Tokyo Games offer Playbooks to assure athletes, sway public
TOKYO (AP) — It will be an Olympics like no other, the world’s largest mega-sports event being staged in the middle of a pandemic.
Tokyo organizers and the IOC on Wednesday began explaining in public just how they hope to do it, rolling out “Playbooks” to detail the ways that 15,400 athletes will enter Japan — and exit Japan — with the Olympics opening on July 23 and the Paralympics a month later.
“There are indeed a lot of questions in the public domain about how the games will take place this summer. And today is a preliminary review of how things will be done,” Olympic Games executive director Christophe Dubi said in a video news conference with Tokyo officials.
The rollout of the Playbooks is aimed at assuring athletes, and an attempt to convince the Japanese public that the Olympics should go ahead. Polls across Japan show up to 80% want the Olympics postponed or canceled. The public sees the health risk in a country that has controlled the virus better than most.
The Playbook introduced on Wednesday is aimed at international sports federations and technical officials. Guides for athletes, broadcasters and the media will come in the next few days. They are all similar, and these are all the “first versions.”
Much of the information is still vague with more details coming in updates in April and June.
The IOC held a similar session earlier in the week with Olympic athletes and their representatives to explain the stringent guidelines in their rule books.
On that video conference, obtained by The Associated Press, IOC President Thomas Bach spelled out the large unknown.
“At this moment in time, no scientist can predict the health situation in 206 national Olympic committees at the time of the Olympics,” Bach told the athletes, adding the IOC was learning day to day and asked for the athletes’ patience.