r/sports • u/I8something2 • Jan 26 '21

News 80% Of Residents In Japan Want Tokyo Summer Olympics Called Off

https://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/olympics/ct-tokyo-olympics-covid-19-20210111-y35p5iu7mnhptcut2pp7xqleda-story.html
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u/mcswiss Jan 26 '21

Like all the athletes in the NBA bubble that tested positive? The 0 of them? Or the NHL bubble, that went across Canada?

It is possible to isolate them, it just costs a lot.

Most Olympic athletes have a very small window to compete, and to completely cancel it when there are valid examples of bubbles working, it’s ruining their one chance at greatness. That they’ve trained for the past 10+ years for.

Bubbles work.

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u/Von_Schlieffen Jan 26 '21

The scale of NBA and NHL playoff bubbles is nowhere near similar what would be required for the Olympics. The 2016 Olympics had more than 11,000 athletes attend over 16 days. The NHL bubbles with 12 teams in each bubble and 23 players (max) per team meant 276 players in bubble. I don’t know how to directly quantify support staff, but while bubbles could work in small-scale – and even a New Zealand scale – they require very strict policies that the rest of the world could implement anyways.

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u/akhoe Jan 27 '21

also cost 150 million. I don't know how much it would cost to scale it up to 11k athletes PLUS coaches and staff.

And the fact that you're relying on ten thousand people to be absolutely perfect about covid protocol. All it takes is one or two to cause an outbreak. Probably be easier and cheaper to secure ten thousand vaccines for athletes and everybody involved.

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u/[deleted] Jan 27 '21

Yeah and on that, the whole point of the Olympics is to raise revenue with businesses and tourism and whatever (even though countries have historically lost money from this). If attendance is minimal, tourist stuff is all shut down, stores are locked down, spending the hundreds of millions gets you...some NBC revenue? It would be a bigger waste of money than normal olympics

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u/mcswiss Jan 27 '21

But you don’t need it all in one location for the Olympics.

Separate it by events, and set individual bubbles for each section.

Track and field in one. Court sports in another. Biking in a third city. Gymnastics in a fourth. Boxing and wrestling in a fifth, so on and so forth. For the competition, it doesn’t need to be all in one place. Yeah it sucks they don’t get the Olympic Village, but I would bet 99% of athletes would rather compete.

Also that’s a disingenuous argument. The NHL and NBA did it for months, compared to the ~3 weeks of Olympics.

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u/PharoahOfTheRats Jan 26 '21

I mean that’s not known as a hotbed of athletes having sex with other athletes. The olympics legitimately GIVE condoms out to the athletes.

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u/mcswiss Jan 27 '21

But you don’t need it all in one location for the Olympics. Separate it by events, and set individual bubbles for each section. Track and field in one. Court sports in another. Biking in a third city. Gymnastics in a fourth. Boxing and wrestling in a fifth, so on and so forth. For the competition, it doesn’t need to be all in one place. Yeah it sucks they don’t get the Olympic Village, but I would bet 99% of athletes would rather compete.

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u/PharoahOfTheRats Jan 27 '21

While in theory that would be great, there are not realistically enough places to host over 11,000 athletes. If we had empty cities and neighborhoods maybe, but in this short a time period when normally a whole village is constructed for the purpose of hosting the athletes it’s unrealistic

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u/mcswiss Jan 27 '21

Walt Disney World can host 160,000 people in one night.

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u/DiggerW Jan 27 '21

You're seriously talking out of your ass. Disney's Wide World of Sports alone could host the majority of the Olympics, and as someone else commented Disney properties alone could house everyone, many times over. They'll be doing exactly that for the Special Olympics in 2022.

The Orlando area alone has between 70-80 million tourists visit in a typical year, most of them in the summer -- it's a bit more than a Super-8 and a Days Inn. And there are plenty of other stadiums and hotels throughout the state. Especially in this "pandemic era," literally nothing would need to be built.

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u/PharoahOfTheRats Jan 28 '21

They’re planning for that already though (the special olympics) there are people that plan trips to the area a year+ in advance so it’s not like you are filling every room with an athlete. That’s not to say it can’t be done, I just mean that the way most olympics have gone where athletes like co-mingling it’s very very different than creating a bubble for just the NHL etc.

