The 2020 Tokyo Paralympics are exactly a year away, and the ticket lottery for Japanese citizens and residents of Japan has begun. Go to this site for information in English.
In contrast to the madness for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the process to apply for paralympic tickets was a piece of cake.
Three days after the start of the lottery registration (August 22), I logged in to the tickets.tokyo2020.org site, selected events I was interested in, pushed a few more buttons and was done. There was no phone verification required as was the case in the 2020 Olympic ticket lottery.
No fuss, no muss.
If you’re Japanese or living in Japan, and want to experience part two of the greatest sporting event in the world in 2020, then go to this link, and start putting events in your cart. The lottery application process continues until September 9, 2019. Go to this link for ticket pricing. The prices are considerably lower than the 2020 Olympic tickets.
If you’re in Japan in 2020, this is perhaps, a once in a lifetime chance. Don’t miss it!
She grew in the heart of the ghetto in Mesa, Arizona, with dreams of making a million dollars, but little else.
I was four years old, watching my first Olympic Games, and looking at the gymnasts, and being thrilled with them, how powerful and beautiful and graceful they were. And I had the thought, ‘they’re little like me. If they can do it, I can do it.’
Today, Breeja Larson is an Olympic champion, with a life of lessons for future Olympians, and the rest of us. In fact, in this age of CoronaVirus, lock downs and social distancing, Larson is expanding her network and influence virtually. Working with Airbnb, Larson offers an online program called “Goal Setting with Olympic Gold Medalist,” an intimate and stimulating experience with a world-class athlete.
Larson won a gold medal in swimming at the 2012 London Olympics on a powerful Team USA swim squad which took nearly half of the 34 gold medals up for grab in swimming. One of those gold medals went to Larson who swam in the preliminary heat in the 4×100 medley relay for Team USA, swimming one of the fastest breaststroke legs amidst the 16 teams, ensuring her team would compete in the finals. Although Larson didn’t swim in the finals, her teammates set a world record and got them all gold medals.
Larson with her gold medal….the color reflected on my screen not doing the medal’s sheen justice.
Larson shared her story on Zoom with 8 participants who joined from California, Texas, Illinois, North Carolina and Tokyo. They were able to hear her Olympic journey, a powerful story of perseverance.
As Larson grew to 6 feet tall, she realized she wasn’t going to realize her dream as an Olympic gymnast. But she knew sport was a way for her to get a college education, and that she would need a scholarship to accomplish that. She saw swimming as an opportunity, and convinced a local Mesa swim club to allow her to swim for free for 10 months. Her coach was encouraging, and asked her of her Olympic dreams. When Larson explained she used to harbor hopes of becoming an Olympic gymnast, her coach opened her eyes to the world of possibility.
Swimming is like gymnastics. Every time you dive in the pool, you have to have the perfect angle, grace and power. Every flip turn has to have the perfect landing. It’s a beautiful dance routine in the water.
That was the moment Larson’s mindset shifted, when she learned that every time you look at something as a negative, you can change the mental angle and see it as a positive. “Mindset has a very strong hold over your performance,” she said.
Larson built up her savings in high school lifeguarding, making sandwiches at Subway, cleaning homes, even collecting aluminum cans while training hard as a swimmer. And her hard work paid off when she got a partial scholarship to Texas A&M University. But life as a student athlete was tough, particularly since she had to embark on a training regimen to make up for years of training that most of her teammates had already compiled.
The workload as a student athlete was just crushing me. And one day, two months into the academic year, I remember going into the cafeteria, trying to eat my food, and the biggest pile of bricks just fell on me. I felt I was about to crack. Everything felt so hard and I was breaking down.
She sent a long message to her mother – “a pathetic rant” as she called it – and said essentially, “I’m going to drown. I don’t want to do this anymore. I want to quit. I want to go home. I’m not good enough.” And as Larson wallowed in self pity, her mother sent a her a very simple life-changing message.
This is what it feels like to be a champion.
In this Airbnb Experience, Larson shared that lesson as well as several others she has learned over the years. In addition to the critical impact of having a positive mindset, she talked at length about how important it is to set audacious goals, to chunk the big goal into smaller tactical goals, be intensively self aware about what you want and why, and get objective feedback from others. She is articulate, practical and most of all, inspiring.
