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Rakuten CEO Mikitani Says Hosting Tokyo Games this Summer 'Too Risky'

Hiroshi Mikitani, chief executive of Japanese e-commerce group Rakuten Inc, said on Wednesday it was “too risky” to hold the 2020 Tokyo Olympics this summer. (Reuters)
Hiroshi Mikitani, chief executive of Japanese e-commerce group Rakuten Inc, said on Wednesday it was “too risky” to hold the 2020 Tokyo Olympics this summer. (Reuters)
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Rakuten CEO Mikitani Says Hosting Tokyo Games this Summer 'Too Risky'

Hiroshi Mikitani, chief executive of Japanese e-commerce group Rakuten Inc, said on Wednesday it was “too risky” to hold the 2020 Tokyo Olympics this summer. (Reuters)
Hiroshi Mikitani, chief executive of Japanese e-commerce group Rakuten Inc, said on Wednesday it was “too risky” to hold the 2020 Tokyo Olympics this summer. (Reuters)

Hiroshi Mikitani, chief executive of Japanese e-commerce group Rakuten Inc, said on Wednesday it was “too risky” to hold the 2020 Tokyo Olympics this summer, as the nation struggles with a nascent fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mikitani’s remarks, posted to his Twitter account, come a day after 2020 organizers said they had decided to postpone a water polo test event, the latest setback to preparations for the Games which were postponed by a year due to the pandemic.

“Honestly, I feel that the Olympics this summer are just far too risky. I am against them,” the high-profile businessman wrote.

“I feel truly very sorry for the athletes, but they are not the only ones living wholeheartedly.”

Olympics organizers and the Japanese government have said the Games will be held as planned from July 23 despite the fact that a majority of the population would like to see them cancelled or postponed again.

The number of new daily COVID-19 cases in Tokyo on Wednesday was 555, the highest since early February.

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Swiatek is in Total Control during a 6-1, 6-0 Rout of Raducanu

18 January 2025, Australia, Melbourne: Polish tennis player Iga Swiatek celebrates her victory over Britain's Emma Raducanu during their women's singles third round match of the Australian Open tennis tournament at Melbourne Park. Photo: Joel Carrett/AAP/dpa
18 January 2025, Australia, Melbourne: Polish tennis player Iga Swiatek celebrates her victory over Britain's Emma Raducanu during their women's singles third round match of the Australian Open tennis tournament at Melbourne Park. Photo: Joel Carrett/AAP/dpa
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Swiatek is in Total Control during a 6-1, 6-0 Rout of Raducanu

18 January 2025, Australia, Melbourne: Polish tennis player Iga Swiatek celebrates her victory over Britain's Emma Raducanu during their women's singles third round match of the Australian Open tennis tournament at Melbourne Park. Photo: Joel Carrett/AAP/dpa
18 January 2025, Australia, Melbourne: Polish tennis player Iga Swiatek celebrates her victory over Britain's Emma Raducanu during their women's singles third round match of the Australian Open tennis tournament at Melbourne Park. Photo: Joel Carrett/AAP/dpa

Everything came so easily for Iga Swiatek during a 6-1, 6-0 victory over Emma Raducanu on Saturday in the only Australian Open women's third-round match between two past Grand Slam champions — if you thought that meant it would be close, you'd have been rather wrong — that this was how she described it:
“I felt like the ball,” The Associated Press quoted Swiatek as saying, “is listening to me.”
Loud and clear. Asked to explain that sensation, Swiatek put her two index fingers a few inches apart and said, “It’s just being able to aim for this kind of space.” Then she spread her palms more than a foot apart to show that's the margin for error on other days.
The difference, she said, comes down to “being more precise and actually knowing where the ball is going to go, seeing the effects that you want it to.”
When the five-time major champion and former long-time No. 1-ranked woman — now No. 2, behind Aryna Sabalenka — is at the height of her powers, as she sure has seemed to be in Week 1 at Melbourne Park, it is hard for anyone to slow Swiatek down.
The heavy-spinning, high-bouncing forehands. The squeaky-sneaker scrambling to get to every shot. The terrific returning. And so on.
Against Raducanu, who won the 2021 US Open as a teenage qualifier, Swiatek played at a level she called “perfect.”
Indeed, Swiatek mounted a 24-9 edge in winners, made only 12 unforced errors — roughly half of Raducanu's 22 — and claimed 59 points to 29. That caused one spectator to yell out, “No mercy!” in the second set as Swiatek was reeling off the last 11 games after the match was tied at 1-all early with not a cloud in the sky and the temperature approaching 80 degrees Fahrenheit (above 25 Celsius).
“I think it was a little bit of her playing well, and me not playing so well,” Raducanu said. “That combination is probably not good.”
Swiatek, who agreed to accept a one-month suspension in a doping case late last year, owns four trophies from the French Open and one from the US Open. But she’s never been beyond the semifinals in Australia; she lost in that round to Danielle Collins in 2022.
A year ago, Swiatek was upset in the third round by teenager Linda Noskova.