Five updates on Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic news, starting with the ongoing furor over organizing committee chief Yoshiro Mori’s sexist comments:
- Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike said Wednesday she will not attend a planned meeting of high-level officials for the Tokyo Games “as it wouldn’t send a positive message given the current situation” vis-a-vis Mori’s remarks. Toyota President Akio Toyoda said the same day that his company was disappointed by the comments, “which are contrary to the values that Toyota respects and supports” as a Tokyo 2020 sponsor.
- Athletes competing in Tokyo will be asked to test for the coronavirus at least once every four days, organizers stipulated in their playbook released Tuesday. But Australia’s top tennis official says the steps are not strict enough. Rigorous quarantine measures are needed, Craig Tiley tells Reuters from the sidelines of the Australian Open, the first tennis Grand Slam event to host crowds.
- Around 9,600 foreign nationals in Japan and abroad have signed up to be volunteers at the virus-postponed Tokyo Games, which organizers insist will go ahead this year as planned. But they now face an agonizing wait for news as tough decisions are made about how to hold the event safely, or at all, AFP-Jiji reports.
- A French judge investigating Tokyo’s alleged vote-buying for its bid to host the Olympics slammed a Japanese probe into the claims as “limited” and having “many flaws,” sources tell Kyodo. Japanese prosecutors “failed to question all the witnesses or seize documents” that had been requested from the French side in 2018, the judge is quoted as telling the head of the Tokyo bid team at the time.
- The rowing and canoeing venue for Tokyo 2020 has already faced well-publicized issues related to the summer heat and poor water quality, but an oyster invasion is the latest problem making waves, literally, in the Sea Forest Waterway. But right now, organizers have bigger things on their plate to contend with than oysters — like a big, steaming mess of Mori stew.