The welcome extended to Japan’s Olympic athletes at the London Games seems not to have lasted too long. In what appears to be an organizational blunder, Japan’s athletes were shown the exit door, just minutes after appearing at the opening ceremony.
The early exit has miffed fans back home all the same, sparking a slew of posts on microblogging sites and even prompting comments by politicians. Some of them wondered how it was possible that Japan’s athletes could be denied their chance to revel in an unforgettable night of Olympic pageantry.
A Japan Olympic Committee spokesman on Wednesday confirmed that the entire delegation was mistakenly led out of the stadium. Athletes have the option to leave after the parade of nations if they don’t want the late-night festivities to tire them out and about 30 of the Japanese contingent had requested to go home early. But amid some confusion, all 44 followed their guide out the door.
Once out, they weren’t allowed back in.
The vexed and delayed reaction came after a Japanese blogger who attended the ceremony posted an entry on Tuesday about his experience. The visitor wondered why the entire Japanese delegation was led out of the stadium after barely rounding the track, while the competitors of other countries were trotted towards an area where they could enjoy the show. Accompanying pictures showed the Japanese athletes being guided toward a one-way exit.
The early departure didn’t smell right to Japanese Olympic fans on Twitter. Many cried foul play by the London organizers. The Japanese word for “failure” trended throughout most of the afternoon and soon became the root of conversation threads on online message boards. Tweets were huffy and expressed disappointment on behalf of the athletes who were denied the chance to sing-a-long to “Hey Jude.”
Then Tokyo Vice Governor Naoki Inose entered the fray, saying he’d “like to confirm” what happened. On Wednesday, Kouta Matsuda, a member of parliament, dedicated a blog entry of his own to the matter after he called Japan’s sports ministry to get to the bottom of the confusion.
To be sure, many athletes don’t choose to attend the opening ceremonies at all because they want to focus on competing.
In fact, only 15% of the 293 athletes representing Japan attended the ceremony on Friday. While the JOC has pointed out the incident to the London Organizing Committee, the spokesman said the JOC doesn’t intend to lodge a complaint.
So what about the slighted athletes themselves? They appear to be more concerned with winning medals than watching fireworks. The spokesman said none of them has complained.
【新闻快讯】
从奥运会开幕式至今，已经有越来越多的人对伦敦举办奥运会的能力提出了质疑。这两天，日本代表团在奥运开幕式上被直接引导出了体育场的消息获得证实，日本网民一片哗然。
伦敦开幕式各国代表团入场式上，按照惯例各国代表团绕场一周后会被引导到场地中央。但是当天，日本代表团亮相绕场后，却被引导员从旁边的出口直接引导出了体育场现场。等到后来各国运动员都已经站在场地中央集合时，日本代表已经不见了！
此事经日本网友写博客爆料后，在网上掀起轩然大波。事后，日本媒体也是致电了日本奥委会询问缘由，对此日本奥委会回复说：“中途退场事件是确实发生的事情，虽然事前代表团提出中途中途退场是有可能的，但是我们日本代表团没有提出过申请。这是奥组委的失误，导致了日本奥运代表团的中途退场。其次，除了日本以外，其他国家也遇到引导错误，而且被引导中途退场的事情也有过发生。，日本代表团表示不会特别看重这个问题，因为这对竞技比赛不会产生任何影响。 ”
当大家矛头开始指向伦敦奥组委时，美联社记者斯蒂夫·威廉森则更新Twitter解释此事却说：“奥委会主席主席罗格证实，日本代表团开幕式亮相后选择离开是他们自己的选择。”
