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Arisa Tsubata, a nurse by profession, had a dream to represent Japan in boxing at the Tokyo Olympics, which starts on July 23 at home. Tsubata even quit her job at a major hospital in January and opted for a less-demanding and less-paid position at a clinic, so that she can focus on her Tokyo Olympics dream.
But with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) canceling the Boxing Olympic qualifiers, earlier scheduled to be held in Paris next month, Tsubata feels helpless and lost. Her Olympic dream of representing Japan on the sport's grandest stage has been shattered because of COVID-19.
According to the new rules, the boxers would be allocated spots at the Tokyo Olympics based on their world rankings. The development deprives 27-year-old Tsubata of a spot at the 17-day event because her rankings aren’t good enough to earn her an automatic qualification.
“It’s very disappointing,” Tsubata, who works at the Life Support Clinic in Tokyo – the job she opted for to train harder, told Reuters. “I had been working so hard for a year after the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics, and it’s so frustrating that I don’t even have the right to compete.”
After quitting her job at the start of the year, Tsubata has been training more than three hours a day with extra practice on Saturdays. Sundays have been for rest and recovery, sometimes even massage. Tsubata isn’t just one case but there are countless whose careers have been thrown into limbo because of COVID.
Already postponed once, the staging of the Tokyo Olympics is also being questioned amid a rapid surge in the number of new cases in the country. An anti-Olympic petition with 350,000 signatures has also been submitted to the organizers.
Although the IOC and the Japanese government are confident of holding the Tokyo Olympics, things look highly uncertain at the moment with Japan experiencing a fourth wave of the deadly virus.
Tsubata's Tokyo Olympics dream started three years ago
Tsubata’s tryst with boxing started three years ago when she took up the sport to get fit. Her rapid strides in the sport culminated in winning the National Championship in the middleweight category in 2019.
Even though as an athlete she wants the Games to go on, being a nurse, she does feel that staging the Tokyo Olympics at this time of crisis would be a challenge for the authorities.
In the meantime, Tsubata needs to remain positive and focus on her international debut in Russia later this month. She doesn’t want to think about competing at the 2024 Paris Olympics now as she believes that her age might play a big factor by then.
“I can’t say I am aiming for the next Olympics in Paris, but what I can do is try to keep working hard step by step, at any competitions ahead, small or big,” Tsubata concluded.
