Japan lied about the weather at its Olympic bid

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TOKYO – The finish line of Monday morning’s men’s triathlon looked like a battlefield scene, bodies sprawled on the ground, coaches offered to help frantic athletes, few even being helped as they rolled their arms over their shoulders.

This is despite moving the start of the Olympics to 6:30 a.m. in an effort to beat the heat that, as this Tokyo Games proved, remains undefeated. Temperatures still hit 85 degrees with a relative humidity of 67.1 percent at start time.

No, the Japanese don’t have to apologize for the weather here – the scorching sun, the high temperatures in the sky, the dampness of pea soup. Nobody tells Mother Nature what to do.

But as the athletes continue to wilt and wilt under the circumstances, they owe everyone such an apology: they lied so hard about it.

“With many days of mild and sunny weather, this period provides an ideal climate for athletes to perform at their best.”

This quote comes from Japan’s official proposal to host the 2020 Summer Olympics.

Nice? ideal? Here in Tokyo in July?

“I wasn’t enjoying it at all,” Russian tennis player Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova said after competing on Saturday in circumstances that left everyone from archers to volunteers and officials fainting.

Daytime temperatures reached from the mid-90s up, with precipitation points in the mid-70s, a combination that ensures triple-digit heat indices. This is a tropical site. Places such as tennis, beach volleyball, cycling, etc. are open and outdoors.

The scene at the finish line of the men’s triathlon looked like a battlefield, as the athletes seemed to beat the sweltering heat in Tokyo.

“Playing in extreme temperatures and in extreme humidity is a huge challenge,” said Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic. “It’s something we knew when coming to Tokyo, we heard and we expected conditions were going to be very difficult, but before you come here and experience that, you don’t really know how difficult it is.”

These are, literally, the best athletes in the world. When they say it’s hard, it’s hard. So why did the Japanese claim otherwise? And why did the IOC give her the offer without commenting on the terms ahead, let them say that?

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Japan’s proposal promised that “meteorological conditions during the proposed Games period will be reasonable.”

Every athlete has to deal with the same situation, so it’s not fair to say it’s unfair. However, when you’ve trained your whole life to compete in the Olympics, you can probably expect a situation that might improve performance, not punish it.

Japan knew it was a liar. They live here. No Tokyoite would describe midsummer here as ‘moderate’ or ‘perfect’. In 2014, not long after the city received the bid, a column in the Japan Times questioned how this would work in the world.

“I’ve been to Manila, Bangkok, Jakarta, Phnom Penh and Singapore in the middle of summer and in my experience Tokyo is the absolute worst,” author Robert Whiting wrote. “The only conceivable and worst places are the games organization, for example, Death Valley, California, or the Horn of Africa.”

Death Valley 2036? Do not give any ideas to the IOC.

Heat wave hits Tokyo Olympics slideshow

Tokyo, by how you measure it, is the largest city in the world, with a metro population of over 34 million. It is modern, friendly, beautiful and clean. It is a wonderful place. Except this time of year.

And they knew it, but claimed otherwise anyway, even bragging that they would provide a place “where athletes could perform at their best.”

The last time Tokyo hosted the Summer Games was in 1964. It was held in October to avoid these kinds of circumstances. That’s logical.

Well, Japan is now 3.6 degrees warmer on average, according to government figures. The number of days 95 or more averaged over one day per year increased to 12. In both 2018 and 2020, it hit a record high of 106, part of heatwaves that saw hundreds of deaths.

The good news so far is that it hasn’t gotten that bad.

“It’s going to be very difficult to operate as usual,” said Carl Parker, storm specialist with the Weather Channel. “At these levels, athletes are really energized and start to sweat. The body uses evaporation to cool itself down, but this is not nearly as effective which is why they sweat more.”

The Summer Games start between mid-July and late August now because these months produce much higher TV ratings around most of the world. This is especially true in the United States, when NBC doesn’t have to compete with the NFL, college football, the start of the school year, or anything else.

Because money is always talking to the IOC, here we are. Perhaps the athletes’ concerns mattered in 1964. That was at the time. This is billions.

So Japan presented a comical vision of perfect summer days, like a breeze across northern Wisconsin. The IOC only pretended not to notice and nodded directly.

“what or what [is] The Japan Times has questioned for nearly a decade what the penalty, if any, for false advertisements is.

Whatever the case, the athletes seem to be pushing it.

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