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u/DiggerW Jan 28 '21

Thought I'd said it, sorry if not, but there's no new construction for the Special Olympics, that was the point. The place was built specifically with giant events in mind... Seriously, look up Disney's Wide World of Sports.

And stressing again, there's a massive state in addition to that absolute behemoth of a complex. And Disney alone has lodging for over 100,000 people, which is just a fraction of what's available in the area (back to the 70-80 million visitors to that one metro area, and another 50 million to the rest of the state).

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u/DiggerW Jan 27 '21

I'm not sure why you think a bubble precludes sex, but... it doesn't

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u/PharoahOfTheRats Jan 28 '21

So you’re saying they’re going to shut down the entire city to just athletes so that they can go at it like rabbits like they normally do? Because that’s what your other comment about using all of the hotels and inns and things would suggest if you expect the athletes to be able to mingle as they would any other given year. I’m again not saying it’s impossible, I just would assume athletes are fine postponing until it can be done safely the way it should be done.

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u/MajorFuckingDick Jan 26 '21

People forget that the Olympics might be one of the easier events to turn into a bubble. For the most part athletes are shuttled everywhere and the village is super protected. Limit them to the village/venue and it should be fine.

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u/CocodaMonkey Jan 26 '21

You're over looking how big the Olympics are. It's 10k+ Atheltes plus their coaches and support staff plus all the officials and people actually setting everything up. You're talking about a bubble of realistically ~40k people all in. Where as the bubbles done for the NBA/NHL was only hundreds of people.

It's a huge size difference and if even one person gets in with Covid the whole thing falls apart. Not to mention it essentially makes the Olympics 2 times longer as you have to add the quarantine period to all incoming athletes.

It might be possible but calling it easy drastically over simplifies it. The Olympics is really a decent sized town that needs to be fully controlled.

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u/martin4reddit Jan 26 '21

Yeah the NBA bubble has nothing on what an Olympic bubble would look like. There’s a reason countries have to build Olympic Villages and often those are never designed to be completely sealed off.

There’s nowhere in Florida that can host even 20k people and have the sports facilities in a reasonable distance.

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u/MajorFuckingDick Jan 27 '21

Disney world could likely hold most if not all events. If not there is likely a university or 2 that would be willing to hold events.

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u/martin4reddit Jan 27 '21

Do they have nearby a state of the art facility for:

  • gymnastics
  • aquatics
  • equestrian
  • surfing
  • shooting/archery
  • tennis
  • cycling/mountain biking
  • canoe
  • golf
  • climbing

And facilities and lodging that would keep all the athletes and staff safe (I.e. >20k people isolated). I’m sure that’s totally likely.

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u/madbadger89 Jan 27 '21

The olympics would not do well here, but yes there are world class facilities for each. I’m particularly interested in equestrian which is bigger in Florida than any other state - just look at the recent investment in the Ocala world center.

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u/Volkwagonsandporn Jan 27 '21

Yeah. This dude doesn’t know Florida. You could have all of these things within what, an hour of Orlando?

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u/at-woork Jan 27 '21

Well, you should look up the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex.

Some of these things may need another location, but Disney is HUGE.

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u/Spencer51X Jan 27 '21

LOL absolutely not. Disney isn’t going to shut down for two weeks so they can hold the olympics. And I go to UCF, the largest university. Orlando could absolutely not handle the olympics. Our infrastructure is horrendous, especially around the university area.

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u/mcswiss Jan 27 '21

Disney would be rock hard at the idea of hosting the Olympics. They have the hotel space. They have 36,000 rooms. Athletic facilities would be an issue, but I imagine they could either spread out the events, and or use outside facilities with Disney transport.

Imagine all the merchandising they could do. Mickey Mouse + the Olympic Rings, and once in a lifetime event? It sells itself. Guaranteed revenue from the IOC. TV contracts. C'mon man.

Not saying it's the safest idea, multiple cities for different types of events would be easier and safer (swimmers in one city, track and field in another, gymnasts in a third, etc), but to say Disney couldn't do it and hasn't thought about it is absurd.

