Sports – Pike & Hurricane

The Olympic Games Tokyo 2020(1): Can it change the way the Olympics Games are held in the future?

Rozarina Bakher — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:11:09 +0000

The coronavirus pandemic has seen many events either postponed or cancelled. The most globally known event by far would be the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo which was originally scheduled from 22 July to 9 August.

The global sporting event is now rescheduled to be held from 23 July to 8 August 2021 instead, but will still retain the name as the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020. Despite general worry from the Japanese population on the pandemic and its aftereffects, The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has announced that there is no “Plan B” and that the games will go ahead as planned. Around 206 National Olympic Committees are scheduled to participate and approximately 11,091 athletes in various sporting games are expected to compete. The choice for the organizer to carry out this event is being met with declining support from the general population over renewed concern of a new strain of the coronavirus. Japan will only begin its vaccination program late February (as of the date of this article, Japan has begun local clinical trials with the Moderna vaccine in January). Many believe vaccination of its 127 million citizens is crucial for the game to take place. A massive $14 billion has been set aside by the government to roll out the vaccine before the games begin, despite growing uncertainty amongst a population which has a history of being deeply wary of vaccines.

A question remains, why is the Japanese government planning to go ahead with its plan to host these Olympic games amidst the threat of the pandemic?

Surely, a potential Plan B would be to cancel it all together? In the Olympics history, the games have been cancelled three times before, in 1916, 1940 and 1944. In fact in 1940, both the summer and winter Olympics were scheduled to take place in Japan but were cancelled due to WW2.

Too far gone

Hosting an Olympic is a big deal for any country, but it also carries huge financial implications. Going ahead with it is a way to recoup the investment that Japanese government and its public sponsors have spent on the games. Japan reportedly spent $75 million for the campaign to host the games and provided a $7.3 billion budget during its bidding in 2013. The coronavirus delay reportedly cost around $2.4 billion, and since then the Tokyo organizing committee has upped the outlays to $15.4 billion. It is now set to be the most expensive summer Olympics. So, the show must go on as the IOC depends on selling broadcasting rights and sponsorships which accounts for 90 percent of its revenue. Note, that this game could go ahead without the anticipated spectators that would bring additional income through ticket sales. It was reported that around 70 percent of tickets are reserved for buyers in Japan and sales are expected to be worth $800 million to local organizers. The remainder is reserved for overseas visitors, who may not be able to travel if the pandemic’s infection numbers continue to rise.

Postponing the game further would also jeopardize plans for the 2024 Olympic games to be held in Paris. A few reasons put forward by IOC President, Tomas Bach was that they simply cannot have overlapping games one after another, the next Olympic game scheduled, the Beijing Winter Olympics in February 2022, is only 6 months away, neither can the committee keep employing the 3,000 – 5,000 people for an indefinite time. If Tokyo Olympics 2020 does not go ahead this year, it could lead to the games taking place further along in 2024, Paris will be 2028 and LA in 2032.

The proud nation

Tokyo Governor, Yuriko Koike has a vision for Tokyo and is betting on Hong Kong’s losing appeal after Chinese crackdowns and Singapore becoming more expensive for investment, that Tokyo will win back some of its former glory as a regional hub for foreign companies in Asia. The Tokyo metropolitan government has launched marketing campaigns, particularly aimed at high-tech and fintech firms, and the Olympics are an excellent chance to highlight the city.

There is also a sense of pride in reliving the 1964 Tokyo Olympics in which Japan gained fame for showcasing to the world how the country recovered from the devastation of the WW2 less than two decades later and how it reformed from an aggressive empire-seeker to a model of peace and democracy. It still craves to showcase the glory of the ’64 successful event, and what better way to reclaim the fame than by hosting the very event that demonstrates the best of Japan and help the world celebrate as it turns the corner on the Covid-19 pandemic.

Forfeiting the games is not an option, as the world’s next global sporting event will be the Beijing Winter Olympics 2022. In the realm of Asian rivalry, this is one that Japan would not want to see itself losing. Japan was the 2nd largest economy after the US from 1968 to 2010, before losing the spot to China, and a few billion dollars to make the games happen may be a small price to pay for a chance at glory.

At this point, pulling off the Olympics is not just a matter of economic damage-control. It is a national project, a matter of honour and saving face from being seen as a nation of give-ins.

