2020 Tokyo Olympics
Olympics Archery: Ruman Shana eliminated from recurve singles
Bangladeshi celebrated archer M Ruman Shana was eliminated from his favourite men's recurve singles on the 5th day of Tokyo Olympics Archery at Yumenoshima Park Archery field in the Japanese capital Tuesday noon.
He lost to his Canadian rival Duenas Chispin by 4-6 set points in a keenly contested round-32 match.
Read:Olympics Shooting: Baki eliminated from 10-meter Air Rifles
Ruman Shana made a good start beating his rival 26-25 in the first set, suffered 25-28 defeat in the 2nd set, conceded 27-29 defeat in the 3rd set, earned a 27-26 victory in the 4th set and eliminated from the event conceding a narrow 25-26 defeat in the 5th and match deciding set to his Canadian rival.
Earlier in the morning, Ruman Shana smartly advanced to the round-32 of the event eliminating Tom Hall of Great Britain by 7-3 set points in the elimination round.
He played 28-28 in the first set, earned 27-25 victory in the 2nd set, managed 26-25 victory in the 3rd set, conceded 25-27 defeat in the 4th set and qualified for the round-32 by winning the 5th and final set by 29-27.
In remaining Bangladesh archery event, archer Diya Siddique will play Dziominskaya Karyna of Belarus in the elimination round of the women 's recurve singles on Thursday (July 29).
Read:Olympics Archery: Bangladesh eliminated from mixed team event
In last Saturday, Bangladeshi archer Ruman Shana pairing with woman archer Diya Siddique lost to event's gold medalist South Korean pair An San and Kim Je Deok in the round-16 of the mixed team event (mixed doubles) of Olympics.
Bangladeshi pair suffered 30-38 defeat in the first set, conceded 33-35 defeat in the 2nd set and eliminated from the event conceding a narrow 38-39 defeat in the 3rd and final set to Korean pair.
Earlier on last Friday, the two Bangladeshi archers made a total score of 1297 to finish 16th and qualifed for the round of 16 of the mixed team event as the last team.
Ruman Shana finished 17th among 64 competitors in the ranking round of recurve individual scoring 662 while Diya Siddique finished 36th among 64 participants in the ranking round making her career best score of 635.
Read:Tokyo Olympics 2020: Meet the Bangladesh Athletes
The Bangladeshi pair Ruman Shana and Diya Siddique earlier played in the mixed team event final of the Archery World Cup Stage 2 held in Lausanne, Switzerland last May.
Archer Ruman Shana directly qualified to compete in the Tokyo Olympics after winning the bronze medal in the recurve men 's singles of the Archery World Championship held in June, 2019 while Diya Siddique earned opportunity to complete in the Olympics after getting a wild card.
Tropical storm to bring rain, wind, waves to northeast Japan
An offshore tropical storm brought wind and rain to the Tokyo region and affected some Olympic events Tuesday as it headed toward northeastern Japan, where stormier conditions were forecast.
The Japan Meteorological Agency predicted Nepartak would bring heavy rains, strong winds and high waves to northeastern Japan in advance of its landfall around midday Wednesday north of the capital region.
Read:Tropical storm pounds East Coast after killing 1 in Florida
The tropical storm had winds of 72 kilometers per hour (44.7 mph) around midday Tuesday off Chiba on Japan’s central-eastern coast, the agency said. It forecast the storm would maintain its current strength through the day but would weaken before making landfall near the city of Akita, about 570 kilometers (340 miles) northeast of Tokyo.
Storm and high wave warnings were issued for the coastal areas of Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures.
Some traffic disruptions are expected in the northern region. Shinkansen super-express train services were to be suspended from Tuesday evening possibly until Wednesday morning, according to East Japan Railway Co.
Read:Japan girds for a surreal Olympics, and questions are plenty
Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato at a regular news conference urged residents in the northern region to use caution and evacuate early in case of increased risks of flooding or mudslide.
At the Olympics, some surfing events planned for Wednesday were moved to Tuesday, but the storm gave the competitors big waves for their final day of competition. Archery, rowing and sailing also adjusted their schedules.
Naomi Osaka eliminated from Tokyo Olympics tennis tournament
The host country’s superstar is out of the Tokyo Olympics.
Naomi Osaka lost to former French Open finalist Marketa Vondrousova of the Czech Republic 6-1, 6-4 in the third round of the Olympic tennis tournament on Tuesday.
The second-ranked Osaka, who was born in Japan and grew up in the United States, struggled with her usually reliable groundstrokes while the left-handed Vondrousova produced a series of drop-shot winners and other crafty shots that drew her opponent out of her comfort zone.
Read: Pandemic Olympics endured heat, and now a typhoon’s en route
“It’s tough for her also playing in Japan and in the Olympics,” the 42nd-ranked Vondrousova said. “It’s so much pressure, I cannot imagine.”
Osaka, who lit the Olympic cauldron in Friday’s opening ceremony, won her opening two matches in straight sets following a two-month mental-health break. But conditions were different Tuesday with the roof closed because it was raining outside.
Shortly after the match was over, organizers said that Osaka had left the venue and would not be talking to the media.
Osaka spoke openly to reporters after her first two matches. That came after she announced in May going into the French Open that she wouldn’t speak to reporters at that tournament, saying those interactions create doubts for her.
Then, after her first-round victory in Paris, she skipped the mandatory news conference.
