The closer we get to the start, the farther we grow apart. Will Tokyo2020 be the Inclusion Games, or the Exclusion Games? Here’s an article I wrote for “Tokyo Updates.”
She was five years old, and she watched the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics with amazement.
Jackie Joyner Kersee! Carl Lewis!
And so Megumi Ikeda thought one day, this little girl from Nanyo, Yamagata in northern Japan would be as fast and as cool as Jackie Joyner-Kersee.
As it turned out, Ikeda (née Harada) simply didn’t have the athletic gifts to excel in track and field. And yet, the flame of high performance can be sparked in unexpected ways. Ikeda would go on to represent Japan at the 2004 Athens Olympics and the Beijing Olympics in individual épée fencing.
Fencing is an old sport, but it is not a money-making sport. People don’t fill arenas around the world to watch fencing, wrestling, weightlifting, curling, hammer throwing, cross-country skiing, or the luge.
But every four years, billions of people watch the Summer and Winter Olympic Games.
Art inspires
Why do so many people watch the Olympics?
So many people watch the Olympics because they become witness to the very best athletes in the world. Human senses are lifted to their keenest. Human physicality is stretched to its limits. Human desire swells up from the deepest recesses of one’s will.
Sport, like painting, singing, dancing, acting and writing is an act of human expression. Like a sculptor in an attic, a rock band in a basement, or actors in a park, kids on the street playing football are expressing themselves.
At the Olympics, sport is art. The Olympics provide highly skilled, highly trained athletes an… (to read more, click on this link.)
Paralympian Mami Sato speaks during the Tokyo 2020 bid presentation of the 125th IOC Session – 2020 Olympics Host City Announcement on September 7, 2013 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. (Photo by Ian Walton/Getty Images)
An Olympic legacy is commonly thought of as the tangible benefits of having hosted an Olympiad—the new sporting venues or transportation systems, the organizing know-how and the practical technology. But it is also the intangible benefits—the inspiration of an entire generation who see the very best athletes in the world strive to their utmost. And on occasion, citizens of the host nation get to see their own athletes and teams take their country on a thrilling ride to victory. These moments can jolt children and young adults, sparking them to dream, to believe that “anything is possible, even for me!”
This aspect of that first Tokyo Olympics carries great significance today as Japan gears up for its second hosting of the Games in 2020. Once again, the country is seeking to create a symbol of resilience, hope, and forward-looking energy as it faces a future encumbered by events of the recent past.
After the collapse of the financial bubble in the early nineties, the Japanese economy fell into protracted doldrums, a period which came to be known as the “Lost Decades.” Markets and corporate profits (with some notable exceptions) languished. Japan was superseded by China as the world’s second largest GDP. Overall, Japan’s presence on the world stage seemed to have dimmed.
In addition to economic and demographic issues (declining birthrate, rapid aging, the emptying out of rural areas), Japan has been beset by a series of natural disasters: torrential rains, floods, and mudslides that have claimed hundreds of lives and demolished whole communities in the western part of the country; the major earthquake in Kumamoto, Kyushu, in 2016; and most devastating of all, the earthquake and tsunami that struck northeastern Japan and triggered a nuclear disaster, on March 11, 2011. Recovery from that disaster, complicated by radioactive debris and contamination, is still far from complete.
Understanding the power of context, the Tokyo 2020 Bid Committee was wise to select a relatively unknown Paralympian named Mami Sato from the March 11 disaster area to kick off their presentation to the International Olympic Committee in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2013. Sato, a two-time Paralympian long jumper, thirty-one at the time, spent long hours of preparation on the speech she had to make in English, a task for which she had almost no background. But her honest and unaffected delivery of a very moving story created an emotional swell of support that helped propel Japan to the winning bid.
I was nineteen when my life changed. I was a runner. I was a swimmer. I was even a cheerleader. Then, just weeks after I first felt pains in my ankle, I lost my leg to cancer. Of course, it was hard. I was in despair. Until I returned to university and took up athletics.
For Sato, the simple idea in sports of having a goal and working to reach and surpass it became a passion, the loss of her leg serving as a catalyst to a sporting life as a long jumper. Sato competed at the Paralympics in Athens in 2004 and Beijing in 2008. “I felt privileged to have been touched by the power of sport,” she said. “And I was looking forward to London 2012.”
Then disaster struck.
The tsunami hit my hometown. For six days I did not know if my family were still alive. And, when I did find them, my personal happiness was nothing compared to the sadness of the nation.
