The opening of the Tokyo Olympic Games has entered a half-year countdown.
According to a report by Japan’s Kyodo News Agency, the Japanese government is looking for realistic options for the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games to be held as scheduled this summer. The plan of “hostless to host the games” has surfaced.
“It is envisaged that by the opening of the Olympic Games on July 23, the COVID-19 epidemic has not subsided, and it is Explore the three options of ‘no audience’ plus ‘no ceiling’ and ‘50%’.
It is hoped that while prioritizing the safety of athletes and Olympic-related personnel, the Olympic Games will be cancelled or postponed again, thus reducing the negative impact on Kan Yiwei’s government.
On January 24, Beijing time, the Japan Cycling Association issued a statement on the recent COVID-19 epidemic in Japanese cycling events. The statement said that a large number of competitors were infected with the virus in a domestic cycling race in Japan a few days ago.
At present, nucleic acid testing results show that 31 people have tested positive.
According to Japanese media reports, before the competition was held, the organizers of the event claimed to have formulated strict epidemic prevention and control measures and countermeasures, but in the end, they could not avoid the emergence of the epidemic.
At a time when the epidemic in Japan continues to be severe and uncontrolled, this incident has added new worries to the preparations for the Tokyo Olympic Games.
The continuous expansion of the epidemic has made the Tokyo Olympic Games a boot again. Rumors that the Tokyo Olympic Games have been postponed or even completely cancelled have appeared many times in recent days, and the news has been reversed many times.
The decline of domestic poll data in Japan and the noise of doubts from all walks of life have forced the Tokyo Olympic Organizing Committee and the International Olympic Committee to speak out one after another, reaffirming that the Tokyo Olympic Games will be held as scheduled, and “hosting empty space” has become the current intensively proposed realistic plan.
According to Kyodo News Agency, since September 19 last year, the Japanese government has relaxed the number of admissions to 50% of large-scale events such as professional sports events.
However, with the issuance of the emergency declaration again this month, the standard for admission to events in the areas of the declaration has become strict, with a ceiling of 5,000 people and It can accommodate less than 50% of the population.
In this context, some Japanese government officials said that it is becoming more and more difficult to host the Olympic Games without a ceiling.
Jio Ozaki, president of the Tokyo Metropolitan Medical Association, expressed the view that “it should be discussed whether it can be held in an audience-free form”. In an interview with Asahi Shimbun, he asked the Japanese government and the Tokyo Olympic Organizing Committee to propose realistic countermeasures in view of the high number of COVID-19 infections and the difficult medical system in Tokyo.
According to the plan, more than 10,000 medical staff will participate in the medical care work of athletes and spectators in and around the Tokyo Olympic Games. In the view of Jio Ozaki, the epidemic response is a long-term work.
Medical staff are already tired and medical institutions are also under heavy burdens. Therefore, “Inviting overseas people to come and hold it.
This idea of the celebration of the century is not feasible without giving up. On the other hand, he fully respected the importance of the Olympic Games to athletes.
“The original intention of the Olympic Games was to allow athletes from all over the world to compete together.” He called for the start to discuss the form of no audience, which can not only reduce the burden of volunteers’ vaccination and cope with the audience, but also focus on completing the medical security tasks of athletes.
Katrina Stefani, the Olympic women’s pole vault champion who opposed the event last year, said in a recent interview with Kyodo News Agency: “This year is different from last year, when I knew nothing about the novel coronavirus.
I believe that the Olympics will be held. It is better to hold it even empty than cancel it.
Sebastian Coe, president of the IAAF who was with her at that time, who opposed the Olympic Games as scheduled also said recently that he was confident that the Tokyo Olympics would be held this year. “If the only way to achieve this goal is to close the door to the audience, I think everyone will accept this.”
Compared with changes such as reducing the size of staff, reducing the expectations of the number of delegations, and abolishing the number of ceremonies, “empty venue” has always been the last option for the International Olympic Committee and host Japan to face directly.
Last May, IOC President Bach made it clear that the IOC would not endorse the way empty venues would be held without an audience, “That’s not what we want, because one of the Olympic spirits is to reunite sports fans, which is unique to the Olympic Games, with sports fans from all over the world gathering in the venues.” Last October, he again gave a negative opinion on the empty field. Japan’s “reliance” is more practical.
Yi Jiandong, a well-known sports scholar and Olympic research expert in China, quoted a journal article in his New Year’s speech, “Japan hopes that 40 million tourists will come to Japan on the opportunity of the Olympics, which is also its biggest sustenance to recover the cost of hosting the Olympics. But at present, 40 million tourists are already in full bloom.
Against this background, the discussion of “held on the empty field” is precisely to prevent the Olympic Games from falling into such a helpless but realistic situation as “cancellation”.
After all, according to Katshiro Miyamoto, honorary professor of sports economics at Kansai University in Japan, if the Tokyo Olympic Games are cancelled, Japan’s economic losses are expected to reach 4551.1 billion yen.
According to Kyodo News Agency, Yasuhiro Yamashita, president of the Japanese Olympic Committee, said in an interview with the Japanese media earlier this month that the Tokyo Olympic Games cannot be ruled out without an audience.
And the International Olympic Committee released a video on January 22, the day before the countdown to the opening of the Tokyo Olympic Games, in which Bach also hinted that hosting the Olympic Games in empty space was an option, and that “we will decide the means needed to deal with the epidemic at the appropriate time.”
In addition, in an interview with Kyodo News Agency, he not only denied the cancellation or re-postponement of the Tokyo Olympics, but also said about how to arrange the audience that “there is no taboo in terms of putting safety first”.
According to the analysis of The Times, for the International Olympic Committee, which receives most of its revenue from television broadcasting, the empty venue will not shake much economic interests, but for Japan, if it adopts the empty field form, the ticket revenue alone is expected to lose 90 billion yen (100 million yen).
The larger losses are reflected in the data released by Katshiro Miyamoto, which shows that if the Tokyo Olympic Games are held without spectators, Japan’s economic losses are expected to reach about 2.4133 trillion yen.
The estimate is based on the expected economic effect of the Tokyo Metropolitan Olympic and Paralympic Preparatory Bureau, and includes various losses.
The consumption expenditure of participants, spectators and families of the event is expected to lose about 71.8 billion yen, and the corresponding loss for a year extension is about 640.8 billion yen. After the closure, sports revitalization will cause about 10527 trillion yen.
The difficulties of reality are added to another heavy, but if it is postponed or cancelled again, the impact will be even more immeasurable, “only stick to it.” Seiko Laida, a professor of sports history at Zhongjing University, pointed out to the Japan Times that the Tokyo Olympic Games should not choose one of the two “cancelled” or “postponed”, but should explore the most feasible way to hold the competition under special circumstances.
“In this process, the spirit of the Olympic Games can also be reflected.” He believes that the Olympic Games should also have a flexible side. “If put into history, the gains and losses now will be left to future generations.”
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