Osaka was fined $15,000 and — surprisingly — publicly reprimanded by those in charge of Grand Slam tournaments, who said she could be suspended if she kept avoiding the media.
The next day, Osaka withdrew from Roland Garros entirely to take a mental health break, revealing she has dealt with depression.
Read: Tokyo Olympics 2020: Meet the Bangladesh Athletes
She sat out Wimbledon, too. So the Tokyo Games marked her return to competition.
Playing Osaka for the first time, Vondrousova came out with her entire game clicking from the start and quickly ran out to a 4-0 lead in the first set as Osaka hardly had time to gather herself.
Osaka then broke Vondrousova’s serve in the opening game of the second set but almost immediately handed the break back when she double-faulted to make it 2-2.
After Osaka lost her serve again to end the match by hitting a cross-court backhand wide, she shook hands with Vondrousova at the net, walked to her chair, zipped her racket up in her bag and followed Vondrousova off the court.
While both players produced 22 winners, Osaka hit 32 unforced errors to Vondrousova’s 10. But it wasn’t simply an off day for Osaka; it was also an outstanding performance from Vondrousova.
“I also (beat) Simona (Halep) twice, but I think now she (Osaka) is the greatest,” Vondrousova said. “The greatest in the game, and she was also the face of the Olympics so it was tough for her, I think, to play like this.”
Osaka got a decent 64% of her first serves in play but won only 49% of the points off her first serve.
During one point midway through the second set, Vondrousova hit an underspin, scooped forehand approach shot that landed right on the line — prompting Osaka to stare at the line for a few seconds in apparent disbelief.
Read:Olympics Shooting: Baki eliminated from 10-meter Air Rifles
Osaka had break points to take a 4-3 lead in the second but Vondrousova hit consecutive drop-shot winners to get back in the game and then held.
About 10 minutes later, the match was over.
“I just really believed the second I stepped on the court,” Vondrousova said. “I think that that’s the main thing.”
As Tokyo Games open, can Olympic flame burn away the funk?
Disputed, locked down and running a year late, the Tokyo Games begin at last on Friday night, a multinational showcase of the finest athletes of a world fragmented by disease — and an event steeped in the political and medical baggage of a relentless pandemic whose presence haunts every Olympic corner.
As the first pandemic Games in a century convene largely without spectators and opposed by much of the host nation, the disbelief and anger of those kept outside the near-deserted national stadium threaten to drown out the usual carefully packaged glitz and soaring rhetoric about sports and peace that are the hallmarks of the opening ceremony.
“‘The festival of peace’ is now starting in an unimaginably disastrous state,” the Asahi newspaper said in an editorial, citing “confusion, distrust and unease.”
Hand in hand with this feeling of calamity is a fundamental question about these Games as Japan, and large parts of the world, reel from the continuing gut punch of a pandemic that is stretching well into its second year, with cases in Tokyo approaching record highs this week: Will it be enough?
Read: Olympics, pandemic and politics: There’s no separating them
“It,” in this case, is the product that’s being packaged and sold, the commodity that has saved past Olympics when they’ve become mired in problems: the deep, intrinsic human attachment to the spectacle of sporting competition at the highest possible level.
Time and again, previous opening ceremonies have pulled off something that approaches magic. Scandals — bribery in Salt Lake City, censorship and pollution in Beijing, doping in Sochi — fade into the background when the sports begin.
But with people still falling ill and dying each day from the coronavirus, there’s a particular urgency to the questions about whether the Olympic flame can burn away the fear or provide a measure of catharsis — and even awe — after a year of suffering and uncertainty in Japan and around the world.
The sports have already begun — softball and soccer, for example — and some of the focus is turning toward the competition to come.
Can the U.S. women’s soccer team, for instance, even after an early, shocking loss to Sweden, become the first to win an Olympics following a World Cup victory? Can Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama win gold in golf after becoming the first Japanese player to win the Masters? Will Italy’s Simona Quadarella challenge American standout Katie Ledecky in the 800- and 1,500-meter freestyle swimming races?
For now, however, it’s hard to miss how unusual these Games promise to be. The lovely national stadium is an isolated militarized zone, surrounded by huge barricades. Roads around it are sealed and businesses closed.
Read:Australia’s Brisbane selected to host 2032 Summer Olympic Games
Inside, the feeling of sanitized, locked-down quarantine carries over. Fans, who would normally be screaming for their countries and mixing with people from around the world, have been banned, leaving only a carefully screened contingent of journalists, officials, athletes and participants.
Olympics often face opposition, but there’s also usually a pervasive feeling of national pride. Japan’s resentment centers on the belief that it was strong-armed into hosting — forced to pay billions and risk the health of a largely unvaccinated, deeply weary public — so the IOC can collect its billions in media revenue.
“Sometimes people ask why the Olympics exist, and there are at least two answers. One is they are a peerless global showcase of the human spirit as it pertains to sport, and the other is they are a peerless global showcase of the human spirit as it pertains to aristocrats getting luxurious hotel rooms and generous per diems,” Bruce Arthur, a sports columnist for the Toronto Star, wrote recently.
How did we get here? A quick review of the past year and a half seems operatic in its twists and turns.
A once-in-a-century pandemic forces the postponement of the 2020 version of the Games. A fusillade of scandals (sexism and other discrimination and bribery claims, overspending, ineptitude, bullying) unfolds. People in Japan, meanwhile, watch bewildered as an Olympics considered a bad idea by many scientists actually takes shape.
