Olympics Live Updates: Coronavirus Cases Intrude on the Festivities in Japan

TOKYO — The U.S. men’s national basketball team traveled to Tokyo on Monday without guard Zach LaVine, who entered coronavirus health and safety protocols.

In a statement, Team USA said it was hopeful LaVine could rejoin the team later this week in Japan. The U.S. men’s basketball team had reshuffled its roster last week after losing guard Bradley Beal to health and safety protocols and forward Kevin Love withdrew from participation.

U.S. women’s basketball also suffered a blow with the news that Katie Lou Samuelson, a member of the 3×3 Olympics team, would miss the Games following a positive test result. Samuelson said she was fully vaccinated.

“Competing in the Olympics has been a dream of mine since I was little girl and I hope someday soon, I can come back to realize that dream,” Samuelson, 24, wrote in an Instagram post.

Earlier Monday, the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee confirmed that an alternate on the women’s gymnastics team had tested positive for the coronavirus while in training in Chiba prefecture outside Tokyo.

Despite being vaccinated, Kara Eaker, 18, of Grain Valley, Mo., began a 10 to 14 day quarantine, her coach, Al Fong, said in a text message. He added that she “feels fine.”

Fong also said that Leanne Wong, another alternate and Eaker’s teammate at his GAGE Center gym in Blue Springs, Mo., is also under quarantine, expected to last until about July 31, because she is a considered a close contact. Wong, who is 17 and from Overland Park, Kansas, said at the Olympic trials last month that she had not been vaccinated.

The opening ceremony is Friday and the first competitions are Wednesday. But organizers of the Tokyo Olympics, delayed one year by the pandemic, are struggling to manage public anxiety about the Games after a cluster of coronavirus cases that threaten to overshadow the festivities.

As about 20,000 athletes, coaches, referees and other officials have poured into Japan in recent days, more than two dozen of them have tested positive for the virus, including three cases within the Olympic Village. An additional 33 staff members or contractors who are Japanese residents working on the Games have tested positive.

Olympics organizers have said their measures — including repeated testing, social distancing and restrictions on movement — would limit, but not eliminate, coronavirus cases. The Games, originally scheduled for 2020, were postponed a year in the hopes the pandemic would have eased and they would herald a triumphant return to normal.

Instead, they have become a reminder of the staying power of the virus and have fed a debate over whether Japan and the International Olympic Committee have their priorities straight.

Nneka Ogwumike’s last-ditch efforts to take the court in Tokyo were crushed on Monday night after the Court of Arbitration for Sport rejected her request to play for Nigeria’s national women’s basketball team.

Ogwumike, winner of the W.N.B.A.’s Most Valuable Player Award in 2016 and a former No. 1 overall draft pick, was not selected for the U.S. team, a decision that stunned the basketball world. But Ogwumike, who was born and raised in Texas to Nigerian parents, applied to compete for Nigeria, where she has dual citizenship. Chiney Ogwumike, also a former No. 1 overall draft pick and Nneka’s younger sister, applied alongside her sister to play for Nigeria.

FIBA, the sport’s international governing body, denied Nneka’s request, citing her “significant involvement” with U.S.A. Basketball. Chiney, who has spent significantly less time with the U.S. national team, was cleared to play for Nigeria as a naturalized citizen.

The Ogwumikes turned to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, hoping the Swiss-based panel that is considered the final arbiter of disputes in international sport would allow both of them a spot on Nigeria’s roster until a hearing could occur.

Ogwumike’s appeal to FIBA was based on the governing body’s regulations that allow exceptions “in the interest of the development of basketball.” Nigeria is currently ranked No. 17 in the world and the addition of the Ogwumikes would have made the country a medal contender, said Dawn Staley, the coach of the U.S. team. It would also have given a continent that has never won an Olympic medal in men’s or women’s basketball a huge boost.

In the end, Chiney and Erica Ogwumike, a former standout at Rice who is a medical student, are on Nigeria’s roster.

Elizabeth Williams, a center for the Atlanta Dream, had also filed a petition with the court to play for Nigeria but the court rejected her petition as well on Monday.

TOKYO — The Olympic Games may profess to be about noble ideals like excellence, friendship and respect. But you had better believe you can still bet on them.

There are many great teams arriving at the Olympics, of course, and at least a few look really hard to beat. But which one is the biggest favorite, the true stone-cold lock?

Let’s start with the American women’s soccer team. With a 2019 World Cup win under their belts and stars like Carli Lloyd, Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe leading their squad again, the Americans are the clear favorites in the women’s tournament. According to Pinnacle, a Curaçao-based site that offers odds on nearly every Olympic event, the team has odds of -157; that means you must bet $157 on the team to win $100.

