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MAKUHARI, Japan — One of the biggest clowns successful the Olympics’ five-ring circus snickered astatine his ain atrocious joke.
COVID-19 was thing much than a nuisance to the Summer Games, according to International Olympic Committee enforcement committee subordinate Nenad Lalovic.
He’s kidding, right?
No, Lalovic meant it. I scratched my caput successful disbelief Sunday arsenic helium insisted a pandemic that has killed 4 cardinal radical astir the satellite was over-hyped arsenic a information to this big, made-for-TV Olympic show.
“There are ever opponents to the Olympic Games everywhere,” Lalovic said with a smirk, arsenic helium launched into a rant astir however COVID had “imprisoned” 19 days of diversion contention with overwrought fear.
“I don’t cognize if you remember, but successful Beijing (2008), we each had to dice from pollution. In London, we had been threatened that we would detonate unneurotic underground. In Rio, we should each person been killed by the Zika mosquito. But it didn’t happen.”
Charmed by his ain wit, Lalovic cavalierly ignored the information a beleaguered big metropolis has suffered a grounds spike successful COVID-19 infections during the Games, with much than 4,000 caller cases reported Friday. What a joke. If smugness were a sin, this feline would beryllium doomed to eternal damnation.
And Lalovic isn’t conscionable immoderate guy. He’s not lone a powerfulness broker successful the wrestling world, but the 63-year-old businessman from Belgrade, Serbia, has besides been touted arsenic a campaigner to regenerate Thomas Bach erstwhile the IOC president’s 2nd word expires successful 2025.
Under strict COVID protocols that forbid maine from drinking a brew successful a barroom with the locals, I traveled to the eastbound borderline of the sprawling Tokyo metroplex, delighted to ticker Denver wrestler Adeline Gray pursuit her imagination of a golden medal.
During a interruption betwixt sessions, however, I besides got a heaping helping of folderol from Lalovic, who proclaimed the Olympics had defeated COVID, arsenic if simply saying truthful could marque it so.
“Today we basal unneurotic with the media, athletes, National Olympic Committees and countries taking portion successful this Games, to combat the pandemic. This is the champion way: by having the Olympics,” declared Lalovic, puffing retired his thorax with the certainty of a antheral unwilling to judge immoderate information but his own.
He harrumphed that absorption to the Games was much astir governmental rabble-rousing than morganatic interest for the wellness of Japanese citizens.
“A politically hard situation, each (this) unit from the absorption and truthful on,” Lalovic said. “But astatine the end, each of this has been forgotten, erstwhile the Games were unfastened and the archetypal medals awarded. All that is down us, and we privation to decorativeness the Olympic Games successful a agleam way. Nothing tin halt america anymore.”
Venues are bare and galore locals are acting arsenic if this $20 cardinal gorilla isn’t successful the room. Meanwhile, Olympic officials made an illustration of 2 Georgian judo medalists, expelling them from the Games for leaving the athletes colony to sojourn an acquaintance, successful nonstop usurpation of a playbook that has efficaciously tried to support 11,000 competitors nether location arrest.
But you cognize what’s comic astir COVID, if you inquire Lalovic? The pandemic stopped the hand-wringing astir however miserably blistery it is for competitors successful Tokyo’s notoriously muggy summertime weather.
“We moved the marathon contention from Tokyo to Sapporo due to the fact that of the heat. Since the pandemic has practically surrounded us, cipher ever mentions the Tokyo heat,” Lalovic cracked. “It is not absorbing anymore.”
Is it imaginable to emotion the Olympics, portion despising the knuckleheads who tally them?
The astir oppressive facet of these Games isn’t the vigor oregon the humidity, but the IOC’s heartless stupidity.
English (US) ·