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© 2021 AFPSayonara Tokyo, bonjour Paris: Summer Olympic focus switches to 2024
PARIS©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.
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© 2021 AFP
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fish10
Good riddance
Randy Johnson
Paris had a nice, well done intro during the closing ceremony.
TheTruthIsOutThere
Panem et circenses
This is what Olympics are like all professional sports.
Just Money money money... and of course politics
Tom Doley
Bye bye comedy festival. It wasn’t funny in the end with all the lies supporting this. Can’t wait for Paris to see the real Olympics.
Chico3
Adios Bach and good riddance!
Kitchener Leslie
Thank you citizens of Japan for paying 20 billion dollars for something you didn’t even want. Thanks for 3 weeks in a luxury hotel. Good luck with corona! Bye!
ShotenGuy
Good. Much better scenery in Paris. Next up...winter Olympics in Beijing...skip! No thanks.
JeffLee
The Games went ahead so as to symbolize the global defeat of the coronavirus. Remember that? What a joke.
Pukey2
For France's sake, I hope they learn from the fiasco known as Tokyo. Winter Olympics, here we come.
Sanjinosebleed
Hopefully this covid lunacy will be over by 2024!!!
Fighto!
Bye bye bad rubbish.
KariHaruka
And very likely to return to Sapporo in 2030 for the Winter Olympics.....
livvy
The abrupt shift to thinking of the Paris Olympics makes my stomach churn. This roller-coaster hadn't yet come to a full stop!
We don't even have the full information yet on the virus spread consequences, and psychological consequences on the hosts of these games. I appreciate that the Olympians are going home in good health -- but they were never the main risk in this pandemic, being young and in extremely good health.
I'd still like to know, for example, why the accounting manager of the JOC committed suicide just before the games? And how many Olympics volunteers will end up in the hospital with covid-19? And how about the thousands of shuttle bus drivers who came from outside Tokyo, worked 12-hour shifts with no anti-virus protection, no PCR testing protocol, nothing but a mask, and who slept in dormitories during their time in Tokyo. They are presently headed home to places all over Japan.
My stomach churns at all these things and I'm in no way prepared to read news about the Paris Olympics.
bass4funk
Bingo.
kwatt
Hope no coronavirus in 2024.
Phil
Looking like The french public is already having a better celebration of sport than we were able to have with our ill timed Olympics.
kwatt
Before Paris Olympics 2024, Beijing winter Olympics is coming very soon next year. Probably variant coronavirus is still spreading all over the world. No doubt Beijing Olympics would be held under the strict martial law and curfew to locals for two weeks. probably no spectators again if it gets worse. but no more infections in the city during Olympics.
NOMINATION
Boy, people sure hate on Japan hosting them as camera pans to Paris with crowds of people gathered together without masks, zero social distancing and a higher rate of Covid. Oh and there are many upon many people that are anti-vaccine there too that march in large protests. Yet everyone here is celebrating Paris.
tamanegi
Banzai and Arigato Tokyo! President Bach, Ms Hashimoto, Ms Koike, PM Suga, Mr Coates and Dick Pound amongst others are to be commended and honored for their perservance and hard work in making the Olympic happen for the athlete and the spirit of the Tohoku.
O'Brien
*Boy, people sure hate on Japan hosting them as camera pans to Paris with crowds of people gathered together without masks, zero social distancing and a higher rate of Covid. Oh and there are many upon many people that are anti-vaccine there too that march in large protests. Yet everyone here is celebrating Paris.*
The degree to which that will or will not change will depend on how Paris' preparation goes, and their attitude towards the IOC when the latter inevitably tries to pull a fast one on them in one way or another.
My guess is that where Japan rolled over and showed its belly, France will be somewhat less of a pushover.
kwatt
It seems to me people wish no more Olympics in the future, because everything is too expensive. Sapporo's finance is not good so far now. No one can predict much good snow at that time in 2030 because of climate change. Most people would not wish future Olympics any more and hope 2020 would be the last one.
Coulda been
Be interesting to see the fate of any Chinese athlete who did not win gold. Anything less is considerable an abject failure and unleashes their social media bad mouthing.
Stefan Drapeaufaux
Be interesting to see the fate of any Chinese athlete who did not win gold. Anything less is considerable an abject failure and unleashes their social media bad mouthing.