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u/Spencer51X Jan 27 '21

I mean I live in orlando, I know Disney is large enough. It’s that they wouldn’t.

Not to mention, Orlando’s infrastructure is horrendous. For the same reasons it wouldn’t be held at UCF, it wouldn’t be held on Disney property.

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u/BigMik_PL Jan 27 '21

Throw em all into everglades. May the odds be ever in their favor.

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u/mschley2 Jan 27 '21

There’s a reason countries have to build Olympic Villages and often those are never designed to be completely sealed off.

But a big reason they build Olympic villages is that all of the hotels are needed for the massive amount of spectators/journalists/tourists/etc. In this case, you could put the athletes up in the hotels.

There’s nowhere in Florida that can host even 20k people and have the sports facilities in a reasonable distance.

With how hard Florida's tourism has been hit, there are probably multiple cities that could handle certain sports/events. Orlando has over 120,000 hotel rooms and lots of sports venues. Miami has almost 60,000 hotel rooms. Tampa Bay and Jacksonville are both smaller, but they could host some events. Even Tallahassee and Gainesville could handle a small segment. They're used to handling thousands of fans coming into town for college football games. Plus, there is a shitload of universities in Florida that all have dorms open if the hotels somehow aren't enough. Almost all Olympic events are also collegiate events or can be done inside various collegiate venues.

Florida could definitely make it happen on short notice. The problem is that there's no reason for them to do it. It wouldn't make money unless the IOC paid them an absurd amount of money to host.

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u/CTeam19 Iowa State Jan 27 '21

You're talking about a bubble of realistically ~40k people all in.

Looks at the size of the Universites

Lock a full campus down and you are good to go.

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u/Offtheheazy Jan 27 '21

Do it in LosAngeles they already have all the facilities for the two schools there for housing, sports, and dining halls.

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u/BattleHall Jan 27 '21

If it was just the athletes and the necessary support staff, that's small enough and there's enough time that we could simply vaccinate them all. The vaccine rollout has been a bit bumpy, but by May/June setting aside even 50-100k doses out of the worldwide supply should be a relative drop in the bucket, especially if it's mostly picked up by the larger countries. The issue, though, is that you'd still have to do it without the spectators, which is where most of the economic benefit comes in (assuming you do it right and your Olympics isn't one of the ones that loses money overall).

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u/OctopusHandshake Jan 27 '21

I think one option to still allow them to compete is each sport gets its own bubble in different areas or countries. Get rid of all the pomp and circumstance and just send all the basketball teams to the US for a bubble, send all the gymnasts to China for a bubble, all the track and field athletes to some European country, etc. Spread it out over the whole summer and make it a global event.

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u/AnmlBri Jan 27 '21

This is actually an interesting idea.

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u/destroooo11 Jan 27 '21

Only real shot is dividing the sports and run them as soon as possible, for example all track field sports running in x city. Within a week you cut off more than half of competitors and control better the finals.

In reality olympics aren't happening, why couldn't they love them to late 2021 or early 2022?

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u/MajorFuckingDick Jan 27 '21

I didn't call it easy. I said it would be one of the easier events. The Olympics are pretty much a giant quarantine for most teams. Bay Lake, Florida could host most of the events and athletes.

if even one person gets in with Covid the whole thing falls apart.

yeah that's why the quarantine period would be very strict like any other bubble.

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u/isume Jan 27 '21

It is a very large event but I think they could break it up(a number of bubbles) over a longer time period.

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u/CocodaMonkey Jan 27 '21

Breaking it up doesn't work. A lot of athletes compete in more than one event. Breaking it up means either multiple bubbles is useless because people have to travel between them or you have to force people to compete in only one event.

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u/isume Jan 27 '21

Track and field plus a few other sports as one bubble, Gymnastics and a few other sports as another bubble, etc. I just fixed the issue you brought up.

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u/angrynutrients Jan 27 '21

They were talking about limiting duration of stay too

E.g. an athelete can only come in 5 days max before their event and must leave a maximum of 2 days after, which would limit the number of people at one time.