Prefer the South Korean women archers? They have won eight straight team titles, every one ever contested at the Games. They are an even bigger favorite than the U.S. women’s soccer team at -261.

How about the American women’s softball team, whose sport is returning to the Games after 13 years? They are -294. And the U.S. men’s basketball team, despite a couple of stumbles over the past week and the loss of several players to coronavirus protocols, is -329.

But despite the high-profile success of these teams, we haven’t even gotten to the biggest favorites. The Sinkovic brothers of Croatia seem nearly unbeatable in the coxless pair rowing event. They are listed at -693.

And don’t bet against Russia in artistic swimming (formerly synchronized swimming): Its team is -900 in the duet and -1,200 in the team event.

Which brings us to the biggest favorite of them all. The United States women’s basketball team has won the last six Olympic gold medals and the last three World Cup titles. It arrives with a roster in which every player is an international star, names like A’ja Wilson and Brittney Griner, Breanna Stewart and Diana Taurasi, Jewell Loyd and Sue Bird.

Their odds at this writing are -1,938. In plain terms, you would have to risk $1,938 to collect a measly hundred bucks if they win another gold.

On the one hand, it might seem to be the easiest hundred you’ll ever make.

Toyota said on Monday that it had decided against running Olympics-themed television advertisements in Japan, a symbolic vote of no confidence from one of the country’s most influential companies just days before the Games begin amid a national state of emergency.

The Japanese public has expressed strong opposition to the Games — delayed for a year because of the pandemic — with many worrying that the influx of visitors from around the world could turn it into a Covid-19 superspreader event, undoing national efforts to keep coronavirus levels low.

Toyota will refrain from airing television ads at home during the Games, and its chief executive, Akio Toyoda, will not attend the opening ceremony, a company spokesman told local news media during an online news conference.

“Various aspects of this Olympics aren’t accepted by the public,” said the spokesman, Jun Nagata, according to the business daily Yomiuri Shimbun.

The ads will still be shown in other markets, Toyota Motor North America said in a statement. “In the U.S., the campaign has already been shown nationally and will continue to be shown as planned with our media partners during the Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020,” the statement said.

The company had prepared ads for the event but will not air them because of concerns that emphasizing its connection to the Games could create a backlash, said a person familiar with the company’s thinking, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

Toyota will continue its commitments to supporting Olympic athletes and providing transportation services during the Games, a spokesman said.

The company’s decision is “a big body blow to the Olympics,” said David Droga, the founder of the Droga5 ad agency.

“You’d think that Toyota would be through thick and thin all in, but obviously the situation is more polarizing than we realize,” he said.

The vast majority of the Japanese public is opposed to holding the Games — set to begin on Friday — under current conditions, polling shows, with many calling for them to be canceled outright.

The Japanese authorities and Olympic officials have played down the concerns, saying strict precautions against the coronavirus will allow the Games to be held safely.

Anxieties have continued to mount, however. This month, Tokyo entered its fourth state of emergency in an effort to stop a sudden rise in virus cases as the country faces the more contagious Delta variant. Cases, which remain low in comparison with many other developed nations, have exceeded 1,000 a day in the city, raising apprehension that measures that had succeeded in controlling the spread of the coronavirus could be losing their effectiveness.

Further complicating the situation is a steady drip of news reports about Olympic staff and athletes testing positive for the illness after arriving in Japan.

Toyota became a top Olympic sponsor in 2015, joining an elite class of corporate supporters that pay top dollar for the right to display the iconic rings of the Games in their advertising.

Until the pandemic hit, the company was one of the most visible supporters of the Olympics. In the run-up to the event, much of Tokyo’s taxi fleet was replaced with a sleek, new Toyota model prominently featuring the company’s logo alongside the Olympic rings. And the company pledged to make the event a showcase for its technological innovations, including self-driving vehicles to ferry athletes around the Olympic Village.

Toyota’s move could prompt other brands to follow suit, but several advertising experts do not expect a ripple effect.

“If you’re a Coca-Cola type, I don’t think it’ll be a retreat — the benefits of being a global sponsor will still work its magic in the U.S. and all the other countries,” Mr. Droga said. “It’s different when you’re in the center, actually in Japan, because that’s where the biggest contrast is going to be, where the Olympics aren’t like previous Olympics.”

Many companies are afraid of sacrificing more exposure, said Rick Burton, a sports management professor at Syracuse University and the chief marketing officer for the U.S. Olympic Committee at the Beijing Summer Olympics in 2008.

“My guess is that they’re going to try and push through so that they don’t lose the investment completely,” he said. “There’s an interesting calculus: If I pull out, how does that get translated in every language? In certain countries, it could seem like I did the right thing, but in others, it could be that I abandoned the one thing that gave the world hope.”