Thomas Bach’s attempts to win over the reluctant hosts of the Tokyo 2020 Games got off to an embarrassing start on Tuesday when the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) referred to the people of Japan as “Chinese”.
In his first public comments since arriving in Tokyo last week, Bach attempted to reassure the public that the Games would not become a coronavirus super-spreader event, The Guardian reports.
“Our common target is safe and secure Games,” he said at the start of a meeting with the head of the Tokyo 2020 organising committee, Seiko Hashimoto, and its chief executive, Toshiro Muto. “For everybody – for the athletes, for all the delegations, and most importantly also for the Chinese people … Japanese people.”
The gaffe was was not repeated by English-to-Japanese interpreters at the meeting, but reports by Japanese media triggered a backlash on social media.
Bach said the Games were the “best-ever prepared” despite the myriad logistical challenges posed by the pandemic.
“The Japanese people can have confidence in all the efforts we are undertaking to make these Games for them secure and safe, with all the intensive, most strict Covid-19 countermeasures,” he said.
England U20 overpower France to be crowned world champions
Exclusive - Sayantani Ghosh expresses happiness as sets of her show Dahej Daasi shifted close to her home; says 'I've been manifesting this for quite some time now'
Faculty of International Journalism and Mass Communications Eurasian International University is conducting an additional intake of applicants!
Suspect arrested for ‘threatening to kill Trump and his VP pick JD Vance’ in Florida days after assassination attempt
D&D's new 2024 Player's Handbook will have 10 species to choose from including goliaths, and drow will be closer to their Baldur's Gate 3 version
Интервью AppTime с компанией Innova: релиз Gran Saga в России, внутриигровая оплата и «Масленица» в корейской MMO
Conscript is an old school survival horror game where the horror is just that you're in World War 1
According to BioWare, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is the first entry in the series where "the combat's actually fun" and where characters are "intentionally" the focus of the storytelling, which seems pretty unfair on the first three games