TOKYO STARTING FROM SCRATCH
TOKYO—JUST two months after the unprecedented Olympic postponement, organizing committee CEO Toshiro Muto was asked Thursday about progress toward next year’s rescheduled Tokyo Games.
“If you ask, are we just around the first corner of the 400-meter race, I cannot answer that question,” said Muto, speaking through an interpreter during an online news conference. “But I can tell you this much. I do not feel we are late in our preparations. I do not feel we are being delayed in any way.”
But from listening to the limited details that Muto provided, preparations seem to be barely
out of the starting blocks.
A former deputy governor of the Bank of Japan, Muto has spoken cautiously ever since the coronavirus pandemic caused the postponement and says little about progress. He said not to expect much solid news until planning reaches the “second phase” in the fall.
This includes who pays for the delay, which is estimated in Japan at $2 billion to $6 billion, how to keep fans, staff and athletes safe from the coronavirus, and deal-making to secure the same 43 venues and the same competition schedule.
“Right now we don’t have any details or specific items that we can talk about,” he said. “We all agree that in addition to heat countermeasures, we will have to have coronavirus measures.”
In the last week, International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach and IOC member John Coates, who oversees preparations for Tokyo, have speculated more openly on how the games might be held.
In interviews, Bach has suggested a possible quarantine for athletes, floated the possibility of little fan access, and has not ruled out empty stadiums.
Coates, speaking last week at a News Corp Australia digital forum and reported in The Australian newspaper, was very frank.
“We’ve got real problems because we’ve got athletes having to come from 206 different nations,” Coates said.
He ran off the numbers: 11,000 Olympic athletes, 5,000 technical officials and coaches, 20,000 media and 60,000 volunteers.
“There’s a lot of people,” Coates said, without even adding 4,400 Paralympic athletes and staff.
Muto said October loomed—and Coates said the same thing—as a time when “many thing will come clear in the process.”
“October will be that point when we start the detailed discussions,” Muto said.
He said that they excluded any decision about “go or not to go” on with the Olympics. Muto has always said the games are on, though Bach and Tokyo organizing committee President Yoshiro Mori agree they cannot be delayed again. Another delay will mean a cancellation. “This is a huge undertaking. This is a big job,” Muto said. “We have to do in one year and a few months something that had taken years of actual preparations to do. So there are so many things we have to review and decide in such a short time.”
Australian Olympic team medical director David Hughes, meanwhile, warned that next year’s Games in Tokyo “will not be business as usual.”
Speaking at the National Sport Integrity Forum, held virtually this year, Hughes suggested the assumption must be made that a coronavirus vaccine will not be available in time for the postponed Tokyo 2020.
“My advice is, in terms of planning for the Paralympics and Olympics next year in Tokyo, we need to make an assumption that there will not be vaccine,” he said.
“And that means it will not be business as usual and it will be a very different looking Olympics from what has been before.”
The coronavirus pandemic forced the rescheduling of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics to July 23 to August 8, 2021.
They will be followed by the Paralympics from August 24 to September 5.
There are concerns a lack of vaccine will result in the complete cancellation of the Games, however, with Japan Medical Association President Yoshitake Yokokura one such figure to express these fears.
Australian Olympic Committee President and Tokyo 2020 Coordination Commission chairman John Coates admitted organizers have “real problems” over the postponed Games as countries struggle to control the coronavirus crisis, while International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach acknowledged Tokyo 2020 would be canceled should it not be held in 2021.
Despite the uncertainty surrounding the event, Hughes revealed the arrangements the Australian Olympic team were considering for the Games.