The shadow of the advancing Covid and the international tensions linked to the Afghan crisis. Two weeks after the end of the Olympics, the opening ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics will be held on Tuesday (starting at 1pm Italian time), which will last until 5 September. An edition that, like the Olympic Games, has already experienced a one-year postponement due to the pandemic, which continues to keep the organizers under pressure after the record wave of infections in recent days. So much so that the CEO of Tokyo 2020, Toshiro Muto, declared that "it is necessary to take further measures" and among these there is the obligation for athletes and professionals (including media) to test themselves daily, rather than every four days and for the whole the length of stay in Japan.
By limiting travel to a minimum, and in any case within the Paralympic circuit. The organizers have reported 552 cases related to the Games since 1 July, but those related to participants in the Paralympics are already 138 out of 25 thousand cases per day nationwide. Four athletes and 10 media workers have already tested positive. In all, it is a delegation of 4,400 athletes representing around 160 countries. Although Tokyo is in a state of emergency until September 12, the governor of the capital Yuriko Koike is pushing to allow at least school children to be able to attend the facilities at the Paralympics. A choice dictated by the will of Japanese institutions to sensitize young people to the issue of disabilities, as claimed by the spokesperson of the Tokyo Organizing Committee Masa Takaya.The president of the International Paralympic Committee, Andrew Parsons, said he was in favor as long as the highest safety standards were respected. They will be the most watched Paralympics ever, with approximately 4 billion television viewers expected. Among the great international stars, the German Markus Rehm stands out, who in the long jump category T64 aims to beat his own world record of 8.62 meters set at the European Championships in Poland last June. In archery, great anticipation for new exploits by the American Matt Stutzman, who uses legs and feet to shoot his arrows and is among the favorites to go to the medal also in Tokyo. Other well-known names include American Tatyana McFadden, in her fifth Paralympics in athletics. After the 58 record medals of the Olympic Games,the host Japan aims to significantly improve the 17 medals of the Rio 2016 Paralympics. Among the national hopes, there is the tennis player Shingo Kunieda, reigning world champion in single men's in wheelchair.
In all, 22 disciplines are competing, with athletes participating in different categories and classes depending on the nature of their disability, with an absolute debut at the Games for badminton and taekwondo. In the latter discipline, Zakia Khudadadi, the first female athlete to represent Afghanistan at the Games, also hoped to make her debut. The overbearing entry of the Taliban into Kabul and the consequent closure of the country's airports, however, forced her, together with her teammate Hossain Rasouli, to give up the trip: "My family - Khudadadi admitted to ANSA in recent days - he is in a very bad situation. We are all under the control of the Taliban and this is a great nightmare for me. " Fear won over the desire to participate in the Paralympics: "Unfortunately - confirmed the spokesman for the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) Craig Spence - the Afghanistan committee can no longer participate in the Tokyo Paralympic Games. Given the situation in the country, all the airports are closed and for those who should have been here it is impossible to leave ".