“We will continue to try to have this dialogue with the Japanese people knowing we will not succeed 100%. That would be putting the bar too high,” said IOC President Thomas Bach. “But we’re also confident that once the Japanese people see the Japanese athletes performing in these Olympic Games — hopefully successfully — that then the attitude will become less emotional.”
Japanese athletes, freed from onerous travel rules and able to train more normally, may indeed enjoy a nice boost over their rivals in some cases, even without fans. Judo, a sport that Japan is traditionally a powerhouse in, will begin Saturday, giving the host nation a chance for early gold.
Read:Japan girds for a surreal Olympics, and questions are plenty
Still, while it’s possible that “people may come out of the Olympics feeling good about themselves and about Japan having hosted the Games against all odds,” Koichi Nakano, a political science professor at Sophia University in Tokyo, believes that such a scenario “is way too optimistic.”
The reality, for now, is that the delta variant of the virus is still rising, straining the Japanese medical system in places, and raising fears of an avalanche of cases. Only a little over 20% of the population is fully vaccinated. And there have been near daily reports of positive virus cases within the so-called Olympic bubble that’s meant to separate the Olympic participants from the worried, skeptical Japanese population.
For a night, at least, the glamor and message of hope of the opening ceremonies may distract many global viewers from the surrounding anguish and anger.
“But for the Japanese people, who will have a much more direct experience and feel more viscerally the empty stadiums and the strange contrast between this spectacle and their own continued struggles with controlling the pandemic, it may not have the same impact,” said Daniel Sneider, a lecturer in East Asian Studies at Stanford University.
Female surfers overcome sexism’s toll to earn Olympic berth
Johanne Defay of France was devastated when the mega sponsor Roxy dropped her right before she became a pro surfer in 2014, shattering her confidence and threatening her career altogether.
“They were just like ’Oh, you don’t look this way, you know, for, like, pictures,” Defay said. “And I just felt like I was never doing enough or I wasn’t fitting in, in the way that they wanted for their brand.”
Now, Defay is headed to the Tokyo Olympics for surfing’s debut at the Summer Games, buoyed by an upset win against reigning world champion Carissa Moore at the high-intensity Surf Ranch competition last month.
Though there’s much excitement and renewed enthusiasm for the women’s game, years of objectification, pay disparities and an opportunity gap have taken their toll. Industry leaders from the professional World Surf League and the developmental USA Surfing say they’re committed to righting the wrongs that have long held female surfers back in the male-dominated sport.
Read:Japan girds for a surreal Olympics, and questions are plenty
The mental, financial and logistical roadblocks for women in surfing date back centuries.
Hawaiians who invented the sport treated it as an egalitarian national pastime that all genders, ages and social classes enjoyed, according to Isaiah Helekunihi Walker, a Hawaii surfing historian. But Christian missionaries who arrived on the island tried to ban surfing in large part because of nudity — surfing naked was common at the sports’ inception. Though locals largely defied the colonizers, female surfers saw their ranks shrink disproportionately.
“When it comes to controlling nudity, it’s about controlling female bodies,” said Walker, also a BYU-Hawaii history professor.
Even for Moore, the child prodigy who could beat the boys before growing up to be — at 18 years old — the youngest World Surf League champion in history, she’s said she’s also struggled with her body image. Moore is 28 now and has spoken openly about starving herself as a teenager, only to binge eat later, and once even trying to force herself to throw up.
“Everyone had this idea of what a surfer girl should look like. And there were a lot of ‘hot lists’ or the ‘cutest surfer girl list,’” Moore said. “I never made them, but then you see who actually made them and you feel like: ‘Oh, I guess, like, that’s what I should look like.’”
Modern day professional surfing in a previous iteration had a decentralized approach that left brand sponsors in charge of many of the competition logistics, which would vary widely from one event to another, said Greg Cruse, USA Surfing CEO. And though it wasn’t an official rule or standard, there was clearly a preference for the men’s game.
Surfing schedules are determined in the morning based on what the ocean waves are like, and it was no secret that the boys’ and men’s competitions would be given the best surf conditions, usually in the morning. Female surfers took the scraps, if they were invited at all.
“There’d be the event directors and they would kind of schedule things the way they wanted to schedule and there would be bias from the outdated patriarchy. It’s changed immensely,” Cruse said. “It took a while for the women to complain about it.”
A turning point came in 2013, when new ownership took over the professional league and the rebranded WSL began to prioritize standardizing the competitions and rebuilding the women’s events, said Jessi Miley-Dyer, a retired pro surfer who now runs the WSL’s competition as senior vice president.
In 2019, the WSL as the leaders of the $10 billion surfing industry also began offering equal prize money for all its events, making it one of the few professional sports leagues to achieve pay equity.
“It was an important statement to make around the value of our athletes. More than anything, it speaks to the emphasis on women’s surfing. We believe men and women are valued the same,” Miley-Dyer said. “It’s the right thing to do.”
Read: Zero risk? Virus cases test Olympic organizers' assurances
The announcement was emotional for many, including Miley-Dyer. Back in 2006 when she won a pro event, she earned just $10,000 — a third of what the top male surfer took home.
“I cried because it means so much,” Miley-Dyer said. “I had also retired, so it wasn’t something for me, but it felt something to me and so many people like me.”
