Will the postponed Tokyo Olympics open regardless of rising opposition and the pandemic?
The reply is nearly actually sure.”
Senior International Olympic Committee member Richard Pound was emphatic in an interview with a British newspaper.
Barring Armageddon that we cant see or anticipate, these things are a go, Pound told the Evening Standard.
Tokyo is under a COVID-19 state of emergency, but IOC Vice President John Coates has said the games will open on July 23 state of emergency, or no state of emergency.
As an exclamation point, Australias softball team the first major group of athletes from abroad to set up an Olympic base in Japan arrived in Tokyo on Tuesday.
So the Olympics are barreling ahead. But why?
Start with billions of dollars at stake, a contract that overwhelmingly favors the IOC, and a decision by the Japanese government to stay the course, which might help Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga keep his job.
These factors have overridden scathing criticism from medical bodies that fear the Olympics may spread COVID-19 variants, and a call for cancellation from Asahi Shimbun, a games sponsor and the countrys second-largest selling newspaper. The United States Department of State has issued a Level-4 Do not travel warning for Japan with Tokyo and other areas under a state of emergency that expires on June 20.
And there’s saving face. Japan has officially spent $15.4 billion on the Olympics, but several government audits suggest it’s much more. All but $6.7 billion is public money. Geopolitical rival China is to hold the 2022 Winter Olympics just six months after Tokyo ends, and could claim centerstage should Tokyo fail.
A not-for-profit based in Switzerland, the IOC has ironclad control under terms of the so-call Host City Contract, and it’s unlikely to cancel on its own since it would lose billions in broadcast rights and sponsorship income.
Though it portrays itself as a sporting league of nations, the IOC is a multi-billion dollar sports business that derives almost 75% of its income from selling broadcast rights. Another 18% comes from 15 top sponsors.
Andrew Zimbalist, an economist at Smith College in Massachusetts who has written extensively about the Olympics, estimates the IOC could lose about $3.5 billion-$4 billion in broadcast revenue if the Tokyo Games were canceled. He suggested a small portion of this, between $400 million and $800 million, might be made up by cancellation insurance.
U.S. broadcaster NBCUniversal is the IOC’s largest single source of income.
The IOC also feels a commitment by the momentum of history to do this, Zimbalist said in an interview with The Associated Press. Their whole DNA is saying: do it, do it, do it. The Japanese government really does not have the right to cancel the games. They can go to the IOC and plead with them, and maybe they are doing that.”
Of course, the Japanese authorities might cease the Olympics. It can be a public-relations catastrophe for the IOC to get right into a authorized battle with Tokyo, so any such deal can be labored out in personal.
The IOC’s lofty picture belies myriad corruption scandals within the final a number of many years. The president of the Japanese Olympic Committee was pressured to resign two years in the past he was additionally an IOC member in a scandal linked to bribing IOC members. An analogous scandal surrounded Rio de Janeiro’s bid to land the 2016 Olympics.
The Olympics are a really, very sturdy model. They’re a novel model. They’re a monopoly, Zimbalist stated. They will not be regulated by any authorities. All of these issues have created a way of invulnerability, maybe.”
The medical community has offered persistent but ineffective opposition. The 6,000-member Tokyo Medical Practitioners’ Association asked Prime Minister Suga to cancel. So did the Japan Doctors Union, whose chairman warned the Olympics could spread variants of the coronavirus. Nurses and other medical groups have also pushed back.
Last week in a commentary, the New England Journal of Medicine said the IOC’s decision to hold the Olympics was not informed by the best scientific evidence. And the The British Medical Journal in an editorial in April asked organizers to reconsider holding the games.
An online petition demanding cancellation gathered about 400,000 signatures in a few weeks, but several street protests have mostly fizzled. Depending on how the question is phrased, 50-80% oppose the games opening.
Suga is moving ahead despite the dissension.
The fundamental situation is that the machine has been set in motion to make this happen and politically for everyone we have passed the point of no return, Dr. Aki Tonami, who teaches international relations at the University of Tsukuba, wrote in an email to AP.
The Japanese system is simply not geared to make a radical U-turn at such a late point.
She said negative public opinion was partly the fault of Suga, who has failed to bolster the Olympics as effectively as former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Politicians may well be aware of the risk they are taking but hope that once the Games begin the Japanese public will persevere for the good of Japan and forget how we got here, Tonami said.
The IOC always references the World Health Organization as the shield for its coronavirus guidance. The IOC has published two editions of so-called Playbooks the final edition is out this month spelling out protocols for athletes and everyone else during the Olympics.
Recent test events held under the protocols have faced few problems, but athletes will have to accept strict rules.
I felt beyond safe, American sprinter Justin Gatlin said at a test event last month in Tokyo. I know a lot of athletes are not going to be happy with this but the measures are in place to keep everyone safe.”
Japan has had many fewer COVID-19 instances than the United States or Brazil or India. Cases have grown within the final a number of months however have begun to return down in the previous few weeks, though worries persist about variants.
Athletes and others should go two COVID-19 assessments earlier than leaving residence, one other upon arrival in Japan, after which bear repeated testing. About 15,000 Olympic and Paralympic athletes, plus added workers, will stay in a bubble on the Olympic Village, coaching websites, and venues.
Tens of 1000’s of others should enter Japan, which has largely been sealed off through the pandemic: judges officers, media, broadcasters and the so-called Olympic Family. Local organizers say that quantity is now 50% of the unique 180,000. Fans from overseas have already been banned, and a choice on native followers is anticipated this month.
The IOC says extra that 80% of the residents of the Olympic Village might be vaccinated. This compares with 2-3% of the Japanese inhabitants that’s totally vaccinated, and most Japanese is not going to be when the video games open.
Japan gave pictures to 200 of its Olympic athletes on Tuesday, an occasion held behind closed doorways with out a lot fanfare.
Despite assurances that the Olympics might be protected and safe, athletes are required to signal a waiver and assume dangers particular to COVID-19.
Waivers have been utilized in earlier Olympics, however this one is up to date with COVID language.
AP obtained a replica of the waiver, which reads partially:
“I agree that I take part within the Games at my very own threat and personal accountability, together with any influence on my participation to and/or efficiency within the Games, severe bodily damage and even loss of life raised by the potential publicity to well being hazards such the transmission of COVID-19 and different infectious illness or excessive warmth circumstances whereas attending the Games…”
Bob Costas, who covered the Olympics for NBC, suggested in a recent U.S. television interview that the games should be postponed until next year.
This has been ruled out.
The IOC says the Olympics must happen this year or not at all. The delay has already cost $2.8 billion, and the main obstacle to another postponement is the Olympics Village, where thousands of apartments have already been sold with owners waiting to move in. Dozens of venues would also have to be rebooked, and a jammed 2022 global sports schedule would have to rejiggered again.
David Wallechinsky, one of the world’s best-known Olympic historians and author of the Complete Book of the Olympics, summed up the situation in an email to Associated Press.
What a mess,” he wrote.
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