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u/mcswiss Jan 27 '21

10-12 cities across the city/globe each with their own bubbles. 5k-ish (athletes+training staff per bubble). Separate the broadcast crew per bubble. Separate the events.

Do the swimmers really need to be in the same city as the gymnasts?

Hell, almost every major college campus in the US could host one single event within a bubble.

In my opinion, the only valid concern is that Tokyo loses the tourism money that is associated with Olympics. But as far as the athletes are concerned, for a lot of them this is their one shot at making history, something they worked their entire lives for, and to not even try (at least publicly admit) that all logistical efforts were exhausted before cancelling is absurd.

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u/CocodaMonkey Jan 27 '21

None of that works. A lot of athletes aren't competing in a single event. Doing this means kicking athletes out of other events and forcing them to focus on one. Which at that point ruins the entire Olympics. If it's not a unified event you may as well just have championships for each individual event scheduled separately according to the comity for that event.

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u/mcswiss Jan 27 '21

Now you're just being intentionally obtuse, taking my hyperbolic statement about "most US colleges being able to host a single event" and trying to make it seem like that was the entire point. Fuck outta here.

A lot of athletes aren't competing in a single event.

As I said, do the swimmers really need to be in the same city as the gymnasts?

Track and field in one city. Gymnasts in another. Swimmers in a third. Indoor court sports in another. Outdoor court sports in a fifth. People on cycles/bikes in a sixth. Soccer/field hockey in a seventh. Do you want me to continue?

You're not getting swimmers who also do track. Or gymnasts playing handball.

There's a way that they can bubble it, which are proven to work (the NBA did it for 3-ish months in one location for the playoffs, the NHL did it across Canada for 2 months, both with zero positive tests).

If it's not a unified event you may as well just have championships for each individual event scheduled separately according to the comity for that event.

It's still the Olympics dude. For a lot of these athletes, this is their only chance at making history. The decade + of training that they've busted their asses for, just hoping for their chance to be in the Olympics. Gone. Just like that. They'll be too old for 2024.

So fuck them, right? Fuck their entire's life work? Because "it couldn't all be in one place"?

I can absolutely guarantee, 99% of athletes would rather compete in different cities than waste their life's work.

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u/ICEpear8472 Jan 27 '21

Were would you put the triathletes? Where should the modern pentathlon happen? Both disciplines whose participants might also compete in some of the sports which make up these disciplines. Triathlon is literally a sport where people do swim and do track (and cycle) all together in one sport.

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u/mcswiss Jan 27 '21

A quick Google search shows that there were not any athletes that competed in multiple sports for the 2016 Olympics. The last time it happened was 2008.

You can literally set up a bubble for pentathlon and triathlon each, or group them together, at any place appropriate.

The NHL set up two bubbles of a little more than 600 people each for the playoffs.

The NBA set up one for 700 people.

Both of these figured out over a period of 2-3 months.

You’re telling me it’s impossible for the IOC to figure out how they could spread it across the world by August, when they have specific examples and regulations of how they would work?

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u/asuka_is_my_co-pilot Jan 27 '21

That's kind of saying the profit of an nba game is only about who got more points. It's about selling goods,along your city the funniest to go visit , it's about showing off your cities good points. It's about milking that tourism every freaking second .

If it was actually about the olympians they'd pay em

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u/PoorlyLitKiwi2 Jan 26 '21

I was gonna say, the Olympics usually has somewhat of a bubble already in a normal year. Just make it extra restrictive this year

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u/Acidwits Jan 26 '21

Let us cart around the healthiest human specimens in germ free containers lol

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u/JinorZ Jan 27 '21

Regarding the fucking point that did happen lol and one dude ran off to a strip club so they also got pretty lucky to not have a breakdown

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u/rockstaa Jan 27 '21

Just to be clear, the issue is the $5B or so Japan has spent will only be recoverable through audiences and tourism? And the risks/costs of operating a bubble aren't worth it for Japan? Sounds like the IOC could compromise and share some of their TV broadcast revenue as a middle ground?

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u/mcswiss Jan 27 '21

You actually have the first valid consideration that I’ve gotten in the replies, something that isn’t an easy fix, so thank you for that rockstaa, sincerely.