The Playbook

The IOC announced on February 3 that the game would take place and have issued the Tokyo Olympic playbooks meant to outline measures against Covid-19. Some of the actions-in-plan from the playbook which aims to keep participants and citizens of Japan safe are:

A vaccination will not be compulsory for those attending the games, although a negative test for Covid-19 is required four weeks leading up to the event and athletes will be tested every four days.
Those coming to the games will be asked to cheer by clapping instead of chanting or shouting.
Athletes, and those attending the games will not be permitted to visit tourist sites or travel on public transport.
A 14-day activity plan is to be submitted ahead by those attending.

In addition to the above, plans are in place to keep strict attendance numbers in the opening ceremony on July 23. Athletes cannot check into the Olympic Village more than five days before the opening and must leave two days after finishing their competition.

Despite all the measures in place, will it be enough to not turn the Olympic Games Tokyo into the “mother of all super-spreader events”?

Certainly, the Tokyo Olympics will be very different from what we are all used to in the past, with a stadium full of spectators cheering and waving their nations’ flag and will be without the grandeur of the opening and closing ceremonies. The IOC have stressed the focus is to host a sporting event without the extravagant hoopla that has become a part of the Olympics. For a while now, the Olympics have been known to cause economic strain to the country that hosts them. Some past examples: Athens spent $15 billion to host the 2004 Olympics, taxpayers in Athens will continue to be assessed annually until the debt is paid and most of the facilities built during the games remain empty. In a nearly similar example of another endemic, the 2016 Olympic in Brazil was affected due to the Zika virus. Extra accommodation was built for the expectation of tourists; however, the virus scares saw the decline in tourists expected during the Games.

While Tokyoites and the rest of the world are Covid-weary, and despite the budget to host the Games having risen, the IOC is still head-on strong to proceed with the Olympics 2020, even if it could mean less spectators and a potential loss in income. The Olympics history has showcased a few past examples as to how the games have caused economic strain to its host country and perhaps the Tokyo Olympic 2020 Games can serve as an inspiration for future Olympics Games and other countries to look for alternative, more cost effective and sustainable ways of hosting.

Note: All currency is in US$

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Photo credits:

Tokyo Tower Special Lightup by t-mizo (CC BY 2.0)

Tokyo Olympics 2020 by Danny Choo on Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

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Football: Two Sides of the Pitch

Fajar Adhiprabawa — Sat, 28 Feb 2015 17:14:37 +0000

An industry requires capitals, and one of the prerequisites of a successful industry is a healthy human capital in the form of its labors. Development in political economy has resulted in the rules and procedures on how governments and private sector should protect workers’ rights as workers’ well-being is part of the employers’ responsibility. In this aspect, cases of human rights violation found in Brazil and Qatar display a horrifying image that is the football industry.

In a football match, two sides fight it out for 90 minutes trying to score more, and to concede less than the other team for two halves, separated by a commercial break. Players wear eye-catching jerseys and boots, with logos of well-known manufacturers and sponsors attached. 80.000 fans cheer for their clubs. Stadiums look ever so immense. ‘The beautiful game’ is indeed irresistible.

Football is t he most popular sport in the world, and attracts more people than any other sports does. Last year’s FIFA World Cup 2014 final match between Germany and Argentina was watched by more than 1 billion viewers worldwide, making it the most-watched event in the history of sport. 672 million tweets were sent related to the event held in Brazil, in contrast to ‘just’ over 40 million tweets on Sochi Winter Olympics, the Super Bowl’s 24.9 million tweets and 17.7 million tweets generated by the NBA Finals. With the staggering attention it draws, the football industry has had no trouble growing into a multi-billion dollar industry.

Kharkiv Stadium

The clubs, main actors in the industry have three main sources of income: matchday revenue, broadcasting, and commercial rights. Matchday revenue comes from stadium ticket sales – it is the smaller bit. Broadcasting and commercial rights – including advertising, branding, naming rights, and sponsorships, make up the biggest part of professional clubs’ revenues.

Financial service firm Deloitte found that in the 2012/13 football season, revenues of the big five European leagues grew by 5%, accumulating to €9.8 billion. English Premier League, the top football league filled with the world’s richest clubs just concluded a deal with Sky and BT Sport, which resulted in a record contract of £5.1 billion paid to EPL clubs for live broadcasting rights for all seasons from 2016 to 2019 seasons. Merely a decade ago, the number was nowhere near today’s amount, at just £1 billion.

