IOCトーマス・バッハ会長にヘイトが集まっている。米ワシントン・ポスト紙は五輪中止を勧めるコラムでバッハ会長を「ぼったくり男爵」と痛烈に批判。日本国内に同紙記事が紹介されると、その内容に共感が広がった。コラムの原文では「Baron von Ripper-off」との表現が出てくる。Baronが男爵、vonは貴族に使われる愛称、バッハ会長がドイツ出身だからだと思われる。そして、Rip off「だまし取る」とか「ぼったくる」という意味。直訳して、ぼったくり男爵と言う訳だ。
Japan should cut its losses and tell the IOC to take its Olympic pillage somewhere else
Somewhere along the line Baron Von Ripper-off and the other gold-plated pretenders at the International Olympic Committee decided to treat Japan as their footstool. But Japan didn’t surrender its sovereignty when it agreed to host the Olympics. If the Tokyo Summer Games have become a threat to the national interest, Japan’s leaders should tell the IOC to go find another duchy to plunder. A cancellation would be hard — but it would also be a cure.
Von Ripper-off, IOC President Thomas Bach, and his attendants have a bad habit of ruining their hosts, like royals on tour who consume all the wheat sheaves in the province and leave stubble behind. Where, exactly, does the IOC get off imperiously insisting that the Games must go on, when fully 72 percent of the Japanese public is reluctant or unwilling to entertain 15,000 foreign athletes and officials in the midst of a pandemic?
The answer is that the IOC derives its power strictly from the Olympic “host contract.” It’s an illuminating document that reveals much about the highhanded organization and how it leaves host nations with crippling debts. Tokyo organizers have estimated they will need to divert about 10,000 medical workers to service the IOC’s demands.
Japan’s leaders should cut their losses and cut them now, with 11 weeks left to get out of the remainders of this deal. The Olympics always cost irrational sums — and they lead to irrational decisions. And it’s an irrational decision to host an international mega-event amid a global pandemic. It’s equally irrational to keep tossing good money after bad.
At this point, money is the chief reason anyone is even considering going forward with a Summer Games. Japan has invested nearly $25 billion in hosting. But how much more will it cost to try to bubble 15,000 visitors, with daily testing and other protocols, and to provide the security and massive logistics and operating costs? And what might a larger disaster cost?