed to have in place."

Supply chains another stress point for Games

Beyond the health challenges other areas of Olympic delivery will be impacted even if coronavirus is non-existent at the time of the Games.

Organising committees also plan for emergency disruption to stocks — excess basketballs, footballs, volleyballs, ping-pong balls are just one area of supplies that may now be running behind schedule with the months-long shutdown of Chinese factories.

"Supply chains for all of those products and many more are now international, the disruption of supply chains can be a serious problem.

"I'm not close enough to know how much of these kinds of products the Tokyo organisers have put aside and what their timing on contracts and supplies was but, yep, that is a potential problem that is affecting Australian industry and industry around the world even now.

"I can't see how it wouldn't be affected Japan and Tokyo as well."

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Earlier in the week it was Canadian IOC member, Dick Pound, that kick-started the public discussion over concerns inside the IOC's Lausanne offices.

"My guess is that somewhere on a wall in the IOC headquarters is a great big board with all kinds of scenarios that need to be considered and rated in terms of possibility or impossibility and then what are the effects on the competition, the athletes, the economy and other consequences," Pound said.

IOC president Thomas Bach briefed Japanese journalists on Thursday night because of the level of concern regarding global headlines of the possible cancellation of the Games.

When questioned about the recent media speculation Mr Bach said the IOC "is fully committed to a successful Olympic Games in Tokyo starting July 24".

Asked specifically to comment on recent suggestions by Pound that a postponement or cancellation is being considered, Bach would only say "I'll not add fuel to the flames of speculation".

Tokyo residents 'fearful of shadows'

One of the journalists on that briefing was Wakako Yuki, from the Yomiuri Shimbun, who has been covering the Olympics for 26 years.

She told The Ticket that while Tokyo residents were living relatively normal lives they were feeling "stressed out and fearful of shadows".

Putting aside the cruise passengers, there are about 200 coronavirus cases in Japan — only 36 in Tokyo — in a population of 10 million.

Residents of Tokyo are dealing with the countdown to the Olympics amid the threat of cancellation. ( AP: Jae C. Hong )

After an investment of $US6 billion ($9.2 billion) over the past decade to get Tokyo Olympics-ready, the cost of cancellation would be heavy both economically and emotionally.

"I know from the past 13 Games that I've covered local people around this time find their real connection to the hosting of the Games," Yuki said.

"The inclusion of the people is vital for success of the Games themselves.

"A lot of people in the devastated area of the tidal wave and earthquake had connections with a lot of Asian countries, cities and schools to try to say thank you.

"Lots of people have bought tickets obviously — including my mother.

"She's been coaching men's volleyball at junior high for forty years and was somehow chosen to be a runner with the torch relay.

"Talk of a cancellation and 'what if' — although necessary — at the same time I would like consideration to be given to how these people feel every time they listen to this talk."

The last time an Olympic Games was cancelled was in 1940, the host was supposed to be Tokyo.

Nobody would wish it to happen a second time.