Next year will be the first time the WSL will include its women surfers at the famous Pipe Masters competition, allowing them the chance to ride the Banzai Pipeline in Oahu, Hawaii, considered by many the best waves in the world.
The WSL has also committed to hosting the same number of events and in the same locations for both the men and women, though the competition at the highest level today still has twice as many male competitor spots — 36 — compared to the women’s game.
In terms of skill and experience, the damage caused by decades of sexism has not yet been fully reversed.
It used to be that girls could begin competitive surfing training at about 11 years old while boys began as early as 4, Cruse said, adding that USA Surfing has closed this experience gap.
And surfboard makers, like many male leaders in the sport, used to believe that girls and women weren’t strong enough to paddle or ride powerfully enough to pull off airs, or aerial maneuvers, so they were given bigger surfboards that are physically easier to ride, but limited their ability to progress into more explosive moves.
So while airs have for years become the gold standard in the men’s competition, it is rarely done by the top female surfers today. Moore, the U.S. surfer to beat at the Olympics, is among the first women to land an air during competition, a milestone she achieved just recently but has no doubt electrified the women’s game and its future.
“They started demanding getting the same type of equipment that allows you to generate more speed and turn sharper and harder,” Cruse said. “Right now, there’s a group of girls coming up. The girls under 16 are better at airs than any of the women in the WSL. They already have the air game and it’s next level and there’s going to be a changing of the guard.”
For Defay, she persevered during her first year without corporate backing. She remembers feeling humiliated hearing others take for granted their private car services arranged by their sponsors after Defay arrived on a two-hour bus ride in order to save money.
She’s thankful fellow pro surfer Jeremy Flores helped sponsor her “insane” rookie season, as a nine-month season can cost as much as $80,000 in travel costs alone.
Read:Tokyo's daily COVID-19 cases top 1000 for 3rd straight day
Now, they’re equals, teammates in Japan on the French Olympic surfing team.
The 27-year-old Defay’s journey to the pros has made her hungrier than ever to prove her talents and worth at the world’s most elite sporting event. And she’ll do it with the body she has learned to appreciate, regardless of how any sponsor may have judged her before.
Though Roxy didn’t respond to requests for comment on Defay’s past sponsorship deal, the surfer declares this:
“I like my shoulders now and my butt,” Defay said with a smirk. “It’s just what it is and what makes me surf this way, so I try to celebrate it.”
Japan girds for a surreal Olympics, and questions are plenty
After a yearlong delay and months of hand-wringing that rippled across a pandemic-inflected world, a Summer Games unlike any other is at hand. It’s an Olympics, sure, but also, in a very real way, something quite different.
No foreign fans. No local attendance in Tokyo-area venues. A reluctant populace navigating a surge of virus cases amid a still-limited vaccination campaign. Athletes and their entourages confined to a quasi-bubble, under threat of deportation. Government minders and monitoring apps trying — in theory, at least — to track visitors’ every move. Alcohol curtailed or banned. Cultural exchanges, the kind that power the on-the-ground energy of most Games, completely absent.
And running like an electric current through it all: the inescapable knowledge of the suffering and sense of displacement that COVID-19 has ushered in, both here and around the world.
Read: Zero risk? Virus cases test Olympic organizers' assurances
All signs point to an utterly surreal and atomized Games, one that will divide Japan into two worlds during the month of Olympics and Paralympics competition.
On one side, most of Japan’s largely unvaccinated, increasingly resentful populace will continue soldiering on through the worst pandemic to hit the globe in a century, almost entirely separated from the spectacle of the Tokyo Games aside from what they see on TV. Illness and recovery, work and play, both curtailed by strict virus restrictions: Life, such as it is, will go on here.
Meanwhile, in massive (and massively expensive) locked-down stadiums, vaccinated super-athletes, and the legions of reporters, IOC officials, volunteers and handlers that make the Games go, will do their best to concentrate on sports served up to a rapt and remote audience of billions.
Since the pandemic canceled the originally scheduled version in 2020, the Japanese media have been obsessed with the Games. Will they really happen? If so, what will they look like? And the endlessly fascinating — shocking, really, to many here — prospect of staging an Olympics during what can seem like a slow-motion national disaster has permeated the society nearly as thoroughly as the virus.
“The mindset that the Olympics can be pushed through by force and that everyone should obey the order has invited this mess,” the Asahi newspaper said in a recent editorial. IOC and Japanese officials “should learn that their absurdity has deepened the public distrust in the Olympics.”
Of course, it’s too early to predict what, exactly, will happen when these cross-currents converge during the Games, as about 15,000 athletes and, by some estimates, nearly 70,000 officials, media and other participants insert themselves into the flow of Tokyo life in sequestered and limited, yet ubiquitous, ways.
Read:Tokyo's daily COVID-19 cases top 1000 for 3rd straight day
Will the normally hospitable Japanese people warm to the visitors or become increasingly infuriated as they watch fully vaccinated guests enjoy freedoms they haven’t experienced since early 2020? Will the Olympians and others play by the rules meant to protect the country they’re visiting? Will they bring in variants that will spread through Japan? Will the effort to vanquish the coronavirus be impeded?
One thing seems certain: These games will have far less of what the world has come to expect from the Olympics, with its attractive mixture of human competition at the highest level amid celebrations and cultural exchanges on the sidelines by fans, athletes and local people.
