It's a Covid twisted world.

Usually, the Paralympic athletes are in the shadow of the Olympic athletes.

But when the Paralympic Games begin this Tuesday in Japan's capital Tokyo, the 4400 or so athletes will be a big step ahead of the Olympians.

Almost all of them had to fight for medals in front of empty spectators.

But the Paralympic athletes can hope for the cheering of more than 100,000 students.

This is one of the side effects of the Covid pandemic that is keeping Japan and Tokyo under control and is causing the games to start a year late.

Patrick Welter

Correspondent for business and politics in Japan, based in Tokyo.

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None of the athletes liked to see the games postponed by a year. But some gain from her positive aspects. "The arc is even more tense by 20 to 30 percent," says cyclist Michael Teuber. “Even more emotions have built up, even more charge.” Teuber is aiming for the sixth gold medal at his sixth Paralympic Games. The 53-year-old athlete was named one of the two standard-bearers of the German team on Monday.

With him, Mareike Miller, the captain of the wheelchair basketball players with whom she won gold in London in 2012, will carry the flag into the stadium.

“The audience will be missing,” says 31-year-old Miller with regret.

But it is important that the games take place.

“The importance of these Paralympic Games is clear to everyone,” says Miller.

Teuber adds: "We all want to help ensure that it doesn't turn out to be a super-spreader event."

"We can have safe games"

The President of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), Andrew Parsons, speaks of the most important Paralympic Games in history. On Monday he tried to wipe away all doubts about the Paralympics in the middle of the pandemic. “We can have safe games. Otherwise we wouldn't be here, ”Parsons told journalists. The anti-Covid measures would be tightened compared to the Olympic Games, among other things with a stricter test regime, announced the President of the Organizing Committee, Seiko Hashimoto.

The organizers have unloaded regular viewers out of concerns about the corona virus.

But between 100,000 and 200,000 students could be in the stadiums, explains the organizing committee.

Due to the Covid, these are far fewer than the originally planned 680,000 students.

Nevertheless, the large number is reminiscent of the first Olympic Games in Tokyo in 1964. At that time, foreign observers registered the many students in the stadiums and speculated that the Japanese wanted to fill the rows of spectators.

The organizers are now trying a different motive.

The school children should see and learn what disabled people can achieve.

"Tokyo is hosting the Paralympic Games for the second time," says Hashimoto.

"This time we have to change society." If that is achieved, the games are a success.

She sets the bar high.

Favoring students over other viewers is positive discrimination.

The decisive factor for admission to the stadium is no longer how strong the pandemic is in Tokyo.

The only decisive factor is the motive with which the organizers accept the people in the stadium as spectators.

There is opposition to this in Japan.

The most prominent comment was made by the government's most important Covid advisor, the medical doctor Shigeru Omi.

Compared to the situation before the start of the Olympic Games in July, the Covid situation was significantly worse, said Omi a few days ago in parliament on the question of students in the stadiums.

"When you think about what that means for admitting viewers, the bottom line is pretty obvious."