By Daily sports on July 19, 2021

Two South African soccer players have become the first athletes inside the Olympic Village to test positive for COVID-19, with the Tokyo Games opening on Friday.

An official with the South African soccer team also tested positive, as did a fourth member of South Africa’s contingent, the head coach of the rugby sevens team. The rugby team was in a pre-Games training camp in another Japanese city.

Organizers confirmed the positive tests for the two athletes in the Olympic Village in Tokyo on Sunday but didn’t identify them other than to say they were non-Japanese.

The South African Olympic committee later confirmed the three COVID-19 cases in its soccer delegation at the village – two players and a video analyst. All three were in isolation at the Tokyo 2020 isolation facility, the South African Olympic committee said. The players were defender Thabiso Monyane and midfielder Kamohelo Mahlatsi.

The rest of the South Africa soccer squad had tested negative for the virus twice and was “following closely all the recommendations of the local health authorities,” the South African Olympic committee said.

South Africa is due to play Japan in its first game of the men’s soccer competition on Thursday at Tokyo Stadium.

South African rugby sevens coach Neil Powell tested positive on Saturday and is in an isolation facility in the southern city of Kagoshima, where the team is preparing for the Olympics. Powell will have to stay in isolation for 14 days and will miss the rugby sevens competition, South Africa’s national rugby body said.

Powell had been vaccinated against COVID-19 with the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine in South Africa on May 24, team spokesman JJ Harmse told The Associated Press.

South African Olympic and soccer officials didn’t immediately confirm whether the two soccer players and official who tested positive had been vaccinated. However, South Africa’s Olympic committee said in May it would offer all its Olympic athletes going to Tokyo the J&J vaccine.

Tokyo Olympic organizers also said Sunday that another athlete had tested positive but this person was not residing in the Olympic Village. This athlete was also identified as “non-Japanese.”

Also on Sunday, the first International Olympic Committee member was reported as positive. He recorded a positive test on Saturday upon entering a Tokyo airport.

The IOC confirmed the test and identified him as Ryu Seung-min of South Korea. He won an Olympic gold medal in table tennis in the 2004 Olympics.

He was reportedly in isolation, and reports said he was asymptomatic.

IOC president Thomas Bach said last week there was “zero” risk of athletes in the village passing on the virus to Japanese or other residents of the village.

Meanwhile, former distance runner Tegla Loroupe, the chief of mission of the IOC’s Refugee Olympic Team, tested positive for COVID-19 before the team was to depart its Doha, Qatar, training base for Tokyo, two people with knowledge of her condition have told the AP. (AP)

Source Daily sports

Posted July 19, 2021

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