Sports
Japan’s emperor Naruhito declares Tokyo Olympics open
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<p>Japan’s Emperor Naruhito officially opened the Tokyo Olympics on Friday in a nearly empty stadium after the Games were postponed for a year because of the coronavirus pandemic.</p>
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<p>“I declare open the Games of Tokyo,” Naruhito said during a three-hour ceremony attended by just a few hundred officials and dignitaries and several thousand athletes in the 68,000-capacity Olympic Stadium.</p>
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<p>Also, Japanese tennis star Naomi Osaka lit the Olympic cauldron as the Tokyo Games opened on Friday.</p>
<p>Osaka lifted the torch to the gleaming cauldron, which had unfurled at the top of a ramp representing Mount Fuji, in the highlight of a ceremony that was stripped back over virus fears.</p>
<p>She was handed the torch by a group of children from the region around Fukushima which was devastated by a tsunami and a nuclear disaster in 2011.</p>
<p>It was an uplifting moment in a low-key ceremony that unfolded in front of fewer than 1,000 VIPs and several thousand athletes.</p>
<p>In another high point, nearly 2,000 synchronised drones formed a revolving globe over the stadium, to a cover version of John Lennon’s “Imagine”.</p>
<p>A reduced parade of about 5,700 athletes, far lower than the usual numbers, filed into the stadium, not all of them socially distanced but all wearing masks.</p>
<p>International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach acknowledged the Games would be “very different from what all of us had imagined”.</p>
<p>But “today is a moment of hope”, he said in an address.</p>
<p>The 16-day Games, with 339 gold medals across 33 sports, have a surreal air after the pandemic compelled organisers to make this the first Games with virtually no spectators.</p>
<p>Athletes are tested daily but they are performing on the biggest stage under the constant risk that a positive test could wreck their Olympic dreams.</p>
<p>(AFP)</p>