Spectators raise muffled cheers for elite marathon runners, and a baseball bat's thud on a ball echoes around a vast empty stadium: sports in Tokyo at the weekend set the tone for how a coronavirus-hit Olympics could play out.
For the first time, Japan's professional baseball teams staged pre-season openers behind closed doors as the response to the virus escalated.
In Tokyo, yesterday's staging of the annual marathon, which last year saw close to 38,000 amateur participants, was scaled back to just a few hundred professional athletes, with people discouraged from lining the route. In past years the event attracted more than a million roadside spectators.
"If the Olympics look like this it's going to be a sad sight," said 68-year-old Hiroshi Enomoto, one of a few spectators cheering runners in the downtown area of Asakusa.
The Olympic marathon has been moved to northern island of Hokkaido because of worries over Tokyo's summer heat, but Enomoto and others wondered if the weekend was a harbinger of things to come.
"There are maybe 20 percent of the number of people who came to see the race last year," said Enomoto.
Barely 30 minutes after the runners zipped through the neighborhood's sun-soaked streets, crews removed barriers. About an hour later Birhanu Legese from Ethiopia crossed the line in sight of the Imperial Palace in two hours, four minutes 15 seconds.
The president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, has said the Olympics will go on, with his organization "fully committed" to a July 24 start.
But sport event cutbacks were not limited to the marathon. Football, rugby and sumo have also been affected.
And baseball fans who on Saturday had to swap the 46,000-capacity indoor stadium of the Yomiuri Giants for a sports bar just hoped the virus will not hit the Olympics.
Spectators wearing masks cheer on the runners, led by race winner Birhanu Legese, below. AP, AFP
Police officers secure the route for the race. AP