Like so many other survivors of the earthquake and tsunami in Northern Japan, Mami Sato helped others—forwarding messages, talking to victims, delivering food, and even organizing sporting events to take children’s minds off the daily worries of the aftermath.
Only then did I see the true power of sport…to create new dreams and smiles. To give hope. To bring people together.
(Go to the 5 minute 25 second mark of the video below to see Mami Sato’s moving speech.)
Mami Sato has spent her recent years passing on that power to others—among them a young woman named Saki Takakuwa from Saitama. When Saki was in sixth grade, she loved playing tennis and running in track. One day she felt pain in her left leg after practicing hurdles, a pain that would not go away. It turned out to be a tumor below her knee, and at first the doctor couldn’t tell if it was malignant or benign. But after enduring four surgeries, including amputation, chemotherapy, hair loss, and the constant reliance on others for assistance, Takakuwa was despondent, wondering if she would ever walk again.
Her mother, Yoko, was determined to help her daughter turn her mindset around. She received a book from a friend called Lucky Girl, by Mami Sato. The mother scanned the book, looking for similarities in experience and stories that might make her daughter feel hopeful for the future. Those stories worked.
It was inspiring to read such a positive story by someone who’d gone through something similar to me. Her book made me realize there were opportunities out there and that I didn’t necessarily have to give up on sport. At a real dark time in my life, it gave me encouragement, but that doesn’t mean I suddenly decided to become a Paralympian. At that point I wasn’t really thinking about my future at all. It was just about getting through each day.
Even better, a doctor gave mother and daughter a sense of hope they simply had not imagined.
Once [Saki] becomes accustomed to the prosthetic, she will be able to go to school again. She will be able to go to senior high school and university. She will also be able to find a job and get married.
Buoyed by Sato’s example and the doctor’s new prognosis, Saki discovered that with practice, she could get around on her prosthetic leg. She could indeed walk again. And then she learned something even more powerful. By focusing on her thigh muscles and using them to maintain balance, Saki found she could run again, run straight, run hard.
At that time, I did not know what my own limitations were. But I was just happy to be able to do the same thing as everyone else, so I tried various challenges. I gave it my all in everything I did. I want to continue running while never forgetting that feeling.
Inspired, Takakuwa went on to compete in both the 2012 London Paralympics and the 2016 Rio Paralympics. At the age of twenty-eight, 2020 in Tokyo should be in her sights, with hopes of inspiring others.
Speaking of her own devastated hometown area, Mami Sato told the IOC delegates in Buenos Aires that athletes and their expression of Olympic values, can inspire:
More than 200 athletes, Japanese and international, making almost 1,000 visits to the affected area are inspiring more than 50,000 children. What we have seen is the impact of the Olympic values as never before in Japan. And what the country has witnessed is that those precious values, excellence, friendship, and respect, can be so much more than just words.
The legacy of the Olympics is the children and young men and women bearing witness to feats of peak performance, honest humility, exhaustive effort, and a perseverance beyond belief. It is also the respect the athletes have for one another, an appreciation on the part of all concerned of cultural differences and strengths, and a chance for the host country to display resilience, competence, goodwill, and hospitality to the rest of the world. Tokyo took full advantage of this opportunity in 1964. By all indications, it appears determined to surpass that performance in 2020.
Imagine over 40,000 people coming together in front of stunning Heian Jingu in Kyoto, people of all ages from all over the world, smiling and happy to be in Japan.
It’s hard to imagine that scene today, a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has left the biggest tourist destinations of the world, including the popular former capital of Japan, bereft of visitors. But that’s what Jens V. Holm sees in his head, in May of 2021. That’s when the World Masters Games 2021 Kansai takes place, the global sporting event that brings together two to three times the number of athletes than the Summer Olympics.
Holm is the CEO of IMGA, or the International Masters Games Association, and he expects to be in Japan from May 14 to 30 of next year, during the 17 days of the first ever World Masters Games (WMG) in Asia.
The WMG invites anyone 30 years of age or older to compete in 35 sporting disciplines ranging from track and field and swimming events to team events like baseball and rugby, to lesser known competitive sports like tug of war or orienteering. Held every four years, the year after an Olympic year, WMG is becoming one of the most popular Big Tent sporting events in the world.
A significant difference between WMG and the Olympics is that while the Olympics invite national teams, the WMG invites individuals, which means there is no mass directives from committees to dictate whether an athlete will attend or not attend. And while Holm, like the rest of us, does not know if there will be a vaccine by the end of the year, he does know we will be better prepared in 2021. “We will take precautions, do proper risk management,” he said. “We have spread the venues out over the entire region of Kansai so that we won’t have all the people in one area during the Games.”
