Olympic opening pruned
THE opening ceremony of the postponed Tokyo Olympics will be about half as big as originally planned, the International Olympic Committee has conceded, as doubts grow about the feasibility of going ahead with the Games.
According to reports in Tokyo, the IOC is estimating that about 6000 athletes will attend a reduced ceremony, compared with the 11,000 originally due to have taken part.
The decision follows months of disagreement between the IOC and Tokyo organising committee about measures to ensure the Games do not provoke a massive coronavirus surge.
Opinion polls suggest the Japanese are overwhelmingly against hosting the Olympics.
The government continues to insist that the Games can go ahead but Japanese officials and politicians have made clear that the decision is not yet final and that outright cancellation is still a possibility.
“We need to do the best we can to prepare for the Games at this moment, but it could go either way,” government minister Taro Kono said last week.
“Anything is possible, but as the host of the Games, we need to do whatever we can so that when it’s a ‘go’, we can have a good Olympic Games. The Olympic committee must be thinking about Plan B, Plan C.”
Days earlier, senior IOC member Dick Pound admitted he could not be certain that the Games would go ahead.
Holding successful summer Games is the reason the IOC exists, and to oversee the first ever peacetime cancellation of an Olympics would be a humiliation to its president, Thomas Bach.
Having invested much time and expense in bidding for the Games, building stadiums and getting ready, the Japanese establishment also dearly wants it to go ahead.
“We will have full anti-infection measures in place and proceed with preparation with a determination to achieve the Games that can deliver hope and courage throughout the world,” Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said.
As a politician, however, Suga has to balance holding the Games against other factors, including his political survival. He has both a party leadership contest and a general election to win after the postponed Games are scheduled to begin.
With four out of five Japanese against them going ahead, and the potential to generate a new wave of the pandemic, Suga faces a dilemma in deciding whether they should take place from July 23 to August 8. There is no official deadline for a decision but realistically it would need to be made by March.