Rain leaks into Asian Games venues. Recent storm-hit games all moved an event.
About 104mm of rain fell in an hour. Hundreds of athletes were moved to higher ground and water leaked into venues, 2 days before competition begins.
What happened
About 104mm of rain fell in an hour in Nagoya on Tuesday , the city ordered parts of the area to evacuate, some 400 athletes and staff in converted shipping containers at Garden Pier were moved to higher ground for about two hours, and rainwater was found leaking into several Asian Games competition venues two days before the first events.
The rain came two days before the first events. Water leaked into several competition venues in Nagoya, but so far the weather has not changed the programme.
The next day the mayor, Ichiro Hirosawa, said the leaks were small, the venues were not badly affected and the games would go ahead as planned. Hosts usually say this first. It tells us what they intend, and it says nothing about the weather.
On the same day Japan’s weather agency had its highest flood warning out for a major river in the area. Subway and bus services stopped for a short time, and about 3,500 people took shelter in emergency centres.
These games have no athletes’ village. More than 17,000 athletes and officials stay on a cruise ship, in temporary wooden container huts and in hotels, so bad weather can reach far more of them than usual.
More wet weather is forecast. Basketball starts on Thursday and the opening ceremony is on . Cricket is played at the open-air Nisshin ground from to the men’s final on . The question is whether the published schedule survives the next ten days.
Sources: Al Jazeera, ICC
The Pattern
We looked at the last eight times since 2016 that heavy weather hit the venues or athletes’ housing at a major multi-sport games or world championship, during competition or just before it. We asked whether organisers moved, delayed or cancelled at least one event within a week because of the weather. All eight did.
Show the other 6 cases
The Read
History says something will move. At every earlier games in this record, organisers changed the schedule within days of heavy weather reaching the venues. It is usually a simple office decision. Games plan spare days for bad weather, and organisers who have just seen water come through venue roofs are likely to use them at the first poor forecast. Nagoya has two extra risks. Its athletes sleep in huts, hotels and a cruise ship with no village, and its programme runs for three weeks, with open-air cricket from .
The main example against is Doha in 2019. Organisers there ran the world championship women’s marathon in its planned midnight slot, in 32C heat and humidity above 70%. They kept that slot even after 28 of the 68 runners dropped out. When moving an event is costly, organisers stay firm and take the criticism. In Nagoya the rain also came before competition started, so the mayor could call the venues usable without saying anything untrue. History is wrong here if the rain stops and the first ten days stay dry. The cricket market fails if the cricket week stays dry.
Sources: BBC
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