‘ANOTHER SACRIFICE’

First Olympians Touch Down in Japan for Mid-Pandemic Games

The Australian softball team will have to stay on a single floor of a hotel until they can move into the Olympic Village next month.

The first international athletes have arrived in Tokyo for what looks set to be the strangest Olympic Games in the event’s modern history. Australia’s women’s softball team—made up of 23 players and 10 support staff, who have all been vaccinated against the coronavirus—landed Tuesday at Narita International Airport, near Tokyo. According to The New York Times, the team will have to stay in a single level of a hotel in the city of Ota until they can move into the Olympic Village on July 17, a week before the Opening Ceremony. “They’ll be extremely limited in what they’ll be able to do every day, and that’s going to take, for them, another sacrifice, but it’s a sacrifice they’re up for,” said Ian Chesterman, vice president of the Australian Olympic Committee. Last week, the Japanese government extended a state of emergency in Tokyo and eight other urban areas for another three weeks. Recent polling showed that more than 80 percent of Japanese people are opposed to hosting the Olympics this year.