Usually, the Olympics are a vibrant time — a two-week party for a host city eager to show the world its charms. They teem with tourists and all the fun that an exotic locale and interesting visitors can bring. This go-round. though, will be strictly choreographed for TV, with the skeptical people of Japan largely isolated as yet another state of emergency places more constraints on their daily lives.
The story that foreign visitors focus on for these Games will also be very different from the reality on the nation’s streets.
Barring catastrophe, the IOC, local newspapers (many of which are also sponsors), Japanese TV, and rights holders like NBC will likely be unified in their message: Just getting through will be cast as a triumph.
Not many visiting journalists, however, will linger in ICUs or chase down interviews with angry residents who feel these Games were hoisted onto the nation so that the IOC could collect its billions in TV money.
Read:6 athletes to represent Bangladesh in Tokyo Olympics
More likely, there will be plenty of made-for-TV images of a tour-book version of Japan, one that mixes shots of ancient history, tradition and natural beauty with a high-tech, futuristic sensibility: Think of a sleek, silver bullet train, for instance, streaking past a snow-capped Mount Fuji. A reality, in other words, riddled with easy-to-digest cliches and predictable establishing shots.
As Tokyo grapples in coming weeks with the intrinsic oddness of these pandemic Olympics, the disconnect between sports and sickness, rhetoric and reality, visitor and local will be hard to miss for many here.
Just how a reluctant Japan will weather a high-risk experiment that might come to define the coronavirus pandemic in future years, however, must wait until the visitors pack up and go home. Only then will the true price that the host nation must pay for these Surreal Games come into focus.
Japan to declare virus emergency lasting through Olympics
Japan is set to place Tokyo under a state of emergency that would last through the Olympics, fearing an ongoing COVID-19 surge will multiply during the Games.
At a meeting with experts Thursday morning, government officials proposed a plan to issue a state of emergency in Tokyo from next Monday to Aug. 22. The Summer Olympics, already delayed a year by the pandemic, begin July 23 and close Aug. 8.
The Games already will take place without foreign spectators, but the planned six-week state of emergency likely ends chances of a local audience. A decision about fans is expected later Thursday when local organizers meet with the International Olympic Committee and other representatives.
Read:As Tokyo Olympics approach, virus worries rise in Japan
Tokyo is currently under less-stringent measures that focus on shortened hours for bars and restaurants but have proven less effective at slowing the spread of the coronavirus.
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga is to formally announce the emergency plans later Thursday, hours after IOC President Thomas Bach was to land in Tokyo. Bach must self-isolate for three days in the IOC’s five-star hotel in the Japanese capital before heading to Hiroshima, where heavy rain is threatening flooding.
The upcoming emergency will be the fourth for Tokyo since the pandemic began and is a last-minute change of plan made late Wednesday after a meeting with experts who warned strongly against the government’s soft approach.
A main focus of the emergency is a request for bars, restaurants and karaoke parlors serving alcohol to close. A ban on serving alcohol is a key step to tone down Olympic-related festivities and keep people from drinking and partying. Tokyo residents are expected to face stay-home requests and watch the Games on TV from home.
“How to stop people enjoying the Olympics from going out for drinks is a main issue,” Health Minister Norihisa Tamura said.
Read: It’s Olympic month for Japan
Tokyo reported 920 new cases on Wednesday, up from 714 last week and its highest since 1,010 on May 13. The figure is in line with experts’ earlier estimate that daily cases in Tokyo could hit 1,000 before the Games and could spike into thousands in August.
Kazuhiro Tateta, a Toho University infectious diseases expert, noted an earlier state of emergency in the spring came too late to prevent hospitals in Osaka from overflowing with patients and said another delay should not be allowed.
Ryuji Wakita, director-general of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, noted that two-thirds of Japan’s cases are from the Tokyo region and “our concern is the spread of the infections to neighboring areas.”
Experts also noted cases among younger, unvaccinated people are rising as Japan’s inoculation drive loses steam due to supply uncertainty.
Read:Tokyo shapes up to be No-Fun Olympics with many rules, tests
Just 15% of Japanese are fully vaccinated, low compared to 47.4% in the United States and almost 50% in Britain. Nationwide, Japan has had about 810,000 infections and nearly 14,900 deaths.
“The infections are in their expansion phase and everyone in this country must firmly understand the seriousness of it,” Dr. Shigeru Omi, a top government medical adviser, told reporters.
He urged authorities to quickly take tough measures ahead of the Olympics with summer vacations approaching. “The period from July to September is the most critical time for Japan’s COVID-19 measures,” Omi said.
As Tokyo Olympics approach, virus worries rise in Japan
The pressure of hosting an Olympics during a still-active pandemic is beginning to show in Japan.
The games begin July 23, with organizers determined they will go on, even with a reduced number of spectators or possibly none at all. While Japan has made remarkable progress to vaccinate its population against COVID-19, the drive is losing steam because of supply shortages.
With tens of thousands of visitors coming to a country that is only 13.8% fully vaccinated, gaps in border controls have emerged, highlighted by the discovery of infections among the newly arrived team from Uganda, with positive tests for the highly contagious delta variant.
As cases grow in Tokyo, so have fears that the games will spread the virus.
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“We must stay on high alert,” Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga told reporters on July 1. Noting the rising caseloads, he said “having no spectators is a possibility.”
