May 20, 2021 (deccanherald.com) - Cancelling the Tokyo Olympics in response to mounting public opposition in Japan to holding the Games during the Covid-19 pandemic would be an unparalleled act in peacetime.
It would represent a bombshell for the sporting world and have far-reaching and complex financial consequences. While the Japanese government and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) say they are confident they can stage a safe Games, opinion p...
While the Japanese government and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) say they are confident they can stage a safe Games, opinion polls in Japan show more than 80 percent of residents are opposed just over two months before the opening ceremony.
Formally, the host city's contract signed by Japanese organisers puts that responsibility on the shoulders of the IOC should there be war or civil disorder, or if it deems that participants' safety is "seriously threatened or jeopardised for any reason whatsoever".
The IOC, however, has no intention of cancelling, convinced that a safe and secure Olympics can be held for the 11,000 expected athletes in the Japanese capital.
But calls for a cancellation have been ramping up in Japan, where concern has been expressed at stretched medical facilities and polls show overwhelming support from the local population for a scrapping the Games. The vaccination roll-out in Japan has been slow to get off the ground, and national and local elections are also coming into view.
"The closer we get to the Games, the less control the IOC has: it wants to maintain the fiction that the IOC is the boss, but it will not impose the Games on the Japanese authorities," says Jean-Loup Chappelet, emeritus professor at the University of Lausanne whose research is focused on the governance of international sport organisations and events.
Entirely "political", the decision therefore depends on both the Japanese state and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, even if all parties agree "to a joint announcement with the IOC, as was the case for the postponement decided in March 2020", Chappelet told AFP.
A large part of the Games budget has already been spent. Re-evaluated at the end of 2020 at $15.4 billion (13 billion euros), more than half of this expenditure is made up of public investments in permanent sites around Tokyo.
A cancellation would reduce operating costs linked to the Games themselves: catering, transport, energy and the rehabilitation of the Olympic Village before it is turned into apartments. But it would also, above all, slash revenues.
