By Daniel Leussink
TOKYO (Reuters) – Spain’s women’s hockey coach Adrian Lock was expecting to be bawling out instructions at his players from the sidelines at the Tokyo Olympics but has instead been left watching their progress on a laptop in a quarantine hotel after a positive COVID-19.
Briton Lock’s saliva test came back positive half an hour before he was expected to hop on the team bus for a match against Australia early on Sunday.
“We’re still doing exactly the same team meetings to prepare the matches,” Lock told Reuters via WhatsApp on Tuesday.
“It’s just that I am stuck in a hotel room.
“The biggest difference is during the matches themselves, instead of being on the bench, I watch the game on streaming and I’m in touch with the coach.”
He added that he relies on a four-way telephone call with other staff members to allow him to coach the team during matches.
“Instead of it being me who is giving the information to the players during the match, it’s my assistant coach,” he said.
Lock said Spanish medical officials thought the positive saliva test may have been a result of him testing positive for the virus in June, about a week after having his second COVID-19 vaccine dose.
He recovered before travelling to Japan and said he now had antibodies against COVID-19.
“I don’t really have COVID now,” he said. “It’s just the remains of COVID that’s in my system from the last time I had it. It’s not a re-infection.”
All of the other members of the team had tested negative for COVID-19 every day, said Lock, adding that Spanish medical officials were working to present his case to COVID-19 experts at the International Olympic Committee.
Lock hoped he could continue to take polymerase chain reaction tests to show that he did not have the virus.
Spain, who lost their first two matches at the Games to Australia and Argentina, face New Zealand on Wednesday.
(Reporting by Daniel Leussink; Editing by Peter Rutherford)
