After Olympia and Athens, Fukushima?
The flame path of the postponed Tokyo Games borrows from the ups and downs of the pandemic.
Flashback.
On March 12, 2020, for the first time in three decades (in 1984, the organizers wanted to protest against the commercialization of the Los Angeles Olympics), the symbolic flame lighting ceremony in Olympia took place with a reduced number of guests. due to the coronavirus, with the first cases present in Greece.
The flame after a reduced course was finally transmitted to the Japanese delegation of the Japanese organizing committee at the Panathenaic stadium in Athens on March 19, 2020. Arrival in Japan on March 20, a few days before the announcement of the postponement of the Olympics, the flame has been since on display at the Olympic Museum of Japan, in the Japanese capital.
The torch parade is symbolically set to take over on March 25 in Fukushima (according to the revised scheduled announcement in September) with a kick-off at the J-Village football training center, one of the locations most affected by the tsunami and the nuclear disaster in March 2011. The symbolic launch should take place behind closed doors (3,000 people were to attend the show initially) according to the Japanese daily Yomiuri.
The spectators would, on the other hand, be authorized to follow and accompany the relay itself (10,000 relay runners traveling through 859 cities in four months to reach Tokyo on the day of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games).
With the imposed respect of the barrier gestures recalled by the organizers: prohibition of cheering and the compulsory wearing of the mask (a precise guide is available on the site of the Olympic Games, it lists information for the torchbearers themselves: tests, taking of temperatures…).
"The details of the big departure are still being discussed," summed up a spokesperson for the Games organizers.
According to directives recalled by AFP, the presence at certain points of the course will be done only by reservation and the information concerning the bearers of the flame will be communicated only at the last minute in order to avoid a grouped public and certain sections of the route. relays could be canceled to avoid regroupings and the risk of transmission of the coronavirus.
The question of the presence of the public during the Olympic Games (23 July-8 August) remains for the moment in abeyance.
Mark Adams, the spokesperson for the Olympic body, in remarks reported by Francs Jeux, advanced on March 8 at the end of the meeting of the executive board: “Regarding the spectators, a decision will be taken towards the end of March, at least for international spectators ”.
Regarding the presence of spectators from abroad, the organizers would already lean for their ban, according to local media.
"As the spread of the coronavirus continues in all countries, they have decided that allowing the arrival of foreign visitors on a large scale will only make people anxious," the Yomiuri daily said last week.
The organizers and the Japanese government, like the IOC, continue to tiptoe.
The relay of the flame and the first appointments on the calendar will allow them to take the first decisions and define a framework that they should impose this summer.
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