The World Masters Games Kansai 2021 is Japan’s “canary in the coal mine” – the event that will determine the confidence the world has in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and whether the world will also come together for the opening ceremony on July 23. As we approach the Fall of 2020, we can look to the “health” of the canary, hoping to hear the chirpy notes indicating WMG is ready for flight in 2021.
And WMG can fly.
In the shadow of the Olympics, FIFA World Cup and other massive international sports events, the World Masters Games has quietly built up a tremendous fan base of participants. Additionally, Holm said that cities are eager to bring the Games to their areas, with four cities currently bidding for WMG 2025: Perth, Taipei, Paris and Singapore.
While the Olympics generally get a lot of bad press about budget overruns and white elephant “legacies,” the World Masters Games creates significant return on investment to the host city, without the development of any new infrastructure. In fact they insist that the host city employs only existing infrastructure. The World Masters Games focuses on attracting participants from around the world, like a major marathon or triathlon event, to generate revenue, not on television rights, spectator ticket sales or sponsorships like the IOC does. Holm explained that the IMGA is a non-profit, and that the purpose of the Masters Games is to serve as a tourism event.
Our focus is on the host cities making money, not the IMGA. We charge the host city rights fees, but always less than the city receives from the athletes in registration fees, so the organizers start in the black. And we don’t allow the city to build anything. This way all their investment into operating the games will serve as an investment in tourism. The big revenue generation for the host city or region is athletes paying for their own travel and accommodation.
In fact, if you watch the promotional video for WMG 2021 Kansai, it is essentially a tourism video enticing athletes to experience the beauty and cuisine of the nine prefectures hosting sporting events during the games.
Holm said that prior to the pandemic outbreak, expectations were that WMG Kansai was going to be their most popular event ever. While the last WMG saw over 28,000 athletes gather in Auckland, New Zealand in 2017, Holm was expecting a record-breaking 50,000 athletes, half from Japan, and half from overseas. And these athletes are above average spenders.
“The average age for both men and women is 51,” said Holm. “The athletes who come from overseas end up taking two weeks off to participate, indicating they tend to be from higher income groups. And 77% of them have a university degree. With high income and high education, you have more time and resources to focus on your health. That fits in very well with the Japan market, which is focused on building their tourism industry, as well as working to ensure their aging population has an active lifestyle.”
So without the financial burden of building costly infrastructure like sports venues or athlete accommodations, among other things, and the focus primarily on attracting motivated athletes (not spectators), the World Masters Games model has proven to have a positive impact on the host economy. An independently researched report on WMG2017 in Auckland, New Zealand stated that the “return on Auckland’s investment in WMG2017 was 151%, calculated as $34.2 million (WMG’s contribution to regional GDP) divided by $22.6 million (Auckland’s investment in WMG2017).”
Jens V. Holm, CEO of the International Masters Games Association (IMGA)
A good part of that return on investment came from the over 27,000 visitors to Auckland who spent a total of 241,480 nights in hotels and Airbnb venues, staying on average 8.9 nights. The 17,000 overseas visitor spent over USD56 million in New Zealand, a fifth of that from visitors who flew in via the national carrier, Air New Zealand.
This is what the leaders of the nine prefectures in the Kansai region are hoping for, a jolt to re-energize their tourism ecosystem.
“That’s why we had it on the drawing board to spread venues across the region,” said Holm. “There is so much to see in Kansai from a tourism point of view. And the infrastructure is very good. This will be an excellent way for the country to promote itself.”
While the “rat” in English tends to have negative connotations, in terms of the Chinese zodiac, the rat is seen in a very positive light.
In Chinese culture, the rat is energetic, alert, flexible, witty and full of life. The rat, because of it’s reproductive prowess, is a symbol of wealth.
As the Chinese zodiac runs on 12-year cycles, and the Olympics run on 4-year cycles, there have been a large number of Olympiads, both summer and winter, held in the Year of the Rat.
Year of the Rat
Summer
Winter
1900
Paris
1912
Stockholm
1924
Paris
Chamoix
1936
Berlin
Garmisch-Partenkirchen
1948
London
St. Moritz
1960
Rome
Squaw Valley
1972
Munich
Sapporo
1984
Los Angeles
Sarajevo
1996
Atlanta
2008
Beijing
2020
Tokyo
You can see a few selection trends via the above table. Initially, the Olympics were highly European-centric, with a shift to North America towards the end of the 20th century. The 21st century has seen a shift towards Asia, including three Olympiads in a row held in Asia (2018 – PyeongChang, 2020 – Tokyo, and 2022 – Beijing).
