The COVIDLympics, Day -9: What Country Are We In Again?

• The Olympic Village, a set of apartment buildings in Tokyo, officially opened yesterday.
• In what has to be seen as a black eye for these Games, a pep talk by IOC President Thomas Bach went well south yesterday when, in talking about the Japanese public's opposition to the Games, he called the Japanese "Chinese" instead!
• The VIP brigade for the United States to the Opening Ceremony will be led by First Lady Jill Biden.
• The Good News:  Team USA got their first win, a 28-point win over Argentina.
• The Bad News, Part One:  Australia just blew out Nigeria by 38!  And Team USA plays them tomorrow night.
• The Bad News, Part Two:  Kendrick Perkins, serving as an ESPN commentator, said Team USA is so poor, they "cannot even guard a parked car"!
• The USOC announced yesterday that the US team going to Tokyo will be the second-largest in history, with the most female competitors the team has ever sent.  And how many of them were sexually compromised as a condition of their participation here, United Sexual-Assault Olympic Committee?   
• Another major drug bust, just before the Games, fells another medal favorite:  Ukraine gymnast Oleg Vernyayev, busted for the common Russian enhancement drug meldonium in August of 2020 -- as of right now, out of both Tokyo and Paris!  Four year ban.  Vernyayev was the parallel bars champion and silver-medalist in the all-around in Rio.
• Two ROC swimmers have been tossed as well.  Alexandr Kudashev (who would've been in his third Olympics) and Veronika Popova Andrusenko (who would've been in her first, but was a 2019 World University Games gold medalist) were banned because of a continuing investigation of Russia's doping programs.  (Suspensions reversed by the CAS 7/19/21)
• THIS IS GOING TO BE A DISASTER.
• The tradition of an IOC member and a sport-federation head putting the medals on Olympic medal-winners has been scrapped due to COVID concerns.  Medal-winning athletes will have to put them on themselves.
• Though many tennis pros have opted out of the Olympics for other reasons (Roger Federer opted out due to a knee injury), Great Britain's Johanna Konta has contracted the coronavirus and was forced to withdraw.
• As has Great Britain's Dan Evans, the best British hope for a men's medal in tennis.
• Seven staffers at a hotel being used for Brazil's Olympic team have come down with the virus...
• ... the same day that Tokyo registered the most cases of any day in the last six months!
• Bradley Beal is the first member of the USA men's basketball team to enter COVID protocols.
• South Africa's rugby sevens team is in quarantine due to contact tracing with a COVID case on their flight into Tokyo.
• The Refugee Olympic Team is still in Qatar, where they've been training -- an official overseeing the team has tested positive, though none of the refugees have, yet...