The COVIDLympics, Day -1: Another Opening Ceremony Official Cancelled Due To The Past

• Kentaro Kobayashi, one day before he was slated to be the director of the Opening Ceremony, was cancelled today, fired because of a 1998 comedy routine where he did a completely tasteless joke about the Holocaust.  And you found this out only 24 hours before the Opening Ceremony?!?!?!?   
• More women's softball and men's soccer pool play today.
• As we formally hit the morning of the Opening Ceremony in Japan:  COVID cases in Japan are at their highest in over six months at about 2000 new cases.  The State of Emergency has done little to nothing.
• The IOC has reversed a previous announcement and will place kneeling protesting athletes in their highlights and social media as appropriate.
• A final prediction from OlympicMedalsPredictions.com (not sure who the outfit is who is doing it or putting on the website) has the USA winning the table with 108 medals and 50 gold.  China is second with 92 and 42 gold. Disqualified Russia is third, Japan and Great Britain duke it out for fourth and fifth.
  
• Gracenote has published it's Virtual Medal Table, where it predicts the nations will stand.  They pick the USA first, but with only 40 gold and 96 total.  They actually pick the illegal Russian ROC team second in total, 21 gold, 68 total.  Though they believe China will get 33 gold, they believe China will only score 66 total.  (They give a reason that no recent post-pandemic performances have been recorded for many of the Chinese top athletes, so they admit this number may be drastically low.)  Gracenote, therefore, forecasts the circumstances will create the widest-open Games in history.
• Historic night last night for a lesbian couple in the Games.  Both are softball players -- one for Team USA, the other for Mexico.  Amanda Chidester drove in the only run Monica Abbott would need for a USA 1-0 win over Canada.  Her fiance (they got engaged last Fall), Anissa Urtez, tied the game with Japan at 2 and sent it to extra innings with Mexico's first Olympic softball home run.  Japan scored in the eighth to win 3-2.  The two will oppose each other in Saturday's third group game.  USA is 2-0 in the six-team round robin, Mexico 0-2.

Some Inside the Games material:

• The Czech Republic now has five six COVID positives in their Olympic traveling group, and they want to know why.  Two beach volleyball players, a beach volleyball coach (the husband of one of the two player positives), a table-tennis player, a cyclist (added today) and an unnamed official are the six.  At least two of the four athletes have withdrawn from the Games.
• The island nation of Guinea has withdrawn completely from the Games, citing new variants of COVID-19 in Japan.
• The mystery surrounding who will light the cauldron Friday night seems to be coming down to either 2021 Masters Champion Hideki Matsuyama or 2004 women's marathon gold medalist Mizuki Noguchi -- who began the initial torch run last year.  There is also belief a more symbolic choice may be made, like 1964's, when a student born on the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima was chosen.
• A row regarding a comment made by the Australian Olympic Committee President to the Premier of Queensland (where Adelaide, the 2032 site, is) "ordering" the latter to appear at the Opening Ceremony.has been quelled as a misunderstanding fanned by media who weren't there.  The Premier has accepted and will be there.
• Eight qualifying marks for track and field have been tossed as fraudulent by the Athletics Integrity Unit -- same unit which works with WADA and the IAAF for drug testing, but it also goes beyond that.
• One blogger at Inside the Games, though cautiously optimistic toward letting the Games begin, acknowledges the risks and wonders what will happen if some passes due to the coronavirus at what he calls "Tokyo Olympics Lite".