It has only been around 6 days since the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games started and there’s already been so many scandals and controversies. While it may not include gender tests, it does include a lot of poop, insensitive jokes and sexism. 

Let’s take a look at all the reasons why the Tokyo Olympics are on thin ice in the eyes of the public: 

1. The director of the opening ceremony got fired on the eve of the games 

Kentaro Kobayashi, the former director of the Tokyo’s opening ceremony was fired because he thought making a Holocaust joke, specifically “Let’s play Holocaust”, was okay. Honey, it is and will never be okay to make jokes about a seriously horrifying and traumatizing even in history! 

Although the comment was made in 1998 when he was 25 years old, there’s no excuse for insensitivity. 

2. Erm, hello, global pandemic but games still on? 

The Japanese government's decision to go on with the games despite the whole pandemic that’s spreading like fire is still being met with mixed reactions. Many athletes that spent years and years training hard to finally go to the Olympics had to pull out at the last minute due to positive Covid tests. 

Although there are a lot of safety measure in place, the Tokyo Olympics website stated that as of Tuesday, there was a total of 155 Games-related COVID-19 cases. These numbers include staff, contractors, media, volunteers and athletes.

3. It’s getting hot in here – here meaning Tokyo

Did you know that the Tokyo Olympics are set to be the hottest on the record? On the day of the opening ceremony, the temperature was as high as 31.7 degree Celsius and it is predicted that the temperatures will likely surpass those of the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, which previously held the record for the warmest Olympics. 

As a Malaysian you might be thinking we’ve had worse and yes, we’ve had hotter temperatures than that but imagine running a marathon in that heat! It could cause serious risks and health concerns for the athletes competing. 

4. Triathletes swimming in poop?!

The swimming venue for the triathlon event was Tokyo Bay but people are like, excuse me don’t you mean Stinky Bay. A strong foul odour was reported at the swimming venue for the triathlon and open water swimmers by the local residents. They said that the bay smelled like a toilet which is risky as it could elevated the levels of the dangerous E-coli bacteria.

Many news reports also say that the strong stench of the bay was the reason many of the athletes were seen vomiting after the race.

5. More poop issues - this time related to the resignation of Keigo Oyamada

Keigo Oyamada was the composer who was working on the opening ceremony before he resigned a few days before the games begun. The reason behind his resignation was because of his past mistakes too. 

He came under fire for abusing his classmates in school and even forcing one boy to eat poop! Kids, this is why you don’t mess up during your early years because your past will definitely come back to haunt you. 

6. Bizarre triathlon boat incident

This was a HUGE screw up! I mean these poor triathletes need to swim in allegedly poop water and you decide to make things worse for them by blocking their path with a boat? 

It all went down at the beginning of the event when the starting gun went off with a media boat still in front of the platform. This caused some of the athletes to begin the race while other we stuck on the platform because of the boat. 

The athletes were then stopped, sent back to the platform and asked to restart the race. They started with 100% energy, and this incident probably lowered it to about 95%. 

7. The suspicion about the Men’s individual Gymnastics winner

Just yesterday, Japan’s Hashimoto was crowned champion of the Men’s individual all-around finals. This win had sparked a lot of suspicion among enraged netizens. 

Netizen’s have been complaining about how Hashimoto’s scores for the two of the events were much lower than China’s Xiao’s and Russia’s Nagornyy’s scores. They also pointed out how he made more mistakes than both of them throughout the competition but somehow was still given the gold medal. 

This could be just a conspiracy theory or maybe not, either way both Xiao and Nagornyy showed good sportsmanship and even congratulated Hashimoto, so there’s no bad blood there. 

8. Norwegian handball team were fined for refusing to wear bikini bottoms

Hmm, we smell sexism. The Norwegian handball team was fined €1,500 (RM 7500+) for improper clothing because they opted for shorts instead of bikini bottoms in the Olympic games.

They did put in a request to wear a uniform that wouldn’t make them feel sexualised, but it was rejected! It’s 2021, people should be allowed to wear whatever makes them feel comfortable.