The 1972 Sapporo Olympics, only 8 years after Japan’s triumphant hosting of the Summer Olympics in 1964, were also a success. Not only did Japan win its first gold medals in a Winter Olympiad, it is said that the Sapporo Games turned a profit. The 1984 Los Angeles Olympics were considered the first Olympiad to make money as well.
So while the Olympics in general are not profit-making events, the Year of the Rat and its aura of prosperity may make a difference in the upcoming 2020 Tokyo Olympics. By many measures, Tokyo2020 is already a success.
So if you smell a rat this year, that may be a good thing.
It was early 1987 and Freddie Mercury was finally meeting one of his heroes – the great Spanish soprano, Montserrat Caballé.
As described in El Pais, they met at the Hotel Ritz in Barcelona. Mercury sat down and began to improve his song, “Exercises in Free Love“, singing in a falsetto a part he hoped Caballe would be willing to perform for him.
Caballé liked that Mercury, contrary to appearances, sold his voice instead of his image. “When he sat down at the piano to improvise, I realized that a true musician was before me,” she said. He made such a good impression that she agreed to meet him again at his house in London to record a demo.
Thus began a creative collaboration that resulted in an album called “Barcelona”, with three tracks sung by Mercury and Caballe, including the title track “Barcelona”. When the song came out in 1987, it hit #8 in the UK Singles Chart, peaking at #2 after Mercury passed away in 1991.
In the run-up to the 1992 Summer Olympics, Mercury was priming the world for the PR explosion to come for Barcelona, a city of sun and fun that was gearing up for its global coming-out party. Today, Barcelona is one of the most popular destinations in a country that is the third most visited in the world. And while city after city reject initiatives to bring the Olympics to their neighborhood, the 1992 Barcelona Olympics is often held up as one of the most successful Olympics ever.
The site of the former Olympic Village of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, in Poblenou. Photo taken by author.
Starved of investment by Spain’s autocratic leader, Francisco Franco, Barcelona was a congested and polluted city by the sea, whose aging manufacturing infrastructure crumbled during the poor economy of the 1970s and physically blocked the city’s denizens passage to the nearby Mediterranean Sea. Thanks to city plans accelerated by the requirements for the Olympics, investments into Barcelona’s transportation and communications infrastructure were made. According to Samuel Rosenthal and his article, “Olympic Cities and the Legacy of Infrastructure: Barcelona 1992 and Athens 2004,”
Barcelona renovated an existing stadium and created four Olympic areas with 4,500 apartments and 5,000 hotel rooms. In terms of infrastructure outside the immediate realm of the Games, the city constructed a new Ring Road to connect venues, two communication towers, new cultural centers and museums, expansions to the airport and the metro system, and five kilometers of new beaches.
The section of ring road that passes by the foot of Mount Tibidabo in Barcelona. Photo taken by the author.
As so few examples of economically successful Olympics exist, this example from 1992 is often called “The Barcelona Model” – in general, a scenario where a city and a country are able to leverage the Olympic brand to accelerate existing plans to develop the host city’s physical and service infrastructure. Or as economist Andrew Zimbalist describes, “Barcelona used the Olympics; the Olympics didn’t use Barcelona.”
Zimbalist explains that there were four factors for Barcelona’s success. (The headings are my words.)
Barcelona cool: In his book, Circus Maximus, Zimbalist described Barcelona in the early 1980s as “a hidden jewel. Its location, climate, architecture, and history meant that the city had a tremendous potential for tourism and business that had been unexploited for decades.” In fact, Zimbalist cited stars like Freddie Mercury who would visit the Catalonian center for its cool factor, and who added to the city’s secret cache. Barcelona was quietly becoming a popular destination for tourism and conventions. As Zimbalist wrote, “with a new airport terminal and forty new hotels in the city, the number of passengers at Barcelona’s airport almost doubled, from 5.46 million in 1985 to 10.04 million in 1992. Barcelona’s ranking as a tourist and business meeting destination among European cities improved from eleventh in 1990 to fourth in 2009.”
Improving economy: Zimbalist wrote that business was so good in Barcelona that unemployment dropped from 18.4% to 9.6% between the period of November, 1986 to July, 1992. Annual GDP growth was stuck under 1% for well over a decade from 1974 to 1985, which means that large infrastructure projects were few and far between. So when the Olympics rolled around, “the Barcelona economy was ready to receive and benefit from stimulus spending.” Unfortunately for Brazil and Greece, the opposite happened when their Olympics rolled around.
