On your marks, get set and go back home. Australians want the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics cancelled in 2021. 

Aussies love their sports. And just as you’d imagine, we love being on the sideline or sinking into the couch cheering on our favourite teams. Beer in one hand, meat pie in the other – participating in or following a sport is embedded into Australia’s culture.

Despite our passion for all things sport, however, the one competition that rules over all others, the Olympics, is facing a backlash from Australians demanding that the Tokyo 2020 games are cancelled for 2021 and rescheduled once more, and we’ve found out why.

Although we’re ready to cheer on our nation’s representatives, a Hunter and Bligh survey showed that three quarters of Aussies believe that the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics should be canned.

75.3 per cent of Australians agree that the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics should be cancelled due to COVID-19.

With just three per cent of Japan’s 126 million population vaccinated*, more than three quarters (75.4 per cent) of Australians agree that the Tokyo 2020 games should not be postponed until it can go ahead without COVID-19 restrictions in place. Interestingly, from this, only 5.6 per cent of Aussies would travel to Japan for the games if international borders were open.

But how much do we really love our sport? Despite the Laurel Hubbard (New Zealand weightlifter) debate flaring up, 10,000 volunteers reportedly quitting and an uninspiring COVID-19 vaccine rollout in Japan, more than half (56 per cent) of Aussies are still looking forward to the Tokyo 2020 games.

Hunter and Bligh has previously reported from a survey regarding COVID-19 vaccination rollouts the finding that around 83 per cent of Australians support the idea of a vaccine passport for both local and international travel. Could this be the solution for our athletes and supporters?

Meanwhile, it looks like Australians are more than happy to tune into the Tokyo 2020 games in the comfort if their own homes – around a quarter (26.5 per cent) of us will be glued to swimming events and 17.7 per cent will be watching the body-twisting, vault-jumping gymnastics. Yelling at the TV and snarky comments on how we could have done better are mandatory, of course.

Data received by Hunter and Bligh and conducted by CoreData Research, a global specialist financial services research and strategy consultancy. The survey was conducted in June 2021 and received results from 1168 Australians.
*Data based off Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reporting.
Feature image: Photographed by Ivonne Wierink. Image via Unsplash.