In the "Why Is the News?" series the editors of the Nihon Keizai Newspaper look at the reasons underlying current news topics. This time they examine the Tokyo Olympics being held in the middle of summer.
Question: It's two years until the opening ceremony of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. For both athletes and spectators, the toughest competition will be against the heat. Why can't the Olympics be held at a different time?
Answer: The Tokyo Olympics will be held from July 24 to August 9. They are expected to be a hot summer Olympics. With Japan's high humidity there is tremendous risk of heat stroke, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has called the need to take measures to protect athletes and audience alike "an urgent task."
No event will be impacted more than the marathon. To ameliorate the situation for the athletes, the start time has been moved up half an hour from the original plan to 7:00 a.m., and Tokyo is introducing special heat-reducing pavement and increased greenery along the course. But in midsummer Tokyo the sunlight is piercing even at 7:00 a.m., so this hasn't done anything to eliminate concerns. A proposal to introduce daylight saving time nationwide has been brought forth but is facing strenuous debate. Prime Minister Abe has told the LDP to study the proposal, but with a significant impact on the day-to-day lives of the average person it faces an uphill battle.
It's obviously better for both athletes and spectators to have the Games in the fall when temperatures are lower. That's what Tokyo did to avoid the summer heat the last time it held the Olympics in 1964, when the opening ceremony went off under gentle autumn skies on October 10. Four years later Mexico City held its Olympic Games in October too. But more recent years have seen the Olympics solidify into a midsummer time slot.
A large part of that is that the primary television broadcaster in the U.S.A., which holds considerable sway over the IOC, wants the higher summertime audience ratings the Olympics will generate. If the Olympics are held in September or October they will clash with the NFL football season and MLB championship series, and in Europe as well they will conflict with soccer season. Nobody wants the impact on viewer ratings that a conflict between major sports events worldwide will bring.
For a long time this American broadcaster has paid massive amounts of money to the IOC for broadcast rights, and it can rightfully be said that the IOC can't afford to ignore what they want. TV broadcast rights are a considerable source of income for the IOC, and if the fees paid to them for those rights were to fall it would have a direct impact on the IOC's operations.
It's already been decided that the 2024 Paris Games and 2028 Los Angeles Games will also be held in late July and early August. From the beginning the IOC told prospective candidate cities for the 2020 Olympics that it sought cities which could stage the Games "during the period from July 15 to August 31." During the bidding stage Tokyo sold itself as having "many days with good weather, and a mild climate ideal for athletes" in July and August.
The shadow of business concerns can also be seen flickering across the scheduled event start times. It has been suggested that the scheduling of swimming event finals in morning time slots when it is harder for athletes to be fully mobile is due to consideration of a primetime slot for U.S. television. At the opposite, colder, end of the spectrum, the same concerns emerged at this year's Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, where many events popular in the United States were scheduled early in the morning or late at night, forcing athletes to deal with bitterly cold conditions.
The IOC returns a large share of its proceeds to the host city's Olympic Committee and to each component sports organization, and as a result it's difficult for countries to oppose IOC policy. In such an environment it's hard to believe that at their heart the Olympics really put the athletes first. Nobody can predict what the climate of Tokyo will be in two years' time, but the countermeasures the government is currently working out will no doubt form this Games' legacy and be utilized in future competitions. The Tokyo Olympics' stated philosophy of organizing "a Games where each athlete can deliver their best performance and record their best mark" has to be viewed as questionable.
Conclusion: It seems that behind the scenes the realities of adult life are fully in play, but it's time for the government to step up and put together the best ideas and technology for the sake of the athletes and fans. If not, Japan's much-hyped "ultimate in hospitality" will be nothing more than hot air.
source article:
https://style.nikkei.com/article/DGXMZO33707750S8A800C1I10001?channel=DF220420167266
translated by Brett Larner
Comments