Seiko Hashimoto, president of the Tokyo organizing committee, agreed.
“It’s not that we are determined to have spectators regardless of the situation,” Hashimoto said Friday.
Organizers, the International Olympic Committee and others are expected to meet this week to announce new restrictions because of the fast-changing coronavirus situation.
Amid the criticism, Suga went to Tokyo’s Haneda international airport June 28 to inspect virus testing for arrivals. He vowed to ensure appropriate border controls as a growing number of Olympic and Paralympic athletes, officials and media begin entering Japan for the games.
On Monday, Tokyo confirmed 342 new cases, the 16th straight day of an increase. On Saturday, the capital reported 716 cases, highest in five weeks.
At a meeting of government advisers, experts warned of the possibility of infections exploding during the games, projecting daily caseloads exceeding 1,000. They said that would severely strain health care systems. In a worst-case scenario, there could be thousands of infections a day, causing hospitals to overflow, they said.
Ryuji Wakita, director-general of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases and the head of a government COVID-19 advisory board, urged tighter border controls to detect and isolate infected arrivals at airports to prevent infections from spreading from Tokyo to the suburbs.
In a case that has shocked many in Japan, a member of the Ugandan team tested positive upon arrival June 19 at Narita International Airport and was quarantined there. The rest of the nine-member team was allowed to travel more than 500 kilometers (300 miles) on a chartered bus to their pre-Olympics camp in the western prefecture of Osaka.
Days later, a second member of the team from East Africa tested positive for the virus, forcing seven town officials and drivers who had close contact with them to self-isolate. The team itself is isolating at a hotel. Health officials said both infected Ugandans had the delta variant.
On Saturday, an athlete from Serbia also tested positive, causing the cancelation of his team’s training in the central city of Nanto. The government also has acknowledged that four other people arriving for the Olympics tested positive after entering the country earlier this year.
Experts say the cases show that Japan’s border health controls can be easily breached.
“There will be more people coming in. … We should use this as a lesson so that similar problems won’t be repeated elsewhere in Japan,” Osaka Gov. Hirofumi Yoshimura told a recent regional governors’ meeting where leaders adopted an urgent request for tighter border controls.
Read:It’s Olympic month for Japan
Under revised guidelines on health measures sent to 530 municipalities hosting Olympic training, airport officials will isolate an entire group if any member tests positive, and they will stay at designated facilities until the athletes’ village opens July 12. Hosting towns can request guests to stop training and isolate themselves until they clear contact tracing and virus tests.
Dozens of municipalities in Japan have canceled their hosting arrangements because of virus worries, and many of them decided to use those facilities as vaccination sites.
In Tokyo, infections are spreading among the young and middle-aged who are largely unvaccinated. The more serious cases requiring hospitalization are gradually replacing the elderly, 26% of whom are now fully vaccinated, according to experts.
Japan’s fully vaccinated rate of 13.8% is slightly above the world average of 11.3% but low compared with 47.4% in the United States and 49.5% in the U.K., according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Our World in Data.
Adding to the worries is uncertainty about Japan’s vaccination campaign.
Workplace inoculations began in mid-June, with thousands of companies applying to vaccinate employees. But the government then indefinitely halted taking new applications for workplace and large-scale vaccination sites due to tight vaccine supplies.
“The progress exceeded our expectations,” said vaccinations minister Taro Kono, noting that daily shots have likely reached 1.2 million or more. He said Japan will receive only one-third of the Pfizer-BioNTechPfizer vaccine supply it had hoped to receive by late July.
“Confusion is spreading across Japan,” because of this slowdown, said Kamon Iizumi, the Tokushima governor who also heads the National Governors’ Association.
A vaccination center in Kagawa had to suspend shots for 30,000 people, and plans were put on hold for 6,500 companies in Gifu, in central Japan. Other areas including Osaka, Kobe and parts of Tokyo also were forced to suspend planned vaccinations from this week.
“What a disappintment,” said Yukio Takano, head of Tokyo’s Toshima district. “We have worked so hard to accelerate the rollouts and now we have to put on the brakes. ... What was the rush for?”
Japan began vaccinating medical workers in mid-February and the elderly in mid-April. Despite initial delays due to bungled reservations and shortages, the pace picked up in mid-May when vaccine imports stabilized and staff was secured to meet a primary target of fully vaccinating all 36 million elderly by the end of July.
Suga set up military-run mass vaccination centers in late May and added workplace and college campus venues to accelerate the progress.
On June 21, Japan eased its third state of emergency to less-stringent measures that focused on shorter operating hours at bars and restaurants in Tokyo and other metro areas until July 11.
Read:Tokyo shapes up to be No-Fun Olympics with many rules, tests
Experts suggest, however, that a resurgence might require another emergency declaration during the Olympics. If so, organizers may have to reconsider their current limit of 10,000 people or 50% capacity at venues to perhaps barring all spectators.
Kengo Sakurada, president of Sompo Holdings and the head of an influential business lobby, said on June 30 that the current vaccination rate is not enough to hold a safe Olympics.
He said he supports having no spectators for events because the damage from a worse outbreak would be far greater.
“I would take the safer option,” he said.
