Olympic Chief confuses 'Chinese' with 'Japanese' in first public speech
Thomas Bach
Japan’s locals have been hesitant about hosting Tokyo 2020 Olympics Games. Therefore, there was a lot of pressure on the President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to convince the locals about hosting the games.
However, Thomas Bach’s attempts to win over the locals got caught up in a racist controversy, as he ended up confusing Chinese with Japanese.
During his first public speech since arriving in Tokyo last week, Bach was reassuring locals that the Olympics Games will be held safely and will not turn out to be a super-spreader event.
"Our common target is safe and secure Games," he said before making an embarrassing mistake. "For everybody – for the athletes, for all the delegations, and most importantly also for the Chinese people … Japanese people."
His mistake was not translated by the English to Japanese interpreters but the slip of tongue was caught by the local media.
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"The Japanese people can have confidence in all the efforts we are undertaking to make these Games for them secure and safe, with all the intensive, most strict COVID-19 countermeasures,"he continued.
Bach further complimented locals for helping the officials put together the games in these special circumstances. "You have managed to make Tokyo the best-ever prepared city for theOlympic Games. This is even more remarkable under the difficult circumstances we all have to face," he said 10 days before the opening ceremony.