Tokyo Olympics Is Cursed

The string of bad luck is continuing regarding Tokyo Olympics. After last year's postponement there was little or no chance to see the Olympics happen at the beginning of this year. The lockdown forced on Tokyo paired with locals being against the games, the situation looked rather sad or should I say desperate?

Image by Please Don't sell My Artwork AS IS from Pixabay

Two weeks ago a huge scandal broke out, having as main character,the Tokyo Olympics chief, Yoshiro Mori, a former Japanese prime minister. Mr. Mori had to find out the hard way that sexist comments have a price.

Mori, a former Japanese Prime Minister, has been under fire since last week, when he said that "board meetings with lots of women take longer" because "women are competitive -- if one member raises their hand to speak, others might think they need to talk too," according to reports in the Japanese press. source

I'm sure remarks like these happen in Japan on a daily bases and go unpunished as people are raised to listen and obey as that's the culture, especially the elder demand respect from the young. If this remark would have been said in an internal meeting, no one would have dared to do something, but because the event is international, 390 Tokyo Olympic volunteers quit after Mori's sexist remarks.

This was a huge slap on Japan's face. In the 21th century such thing should not happen.

Japan's country's gender gap is "by far the largest among all advanced economies," according to the World Economic Forum's 2020 Global Gender Gap Report. The report ranked Japan 121 out of 153 countries, in part due to its findings that women only make up 5.3% of board members on listed companies and only 10% of parliamentarians, one of the lowest levels of female political representation in the world. source

Mori has resigned, which I'm sure has happened due to the huge pressure and when things seemed to go smoothly, today we got the news that international fans may not be allowed to attend games. This may look shocking but was expected in a way.

Australian Open was an example of how an international event will happen in the near future. Everyone arriving to the event (athletes, trainers, doctors) had to be quarantined for 14 days, on the expense of the Australian government. 14 days of inactivity, lack of proper training led to a lot of injuries. Imagine locking up for 14 days 11,500 athletes and the staff coming with these athletes (trainers, doctors etc.).

Tokyo was already in red as far as spending is regarded, even before the pandemic broke out. Not allowing international fans to take part of the event will cause more damage to the budget for sure. Organizers seems to be stubborn and want to go ahead with the events, even though everyone knows it's very risky. Broadcasting rights may bring something to the budget and maybe that's one of the reasons they are pushing to organize the events.

As the start date is getting closer and closer, I guess we're going to hear more strange news, so please buckle up!