By Antoni Slodkowski
TOKYO (Reuters) – A line of masked spectators raises muffled cheers for elite marathon runners, and the thud of a baseball bat against a ball echoes through a large empty stadium: sports in Tokyo this weekend have set the tone for how the Olympics were affected. through the coronavirus, it may just be over.
For the first time in history, Japan’s professional baseball teams held their first preseason games behind closed doors after the country dramatically escalated its reaction to the global coronavirus outbreak by holding final schools and canceling mass events.
In Tokyo, the annual Sunday marathon, which last year drew some 38,000 amateur participants, was reduced to a few hundred professional athletes, with the public strongly urged not to stick to the course. In recent years, the occasion has attracted more than a million spectators on the roads.
“If the Olympics look like this, it will be a sad sight,” said Hiroshi Enomoto, a 68-year-old shoemaker, one of the few spectators cheering on the runners in downtown Asakusa.
The Olympic marathon itself has been moved to Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido because of worries over Tokyo’s scorching summer heat, but Enomoto and others wondered whether this weekend’s crowdless events were a harbinger of things to come.
“There’s 20 percent of the number of people who came here to watch the race last year. Normally, there are so many people you can breathe,” said Enomoto, who remembers watching the 1964 Olympic torch relay pass through Asakusa.
Barely 30 minutes after the runners zipped through the neighbourhood’s sun-soaked streets, staffers clad in bright vests removed plastic barriers and cleaning trucks swooped in to pick up trash.
About an hour later, Birhanu Legese from Ethiopia arrived at the finishing line in sight of the Imperial Palace in 2:04:15. Japan’s Suguru Osako ended fourth in 2:05.29, beating his own national record and securing a spot in the men’s field for the Olympics.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the president of the International Olympic Committee Thomas Bach have said the Games will go ahead. Bach said his organization was “fully committed” to the July 24 start, dismissing other options as “speculation”.
But the sports event cancellations and other measures were not limited to the marathon. Soccer and rugby have also been affected, and Japan’s sumo association was to make a call later in the day on what to do with its next tournament, slated to start in Osaka next Sunday.
Baseball enthusiasts who had to swap the 46,000-seat indoor stadium of the Yomiuri Giants (the Japanese edition of the New York Yankees) for a sports bar in central Tokyo on Saturday said they hoped the virus would not have an effect on the Games.
“I don’t think the Olympics will be canceled. I’d like to see them, so if possible, I need them to continue,” said Natsuki Tsukamoto, 26, between sips of beer and bites of fried chicken.
Deprived of the support of Tsukamoto and other fans at the Tokyo Dome, the Giants slumped to a 3:5 loss to their cross-town rivals, the Yakult Swallows.
Elsewhere, the manager of Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles baseball team, Hajime Miki, reflected on the importance of spectators to sport after another game played in the absence of fans.
“He once made us understand that cheering and getting enthusiasts to watch the games empowers the players,” Miki said.
(Reporting via Antoni Slodkowski; additional reporting by Akiko Okamoto and Kim Kyung-Hoon; editing by Kenneth Maxwell)
This site is through reCAPTCHA and Google’s privacy policy and terms of service apply.