TOKYO (AP) – Tokyo set itself up as “a safe pair of hands” when it hosted the Olympics 7 1/2 years ago.
“Security was a crucial factor,” said Craig Reedie, then vice president of the IOC, after the 2013 vote in Buenos Aires.
Now nothing is certain, as the postponed Tokyo Olympics hit the 100-day mark on Wednesday. Despite rising cases of COVID-19, numerous scandals and overwhelming public opposition in Japan to the holding of the Games, the organizers and the IOC continue.
The 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo were celebrated Japan’s rapid recovery from World War II defeat. These Olympic Games are marked with footnotes and asterisks. The athletes will aim high, of course, but the goals elsewhere will be modest: get through it, avoid becoming a superspreader event, and spark some national pride, knowing few other countries could have done this.
“The government is very aware of how ‘the world’ views Japan,” Dr. Gill Steel, a lecturer in political science at Doshisha University in Kyoto, wrote in an email. “Canceling the Olympics would, on some level, have been seen as a public failure on the international stage.”
The price will be high when the Olympics open on July 23.
The official cost is $ 15.4 billion. Olympic spending is hard to track, but several government audits suggest it might be twice as much, and anything but $ 6.7 billion is public money.
The Switzerland-based IOC generates 91% of its revenues from the sale of broadcasting rights and sponsorships. This equates to at least $ 5 billion in a four-year cycle, but the revenue stream from networks like US NBC has stalled due to the delay.
What does Tokyo get from the 17-day sports circus?
Fans from abroad are banned, tourism is out and there is no room for parties in the area. Athletes are told to arrive late, leave early and maneuver through a moving maze of rules.
There are also reputational costs for Japan and the International Olympic Committee: a bribery scandal, planning failure and repeated misogyny among Tokyo’s Olympic leaders.
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 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
Various polls show that up to 80% of the Japanese want the Olympics to be canceled or postponed. And many scientists are against it.
“Given the significant risks, it is best not to hold the Olympics,” said Dr. Norio Sugaya, an infectious disease expert at Keiyu Hospital in Yokohama, to The Associated Press.
The introduction of vaccines in Japan is almost non-existent, few will get shots before the Olympics open, and Tokyo has 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, accompanied by tens of thousands of officials, judges, media and broadcasters?
“The risks are great in Japan. Japan is dangerous, not a safe place at all, ”Sugaya said.
The heavily sponsored torch relay with 10,000 runners criss-crossing Japan also poses dangers. The legs scheduled for Osaka this week were taken off the streets due to rising COVID-19 business and moved to a city park – with no fans allowed. Other legs in Japan will certainly be disrupted as well.
The IOC and Japanese politicians decided a year ago to postpone, but not cancel, the Olympics, driven by slowness and the influence of Japanese advertising 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 very well that the Japanese public does not want the Olympics from now on,” wrote Dr. Aki Tonami, who teaches political science at the University of Tsukuba, in an email to AP. “But nobody wants to be the one to pull 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 told famous IOC voters in 2013 that the March 11, 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster was “under control.”
Despite being billed as the “Recovery Olympics,” a decade later, the northeastern part of Japan is still suffering. Many blame the Olympics for the slow recovery and the transfer of resources.
“Suga’s fate is sealed,” Tonami said. “I think he knows his tenure as prime minister will not be long, so while it would be nice for him personally to get it done, it probably won’t change the political conditions around him.”
Staal was more optimistic.
“His government has a better chance of surviving, even thriving, if they can deliver a successful Olympics – a risky strategy, of course if it’s a disaster.”
IOC Chairman Thomas Bach has repeatedly called Tokyo the “best-prepared Olympic Games in history,” and he repeated it during the pandemic. Beautiful venues quickly rose, including Kengo Kuma’s $ 1.4 billion National Stadium, and while expensive, the Games stayed on track until the pandemic struck.
But the ‘safe hands’ were often shaky.
Tokyo’s original logo was dropped after it was alleged to be plagiarized, the original stadium concept was dropped when costs rose above $ 2 billion, and the chairman of the organizing committee, Yoshiro Mori – a former prime minister – resigned two months ago 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 Tokyo ended the Olympics by providing bribes to IOC voters. Rio de Janeiro apparently ended the 2016 Olympics the same way, prosecutors claim.
Tsunekazu Takeda, an IOC member at the time and head of the Japan Olympic Committee, was forced to resign in the vote-buying scandal two years ago. He denied any wrongdoing.
Dr. Lisa Kihl, who studies sports governance and is director of the Global Institute for Responsible Sport Organizations at the University of Minnesota, said corruption has become “institutionalized” in many sports governing bodies, particularly those that operate across national borders.
“It’s so easy to make money with the system,” she said in an interview with the AP. “No one will rock the boat because it benefits everyone. Professional sports organizations within a country – especially the US – must obey the rules of that country. There is no international authority to hold organizations such as the IOC to account. Until sport is run internationally, such as financial institutions, it will not change. “
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