Olympics with great differences
During the course of this week, we have had opportunities to watch the Trials in the USA for that country’s team to the Tokyo Olympics.
This weekend, The Bahamas and Jamaica will host their respective National Championships which will also serve as their Olympic Trials.
According to the regulations set for the Olympic Games this year this weekend offers the last opportunity for athletes around the world to qualify for the Tokyo.
Under normal circumstances, the world would have been excited about the Summer Olympics. However, with the onset of Covid-19 in the latter part of 2019 and its rapid global expansion in 2020, the international community, sporting and otherwise, has been filled with trepidation of mass gatherings, not the least of which is the multisport Olympic Games.
The world remains in a state of much confusion as the Japanese government, the Organising Committee of the Olympic Games 2020 (OCOG2020) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), engage themselves in a variety of exercises, all of which are aimed at convincing the Japanese people that they should accept all that they have been told and lend their support to the quadrennial festival of sports, albeit, one year late.
The conclusion is that this edition of the Tokyo Olympics would be significantly different and will be history for the widest possible list of reasons.
Tokyo 2020 in 2021
For the very first time in Olympic history, we will have an edition of the Olympic Games in a year different from the one in which it was supposed to be held but which has, nonetheless, retained the label that carried the previous year.
Under normal circumstances, this would have been considered ridiculous and in many respects it is. However, such is the influence of the IOC that it has been able to convince the entire Olympic Movement and global sports community that such an approach can and ought to be acceptable.
History will perhaps, in short order, reveal just how much this aspect of sport’s influence on society is much more than an anomaly, but rather, a historical wrong.
Qualification challenges
The global pandemic has wrought havoc on the qualification system originally planned by the respective sports on the Games’ programme. Many international federations were forced to change their qualifying systems, placing significant challenges on member federations, their athletes and coaches, across the world.
The suggestion, very early after the announcement of the postponement of the Games, that those who had already qualified would be retained for the Games one year later, was as ridiculous as the initial decision to leave the Games labelled Tokyo2020 even though it is being held in 2021.
It is utterly ridiculous to suggest that an athlete’s performance two years before the Games should be given consideration when sports scientists and coaches are aware that so much could change in the time between then and the Games than other athletes may be much better prepared and capable of performing much better.
If indeed the Olympics are intended to have the very best performing athletes in competition, then it is extremely to automatically decide that those who had already qualified for the Games had they been held in 2020 should somehow be favoured.
Clearly, it makes much better sense to insist on qualifications in the year of competition.
Restrictions galore
This year’s Olympic Games will have more restrictions than any previous edition in history.
Astute followers of the Games preparation exercise would have been thoroughly confused by the number of restrictions put in place and the subsequent and frequent changes that have been taking place in this regard.
The first major restriction was the announcement that international spectators would not be allowed into the country for the Games. Of course, this would have a significantly debilitating impact on gate receipts as well as on the income usually generated throughout the economy by the international spectator spend. This has to be taken against the backdrop that under normal circumstances, host cities take a decade or more to adequately recoup the expenditures made on having the Games.
Interestingly, in the recent past, some of the restrictions have been lifted in some of Japan’s districts.
Japanese Prime Minister, Yoshihide Suga, has recently announced the lifting of the state of emergency that had been imposed on Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and Hokkaido, paving the way for the possibility of allowing approximately 10,000 Japanese spectators only.
Then there are restrictions on the movement of people, the participating delegations. Just about every category of participants has been asked to submit their comprehensive daily itineraries for the duration of their stay in Japan, well in advance of arriving in the country. This is perhaps one of the most challenging features of the Games and one that would be closely monitored by all concerned.
The foregoing restrictions have negatively impacted the plans of many National Olympic Committees regarding the conduct of training camps in other parts of Japan in the lead up to the Games. Many have actually cancelled their pre-Games training camps altogether.
There will also be a greater insistence on the number of days before and after an athlete’s competition that he/she is expected to leave Japan.
The restrictions on movement also mean that for the duration of the Games, most of the delegations would have to strictly adhere to regulations that have them spend most of their time in their hotel rooms.
For some, the restrictions will perhaps leave athletes much more focused on their preparation for and participation in their respective competitions.
For others, the numerous factors that have impacted the Games preparation exercise may well have yielded novel ways of reviewing the way in which the Olympics have been planned and executed. This is an important feature since the Games remain in need of ongoing critical analysis given the fact that costs related to the size of the quadrennial sporting spectacle are a major consideration for future potential hosts.
Reasoning
For decades, Japan has been credited with an amazing recovery, perhaps matched only by Germany, in terms of where it was following the war and particularly the destruction wrought by the atom bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
We have watched as the Japanese people have literally risen from the ashes to emerge as one of the leading economic miracles of our time, founded on advanced science and technology.
It was therefore most confusing for much of the world to understand what it is about the culture of the Japanese people that has allowed the nation to be so slothful in respect of its response to the pandemic.
According to The Lancet, dated 19 June 2021,
“Although Japan is preparing to host the Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo, only 4% of the population had been vaccinated as of May 21, 2021.”
The reasons proffered include,
“the regulatory approval of COVID-19 vaccines in Japan has lagged behind other countries…there were several months of delay in approval compared with other high-income countries…there has been a delay in vaccine importation…the vaccine roll-out system has been insufficient for achieving mass vaccination.”
The Japanese venture into producing its own vaccine has also been very slow. It may well be that given the nation’s history with the West, the Japanese may not be particularly trusting of vaccines that are produced outside their country.
Whatever the reasons for the situation in Japan in respect of the pandemic, many remains surprised that such an advanced industrial nation could have been so lethargic in addressing what has emerged as the most dangerous pandemic in modern times.
Many analysts have been asking themselves why the Japanese authorities accepted the ‘pressure’ to host the Games in the midst of the global pandemic and given the aforementioned issues confronting the Asian nation’s response to it.
For months the Japanese people have voiced their objections to the hosting of the Games. This is significant since they were the very people that overwhelmingly supported the bid several years ago and rejoiced when Tokyo won.
There were tense moments when it came to deciding whether to postpone or to cancel the Games. When the decision was announced, the people did not immediately object. Over time, however, and with the very slow response to the pandemic and rising cases, the people raised their concerns and eventually, their very strong objection.
The IOC, the custodians of the Olympic Movement, pulled together several leading health agencies to advise on the way forward. However, some may well have been certain that once the decision was taken to postpone the Games by one year and to retain the label, Tokyo2020, the ultimate decision would have been to let the Games go on.
The issue that has been haunting the authorities ever since the pandemic began is whether the decision in respect of hosting or cancelling the Olympics is about sport and the lofty ideals so often promoted or the money that sports, especially the Olympic Games, generate.
The Olympics remain the most prized global sporting festival and its income-generating capacity has not waned. The matter of the impact on several sports that rely heavily on income from part of the TV Rights’ revenue earned by the IOC, may well have been a critical feature of the decision-making process.
One thing is certain, the decision has not been made by the people of Japan nor by the National Olympic Committees and their national federations nor the millions of athletes around the world.
The Games are on. Hopefully, while vaccination is not compulsory for participants there will be an abundance of caution displayed in the form of regular testing.
The jury remains out on the decision-making process that led to the decision to continue with the Games. There is little doubt that sports critics will discuss this decision and its implication for decades to come.