EU Membership: In 1986, Spain joined the European Economic Community (today called the European Union), which gave Spain access to broader opportunities in finance, trade and tourism across Europe.
The Olympics as Part of the Grander Plan: The most important reason that the Barcelona Olympics did not result in the hideous white elephants that we have seen recently in Sochi and Athens, among many others, is that “the Olympics were made to work for the plan. The plan was not created posthaste to work for the Olympics.” Most of the $11.5 billion budget 2000 dollars) was from private sources. Public funds were 40% of the entire budget, and most of the public spend were in projects already part of city plans that had existed for decades.
Part of grand plan of the city planners was to focus on four peripheral areas of Barcelona where investments for the Olympics would spur continued economic use. As Rosenthal explained, “It was also important that any infrastructure built specifically for the Games had a clear post-Olympic use,” so the planners chose four areas in the peripheries of the city where investment was needed: Montjuïc, Diagonal, Vall d’Hebron, and Poblenou.
The most dramatic and most praised of the changes took place in Poblenou, the eastern seaside part of Barcelona that was opened to the sea, and boasted two gleaming towers that initially housed the athletes as a central part of the Olympic Village, and then went on to become residences for the citizens of Barcelona. As Rosenthal wrote, “Newspapers lauded the ‘gleaming new Olympic village and beachfront’ which had replaced the ‘grimy industrial area that had blocked access to the sea for decades.'”
In 1992, Spaniards saw the Olympics as a symbol of progress and global integration. But it was also a chance to show off Barcelona cool, and help make the Capital of Catalonia a must-see destination. And nothing symbolized that more than the memorable cauldron lighting of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.
The Olympic cauldron of the Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys in Montjuïc, Barcelona. Photo taken by author.
At the end of the opening ceremony, held in the refurbished Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys in the newly improved Montjuïc area, archer Antonio Rebollo pulled back on the arrow, feeling the tension in the bow, and the heat of the flame that flickered in the wind from his arrow’s tip. Rebollo could barely see the reflection of the silver cauldron beyond the wall of the stadium, but once he was oriented and certain of his angle, he released the bow string sending the flaming arrow into the summer night. The arrow travelled 230 feet up into the air and over the cauldron, setting the fumes alight.
They call it one of the greatest Olympic torch lightings ever, for what is also called one of the greatest Olympics ever.
Over 80% of the citizens supported it. Some 80% of the infrastructure was in place. It was September, 2013 and Spaniards were feeling good about their third bid for the Summer Olympics.
The organizers of the bid campaign for Madrid, Spain had come in third for the 2012 Olympics, and then finished an excruciating second to Rio de Janeiro for the 2016 Olympics. But this time around, three was going to be the charm.
Unfortunately, three was their fate.
Tokyo, Japan won going away, defeating Istanbul, Turkey by 60 votes to 36 at the 125th IOC Session in Buenos Aires, Argentina on September 7, 2013. In the first round of voting, Japan scored 42 votes from IOC members, while Madrid and Istanbul tied at 26, resulting in a run-off match to compete against Tokyo. In the run-off, Madrid was out-counted by the narrow margin of 49 to 45.
After climbing from third to second in the previous two Olympic bids, Madrid fell back to third in their third try. Athletes in Spain were shocked, according to Diario AS Espana in English.
Guti (former Real Madrid player): “This is terribly sad, a huge blow, not just for Madrid, but for Spain as a whole.”
Javier Gómez Noya (Triathlete and Olympic silver medalist): “It’s a real shame, because everyone was very optimistic. But another city has got it and all athletes need to keep working hard and prepare for the Games in the same way. It will still be the Olympic Games, even though it’s a pity it will not be in Madrid.”
Jennifer Pareja (Waterpolo player): “We are lost for words, we didn’t expect to draw (with Turkey). It was the worst thing that could have happened. We hadn’t envisaged this, we were full of optimism. We are stunned. We don’t know what to say – everything could have changed and now it’s not going to happen. It’s a shame after all the efforts everyone has made.”
A man covers his face with a Spanish flag in Madrid’s Puerta de Alcalá on Saturday night, after hearing the news that the city’s bid to host the 2020 Olympics had failed. / Emilio Morenatti (AP)
Tokyo, Japan was the oft-described “safe pair of hands,” an economically solvent economy with a reputation for dependability and quality. Yes, Japanese slowly warmed to the idea of hosting a second Summer Olympics as only a little over half of Tokyo citizens supporting a bid for the 2016 Olympics, although that number got into the 70’s as the bid for 2020 rolled around. More significantly, the vote for 2020 came only two-and-a-half years after the disastrous earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011, and fears of radiation poisoning lingered in the minds of IOC members.
