Olympic champion swimmer Ryan Lochte says that while he is disappointed by the postponement of the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo due to the coronavirus pandemic, it's a "bump in the road" for him and fellow athletes.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had announced on Tuesday that the games, which were originally set to start on July 24, "will be held by the summer of 2021." Lochte, 36, has competed in four previous Olympics, where he won 12 medals—half of them gold, and has spent the past few years training for the 2020 event.
"As soon as I saw it, I was disappointed," Lochte said on ABC's Good Morning America in a home interview carried out via Skype on Wednesday. "I mean, I have trained four years for this moment, and this is probably one of my biggest Olympics, going into the Olympics, that I have ever had in my career. 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."
"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 continued. "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."
Meanwhile, like millions of people worldwide, Lochte has been staying at home, where he lives his wife and young son and daughter. He said on Good Morning America that he has been "deep cleaning the house," "going on family walks" and keeping up with his fitness.
"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 to help keep me in some shape," he said.