And now, at the age of 27, Larson is working hard to apply those lessons and make the team again for Tokyo next year. Competing as a pro, she actuallytook first leading wire-to-wire in a 100-meter breaststroke finalsof the Phillips 66 National Championships on August 3, 2019, only 9 months ago, giving her hope of returning to the Olympics in 2021. But then COVID-19 entered the picture.
The pools are all closed. Coaches don’t have jobs. But the athlete in my head is saying, ‘keep going. You got this. 16 more months. Just chunk it out. Figure it out up here and the rest of it will take care of itself.’ But if I choose to swim, everything else goes on hold. I can’t eat anything with sugar. (Assuming concerns of the pandemic ease) I wouldn’t be able to travel anywhere with my boyfriend or go to music festivals. I’d miss a lot of summer weddings.
However, if she doesn’t make the attempt, Larson said she would “have this empty hole. I want to hang up my goggles after my last race, instead of saying the pandemic happened and I moved on.”
So against all odds, Larson stays positive, focused on her goal. Will we see her in Tokyo in the summer of 2021? Maybe you should attend her Airbnb Experience over the next few months and ask her yourself. She’ll be happy to talk with you.
The design of the tickets for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympics were released, and have been put on display. You can see them on the first floor of the Nihonbashi Mitsui Tower in Tokyo for free until January 29.
There are 59 different ticket designs for the Olympics and another 25 for Paralympic events. If you are fortunate enough to have bought a ticket, deliveries will start in May.
According to Tokyo Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the design is based on two concepts:
The three rectangular shapes that make up the Tokyo2020 emblems, and
Kasane no irome, which is the color scheme used in the creation of fabrics used for kimono during the Japanese Heian Period (794-1185).
Athletics at the new Olympic Stadium, as well as Badminton at Musashino Forest Sport Plaza will be popular.Paralympic tickets are still available!The modern Penthathlon, which covers five events, will be held in two different places, although the Musashino Forest Sport Plaza is right next to Tokyo Stadium (aka Ajinomoto Stadium)1964 saw the debut of the Japanese martial art Judo. 2020 will see the debut of the Japanese martial art Karate.Two great new sports that will attract the kids: skateboarding and sport climbing.
The Olympic rings in the sky, blowin’ in the wind.
In 1964, on Saturday, October 10, the Blue Impulse aerobatic jet team that painted the brilliantly blue sky with the Olympic rings on the opening day of the Tokyo Olympics, symbolizing then that the sky’s the limit for Japan.
In 2020, on Saturday, March 20, the Blue Impulse team reprised their role from nearly 56 years prior, sketching the five rings in the sky during the ceremony welcoming to Japan the sacred Olympic fire from Greece.
Unfortunately, the rings were immediately washed away by the blustery winds over Matsushima Air base in Miyagi prefecture, symbolizing, perhaps, that our limits are not quite so high.
I watched the officials, athletes and celebrities line up ceremoniously, undoubtedly proud to represent Japan in this extraordinary event. The Olympic flame is scheduled to start a nation-wide relay from Futaba, Fukushima on March 26 and end in Tokyo at the Opening Ceremonies of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics on July 24, perhaps at that time, showing the world that the Tokyo2020 Games are truly the “Recovery Olympics,” as the organizers have billed them.
But I couldn’t help but imagine that each and every one of them harbored the question, “Will this flame actually ignite the Olympic Cauldron on July 24?”
President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Thomas Bach, Tokyo2020 chief, Yoshiro Mori and Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe among many other officials have said that the Tokyo Olympics are going to take place as scheduled. “The I.O.C. remains fully committed to the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, and with more than four months to go before the Games there is no need for any drastic decisions at this stage,” said Bach.
The cool and patient approach of the IOC may be the right approach, but their words are beginning to seem surreal, and increasingly at odds with the heated and urgent voices of athletes and officials around the world.
“Of course the IOC and the whole world wants a successful Olympics. But for that to happen I strongly believe the event needs to be postponed – unless the authorities can guarantee it will be business as usual, which I don’t believe they can,” said Guy Learmonth on March 17, who is competing for a spot on the Great British track team.
“I’m not against the Olympics. But saying that the Olympics will still go on is a big mistake in communication,” said Giovanni Petrucci on March 19, who served as president of the Italian Olympic Committee for 14 years.
“Our athletes are under tremendous pressure, stress and anxiety, and their mental health and wellness should be among the highest priorities. It is with the burden of these serious concerns that we respectfully request that the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee advocate for the postponement of the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 by one year,” wrote USA Swimming CEO, Tim Hinchey, to the head of the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee CEO, Sarah Hirshland, on March 20.