Istanbul, Turkey was an intriguing candidate, bidding to the be first Islamic nation to host an Olympics, an idea that appealed to the globalists of the IOC. Just four months prior to the IOC vote, protests erupted in Istanbul as people protested government plans to re-develop Gezi Park by barricading the streets and starting bonfires. Police battled protestors in the streets, where thousands were injured a few were killed. The domestic unrest was on top of Turkey’s growing involvement in the Syrian Civil war at their border. Only 11 months prior to the IOC vote, a Turkish fighter was shot down from the sky by Syrian forces in October, 2012.
One might think that if Spain were competing against a nation whose citizens were possibly under threat of radiation poisoning, and another nation which appeared on the brink of war, they should have a distinct advantage.
Alas, Madrid’s bid was seeming more like an impossible dream.
In 2013, Spain’s economy had racked up nine straight quarters of negative growth, and was so in debt that the government had to accept a bailout of 41 billion euros by European banks to get by. The country, in such financial distress, was the last letter in a slew of European nations under economic stress: Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain – with the unfortunate acronym PIIGS.
On top of that, the Spanish newspapers in 2013 were filled by stories of a trial about Operacion Puerto, a sting operation by the Spanish police that started in 2006, revealing the existence of widespread doping by Spanish cyclists, football and tennis players.
After losing the bid for 2020, the Madrid bid organizers called it a day, and declared they would not bid for the 2024 Games.
To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
Even for the Madrid team, it was time to stop tilting at windmills.
2019 is the Year of the Boar (in Japan) and Year of the Pig (in China). More specifically in the Chinese Zodiac, it is the Year of the Earth Pig, which waddles into the spotlight once every 60 years.
And it was 60 years ago on May 26, 1959 in the last Year of the Earth Pig, that members of the IOC met in Munich, Germany for the 55th General Session of the International Olympic Committee to decide which city – Brussels, Detroit, Tokyo or Vienna – would host the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.
In a decisive vote that required only one round, the IOC selected Tokyo, which took a majority 34 votes of the possible 58. Detroit came in a distant second with only 10 votes.
What were the reasons given for Tokyo’s winning bid in 1959?
Successful Asian Games:in 1958, Tokyo hosted the Asian Games, where over 1,800 athletes from 20 nations participated in 13 different events. As the Detroit Times wrote the day after its selection, “Tokyo, a strong favorite in recent months, after the world-wide fanfare it received after its holding of the recent Asian Games, was given the 1964 award.”
Fred Wada: Wada, a Wakayama native, was a Japanese American who hosted the Japan swimming team when they competed at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics, and was instrumental in lobbying IOC members in Latin America in support of the Tokyo bid for the 1964 Olympics.
Cancellation of the 1940 Tokyo Olympics: Tokyo was awarded the right to host the 1940 Summer Olympics, but the threat of global conflict made the organization of those Games untenable, so they Olympics were cancelled in both 1940 and 1944. Avery Brundage, the president of the International Olympic Committee, would mention that they lost their chance to stage those Games because of “unfortunate circumstances,” implying that 1964 would be a second chance.
Avery Brundage:Brundage was a dominant president of the International Olympic Committee from 1952 to 1972. And he was someone deeply familiar with Asia, particularly its art. After visiting an exhibition of Chinese art in London in 1935, he began to amass a collection of Asian art, much of which would be donated to the new wing of the Memorial Museum in San Francisco. In his speech at the opening of the new wing, Brundage professed his admiration for Asia.
We think in terms of years, Orientals think in terms of generations, or of centuries, and some Indian philosophers even think in terms of five thousand year cycles. The great religions all originated in Asia. The Chinese invented silk, paper, gunpowder, porcelain, printing, and a hundred other things, and had a well developed civilization when Europe was in the throes of the dark ages and most of America a wilderness, inhabited only by savages. (From The Four Dimensions of Avery Brundage, by Heinz Schobel.)
Avery Brundage Visiting an art exhibition in Tokyo, 1958, from The Four Dimensions of Avery Brundage
Supporters of the Detroit bid didn’t take kindly to what they perceived as Brundage’s outsized influence and bias for bringing the Olympics to Asia. One of the leaders of the Detroit bid, Fred Matthaei, was quoted as saying, “We got the impression the committee wanted to hold the Games on another continent.”