This trajectory of capital allows clubs to spend millions on buying new players and paying the exorbitant wages of their top eleven footballers on the field. The likes of Wayne Rooney, Eden Hazard, Radamel Falcao, and Sergio Aguero, all under 30 year-old, have the fortune to drive sport cars, dine at luxurious five-star restaurants, and live in high-end apartments in London and Manchester, all thanks to their comfortable incomes upwards of £300.000 weekly. The average annual salary of a Premier League player is at an all-time high, £2.3million, and dwarfs other industries’ employees’ wages. Players’ services are bought for hefty sums, too. Gareth Bale and Cristiano Ronaldo were transferred for no less than £80m each, after which the player’s new clubs can make more millions from shirt sales, name rights, and sponsorships.

Protest against the Confed Cup in Brazil

On the other side of the pitch, reality is not as sweet. The preparations of for holding prestigious events such as the World Cup often unravel problems that previously had been ignored. Both Brazil as host of the 2014 World Cup and Qatar as the host of the 2022 World Cup have been put into the spotlight, amidst accusations of massive misappropriations human rights violations. As if the controversy surrounding the football governing body FIFA was not enough.

One Rafael Braga Vieira was walking in the street of Rio de Janeiro when he was confronted by Brazilian police. The city was in high tension following month-long protests, in that particular night hundreds of thousands demonstrators were dispersed by police. Rubber bullets were shot, tear gas was thrown. He was on his way to his aunt’s house, carrying two bottles of cleaning products to give to her.

Rafael says the police stopped him, arrested, and then beat him. Police accused him of being part of the demonstration and charged him for ‘carrying explosives without authorization’. A report by Amnesty claimed ‘the forensic department concluded that the chemicals in the products couldn’t possibly have been used as explosives’. Even so, Rafael was still sentenced to five years of prison for petty theft.

Workers’ apartments in Dohar

In Qatar, violations have proven to be even more concerning. A Guardian investigation into construction project for the 2022 FIFA headquarters in Qatar 2022 found that: 82 Indian workers had died in a 5 months period and reported 44 Nepalese migrant workers died in two months of highly unacceptable violations of workers’ rights. Although Qatar national labor law – Ministerial Resolution No. 16 of 2007 – specifies that workers should not work from 11.30am to 03.00pm, many workers claimed to have been working up to 12 hours a day in the summer, when temperatures easily reach 50°C.

Migrant workers reported issues of hunger, retained salaries by employers, overcrowded and insanitary housing, and other maltreatments attributed to the Qatar government. Exposure to uncovered septic tanks, overflowing sewage, and deprivation of running water have been revealed.

Many migrant workers are struggling to survive during the period of their contracts, and may not even return home after the fulfilment of the contract. Reports suggest employers have been blackmailing workers into signing statements stating they have been paid for their work, leaving them penniless.

When British human rights researchers Krishna Upadhyaya and Ghimire Gundev visited Doha to investigate the treatment of migrant workers in Qatar, the two went missing on their last day of stay. Even after almost six days of the two’s disappearance, no official statement had been issued by the Qatari authorities. Calls for significant improvements in the infrastructure projects’ employment policy have been echoed by many governments and organizations.

It is striking to see the development of football showing two sides of progress that are in stark contrast to each other. The business continues to grow exponentially, allowing for more funds to be distributed within the industry, while the other side displays a worrying image of serious human rights violations, a high death toll amongst workers and unresponsive government officials doing their best to avoid addressing and tackling these issues.

By Fajar Adhiprabawa

Image credit:

Picture 1: Aleksandr Osipov, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Picture 2: Sebástian Freire, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Picture 3: Richard Messenger, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

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Activism Through Sport: Running the Palestine Marathon

Rodrigo de Souza — Fri, 30 May 2014 17:53:29 +0000

The very first time I heard about the Right to Movement Palestine Marathon was with a little bit of sadness. The very first marathon had just happened and I missed it, this was about a year ago. However, as a student of International Relations, passionate about foreign affair and an avid runner, I knew I could not let the second one pass without being part of it.