The pressure on the local officials in Japan is immense, and we are seeing fissures in this brave front that the Games must go on. Recently two prominent Japanese voices have spoken up:
Japan is hosting the biggest, most logistically complex big-tent event in the world this year, but decisions regarding cancellation or postponement are made by the IOC. And as long as the IOC takes a wait-and-see approach, waiting to the last possible moment before making such a decision, Japanese officials believe they must do the same.
The decision that has to be made is a thankless one – there will be an outcry whether the Games go on as scheduled, are postponed or cancelled. I have no doubt that the IOC and the Tokyo2020 Olympic and Paralympic Organizing Committee are doing the best they can to make a wise decision.
In the meanwhile, the pressure continues to build, and reality continues to distort.
Wrestler and three-time gold medalist, Saori Yoshida, and judoka and three-time gold medalist Tadahiro Nomura, welcome the sacred flame to Japan.
The National Stadium in Tokyo opened its doors to 60,000 people on Saturday, December 21, 2019, a combination ceremony to mark a major milestone on the road to Tokyo 2020, and a concert featuring popular Japanese bands Dreams Come True and Arashi.
Designed by architect Kengo Kuma, the venue is sometimes referred to as the Forest Stadium, in reference to the significant use of wood in the stadium’s exterior. With cedar and larch sourced from each of the 47 prefectures of Japan, Kuma designed a stadium he intended to meld into the green surroundings of the stadium, particularly the spiritual woods of neighboring Meiji Shrine.
“I want to go beyond the era of concrete,” Kuma, 62, said in a Japan Times interview. “What people want is soft, warm and humane architecture.”
The stadium is composed of five levels above ground, which rises to about 50 meters at its highest point. Each level is topped by lattice rooves of long wooden slates, designed to allow seasonal winds to flow into and through the stadium, aided by 185 fans that direct the winds inward.
Ample greenery in and around the stadium_photograph by author
Kuma has said that he modeled his stadium design on the Buddhist temples of Kyoto and Nara, appreciating how well those temples have aged. “We will show the model of a mature society in the stadium,” Kuma says. “That’s the way to live a happy life relying on limited natural resources from a small land.”
On the whole, the Japanese who have seen it appear to be happy, according to posts on social media or reports on Japanese television, particularly proud that the biggest visible milestone to the start of Tokyo2020 has been completed.
Photograph by author
Entry into the stadium appears smooth with QR readers, although I haven’t seen anything on whether that included security checks. The corridors that ring the seating areas and house the food and beverage booths are wide and easy to navigate through crowds.
Inside, there are 500 spaces for spectators in wheelchairs. For everyone else, there are seats for 60,000. The seats are in five different colors, which cleverly deceive the eye into thinking empty seats are occupied, although no one anticipates too many empty seats in the coming Olympic or Paralympic Games.
An opportunistic peak inside…
Different from other stadium in Japan, there are two large screens at the ends of the oval, with a ribbon screen that rings the middle level of the stadium, so replays and information should be easy to view. And apparently, thanks to the fairly steep angles of the seats, there isn’t a bad seat in the house.
However, there have been a few comments about issues. The seats, which provide a great view, have very little space for people for possessions or for people to pass. If you happen to sit in the middle seats, you’ll make everyone stand up to get through, and you’ll have be careful not to knock over peoples’ beverages.
And for foreign visitors, the signage in English appears to be much to be desired.
But there’s time for that to be corrected. Tokyo2020 awaits.
On Friday, July 23, 2021 – 365 days from now – the 2020 Tokyo Olympics will start!
I hope.
In this time of uncertainty, hope is all we have. No one can guarantee an Olympics in Tokyo. No one knows if the world will be healthy enough to come together in Tokyo a year from now.
With coronavirus infections on the rise in certain regions of the world, in particular the United States, doubt remains. Professional baseball has started in Korea and Japan. Football has commenced in Europe. Baseball, basketball and ice hockey are about to return to the United States. But no can say if they can finish what they start.
In Japan, as the number of infections climb, particularly in Tokyo, public sentiment towards the Olympics next year is running negative. Less than 40% of Japanese in a recent survey stated they would want to attend an Olympic or Paralympic event. This is only a year after over 7 million Japanese bought up nearly 8 million tickets in the opening stage of the ticket lottery, setting the tone for what was arguably to become the most popular Olympics ever.