Bet the North Korean athletes were glad that they were ordered to boycott these games. "You did not win a medal. Report to the Dear Leader at 9 sharp tomorrow morning to explain yourself. Make peace with your creator beforehand".
shogun36
Hit the bricks, Bach.
Take Koike and Suga with you.
Good luck France.
MASSWIPE
Overall, I have to say that it will be a relief to see an Olympics host not plagued by assorted insecurities or a desire to display one's newfound hard and/or soft power to the world. Beijing 2008 was about the latter (so was Pyeongchang 2018), and Tokyo 2021 was impacted by the former (i.e. relatively speaking a declining power vis-a-vis growing regional rivals like China and South Korea). France went through the whole "insecure due to a rising regional power (namely Germany)" phase more than 100 years ago. It's not hosting in 2024 to display its newfound power to the world. It has none. France is a second-tier power happy to play junior partner in the EU to Germany. In other words, I hope it will be a restoration of the Olympics as a largely non-political event. Well, after Beijing 2022. For the CCP, everything is political.
Michael O’ Dereiter
Paris sounds like it'll be a lot of fun, but then I think of the massive price gouging that will inevitably take place, and the open season on the visitors by pickpockets. It gives one pause about going.
I consider myself a semi-Francophile; I can speak French moderately well and I've been there several times. I have to say that the last time I went to Paris, it was a mixed bag. The city itself is as elegant as always, but I didn't care for the roaming gangs of people with clipboards pretending to be doing surveys but actually intent on just scamming as many people as they could.
Plus coming from Japan, where shop staff are polite - if kind of robotic - the attitude of staff in France was just terrible. Like "WTF are you doing in my shop" terrible.
And I do specifically remember hearing the warnings about pickpockets on the subway. That's a pretty poor advertisement for a city planning on hosting something like the games.
ebisen
For all the hater TikToks here: it takes more than 10 hours of YouTube a day to become an Olympic athlete (to your surprise perhaps). Above all, this Olympics were for those people and their extremely hard work.
Iron Lad
Thank you Japan!
The chinese and russian, by far the hardest critics of Japan (next to South Korea), love it:
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202108/1230915.shtml
https://www.rt.com/sport/531435-tokyo-olympics-what-we-learned/
Japan has inspired the world.
DudeDeuce
I agree. Especially once they sensed that I didn't speak French, I got yelled at a few times though people spoke English pretty well. That was Paris though. Outside of Paris, French people seemed nice.
Pukey2
Coulda been:
You mean like when the three English football players during Euro2020 were subjected to racist abuse by their own fans?
Sven Asai
I just already smell the next postponement or in this case even a real cancellation.
rainyday
Remember how un-threatening it seemed when PM Abe appeared dressed up as Mario after the 2016 Olympics? Like lots of people were excited for this event in a few years time that, sure, was going to be a corrupt squandering of public resources but hey at least we'd have some fun while getting fleeced.
That is where France is right now. Poor suckers.
kohakuebisu
The IOC may want the focus to switch to Paris, but things are far from finished in Japan, i.e., the pandemic raging, big Olympic bills to pay, and the Para and Special Olympics to come.
There is also the huge elephant in the room that is prospective boycotts of Beijing over human rights abuses. Talk of this was only taken off the table to stop China boycotting Tokyo. Now that danger has passed, it's game on again.
gakinotsukai
Well by stating Paris = France in your speech, i considered you as a quarter-Francophile at best.
Visit others cities, there are big differences in atmosphere and politeness. Even french people consider parisians as arrogants and not welcoming.
CLJF
paris should have been made to wait until 2028 so the Tokyo games could be rescheduled to 2024. But the french didn't want to wait and we see what happened. So I can't celebrate the paris olympics.
snowymountainhell
Wasn’t Your 4:33pm ‘signature’ quote? ;
Seems ‘hypocritical’ from today’s @Kentarogaijin 9:20am:
Well, more flighty, than frumpy.
lostrune2
Take your vaccinations early enough, Frenchmen - so ya don't end up having to repeat another Tokyo
1glenn
The last pandemic lasted from 1918 to 1920, three years. If this one lasts three years, 2020 to 2022, then things will be back to normal in time for the 2024 Paris Olympics. I hope.
Seems like the internet makes it easy for people to be negative. That said, I enjoyed these Tokyo Olympics, and I think they were well done.