Does Japan have 2020 vision?

Welcome to the year of the rat. True to its nature, the opening month of 2020 unleashed a fusillade of annoying, frightening and sickening world events at a pace that would make Usain Bolt take notice. Let’s take a look at how Japan is weathering the pestilence and scrambling to prepare for the looming summer Olympics. The forecast is not pretty.

It’s OUR stadium, not yours.

Well, the brand new ¥157 billion Olympic Stadium opened to the press with all the carefully planned fanfare that Japan excels at, but laughter and confusion over clunky English slogans and signage managed to steal a bit of the thunder, earning derision from Japan’s English-speaking community.

The cherry on the sundae was the main welcoming sign blasting in bold type, “Hello, Our Stadium.” This copy is so typically and uniquely Japanese, it’s difficult to quibble with, unless of course it was created for an international audience. Ooops. Those who reside in Japan are well used to these kinds of signs and slogans. Take a decade and you’ll find an ordinary English word that became popular and was exploited in every manner possible until it died a meaningless death. “Let’s” (Let’s Kiosk, Let’s Sports), “Fair” to indicate a sale, “My” (My City, My Bag, My Lord, My Sharona…just kidding). Lately, “Smile” has been en vogue with non-natives believing it has the same meaning as “happiness.” Perhaps, “Hello” is on the rise.

You would think with all the money they poured into constructing Our Stadium—which makes one wonder if they didn’t use golden cement—they could have spent a little more on a native check of the English messaging. Hint, hint.

The Tokyo Olympic Marathon Gets Run Out of Town

Witnessing the gradual disintegration of the Tokyo version of the 2020 Olympic marathon was mildly entertaining. At least we were able watch it live. The same won’t be true for the actual marathon. Due to concerns about hot and humid August weather in Tokyo (who knew?), the Japan Olympic Organizing Committee began announcing plans to move up the start an hour—7 am…6 am…5 am—until they ran out of morning. What next? In steps the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to handle the problem with its usual finesse. Ahem. How about moving it to a cooler place? Let’s pick the farthest place from Tokyo that’s still in Japan.

Thus, the 2020 Tokyo Olympic marathon, the marquee event of the entire Olympiad, where people line the streets and cheer for the runners until they finish with a lap inside the brand-new Olympic Stadium will be held in….checks notes…Sapporo. A mere 1,768 kilometers to the north or, if you will, the next big island up.

“The decision-making process was top-down from the IOC and made without regard to the wishes or opinions of the Japan side. Its timing was largely in response to the poor optics of women dropping out of the Doha World Championships marathon a few weeks earlier,” says Brett Larner, a World Athletics authorized Athlete Representative and editor of Japan Running News—“the world’s window to elite Japanese distance running."

Larner contends that the move to Sapporo may only offer a slight benefit to athletes, as the city will still be hot and humid in August. Moreover, he wonders if the move could actually have a negative effect resulting in a larger number of people expecting cool conditions and thus poorly prepared for hot weather.

“Many athletes have spent years focusing on training and preparation for the specifics of Tokyo and its marathon and race walk courses,” he says, noting that some runners even visited Tokyo at their own expense to train on the Tokyo course.

“Japan staged its marathon trials on the Olympic course, allowing its marathoners to try out course-specific tactics. All of that preparation was eliminated by the move, which was announced just nine months out,” says Larner.

Moreover, with all the concerns about health, what about the added travel?

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“For the men's marathon in particular, the IOC has insisted that the medalists be back in Tokyo to take part in the medal ceremony at the Olympic closing ceremonies,” says Larner..”

“Factor in anti-doping requirements, which can take hours if a dehydrated athlete cannot produce a urine sample, and it is hard to see how this can be done without seriously compromising either the athletes' health or the integrity of the anti-doping process,” he says. Most importantly, for Japan running fans, the move is a slap in the face the home team.

“For the marathoners, the chance to finish in an Olympic stadium in front of a massive crowd is one of the dreams that drives them. Tokyo was actually going to be the Olympics that brought this back, with both a stadium start and finish,” says Larner.  

According to Larner, the Sapporo course will have the athletes start and finish in a park while running loops around a city a thousand kilometers away from the Olympics. Sounds like a bit like a charity fun run.

“It’s less an Olympic marathon than a marathon held simultaneously with an Olympic Games happening in another part of the same country,” says Larner. Ouch.

Another Corona, but hold the virus, please. 

Perhaps the gods do not want Japan to have a successful Olympics. China’s latest export, the novel coronavirus, is clearly not what the doctor ordered. It’s the kind of global catastrophe with the potential to bring border control and international travel to a standstill. With about a thousand Chinese athletes and delegates and even more fans preparing to visit Tokyo in about six months, the coronavirus is a very sticky problem. Surprisingly the Japanese government took the unique approach of sending a plane to Wuhan, China to bring infected Japanese back home, and then even let some people go untested. And, currently, there’s a quarantined cruise ship in Yokohama holding 3,700 people in what has been called a “floating prison.”

As of this writing,—the numbers change hourly—there were about 40,600 cases documented in China, with 910 dead, and 97 cases in Japan, including those on the quarantined cruise ship. On the bright side, 3,332 people worldwide have recovered. However, many countries have banned flights from China and some businesses are refusing Chinese customers. It will be interesting to see how this plays out as summer approaches. You can be sure the Japan Olympic Committee is praying for a vaccine. The last thing they need is another Olympic-size headache.