Olympic chaos as Covid causes withdrawals and angst

Australia’s Olympic preparations have been thrown into chaos with two medal prospects, Alex de Minaur and Liz Cambage, ruled out of the Games and more confusion on the way.

Australia's Liz Cambage has writhdrawn from the Olympics. Picture: AFP

Australia’s Olympic preparations have been thrown into chaos less than a week before the opening ceremony with two medal prospects – tennis player Alex de Minaur and Opals basketball player Liz Cambage – ruled out of the Games and further confusion surrounding the Boomers exposure to Covid-19.

As Tokyo heads into the Olympic Games this week battling a spike in Covid infections and with the Japanese government resisting a full lockdown, the enormity of staging the biggest sports gathering in the world amid a pandemic is starting to affect athletes’ preparations.

With 90,000 athletes, officials and journalists arriving into Tokyo for the staging of the Games, the Japan government is desperately trying to prevent it turning into a superspreader event – banning spectators, putting visitors into social bubbles and urging residents to stay out of the city and work and study remotely.

But the tension for all concerned is mounting.

Strict measures designed to create a secure bio-bubble around the 11,000 athletes are already showing signs of cracking, as a cluster of hotel workers testing positive in the pre-games hotel hosting some of the Brazilian team quickly highlighted athletes’ vulnerability to volunteers in the Olympic village.

Chef de mission Ian Chesterman said the cleaners in the Australian accommodation at the Olympic village were being tested daily. But that will be of little comfort if a worker exposes Australian athletes to the virus shortly before their competition.

De Minaur was shattered to have been ruled out after two positive tests before boarding his flight from Spain, while Cambadge said her heart was broken after experiencing panic attacks and anxiety leading up to the Games.

The spearhead of the Opals team was involved in an “incident” with Nigerian players this week and withdrew because of the pressure trying to control her anxiety.

She said: “It’s no secret that in the past I’ve struggled with my mental health and recently I’ve been really worried about heading into a ‘bubble’ Olympics.

“No family. No friends. No fans. No support system outside of my team. It’s honestly terrifying for me. The past month I have been having panic attacks, not sleeping and not eating.

“Relying on daily medication to control my anxiety is not the place I want to be right now.”

The Boomers, who are in camp in Las Vegas, cancelled a planned exhibition match against Team USA after the Americans isolated two players because of Covid-19. The Opals tested negative, but could not risk further exposure so close to travelling to Japan.

There has been widespread confusion about how the Japanese would handle teams and athletes who came in contact with Covid-19 positive cases, with suggestions that athletes may have to show a negative test within six hours of competition to be allowed to compete.

The flip-flopping of rules is not just confined to the Games, with the Japan government quietly reversing a series of policies it had developed seeking to limit commercial activity in and around Tokyo.

It apologised for any embarrassment of earlier plans to “ask’’ alcohol suppliers to stop supplying restaurants and bars that refused the government’s requests not to serve alcohol.

It also decided not to continue to ask banks to help pressure restaurants into complying with the no-alcohol request.

Despite Covid infections spiking in Tokyo – the city reported 1308 cases on Thursday, the highest number in six months – the central government has declined to introduce a hard lockdown.

There was confusion among international delegations about what role Japan’s constitution – a progressive document written after World War II that enshrines a bill of rights for individuals and imposes restrictions on government powers – had on the government’s decision-making around Covid.

Australian AOC president and IOC vice-president John Coates said he understood that obligations imposed by Japan’s constitution were part of the reason Tokyo’s 14 million residents had not been placed into hard ­lockdown.

“Here, they haven’t had the tracing or closing down of cluster areas like Australia and this is because of the constitution post-World War II,’’ he said.

“As I understand it, the ability to regulate people and police people was taken away.

“The Japanese have an aversion to this style of regulation post WWII and now it is in their ­constitution.’’

But Koichi Nakano, a politics professor at Tokyo’s Sophia University, said the constitution did allow for a hard lockdown.

“In fact, the government also passed a new Covid special measures law that grants the government power to order business shutdowns or to confiscate property to build medical facilities,’’ he said.

“What the constitution does not allow is the exercise of unchecked, arbitrary executive power without respect to basic rights and freedoms, but, as long as there is matching compensation, all that is needed is legislation, not constitutional amendment.”

Professor Nakano said the government had harsher measures available to it under the Covid special measures law but had so far declined to use them.

“This seems to be in part because the government doesn’t want to provide matching financial compensation, and also in part because they are fearful of the economic impact of a harder lockdown,’’ Professor Nakano said.

“Finally, the Japanese people are generally orderly and law-abiding, and even conformist, so even the very mild government measures have been met with extraordinarily high degree of ­co-operation.

“Very clearly, more coercive intervention was never sought by the government and, if anything, it was the people and the opposition that have been pushing the government to take more drastic measures faster.’’