Tokyo Olympics

FASANOC has confirmed his name in the Team Fiji list.

Tabakaucoro is currently training in Australia preparing for the Games.

The 29-year-old will race against the best in the world as he takes up the universality spot for athletics.

Meanwhile, Fiji Swimming has submitted the names of Cheyenne Rova and Taichi Vakasama.

Rova and Vakasama are going to the Olympics through the universality spot.

Table Tennis will also be represented at the Games by Sally Yee.

Fans from overseas had already been banned from the Games but it has been confirmed that spectators from Japan will be allowed.

Capacity will be set at 10,000 spectators, provided it does not exceed 50 percent of a venue's capacity.

The Olympics are scheduled to begin on 23 July, while the Paralympics follow a month later, from 24 August.

The event was postponed last year, but is now going ahead despite a fresh wave of COVID-19 cases in Japan.

Uganda is also experiencing a surge in cases, which forced the government to tighten lockdown measures on Friday.

The unnamed Ugandan was part of a nine-member squad who had all been fully vaccinated, reports said.

The group - who included boxers, coaches, and officials - had also tested negative before leaving Uganda.

Negotiations, as RugbyPass revealed last week, are ongoing with Bristol and two other European rugby clubs in a bid to get players released with Castres’ Vilimoni Botitu and Pau’s Aminiasi Tuimaba also targeted for inclusion in the final squad for the Games. Fiji’s seven squad is currently in quarantine in Brisbane before taking part in a tournament in Townsville. The plan is then to fly directly to Japan from Australia for the Games.

In an outspoken editorial, Kaori Yamaguchi said the International Olympic Committee, the government and local organisers are ignoring widespread opposition to the Olympics from the Japanese public.

Depending on how the question is phrased in different polls, between 50-80% of Japanese oppose holding the Olympics.

But she never imagined how far the women would go.

"Our aim was just to become the best at beach volleyball in the Pacific," the Australian former volunteer said. 

"So we never started with the ambition of qualifying for the Olympic Games.”

But in 2009, Australian Olympic gold medal winner Natalie Cook saw the team play during a visit to Vanuatu and she told Masauvakalo they were world-class.

Nevertheless, achieving success on the world stage would be a challenge.

The Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reported that the Japanese Government is considering the measures, with a decision on spectator attendance to be taken next month.

Overseas fans have been banned from attending the Games amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but organisers have held off on a decision on domestic fans to date.

A decision is likely to be made towards the end of June, with state of emergency measures in 10 areas including Tokyo set to expire on June 20.

Japan is prioritising vaccinations for the elderly.

This is one of those stories, but it is also so much more. It’s a story of determination and drive, and one that ultimately changed the status quo and inspired a nation.

Just one tournament stands between Vanuatu’s women’s beach volleyball team and a historic berth at the Olympic Games this summer at Tokyo 2020.

Naoto Ueyama has repeatedly sounded the alarm about the Japanese government and International Olympic Committee's decision to hold the Tokyo Olympics in July despite rising cases in the country and an increasingly burdened health-care system.

"It is dangerous to hold the Olympics here in Tokyo this July," he warned in a news conference, saying that with people coming into Japan from over 200 nations around the world, "all of the different mutant strains of the virus that exist in different places will be concentrated and gathered here in Tokyo."

In the report, titled Rings of Fire, it is argued that summer heatwaves in Tokyo during the past three years indicate that conditions will be tough.

Concerns over heat have caused the marathon to be moved from Tokyo.

Professor Mike Tipton said he expects Tokyo to be the most "thermally stressful Olympics" of recent times.

The University of Portsmouth professor helped to produce the report, which was backed by athletes, the British Association for Sustainability in Sport (Basis) and scientists from the Priestley International Centre for Climate at Leeds University.