This 21-year-old Japanese swimmer battled cancer and qualified for the Olympics after more than a year outside the pool. But because of COVID-19 restrictions, she's missing the fanfare she deserves.
were felt most acutely, the absence of a crowd diminishing the emotional impact of one of its most anticipated moments by several orders of magnitude.leaping off the starting block and into the water Saturday night.Japan was in fifth place in its heat when Ikee started the second leg of the 400 freestyle relay and was in fifth place when she finished with a team-best split of 53.63 seconds.
Instances like this have made impossible the hope of shifting the focus of the Games from its pandemic-related restrictions to the competitions.Tokaidai Sagami of nearby Kanagawa, which won the spring edition of the national high school baseball championship, was eliminated from its prefecture tournament because 17 of its 20 players tested positive for the coronavirus.
Still, the Games’ efforts to safeguard against the spread of the disease have remained a widespread subject of controversy. Plexiglass divides journalists in the dining rooms at the Main Press Center, a measure previously described by Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist and IOC consultant, as “hygiene theater.” However, the same journalists travel to venues in packed buses, often with people sitting or standing in the aisles between the rows of seats.
Standing 5-foot-7 with a 6-foot-1 wingspan, Ikee competed at the 2016 Rio Games as a 16-year-old, becoming the first Japanese swimmer to qualify in seven events. She finished fifth in the 100 butterfly. In December of that year, 10 months after she was hospitalized, she was finally discharged. She said at the time her goal was to qualify and medal at the 2024 Paris Games, if not the 2028 Los Angeles Games.Rikako IkeeWhen Ikee resumed training in March of 2020, looking emaciated, she hadn’t been in a pool for more than 400 days.She returned to competition in August. She won her heat in the 50 freestyle, but her time was more than two seconds slower than her personal best, a Japanese record.
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