The editorial in the May 27, 1959 editorial page of the Detroit Times was blunter in its criticism of Brundage.
Brundage is a native Detroiter. The local delegation hoped that fact might help their campaign. It didn’t. It merely proved how little they know the egotistic Mr. Brundage. He insists piously and repeatedly that his position as president of the IOC prevents his taking sides. But he made no secret of his leaning toward Tokyo. His explanation for the about-face in principle is that Tokyo lost the 1940 games because of the war. He indicated he deemed it an accident of fate. He ignored the argument that in 1940 the Japanese were engaged in an aggressive war and, accordingly, deserve no special consideration.
Whatever the reason, the Olympics came to Tokyo in 1964, thanks to that crucial vote in 1959, the Year of the Earth Pig.
She was on the verge of winning the 1993 Wimbledon Championship, up 6-7, 6-1, 4-1, and 40-30 in the third set, a point away from taking a commanding 5-1 lead over Steffi Graf. Jana Novotna then double faulted, and proceeded to melt down.
Ten minutes later, Graf had won the final set 7-6 and taken her fifth Wimbledon championship. Novotna, who let glory slip through her fingers, could do nothing but cry on the shoulder of the Duchess of Kent, as the tennis world cried with her.
The tennis world cried again, as three-time Olympic medalist Jana Novotna died on November 19, 2017. She was only 49, succumbing to cancer.
Novotna’s career was hardly shattered by her dramatic loss in London in 1993. Encouraged by the Duchess of Kent, she came back five years later to win the 1998 Wimbledon singles championship. But when I review her grand slam tennis record, I was amazed at how many championships she won in doubles and mixed doubles: 4 doubles and mixed doubles championships at the Australian Open, 5 doubles championships at the French Open, 5 doubles and mixed doubles championships at Wimbledon, and 4 doubles and mixed doubles championships at the US Open.
In other words, Novotna had a total of 17 grand clam championships, although 16 were in doubles. I thought, wow, that’s a lot of grand slam championships….until I saw the list of tennis players who had more grand slam titles. There were 20 people ahead of her.
What I found interesting is that of the 20 people ahead of her, most had decent balance between singles and doubles championships – people like Margaret Court, the all team leader at 64, with 24 singles championships and 40 doubles championships, or Serena Williams with 23 singles and 16 doubles championships. There were a few like Graf and Chris Evert who basically focused on winning singles championships. But the majority on the list piled up their championships in the doubles arena, like Novotna.
Is there a difference in mentality and skill sets for singles players vs doubles players? According to this blog post from the website Talk Tennis at Tennis Warehouse, there are significant differences between the two.
Successful singles players have powerful first and second serves, love to pound it back and forth from the baseline, and aim for the corners, while successful doubles players are cat-like in front of the net, are skilled at drop shots and lobs, and tend to hit to the middle of the court. The post goes on to describe what it’s like when a person who has a singles mentality plays doubles, and vica versa. Here are a few:
Singles guy playing doubles (with 3 doubles players), singles guy…
after his partner serves, he begins immediately retreating to the baseline (where he’s comfy)
after his partner returns serve, he begins immediately retreating to the baseline (where he’s comfy)
serves rocket first (and second) serves (rather than slowing the speed and getting the first serve in)
make no consideration to serve down the middle to capitalize on his netman’s poaching prowess
way too many low-percentage shots (when other available for typical doubles player)
poor volley skills make him the target of every possible ball until he gets to the baseline
Doubles guy playing singles player, doubles guy…
serves second serves like doubles (slower) only to find singles man has a field day crushing them for winners
used to covering half of 36′ doubles = 18′ but now has to cover 27′
that extra 9′ makes the “alleys” twice as big and he gets passed a ton by the singles player smoking them DTL or CC
baseline exchanges are short because singles guy is looping/spinning the ball like mad with nice pace and Doubles guy is not used to that
doubles guy can’t seem to get to the net because singles guy’s pinning ’em to the baseline — so who’s gonna win?
A grim-faced Carlos Nuzman left his home wearing a dark business suit in the Rio heat as he was escorted by police. (Source: AP)
He was a member of the Brazilian men’s volleyball team at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.
After serving as the head of the Brazilian Volleyball Confederation, he was selected as the president of the Brazilian Olympic Committee and a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
And in his role as head of the Rio de Janeiro Organizing Committee, he led the bid process that resulted in the selection of Rio de Janeiro for the XXXI Olympics in 2016.
But today, Carlos Nuzman is a man under arrest on bribery and fraud charges. A French investigation into the activities of former IAAF head and IOC member, Lamine Diack, who is under detention in France, have uncovered evidence that indicates vote buying during the bid process for the 2016 Games.