Today, even if you have tickets, it’s unclear whether you’ll be allowed to go to the events. Right now, it doesn’t look good.
And yet, there’s still one year to go.
We face adversity all the time. Sometimes barriers or problems we face are out of our control, spiraling us into a vortex of hopelessness. But time and time again, we persevere, we see winds shift and fortunes change.
At times, film can powerfully convey our innate ability to overcome. I cite three scenes from movies you know.
First we do everything we can to put ourselves in a position to achieve our goal in the face of adversity. Al Pacino captured this mindset powerfully in his halftime speech to his football team, the film “Any Given Sunday.” He states the reality: “We are in hell right now, gentlemen.” But then tells them that “life is just a game of inches….” and that “the inches we need are everywhere around us,” and that “on this team, we fight for that inch.”
I believe there are many people around the world fighting for those inches, to cure the virus, as well as make sports in general, and Tokyo2020 in particular, safe.
In the final film of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Frodo is ready to give up in his quest to save Middle Earth. But his friend, Sam, is not ready to give up on Frodo, literally lifting and carrying him forward.
I believe there are many people around the world willing to carry us when we are down, remind us of better times, and tell us those times will return.
And in the movie, Henry V, Kenneth Branagh brings incredible joy and energy to young King Harry as he wills his ragtag troops to take on the bigger, fresher French army at the Battle of Agincourt. Outnumbered, in the face of what they believe to be certain death, the men of England are inspired by King Henry to imagine a world when they have survived this battle and lived to a ripe age, telling their children of the scars they got and the feats they achieved that miraculous day in France.
I believe there are many people who see in their mind’s eye a packed stadium, a field filled with the best athletes in the world, and a brilliant blue sky, telling us all that anything is possible, including a Summer Games in 2021.
If there are people who fight for that inch,
If there are people who carry us when we need them,
If there are people who paint us a picture of a glorious future,
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.”
Japan’s players celebrate after beating Ireland during their Rugby World Cup Pool A game at Shizuoka Stadium in Shizuoka, Japan, Saturday, Sept. 28, 2019. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
The taxi driver couldn’t help it. He started talking about Japan’s incredible upset over Ireland in rugby on Saturday. Then he talked about the Japan women’s volleyball team come back win over Serbia a day before that. And how about those Japanese boys in Doha at the World Track and Field Championships? He said that if he could, he would be ditching the taxi and watching sports all day and all night.
Something’s in the air in Japan.
The 2-month 2019 Rugby World Cup taking place in Japan is a huge hit – stadiums are packed with fans from all over the world. And Japan, which entered the tournament ranked ninth in the world, pulled off an incredible upset of second-ranked Ireland, which set the country on fire. As The Guardian put it:
Japan have done it again, this time against the team ranked No 1 in the world two weeks ago. The World Cup hosts came from nine points down to win after playing with pace, skill and fervour that the humidity and time could not dim. Such was the thunderous roar when the final whistle sounded it would have caused the nearby Mount Fuji to wobble.
Over the weekend, Japan watched the Japanese women’s volleyball team win the last three games of an 11-game FIVB Volleyball Women’s World Cup. They had fallen into a funk and ran their record to 3 – 5, losing to regional rivals China and South Korea, but defeated Serbia, Argentina and the Netherlands in the final three days to take fifth place in the tournament.
Like the rugby matches, all games were on national television, and the volleyball arena in Osaka was packed with enthusiastic, cheering fans.
In the late evenings and mornings, Japanese track and field fans watched Japanese sprinters and long jumpers at the 2019 IAAF World Championships in Doha, Qatar. Fans watched rising stars Yuki Koike, Abdul Hakim Sani Brown and Yoshihide Kiryu compete for 100-meter glory. After Japan’s incredible silver-medal feat in the 4×100 relay sprint at the 2016 Rio Olympics, Japan’s men have raised their games and hope to equal their prospects in 2020.
Unfortunately, Japan’s sprinters were all eliminated in the semi-finals. But that did not dampen the mood of a nation electrified by the accomplishments of their national teams over the weekend.
Japan’s rugby team showed that on your home turf, anything’s possible. Japan’s volleyball team showed that on their home court, they can be as dangerous as any other team – in fact they took number 2 USA to five sets last week.