Tokyo shapes up to be No-Fun Olympics with many rules, tests
The Tokyo Olympics, already delayed by the pandemic, are not looking like much fun: Not for athletes. Not for fans. And not for the Japanese public. They are caught between concerns about the coronavirus at a time when few are vaccinated on one side and politicians who hope to save face by holding the games and the International Olympic Committee with billions of dollars on the line on the other.
Japan is famous for running on consensus. But the decision to proceed with the Olympics — and this week to permit some fans, if only locals — has shredded it.
“We have been cornered into a situation where we cannot even stop now. We are damned if we do, and damned if we do not,” Kaori Yamaguchi, a member of the Japanese Olympic Committee and a bronze medalist in judo in 1988, wrote in a recent editorial published by the Kyodo news agency. “The IOC also seems to think that public opinion in Japan is not important.”
Support for going ahead seems to be increasing, but there’s persistent opposition with small street protests planned on Wednesday, one month before the July 23 opening. Much of that concern stems from qualms about the health risks. While the number of new cases has been receding in Tokyo, only about 7% of Japanese are fully vaccinated — and even though the government is now supercharging its vaccine drive after a slow start, the vast majority of the population still won’t be immunized when the games start.
Read:Japan’s vaccine push ahead of Olympics looks to be too late
That’s left the IOC and the Japanese government going through contortions to pulls this off. Dr. Shigeru Omi, the government’s top COVID-19 adviser, called it “abnormal” to hold the world’s biggest sports event during a pandemic. He also said the safest Olympics would be with no fans.
He was overruled on both counts by the government of Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and organizers.
The official cost of the Tokyo Olympics is $15.4 billion, but government audits suggest it’s twice that. All but $6.7 billion is public money. The IOC chips in only about $1.5 billion to the overall cost.
The pressure to hold the games is largely financial for the Switzerland-based IOC, a nonprofit but highly commercial body that earns 91% of its income from broadcast rights and sponsorship. Estimates suggest a cancelation could cost it $3 billion to $4 billion in broadcast rights income.
Beyond financial concerns, putting on a successful Olympics is also a major source of pride for the host country. Some economists compare it to throwing a big party. You overspend but hope your guests go away bragging about the hospitality.
“It’s a bit like a gambler who already has lost too much,” said Koichi Nakano, a political scientist at Sophia University in Tokyo. “Pulling out of it now will only confirm the huge losses made, but carrying on you can still cling to the hope of winning big and taking it all back.”
Before the postponement 15 months ago, Japan was on track to host a well-run if expensive Olympics. It had a beautiful new National Stadium by architect Kengo Kuma, meticulous organization, and a grand stage for a country that mounted historic games in 1964 — just 19 years after defeat in World War II. IOC President Thomas Bach called Tokyo the “best prepared Olympics ever” — and he still says it repeatedly.
But now, worries that the games will be become an incubator for the virus hang over them. For now, the rolling averages of deaths and cases have stabilized in a country that has reported more than 14,000 deaths — good by global standards but worse than many of its Asian neighbors.
While the games may still end up wowing television audiences who will tune in around the world, the pandemic has removed any sense of celebration. Athletes are meant to stay in the village or venues. Most others entering Japan for the Olympics can only shuttle between their hotels and venues for the first 14 days, must sign a pledge of follow the rules, and could have their movements monitored by GPS.
Read:Torch relay for Tokyo Olympics kicks off its 121-day journey
There will be no public viewing areas in Tokyo. The few fans who can attend venues must wear masks, social distance, refrain from cheering, and go straight home afterward. No stopping off at the local izakaya for beer and skewers of grilled chicken.
With spectators from overseas ruled out months ago, there’s little business for hotels. Local sponsors have paid more than $3 billion to be involved, and some have complained about lost advertising possibilities. Others have expressed concern about being tied to an event that’s unpopular at home.
In perhaps a last-ditch effort to save some of the festive spirit, organizers said Tuesday they were looking into selling alcohol at the venues.
Olympic Minister Tamayo Marukawa indicated financial concerns were at play: Japanese brewer Asahi is one of the sponsors and has kicked millions into the local operating budget.
But after immediate pushback, organizing committee president Seiko Hashimoto reversed the decision at a Wednesday news conference.
“We decided as Tokyo 2020 not to sell alcoholic beverages and to ban drinking alcoholic beverages in the venues,” she said.
And athletes who might want a drink to celebrate have been told by organizers to “drink alone” in their rooms.
Alcohol is otherwise banned in the athletes’ village.
This village will also have a fever clinic, the first stop for anyone who fails a daily test — and the last place anyone wants to go.
Read:What drives possible boycott of Beijing Olympics
“We are hoping that there won’t be so many people,” Dr. Tetsuya Miyamoto said, director of medical services for Tokyo 2020. “This is an infectious disease we are talking about. It has the possibility of spreading. So once that happens, the numbers could start to explode.”
Details of the opening ceremony are always kept a secret. But this time the questions aren’t about which celebrity will light the cauldron but rather will athletes social distance and wear masks as they march through the venue? And how many will march at all?
One of the symbols of the celebratory atmosphere of the Olympics has long been its notorious policy of handing out condoms. At the games in Rio de Janeiro, officials distributed 450,000 through vending machines with signs that read, “Celebrate with a Condom.”
This time there will be 150,000 — but only given to athletes as they leave for home.
Japan’s vaccine push ahead of Olympics looks to be too late
It may be too little, too late.