The Israeli-Palestine conflict is one of the most important events of the second half of the 20^th century and continues to be unresolved in the first decades of the 21^st century. It’s a source of violence in the Middle East that spreads its consequences throughout the near region and the world. These consequences come in the form of refugees and terrorist acts that shape the foreign relations of the biggest economy and most powerful military in the planet… the United States. Therefore, for anyone involved in foreign affairs, this struggle is a great source of interest. At the same time, it is such a complex situation that it is really difficult even for the most knowledgeable ones to give an opinion without seeming biased. However, there is a clear power difference in this fight between the parties and it resembles to David against Goliath. In this case, David wouldn’t represent the king of Israel but the Palestinians who are much weaker economically and militarily in comparison to Israel. This is my motivation to run. Although I can’t give a solution and point fingers in such a complex issue, I know Palestinians have an uphill battle to achieve their rights and that’s the reason why they need the help of the international community since they can’t couple with this struggle on their own.

The same desire to help was the reason why a group of Danish runners and activists together with local Palestinians in Bethlehem created an organisation called The Right to Movement. This institution is responsible for the creation of the Palestine Marathon which first happened in 2013. Their pledge is to create awareness about the restrictions on movement that Palestinians endure in their everyday life. According to their website, “Palestinians cannot move freely on roads or from one city to another. The Palestinians right to move is controlled by their ID, permits, which city they live in, or who they are married to. The environment that Palestinians were supposed to move freely in is occupied and thus controlled by a foreign army. An army that controls their movement with roadblocks, checkpoints, military zones, an illegal wall and a complex set of discriminatory laws”.

This restriction on Palestinian’s right to movement is highlighted by the fact that the race organisation had problems finding the necessary 42.192 kilometres stretch of roads necessary for an official Marathon without reaching a wall or checkpoint. To solve this problem the full marathon race was performed doing two laps on a shorter distance. This issue highlights the point of the whole event, to show that Palestinians don’t have one of the basic rights stipulated in the United Nations Human Rights declaration. The right is enshrined in Article 13 which stipulates that “everyone has the right to freedom of movement”.

The race took place in Bethlehem, the birth place of Jesus. It started in front of the Church of Nativity, where Christians believe the physical location where Christ was born, adding to the grandiosity of the event. The first kilometres are run next to the Wall which by many Israelis is referred to as the “separation barrier” and by many Palestinians as “apartheid wall.” In 2004, the International Court of Justice deemed the Wall illegal as it is not build on the 1967 border, the so-called Green Line, but instead is built inside the Palestinian territories thus separating Palestinians from Palestinians and Palestinians from their land. Palestinians need permits to cross the wall through military check points whereas Israelis can move freely from one side to the other. The Palestinian side of the Wall has graffiti that symbolises their struggle.

After a few kilometres and alongside the wall we ran through the Palestinian refugee camp of Al Ayda, where the entrance is marked by a huge key. This key symbolises the actual keys from the houses where many Palestinian used to live before being expelled during the creation of Israel. Even today, some keep the original keys as a wish to return to their original land. Runners go through a second refugee camp, Ad Dheisheh, which has 13,000 registered inhabitants, a third of them unemployed. The result is a view of poverty and a life of difficulties.

Besides some foreign faces, the great majority were local runners. The total number of athletes added up to more than 2,500 from 38 different countries, which is quite a respectable number since this is only the second year of this event and the travel conditions and security concerns (which were non-existent) can drive off many competitors. Of those runners, 35% were female, which is also respectable considering the circumstances.

Running in a majority Muslim region has its particularities. What surprised me the most was the beautiful prayers coming out of the local mosques. Personally, it gave me a quite relaxing feeling which is not common for someone who is preparing to run for more than 3 hours straight. Aside from that, clothing precautions have to be taken in regards to female runners. Although few wore the full head-covering, nearly all (including the foreigners) had to cover their knees as well as shoulders. All of these safeguards added to the difficulties of running a Marathon since the weather was really hot which apparently didn’t change the local boys culture of also running with long pants, even though we were not instructed to do so.

According to the organisation, the race was a great success and another one will follow next year, in an attempt to make of it an annual event. This will fulfil the organisers’ wishes, that like any other country, Palestine should also have the right to host its own Marathon.

By Rodrigo de Souza

Image credit:

Picture 1: israeltourism, licensed under CC BY 2.0

Picture 2: Brian Negin, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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