Tokyo 2020 has been hit by a string of scandals, including the exit of senior officials over derogatory comments about women, Holocaust jokes and bullying.
Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee, said in his opening speech addressing the athletes: “The lesson we learned is we need more solidarity – more solidarity among societies, and solidarity within societies.”īut the shift towards greater inclusiveness has not come without stumbles. “I have no words to describe the feelings I have right now but I do know I am currently filled with gratefulness and thankfulness.” “Undoubtedly the greatest athletic achievement and honor I will ever have in my life,” Osaka wrote in a tweet. It was finally handed to Osaka, the 23-year-old four-time tennis grand slam champion whose background as the daughter of a Haitian man and Japanese woman reflects the changes and slowly growing diversity coming to a once ethnically homogeneous country. In its journey through the stadium, the torch was passed from Olympic champions to baseball legends – one born in Taiwan – a doctor and a nurse, a Paralympian, and children from parts of Japan hit badly by the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011. Postponed by a year due to the coronavirus, the Games are being held without spectators in a city under a COVID-induced state of emergency, as many other parts of the globe also still struggle with a resurgence of cases.Īthletes, the vast majority wearing masks, paraded through an eerily silent National Stadium where flagbearers for the first time were both men and women and the Canadian delegation marched with rainbow badges on their uniforms in support of the LGBTQ+ community. TOKYO (Japan): Tennis ace and Japan’s global superstar Naomi Osaka on Friday lit the Olympic cauldron to mark the start of Tokyo 2020, in an opening ceremony shorn of glitz and overshadowed by a pandemic but defined by hope, tradition and gestures of diversity.
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