Sport Writer Clara Morate assesses whether holding an Olympic Games in Tokyo this summer is feasible, and the ethical implications of staging the event
COVID-19 continues to cause havoc for the sporting world, including the Tokyo Olympic Games. However, with the recent advancements in vaccines and many countries effectively curbing the transmission of the virus, there may be some light at the end of the tunnel this summer.
The 2020 Tokyo Olympics were unsurprisingly unable to proceed and have been rescheduled for 23rd July to 3rd August 2021. The Paralympic games are also set for 24th August to 5th September 2021.
Thomas Bach, president of the IOC, described the Tokyo Olympics as ‘a light at the end of this tunnel.’ Whilst such a significant and global event may give people across the globe what we have all been craving: human connection, purpose and a sense of global citizenship, such an international challenge poses many questions and doubts.
The logistical issues of hosting a sporting event during the current climate is a major undertaking
Recently, the 2021 Australian Open became the subject of chaos and spectacle. Last month, a number of passengers on a flight to Australia tested positive on arrival. This resulted in all passengers having to isolate, including 24 tennis players. Some became internet sensations for the duration of their quarantine, as images of them replacing opponents with walls or mattresses circulated the media. Additional complications arose when some of the quarantine accommodation for the tennis professionals was revealed to be suffering from rat infestations. As seen from the Australian Open, the logistical issues of hosting a sporting event during the current climate is a major undertaking. The chaos that ensued from this comparatively smaller sporting event does not bode well for the Olympics.
The Games also face innumerable ethical concerns. One such concern is that Paralympic athletes may be more at risk from contracting and suffering from COVID-19. The argument is that by pushing the games to continue at the present moment, when much of the world is still grappling with the virus, this would not only pose a danger to the athletes who suffer from illnesses that make them more vulnerable but also be unjust to them in the spirit of the Olympics and sportsmanship.
Athletes are also not the only collective that must be considered if the games are to go ahead as currently planned. Tokyo, the most populated city on the planet, hosts a population of 13.93 million. Although the option of no spectators is being considered at the moment by Tokyo’s Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and the IOC, if the games go ahead this will require some 11,000 athletes from over 200 countries to travel to Tokyo. Regardless of a global pandemic, this is a challenge which in the past has not been met. In 2016, the Olympics were hosted in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro. Some of the athletes were dissatisfied to the extent that they refused to move stay in the accommodation provided, complaining of leaks, smells, and defective facilities. Of course, Rio and Tokyo are not identical; differing in language, culture, economics and government. Nevertheless, successfully organising and carrying out a fortnight of Olympic games in Tokyo, a city with a similar population density to Rio, during a global pandemic is a daunting task.
If the Olympics went ahead to turn a profit, placing a whole city at risk, moral questions would have to be answered
Postponing the Olympics has created extra financial burdens for the IOC and Japanese organisers and may explain why they are so determined to implement business as usual as soon as they are able to. This attitude that could be described as dismissive of ethics and science. If the Olympics went ahead to turn a profit, placing a whole city at risk, moral questions would have to be answered. Olympic staff, athletes who depend on their health and fitness, and potential spectators are no less deserving of leaving in the quality of health they arrived with.
A further concern that has recently been latched onto by the media is the bitterness and resentment of people in the U.K. against celebrities and those seemingly exempt from the national lockdown. This is particularly in response to that of influencers and graduates from the UK’s most-watched school of love, grace, and decorum: Love Island. Although world-class athletes and Love Island alumni differ in a whole variety of ways, emotional responses and national outrage do not always follow logic. The genuine and sudden hatred of these Love Islanders has snowballed into almost national rage and intentional efforts to erase them from timelines, brands, and screens. Such emotional angst from so many casts doubts as to whether we as a nation would be prepared to perhaps spectate from our homes as we have done for the last 10 months. Can we be sure that the Olympics will not cause resentment to fester once more. Or even worse, as it did in the debut of COVID-19, cause racism to skyrocket?
Of course, the best-case scenario is that come the summer of 2021, global efforts to placate and control the virus and populations in distress will have been successful. If indeed the games are safe to go ahead then, at last, we will have something special to cherish and potentially mark the beginning of the end of the coronavirus pandemic, at least in the sporting universe.
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