TOKYO (AP) – Tokyo declared itself a “safe pair of hands” when the Olympics were awarded 7 1/2 years ago.
“Security was a crucial factor,” Craig Reedie, then IOC vice president, said after the 2013 Buenos Aires poll.
Nothing is certain now, as the postponed Olympic Games in Tokyo reached the 100-day turning point on Wednesday. Despite the increasing instances of COVID-19, there is a myriad of scandals and overwhelming public opposition in Japan to hold the Games, the organizers and the IOC continue.
The 1964 Tokyo Olympics were celebrated Japan’s rapid recovery from defeat in World War II. These Olympics will be marked by footnotes and asterisks. The athletes will of course aim high, but the goals elsewhere will be modest: get through it, avoid a super-distributor event and make some national pride in the knowledge that few other countries could achieve it.
“The government is very aware of how ‘the world’ views Japan,” Dr. Gill Steel, who teaches political science at Doshisha University in Kyoto, wrote in an email. “The cancellation of the Olympic Games would a certain level could be seen as a public failure on the international stage. “
The prize will be steep when the Olympic Games open 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, even if $ 6.7 billion is public money.
The Switzerland-based IOC generates 91% of its revenue from the sale of broadcasting rights and sponsorship. It amounts to at least $ 5 billion in a four-year cycle, but the revenue flow of networks like the American NBC has been halted by the postponement.
What does Tokyo get out of the 17-day sports circus?
Fans from abroad are banned, tourism is outside and there is no space for neighborhood parties. Athletes are told to arrive late, leave early and move around around a gripping maze of rules.
There are also reputational costs for Japan and the International Olympic Committee: a bribery scandal, deviant planning and repeated misogyny in the Tokyo Olympic leadership.
The IOC is betting that Tokyo will be a diversion – ‘the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel’ – as the closing event begins just six months before the opening of the boycott of the Winter Olympics in Beijing.
Various polls suggest that up to 80% of Japanese want to cancel or postpone the Olympics. And many scientists are opposed to it.
“It is best not to hold the Olympics, as there are significant risks involved,” he said. Norio Sugaya, an expert on infectious diseases at Keiyu Hospital in Yokohama, told the Associated Press.
Japan’s vaccine deployment was almost unsustainable, few will get shots before the Olympics, and Tokyo has raised its ‘warning level’ with another wave. forecast about the time of the opening ceremony. About 9,500 deaths in Japan are attributed to COVID-19, good by global standards 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, along with tens of thousands of officials, judges, media and broadcasters?
“The risks are huge in Japan. “Japan is dangerous, not a safe place at all,” Sugaya said.
The heavily sponsored torch relay with 10,000 runners crossing through Japan also poses danger. Legs scheduled for Osaka this week were pulled from the streets and moved to a city park due to the rising COVID-19 cases – without fans. Other bones across Japan will also be disrupted.
The IOC and Japanese politicians decided a year ago to postpone but not cancel the Olympics, driven by inertia and the influence of Japanese advertising giant Dentsu Inc., which set a record $ 3.5 billion in local sponsorship – probably three times more than any previous Olympics.
“I think the government knows very well that the Japanese public does not want the Olympics,” said Dr. Aki Tonami, who teaches political science at Tsukuba University, wrote in an email to AP. “But no one wants to be the one pulling the plug.”
The Olympics could also determine the fate of Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who replaced Shinzo Abe seven months ago. It was Abe who famously told IOC voters in 2013 that the nuclear disaster in Fukushima on March 11, 2011 was ‘under control’.
Despite being the “Olympic Games for Recovery”, the northeastern part of Japan is still hurting a decade later. Many blame the Olympics for the slow recovery and depletion of resources.
“Suga’s fate is sealed,” Tonami said. “I think he knows that his term of office will not be long, although it would be nice for him personally to pull it out, it probably does not change the political circumstances around him.”
Steel was more optimistic.
“His government has a greater chance of surviving, even thriving, if they can achieve a successful Olympics – a risky strategy if it is a disaster.”
IOC President Thomas Bach repeatedly called Tokyo the “best prepared Olympics in history” and he repeated it during the pandemic. Nice places went up quickly, including the $ 1.4 billion National Stadium by Kengo Kuma, and although it was expensive, the Games were on track until the pandemic hit.
But the “safe pair of hands” was often shaky.
Tokyo’s initial logo was scrapped after alleging plagiarism, the stadium’s original concept was abandoned when costs rose above $ 2 billion, and organizing committee chairman Yoshiro Mori – a former prime minister – has two months retired after making derogatory remarks about women. Artistic director Hiroshi Sasaki left a few weeks later, for the same reason.
In addition, French prosecutors believe that Tokyo landed the Olympics by sending bribes to IOC voters. Rio de Janeiro apparently landed the 2016 Olympics in the same way, prosecutors claim.
Tsunekazu Takeda, a member of the IOC at the time and head of the Japanese Olympic Committee, was forced to resign in the vote-buying scandal two years ago. He did any injustice.
Dr Lisa Kihl, who studies sports management and is the director of the Global Institute for Responsible Sports Organizations at the University of Minnesota, said corruption has “institutionalized” in many sports governing bodies, especially those working across national borders.
“It’s so easy to make money from the system,” she said in an interview with the AP. “Nobody is going to rock the boat, because everyone benefits from it. Professional sports organizations within a country – specifically the USA – must adhere to the rules of the country. Internationally, there is no institution that holds organizations like the IOC accountable. Until sports are managed internationally like financial institutions, it is not going to change. ”
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