Have you imagined an olympic 100m final in an empty stadium?
There are possibilities that the tokyo 2020 olympics could hold behind closed doors because of the deadly coronavirus.
Sports in tokyo this weekend is a huge pointer to this assumption.
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The streets of tokyo were relatively empty as ethiopian birhanu legeses won the tokyo marathon for the second year in a row while empty rows, empty seats, and not even a single fan was cheering the baseball players at tokyo dome on saturday.
Locals were strongly discouraged from lining the marathon route, as the race was restricted to a few hundred elite athletes, rather than the 30,000 amateur runners while japan’s professional baseball teams staged pre-season openers behind closed doors.
This has raised concerns from sports fans in tokyo who are already looking forward to the start of the olympics.
Prime minister shinzo abe and the president of the international olympic committee, IOC thomas bach have said the games will go ahead.
Bach said his organisation was “fully committed” to the july 24 start, dismissing other options as “speculation.”
Japan has recorded more than 940 cases of coronavirus, including 705 from the diamond princess cruise liner which was quarantined near tokyo this month.