Japan’s athletes are competing at the highest levels. They look to smash their record of 16 gold medals at an Olympics at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
There’s something in the air. And to the Japanese, it’s a tailwind, and it’s just beginning to build.
I felt terrible. Crestfallen. Could not really focus on work when I got the email from Tokyo2020.
Thank you for your interest in purchasing Tokyo 2020 tickets.
The demand for tickets was incredibly high, and unfortunately, you were not awarded any of the tickets you requested in the lottery.
As a resident of Japan, I was able to register for a lottery that gave me a chance to buy tickets to events of my choice…an opportunity that up to 85 million other people in Japan also took up.
In an interview with the hosts of the podcast Olympic Fever, Ken Hanscom, the chief operating officer of TicketManager in the United States, explained why I was left brooding all day June 20.
This lottery has been extremely successful. At the close of the lottery, seven and a half million registered for what is really a total of 7.8 million tickets in its entirety. So Tokyo 2020 is already super popular.
The way I look at Tokyo is, it will be in my opinion the highest demand Olympics of all time. It could be the highest demand event of all time.
Of course, that is fantastic news for Japan (and the IOC) – Tokyo 2020 will be a hit! But I was still left wondering if the only way I’m going to see the Tokyo Olympics is from my living room a few kilometers away from the Olympic venues.
But later in the podcast, Hanscom provided some additional context on the lottery in Japan that ran from May 9 to 28, which gave me hope.
We’re talking about requests for 85 million tickets when there is only 3.5 million that are going to be granted as a part of this lottery process. Roughly 90% of people making requests are not going to receive any tickets, assuming everything is similar to London. So they’re only making a sub-set of these tickets available.
In other words, a relatively small percentage of the overall ticket numbers were made available in this lottery in Japan. This is just the beginning of the ticket sales process, which he said will continue in earnest in the opening months of 2020. And more significantly to me, Hanscom said that 75% of all tickets are made available to those in Japan.
For those outside of Japan, Hanscom explained that most other countries will have their own official re-seller and that there were about 8 to 10 authorized sellers of Olympic tickets around the world, including such companies as Kingdom Sports, CoSport, and Cartan.
Hanscom explained that that each country gets an allotment of tickets based on historical allotment numbers and number of participating athletes, for example, and that those tickets can be purchased only through the authorized seller for their country. The exception is in Europe, where a person living in France, for example, can buy tickets in France, or in Germany or in any other country that is under the European directive.
If tickets are not selling in certain countries, Tokyo 2020 has the right to take back those unsold tickets and re-sell them, or sell them on behalf of that country. But as Hanscom pointed out, this is unlikely for Tokyo2020, which is going to be a must-see Games.
Scalping will be illegal, as Japan enacted a ticket scalping law ahead of the 2019 Rugby World Cup and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. So for those in Japan, Tokyo 2020 will make a re-sale site available for those people who are not able to use their tickets, in order to offer their tickets to the public at face value.
Hanscom tells those of us who did not land tickets in the lottery to stay positive, that there will be other opportunities.
Tickets are released in blocs over time, so if you miss out on one or two of these opportunities, you’re going to continue to have opportunities next year if you are very diligent, and you put a lot of hard work in. You are going to be able to get a lot of the tickets you want from the market.
Open discussion on the possibility of postponing the Tokyo2020 Olympics during a popular Japanese news program, Sunday Japon, this morning on TBS_March 15,2020
Standing in the middle of the office, I let out an audible “woah.”
It was around noon on Thursday, March 12 (Japan time) and I saw on my phone that the NBA had just suspended the season after learning that a player for the Utah Jazz (later revealed as center Rudy Gobert) had tested positive for coronavirus. Seemingly minutes later, I saw that Tom Hanks and his wife Rita announced that they too have tested positive while on a movie shoot in Australia.
The NBA is an organization that generates over $8 billion a year and the average franchise is valued at over $2 billion, and it suspended all games in the midst of a playoff drive, probably ending the opportunity for their greatest revenue generating opportunity – the NBA playoffs in May and June.
Tom Hanks is a two-time Oscar award winner for best actor and one of the most beloved actors in the world, and he put a human face on the virus for billions of us.
In the next 36 hours, those major quakes were followed by a quick succession of aftershocks in the sports world: cancellation or postponement of the Major League Soccer season, the NHL during their run to the playoffs, the popular NCAA men’s and women’s basketball championship tournaments, the MLB pre-season and opening day, The Masters golf championship, the Boston Marathon…and that was just the United States.
