FINGERS CROSSED

‘We’ve Done All We Can,’ Says IOC as Pandemic-Hit Tokyo Games Finally Get Started

They've been delayed for a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but IOC says organizers have done their best to ensure Tokyo Games can go ahead safely

Faster, higher, stronger... but safer? Hours before the curtain raised on the Tokyo Games, the International Olympic Committee said its organizers have done all they can to ensure that everything can finally go ahead on the event said to cost as much as $25 billion. Delayed for a year by the the coronavirus pandemic, the 2020 Olympics formally get underway Friday with an Opening Ceremony in a near-empty stadium. With COVID cases rising and the new delta variant a huge risk, polls show a majority of Japanese people oppose the Games, among them Emperor Akihito and his wife, Masako. Hours before the ceremony, the IOC’s top organizing official, Christophe Dubi, rejected criticism that “cheap measures” had been used to protect the Games. “Everything that… can be done, everything that was recommended by all these experts—some of them here with us to deliver these Games—we have done,” Dubi told CNBC. “I think we’re doing just the right thing, and we do not consider at all that it is cheap.”