The Daily Mail cites the Brazilian press stating “Nuzman is accused of being the link between Brazilian businessman Arthur Cesar de Menezes Soares Fiho, nicknamed ‘King Arthur’, and Diack for bribes to African IOC members ahead of the 2009 vote which awarded the Games to the South American city.”
In early September, it was reported by AP that Brazilian authorities searched Nuzman’s house, uncovering $150,000 in cash in five different currencies, as well as three passports: a Brazilian, Russian and a diplomatic passport. According to this more recent AP report, Nuzman “amended his tax declaration to add about $600,000 in income, according to the arrest order,” and that “in Nuzman’s last 10 years as Brazilian Olympic Committee president, his net worth increased 457 percent, according to invLamine Diackestigators.”
Following Nuzman’s arrest, the IOC suspended him from his honorary membership in the IOC, and has been released from duties in the IOC coordination commission overseeing preparations for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, according to the Daily Mail. Not only has Nuzman been impacted, the IOC has suspended the Brazilian Olympic Committee, frozen that organization’s funds, and will not allow it to vote on Olympic matters.
He arrived at Haneda Airport in May of 1958, camera bulbs popping and microphones thrust towards him. He was driven to The Dai-ichi Hotel escorted by police on motorcycles, greeted by fans asking for autographs.
Having recently broken the Asian speed records in both the 400 meters and 200 meters, Milkha Singh was a sports hero throughout Asia, and was in Tokyo to compete in the 1958 Asian Games.
Eyes bleary and bloodshot from a long flight from Calcutta, India, Singh still was amazed when he arrived in Japan, as he described in his autobiography, The Race of My LIfe. “I was thrilled to have been given a chance to visit Japan, a country I admired for the tenacious way they had rehabilitated themselves after the devastation wrought by the Second World War. When we landed at Tokyo Airport, our eyes were dazzled by the brightness of the multicolored lights. The puddles of water that had collected after a recent shower glowed with the reflection of the lights as well.”
It was at these Asian Games where Singh established his famous rivalry with Pakistani, Abdul Khaliq, the fastest 100-meter sprinter in Asia at the time. According to Singh, when Singh was first introduced to Khaliq at the hotel, with a friendly warning to watch out for Singh in the 200 meters, “Khaliq shot back, ‘I have met and run races with many a Tom, Dick and Harry like him. They are no match for me.”
On Day 2 of the Asian Games, Singh was favored to win the 400-meter race, which he did fairly handily. His time of 46.6 seconds was an Asian record, which the Japanese crowd greeted with an eruption of cheers. “I felt my hair stand on end and a shiver of delight ran through me,” he wrote. And when he saw the Indian flag rise high, he wrote that “it was the most stirring moment in my life and I was filled with great patriotic fervour seeing the Tricolor fluttering in the open blue sky.”
But his defining moment of truth was still to come.
The 200-meter competition was held the next day. Khaliq of Pakistan had won the 100-meter finals. Singh of India had won the 400-meter finals. Thus, bragging rights for fastest man in Asia would be determined in Asian Games 200-meter finals.
After the starting gun was fired, and the six sprinters made their way up the straightaway, Khaliq and Singh were essentially neck and neck at the 100-meter mark. With Singh on the innermost lane and Khaliq a couple of lanes to Singh’s right, they both knew it was going to be a fight to the finish.
Despite focusing on our running, we were each aware of the other’s progress and were pushing ourselves and our utmost limits. It was fast, it was furious, it was neck-to-neck. There was high drama. About three or four yards from the finishing line, I pulled a muscle on my right leg. Then my legs got entangled and I tripped and tumbled over the finishing line. At that very moment, Khaliq breasted the tape too.
From Singh’s autobiography, The Race of My Life.
It took about 30 minutes for the judges to analyze the photographs taken at the finish line from multiple angles. In the end, the judges determined Singh the victor. “I was now Asia’s best athlete!”
Japan leveraged these 1958 Games, showing off its new National Stadium and its ability to run a major international sports competition. The next year, Tokyo was selected to host the 1964 Summer Olympics. Singh would go on to take gold at the 400 meters at the Commonweatlh Games in London, and earn the moniker, The Flying Sikh, and become a favorite to be the first Asian to win a gold in track at the 1960 Rome Olympics.
In the early 1960s, Milkha Singh, along with C. K. Yang emerged as the great Asian hopes in athletics.
Milkha Singh returns from Tokyo to India, from The Race of My Life
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