TOKYO (AP) – Tokyo launched as a “safe pair of hands” when it was awarded the Olympics 7 and a half years ago.
“Certainty was a crucial factor,” said Craig Reedie, IOC’s vice president at the time, after the 2013 vote in Buenos Aires.
Now, nothing is certain, as the postponed Olympic Games in Tokyo reached the 100-day mark on Wednesday. Despite the growing cases of COVID-19, countless scandals and overwhelming public opposition in Japan to the Games, the organizers and the CIO continue.
The 1964 Tokyo Olympics celebrated Japan’s rapid recovery after the defeat of World War II. These Olympics will be marked by footnotes and asterisks. Athletes will aim high, of course, but the goals elsewhere will be modest: get over it, avoid becoming a super-widespread event and provoke national pride, knowing that few other countries could have pulled this off.
“The government is very aware of the way the ‘world’ looks at Japan,” wrote Dr. Gill Steel, who teaches political science at Doshisha University in Kyoto, in an e-mail. “The cancellation of the Olympic Games would have been seen, at some level, as a public failure on the international stage.”
The price will be raised at the opening of the Olympic Games on July 23.
The official cost is $ 15.4 billion. Olympic spending is difficult to track, but several government audits suggest it could be twice as much, and all but $ 6.7 billion is public money.
IOC in Switzerland generates 91% of its revenues from the sale of broadcasting and sponsorship rights. This amounts to at least $ 5 billion in a four-year cycle, but the revenue stream from networks like NBC based in America has been blocked by the postponement.
What brings Tokyo out of the 17-day sports circus?
Fans from abroad are banned, tourism is out and there will be no room for neighborhood parties. Athletes are told to arrive late, leave early and maneuver around a maze moving rules.
There are also reputational costs for Japan and the International Olympic Committee: a bribery scandal, poor planning and repeated misogyny in the Tokyo Olympic leadership.
The IOC is betting that Tokyo will be a distraction – the “light at the end of the pandemic tunnel” – as the closing ceremony comes just six months before the opening of the boycott-threatened Beijing Winter Olympics.
Various polls suggest that up to 80% of Japanese want the Olympics to be canceled or postponed. And many scientists oppose it.
“It is best not to hold the Olympics, given the considerable risks,” Dr. Norio Sugaya, an infectious disease expert at Yokohama’s Keiyu Hospital, told the Associated Press.
The launch of vaccines in Japan was almost non-existent, few will receive fire before the opening of the Olympic Games, and Tokyo raised its “alert level” with another wave predicted about the time of the opening ceremony. About 9,500 deaths in Japan have been attributed to COVID-19, good by global measures, but poor by Asian standards.
And what is the impact of 15,400 Olympic and Paralympic athletes from more than 200 countries and territories entering Japan, joined by tens of thousands of officials, judges, the media and broadcasters?
“The risks are high in Japan. Japan is dangerous, it is not a safe place at all, “Sugaya said.
The heavily sponsored torch relay with 10,000 runners crossing Japan also poses dangers. Legs scheduled for Osaka this week were taken off the streets due to growing COVID-19 cases and moved to a city park – no fans allowed. Other legs in Japan are also sure to be broken.
The IOC and Japanese politicians decided a year ago to postpone, but not cancel, the Olympics, led by inertia and the influence of Japanese giant Dentsu Inc., which has set a record $ 3.5 billion in local sponsorship – probably three times more than any previous Olympics.
“I think the government knows full well that the Japanese public does not want the Olympics now,” Dr. Aki Tonami, who teaches political science at Tsukuba University, wrote in an email to the PA. “But no one wants to be the one to pull the plug.”
The Olympics may also determine the fate of Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who replaced Shinzo Abe seven months ago. Abe was the one who told IOC voters in 2013 that the March 11, 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster was “under control.”
Despite being called the “Recovery Olympics”, northeastern Japan suffers another decade later. Many blame the Olympics for slow recovery and diversion of resources.
“Suga’s fate is sealed,” Tonami said. “I think he knows that his term as prime minister will not be a long one, so while it would be nice for him personally to withdraw it, it probably does not change the political conditions around him.”
Steel was more optimistic.
“His government has a better chance of surviving, even thriving, if they succeed in a successful Olympics – a risky strategy, obviously, if it is a disaster.”
IOC President Thomas Bach has repeatedly called Tokyo “the best-prepared Olympics in history” and reaffirmed it during the pandemic. Beautiful places have grown rapidly, including the $ 1.4 billion National Stadium in Kengo Kuma and, although expensive, the Games have been on track to hit the pandemic.
But the “safe pair of hands” was often shaken.
The original Tokyo logo was removed after being plagiarized, the original stadium concept was abandoned when costs rose to more than $ 2 billion, and organizing committee chairman Yoshiro Mori – former prime minister – resigned. two months after making derogatory comments about women. Artistic director Hiroshi Sasaki left a few weeks later, essentially for the same reason.
In addition, French prosecutors believe that Tokyo landed the Olympics by channeling bribes to IOC voters. It seems that Rio de Janeiro landed the 2016 Olympic Games in the same way, prosecutors say.
Tsunekazu Takeda, IOC member at the time and head of the Japanese Olympic Committee, he was forced to resign two years ago in the vote-buying scandal. He denied any wrongdoing.
Dr. Lisa Kihl, who studies sports governance and is the director of the Global Institute for Responsible Sports Organizations at the University of Minnesota, said corruption has become “institutionalized” in many sports governing bodies, especially those that operate across borders. national.
“It’s so easy to make money from the system,” she said in an interview with the AP. “No one is going to swing the boat because everyone benefits from it. Professional sports organizations in a country – especially the USA – must follow the rules of that country. At the international level, there is no body to hold organizations like the IOC accountable. Until international sport is governed like financial institutions, it will not change. “
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