People like myself, who have not been personally impacted by the growing pandemic in any serious way, were given a reality check. We watched the news with growing alarm, followed the news in hot spots like China, Korea and Italy with concern, obeyed the instructions of health experts, but pretty much went about our lives because we are fortunate enough to do so.
But then came the rash of major cancellations and postponements, the news of global travel restrictions, plummeting stock markets and invocation of national emergencies….many of us are now experiencing, on a much smaller scale, what people who are directly impacted by the virus have already gone through: Shock.
Shock is the first phase of The Change Curve, the emotional reaction people have to sudden change, or very bad news. Based on a model that explains how people deal with terminal illness developed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, the Change Curve shows how people go through stages that include denial, anger, depression and acceptance. In my world of leadership development, we use a framework that provides shorthand for that curve: SARA, which stands for Shock, Anger, Resistance, and Acceptance.
The early images of Wuhan, China, where the outbreak originated, were of shock and anger, particularly regarding lack of transparency about how bad the situation was, the silencing and martyrdom of the doctor who first tried to spread the news of the virus in Wuhan, and the fact that the Chinese government waited till mid January to inform residents that the virus could spread via contact with other people. By the end of January, over 50 million people in China saw their cities and towns placed in lockdown, anger boiling over with attacks on doctors or spitting on elevator buttons.
There is no doubt still a great deal of anxiety in China, but recent reports out of major cities in China report an acceptance of sorts, a new normal of everyday life, where almost all moments of the day are spent inside one’s home, where streets are empty except for delivery bikes. Oscar Fuchs, a Brit living in Shanghai, wrote in the middle of February, that he has gotten used to living behind locked gates in a country where swift and strong action was taken to clamp down on social interaction.
I don’t feel under siege. And as inconvenient as these restrictions are, I don’t find them stressful. I find them comforting. There’s a stoicism in my community of Chinese neighbors that is very calming. And everyday changes to regulations are being superbly well-organised and communicated. It makes me feel that China and the Chinese people are on top of this. And it makes me feel that mindset is everything.
In fact, the levels of safety and security compared to the rising concern in the rest of the world has created the perception that China is safer than other countries just starting to deal with the growing shock, anger and resistance to coronavirus. At least that is how Tony Perman, an associate professor at Grinnell College, views China after recently returning to the US from Shanghai.
When my family returned to the United States after six weeks of quarantine in Shanghai, our friends and relatives responded with congratulations and relief that we were finally safe. Less than a week since arriving back home, however, we don’t quite share our loved ones’ sentiments. We felt safer in Shanghai as conditions improved than we do in the U.S.
I’ve now lived through a coronavirus quarantine in the two countries, and the differences are stark well beyond their airports. In China, the obligation to isolate felt shared and the public changed their habits almost immediately. Sterilization, cleanliness and social distancing were prioritized by everyone at all times. Rightly or wrongly, the Chinese state’s heavy-handed approach seemed to work.
We do not know how long the COVID-19 pandemic will last. Many of us are still in the early stages of the change curve. For me personally, it’s been a succession of shock-anger-resistance cycles. During the Diamond Princess scare in February, I shared the armchair frustration and anger, but continued to attend networking events where large groups of people attended.
Then there were the series of corporate or chamber of commerce events that I was personally involved with that had to be postponed, with the hope that they would be re-scheduled for early Spring or Summer.
And while various officials would speak out on the possible cancellation or postponement of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, I joined Tokyo2020 officials in the belief that the Show would go on as scheduled, wishfully believing that something so big, with so many stakeholders, with so much invested, could not be cancelled or postponed.
But the rapid-fire shocks of recent events have had a desensitizing effect on me. The reality is, the health and welfare of people around the world, whether they be members of our own family, friends, athletes, or world leaders for that matter, is far more important than a sporting event, even a mega, big-tent event like the Summer Olympics.
To be honest, I am still in that resistance stage, hoping that the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics will take place as scheduled. But as expressions of shock, anger and resistance continue to grow well beyond Asia, and uncertainty persists as to when a reliable treatment or cure will emerge, it is hard to imagine a world that is secure and confident enough to congregate in July by the tens of thousands in one city – Tokyo.
I’m not quite at the second “A” in SARA, but I’m getting there.
And once there, I hope to add the letter “H,” which represents healing and hope.
Normalcy will return. But not until the change curve has run its course.
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