Tokyo Olympics: Woman on treadmill at opening ceremony a haunting solo-training reminder

As a symbol for all that the athletes have had to go through while training alone during the COVID-19 a lone woman running on a treadmill was the start of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics opening ceremony. That woman is athlete Arisa Tsubata and she got her moment in the Olympic spotlight but not the way she would have wanted.

Tsubata is a Japanese boxer and nurse, who was on her way to qualify for the Olympics but the International Olympic Committee ruled that the Olympic qualifying event would be cancelled and instead use world rankings as criteria for qualification. The reason given by IOC for scrapping the event was the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I had been working so hard for a year after the postponement of the Olympics, and it’s so frustrating that I don’t even have the right to compete,” Tsubata told Reuters.

Tsubata would train around her work shifts at the hospital for over a year to prepare for the final Olympic boxing qualifier in the hope of making it.

In January of this year, so that she could focus on her boxing, the 27-year-old took a job at a small psychiatric clinic after leaving her previous job at a major hospital where she was getting paid more.

Mixed feelings about the Tokyo Olympics

The Tokyo Games 2020 have been embroiled in velitation, with many people questioning whether the Olympics should be taking place in the middle of a pandemic and the cases in Tokyo on a rise.

The nurse and boxer also spoke about her mixed feelings about the Olympics being organised in the middle of a pandemic saying that as an athlete she understood that the athletes had been waiting for this moment and after seeing her chance being taken away the Olympics should happen.

But as a nurse, she said it would be difficult for Japan to host the Olympic Games with COVID-19 not that contained.

“I can’t say I am aiming for the next Olympics in Paris, but what I can do is try to keep working hard step by step, at any competitions ahead, small or big,” Tsubata added.

(Image Credits: @Olympics - Twitter)