Tokyo hands Olympic baton to Beijing but virus, boycott calls weigh
BEIJING, China — The focus immediately shifts to Beijing as the curtain falls on the Tokyo Olympics, with a growing coronavirus outbreak in China and boycott calls looming large just six months from the start of the Winter Games.
The Beijing 2022 Olympics are scheduled to take place from February 4 to 20, when the Chinese capital will become the first city to host a Winter and Summer Games.
New venues have been constructed and some from Beijing 2008, including the "Bird's Nest" National Stadium, are being spruced up as China attempts to show the world its best face.
The 2022 Games will be spread over three main zones — Beijing, Yanqing and Zhangjiakou, which is about 180 kilometres (110 miles) northwest of the capital. A high-speed train will connect the three hubs.
All competition venues were completed several months ago and the Chinese government has been keen to assert that preparations have successfully ploughed on despite the coronavirus pandemic.
But just as Beijing 2022 swings into view, China is now facing its largest virus outbreak in months, even if infection numbers are still low compared with many other countries.
Another headache for the Beijing Olympics and China's ruling Communist Party is sustained calls from activists, the Uyghur diaspora and some Western politicians for a boycott over the country's rights record, especially the fate of Muslim minorities.
China, where Covid-19 emerged towards the end of 2019, already had some of the world's strictest containment measures and is ramping them up further in the capital.
People flying into China from abroad must quarantine for between two and three weeks in a hotel, and it is unclear if the thousands of athletes, team officials, media and others coming to the Games will have to do likewise.
Tokyo model?
Bo Li, assistant professor of sports management at Miami University in Ohio, said Beijing 2022 organisers should take their cue from Tokyo in handling the virus threat.
There were concerns there would be mass infections among participants in Japan but while there have been cases, the worst fears have not materialised.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and local organisers insisted on testing everyone involved before and regularly during the Games, and keeping athletes away from the public.
Spectators have also been barred from most events at Tokyo 2020 — it is unclear whether Beijing 2022 will follow suit.
"Overall the strategy that has been used by Tokyo has been pretty successful and I think Beijing will duplicate something very similar," said Bo Li, adding that he was "curious" about what China would do with its current strict quarantine procedures.
"I don't think it’s realistic to expect the athletes to arrive in Beijing (at least) two weeks in advance and to be quarantined," he said.
"From the financial point of view, who would pay the bill? The organising committee? The IOC?
"The preparation of the athletes would be greatly affected, it would be unacceptable to most of them."
Unanswered questions
The United States says Beijing is carrying out a genocide against Uyghurs in the region of Xinjiang and experts estimate more than one million people have been incarcerated in detention camps.
Beijing denies genocide and has described the camps as vocational training centres.
Yaqiu Wang, a New-York based China researcher for Human Rights Watch, stopped short of calling for a full boycott: "Athletes have been preparing their whole lives to have this moment, so taking that moment away is wrong.
"Athletes can still go, but sponsors, international dignitaries, celebrities, we think they should not go to lend legitimacy to the Chinese government hosting the Games."
Mark Dreyer, a China sports analyst, said that many questions remain unanswered about the Winter Games, even with fewer than 200 days to go.
"Ticketing plans haven't been released. And do we know about spectators? It's looking likely there are not going be international spectators allowed, but what about domestic spectators?" asked Beijing-based Dreyer, who runs the China Sports Insider website.
"All this sort of stuff, normally it takes years to plan and there are still test events supposedly happening between now and the Games.
"Will those happen? Will they provide us any additional information in terms of how China plans to run the real thing?" — with Peter Stebbings in Tokyo
Monitor major updates as we follow developments in the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.
Sprint legend Usain Bolt says he could have emerged from retirement to win a fourth straight Olympic 100m title in Tokyo this year, insisting the winning time was within his reach.
Bolt, 35, tells AFP that it was frustrating to watch the delayed 2020 Games from his home in Jamaica as his male countrymen flopped and Italy's Lamont Jacobs claimed a shock victory.
"I really missed it. I was like, I wish I was there," he says in an interview at the Dubai offices of his sponsor PepsiCo on Sunday.
"Because for me, I live for those moments. So it was hard to watch." — AFP
US broadcaster NBC says its Olympics coverage garnered strong ratings on television and streaming despite declines from viewership in prior years.
The NBCUniversal unit says the average television audience for the Tokyo games was 15.1 million. The figure was below that of the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics and the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro.
The media group says the Tokyo event was "the most streamed Olympics ever" with some six billion streaming minutes and 2.9 billion impressions on NBC's Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts. — AFP
Tokyo awakes to a huge bill and soaring coronavirus cases on Monday after pulling off a mid-pandemic Olympics that at times looked impossible and had a mixed reception to the end.
Olympic officials have been predictably bullish, saying the Games offered hope and uplifting moments, and went off without any major coronavirus outbreaks.
"These Olympic Games have been a powerful demonstration of the unifying power of sport," International Olympic Committee chief Thomas Bach says at his closing press conference. — AFP/Sara Hussein
Greece's Olympic Games water polo team on Sunday said it would donate half the prize money they will receive from Olympiakos football team owner Vangelis Marinakis to wildfire victims throughout the country.
"We want to thank Mr Marinakis from the bottom of our hearts for his generous move. We consider it our duty to help by donating half of the amount to the wildfire victims," team captain Giannis Foundoulis announced in a statement released by the Greek Olympic Committee.
Greece lost the Olympic Games water polo final in Tokyo to Serbia.
Marinakis said he would award the team with 200,000 euros, an announcement from Olympiakos said. — AFP
Ukraine's Khyziak flattened by Brazil's Sousa in just a minute for the middleweight gold.
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