Tokyo : International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach on Friday praised athletes from around the world for giving the coronavirus-marred Tokyo Games a “soul.”
Bach said the Games had by far exceeded his expectations and spoke of a feeling of togetherness as athletes had been grateful that the Olympics delayed from 2020 could take place at all, amid a tight hygiene protocol and behind closed doors at most venues.
“After we had to accept the decision to have no spectators, I must admit that I was concerned these Games could become Games without a soul. But what we have seen here is totally different,” he told a news conference.
“The athletes gave the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 a great Olympic soul … The atmosphere in the Olympic Village has been more intense than ever before.”
The IOC president named the sporting level “extremely and surprisngly high” and named the Games with new sports including skate boarding and sports climbing “more youthful, more urban, more gender-balanced, bringing in new audiences, new communities.”
There was wide-ranging opposition from the Japanese public to staging the Games amid the pandemic, and infection rates are still rising in Tokyo which remains under a state of emergency, said dpa international.
But Bach praised the protocol, insisting that “the Olympic community has been the best tested community anywhere in the world during the last few weeks.”
He said in all more than 600,000 coronavirus tests have been conducted, with only 0.08 per cent of the arrival tests and 0.02 per cent of the tests at the Games positive.
And Bach dismissed the suggestion the Games had played a part in the rapidly increasing infection number in Tokyo, saying there was no evidence for it.
Bach thanked the Japanese organizers and authorities and said that Japan had been gripped by Olympic fever after all, helped by a strong performance of the home team in Japan’s most successful Games
“The very strong performance of Japanese athletes has contributed a lot to this success and how much the Japanese people are supporting and embracing these Games,” Bach said.