That’s the realization sinking in as Japan scrambles to catch up on a frustratingly slow vaccination drive less than two months before the Summer Olympics, delayed by a year because of the coronavirus pandemic, are scheduled to start.
The Olympics risk becoming an incubator for “a Tokyo variant,” as 15,000 foreign athletes and tens of thousands officials, sponsors and journalists from about 200 countries descend on — and potentially mix with — a largely unvaccinated Japanese population, said Dr. Naoto Ueyama, a physician, head of the Japan Doctors Union.
With infections in Tokyo and other heavily populated areas currently at high levels and hospitals already under strain treating serious cases despite a state of emergency, experts have warned there is little slack in the system.
Read: Japan's Olympic chief marks pride week with LGBTQ event
Even if the country succeeds in meeting its goal of fully vaccinating all 36 million elderly by the end of July — already a week into the Games — about 70% of the population would not be inoculated. And many have dismissed the target as overly optimistic anyway.
To meet it, Japan is vowing to soon start administering 1 million doses daily. It currently is only giving 500,000 per day, already a big improvement after Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga called on military doctors and nurses and started making legal exceptions to recruit other vaccinators in order to boost the drive.
“Vaccinations under the current pace are not going to help prevent infections during the Olympics,” Tokyo Medical Association Chairman Haruo Ozaki said. “The Olympics can trigger a global spread of different variants of the virus.”
The International Olympic Committee says more than 80% of athletes and staff staying in the Olympic Village on Tokyo Bay will be vaccinated — and they are expected to remain largely in a bubble at the village and venues. On Tuesday, Japan started vaccinating athletes who will go to the Games, the Japanese Olympic Committee said.
But vaccination rates are not clear for others involved in the Games who are coming from abroad, including hard-hit regions, and experts warn that even strict rules won’t prevent all mingling, especially among non-athletes. Spectators from overseas have been barred.
Prominent medical journals have questioned the wisdom of pushing ahead with the Tokyo Games and the Asahi Shimbun — the country’s second-largest newspaper — has called for them to be canceled, reflecting widespread opposition to holding the Olympics now among the Japanese population.
But the government has said it’s determined to push ahead, with the viability of Suga’s leadership and geopolitical competition with rival Beijing, the next Olympics host, as well as the health of millions, on the line.
“By using a new weapon called vaccines and taking firm preventive measures, it is fully possible” to hold the Olympics safely, Suga told a parliamentary session Tuesday.
Officials are now desperately trying to think of ways to increase the shots at a time when medical workers are already under pressure treating COVID-19 patients. Many say they have no extra resources to help with the Olympics, if, for instance, the boiling Japanese summer causes widespread cases of heat stroke. Some local leaders in and around Tokyo have rejected the Olympics organizers’ requests to set aside beds for athletes.
Read:Torch relay for Tokyo Olympics kicks off its 121-day journey
Dr. Shigeru Omi, former World Health Organization regional director and a head of a government taskforce, said it is crucial to start inoculating younger people, who are seen as likely to spread the virus, as soon as possible.
More than three months into Japan’s vaccination campaign, only 2.7% of the population has been fully vaccinated. The country started its rollout with health care workers in mid-February, months behind many other countries because Japan required additional clinical testing here, a step many experts say was medically meaningless.
Inoculations for the elderly, who are more likely to suffer serious problems when infected, started in mid-April, but were slowed by initial supply shortages, cumbersome reservation procedures and a lack of medical workers to give shots.
But there are signs of improvement. The vaccine supply has increased and despite earlier expectations of a hesitant response to vaccines in general, senior citizens fearful of the virus are rushing to inoculation sites.
Since May 24, Japan has deployed 280 military doctors and nurses in Tokyo and the badly hit city of Osaka. More than 33,000 vaccination sites now operate across Japan, and more are coming, said Taro Kono, the minister in charge of vaccinations.
In Sumida, a district in downtown Tokyo where boxing events will be held, vaccinations for its 61,000 elderly residents began on May 10, and within two weeks, 31% of them had gotten their first shots, compared to the national average of 3.7%. Sumida is now looking to start inoculating younger people later this month, well ahead of schedule.
Close coordination among primary care doctors, hospitals and residents, as well as flexibility, have contributed to smooth progress, Sumida district spokesperson Yosuke Yatabe said.
“It’s like a factory line,” Yatabe said.
Ryuichiro Suzuki, a 21-year-old university student in Tokyo, said he is frustrated with Japan’s lagging vaccination campaign.
“I saw that some of my friends overseas have been vaccinated, but my turn won’t come until later this summer,” he said. “The risk-averse government took extra caution even when our primary goal was to get back to normal as soon as possible.”
Read: Tokyo Olympic organizers to meet March 20 on fate of overseas spectators
Kono, the vaccine minister, said more large-scale inoculation centers are getting underway, including at hundreds of college campuses and offices to start vaccinating younger people from June 21.
Beyond the concerns about the Olympics and despite the fact that Japan has seen fewer cases and deaths compared to the United States and other advanced nations, the country’s slow pace of vaccinations and its prolonged, often toothless state of emergency could also delay its economic recovery for months, said Masaya Sasaki, senior economist at the Nomura Research Institute.
And despite repeated expressions of official government confidence in the Games being safe, there are fears here of what might happen if vaccinations don’t pick up.
“The Olympics, billed as a recovery Games, can trigger a new disaster,” said Ueyama, of the Japan Doctors Union.