These “2020” games, as every public reference to them bizarrely proclaims, should never have been held. “The 6,000-member Tokyo Medical Practitioners’ Association asked Prime Minister [Yoshihide] Suga to cancel. So did the Japan Doctors Union, whose chairman warned the Olympics could spread variants of the coronavirus. Nurses and other medical groups have also pushed back.”
Depending on how the question is phrased, 50-80% [of the Japanese population] oppose the games opening.” Asahi Shimbun, in an editorial, “demanded” that Prime Minister Suga “evaluate the situation calmly and objectively, and decide against holding the Olympics and Paralympics this summer.”
So why, asked the Associated Press a month ago, were the games “barreling ahead,” with the dangerous impending influx of 11,000 athletes and tens of thousands of coaches, officials, journalists, technicians, etc.? The news service answered its own question: “Start with billions of dollars at stake, a contract that overwhelmingly favors the IOC, and a decision by the Japanese government to stay the course,” which might help Suga “keep his job.”
How can one separate this corrupt atmosphere, with the threat of disease and death hanging over the games, from the mental state of Biles and other athletes?
The gymnast has made reference to the difficulties produced by the games’ year-long postponement, as well as the added mental pressure of the athletes’ isolation in Tokyo. “Usually you hang out in the village, all that stuff,” she explained. “It does suck when you feel the weight of the world. There are no outlets with the amount of training that we do.” Along with many others, Biles also lives with the burden of the sexual abuse inflicted by team doctor Larry Nassar and covered up by her own sport’s officialdom.
