The shocking thing is that one is not at all shocked by this new suspicion of corruption surrounding the Olympic Organizing Committee Tocog, which has since been dissolved. Shortly before the first anniversary of the opening of the Tokyo Games, it became public. On Tuesday, the house of ex-board member Haruyuki Takahashi, 78, was searched. He denies having gotten a sponsorship deal for a company for 45 million yen, the equivalent of 322,000 euros.
But Takahashi is well known: two years ago he admitted to lobbying during the application with 881 million yen from the Tokyo games cash register. And as an ex-manager of the Japanese marketing agency Dentsu, a long-time partner of the International Olympic Committee, he certainly knows how to hand out money and favors.
So no shock. Sport doesn’t have its corruption problem under control, that’s a well-known fact. The fact that Takahashi didn’t have to justify himself publicly during Tocog’s operative days may even be a symptom of this.
And otherwise? It’s hard to believe that another year has passed since Tokyo hosted the first pandemic games in empty stadiums and without spectators traveling to the city. There was a memorial ceremony at the National Stadium. Governor Yuriko Koike praised “many legacies”. And IOC President Thomas Bach found in the Kyodo-Interview, Japan’s people could be ‘very, very proud’ Complacency rhetoric. The usual.
An island country with few foreigners like Japan needs international sport
The truth is that it could have been worse. Doctors still doubt whether it was wise to hold the games after the postponement in summer 2021 during a wave of infections with a low vaccination rate. But so far it is not known that the games would have become the feared coronavirus slingshot. Overall, the organizers managed to separate the event, with tens of thousands of athletes, officials and media representatives, from the population in the world’s largest metropolitan area. Since the spaceship-like conditions at the Winter Olympics in China have become known, one even has to say: Despite all the rules, the Tokyo Games were still relatively relaxed.
Japan’s top sports have apparently used the games: there have recently been historic successes at the athletics and fencing world championships. The pure television Olympics may also have inspired people to do sports. And Tokyo itself? The subsequent use plans for the sports facilities are not convincing. As things stand, the maintenance of the newly built national stadium alone costs 2.4 billion yen in tax money every year. After all, the World Championships in Athletics will come in 2025. And perhaps the new facilities will attract even more major events. An island country with few foreigners like Japan needs international sport to see the world.
It wasn’t right to just somehow push through the games against the will of many people. But one cannot say from a distance that this strange world sports festival was irresponsible and useless. Especially since even the aftermath is instructive: Japan’s youth can learn from the example of the old sports marketer Takahashi what suspected corruption is.