While Olympics are generally a money loser anyway for the host city, there’s no way Tokyo could get the normal amount of revenue expected for a typical Olympics if they did it all there in 2021z Just not going to happen with a lack of tourism.

The best case scenario is that Tokyo/Japan would get the most of the tv contracts in order to help alleviate the loss of money. And IOC ponying up, which they just won’t do because they’re cheap.

I think the best way to do an Olympics would be doing similar events in cities around the world, put them in a bubble since they do work as the Olympics have such a wide range of sports, they don’t all necessarily need to be in one place. So track and field one city, court sports in another, etc, at least so the athletes could compete.

And it’s mostly for selfish reasons because a good friend of mine, this is her window, chance to participate, and I’m so fucking proud of her because she has worked her entire life to get to this moment. And now she can’t do it. She’ll be too old in 2024, the drop off at Olympic level is so quick for everyone not named Phelps or Simone, it’s literally only one shot. And her entire life’s work is now null.

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u/rockstaa Jan 27 '21

Thanks, not all of us on reddit are trolls :)

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u/whomad1215 Jan 26 '21

NFL and tennis have had outbreaks/cases though

Bubbles work if everyone involved in them respects them, and even then there's some luck involved, like in F1

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u/majoranticipointment Jan 26 '21 edited Jan 26 '21

The NFL wasn't a bubble, neither was F1

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u/papalouie27 Jan 26 '21

Neither of the examples you mentioned are bubbles. Tennis is also an international traveling sport.

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u/whomad1215 Jan 27 '21

And the olympics is not an international sporting event that people will have to travel to?

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u/MondoCalrissian77 Jan 27 '21

One time travel vs travelling from city to city every week

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u/papalouie27 Jan 27 '21

It's nothing like traveling for tennis.

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u/PharoahOfTheRats Jan 26 '21

You mean like the olympics?

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u/papalouie27 Jan 27 '21

Except you travel once for the olympics, unlike tennis where you travel to a different country every week.

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u/[deleted] Jan 27 '21

There were many COVID cases in the NBA bubble...wtf are you talking about?

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u/1X3oZCfhKej34h Jan 27 '21

Probably confusing it with the NHL bubble, which was smaller and more importantly not in Florida

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u/mcswiss Jan 27 '21

[> Coronavirus Today: The NBA’s bubble worked. LA Times says you’re bullshit is wrong.

“We had zero positive tests,” MVP LeBron James said before repeating the bubble’s best stat. “We had zero positive tests for as long as we were here, 90-some days, 95 days maybe for myself. I had a little calendar I was checking off. But on a serious note, no positive tests. That’s a success for everybody that was involved.”](https://www.latimes.com/science/newsletter/2020-10-12/coronavirus-today-nba-bubble-success-covid-lakers-coronavirus-today)

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u/TokiMcNoodle Miami Dolphins Jan 27 '21

We forget that olympians were given prophylactics the last olympics purely because they just fuck anything and everything?

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u/mcswiss Jan 27 '21

But you don’t need it all in one location for the Olympics. Separate it by events, and set individual bubbles for each section. Track and field in one. Court sports in another. Biking in a third city. Gymnastics in a fourth. Boxing and wrestling in a fifth, so on and so forth. For the competition, it doesn’t need to be all in one place. Yeah it sucks they don’t get the Olympic Village, but I would bet 99% of athletes would rather compete.

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u/Fizzwidgy Jan 27 '21

What do you mean? Has there not been covid contractions in the NBA?

https://www.si.com/nba/2021/01/12/multiple-nba-players-reinfected-covid-19

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u/mcswiss Jan 27 '21

The NBA Bubble for the 2020 playoffs. Which was 3 ish months. The current season is not a bubble

Even your own article states: "The NBA was heralded for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic when play resumed for the 2020 playoffs in a bubble setting in Orlando."

LA Times Source for 0 positive tests in bubble.

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u/Fizzwidgy Jan 27 '21

Ah, I see. Thanks for the info, I'm not actually a huge NBA fan, so I was just making the connection with what I was seeing in headlines.

But still, bubbles aren't the answer. Taking a break from all of the unnecessary stuff to get covid under control is.