Organizers of the Asian Para Games in Japan were forced to apologize after Iran's national anthem was mistakenly played three times for athletes from Taiwan and Mongolia during medal ceremonies, the latest in a series of logistical stumbles at the Nagoya-hosted event.
Nagoya's mayor issued a public apology over the mix-up, which drew criticism from affected delegations and renewed scrutiny of the Games' organizational preparedness. The error follows a separate, embarrassing anthem mishap at the preceding Asian Games in September, when North Korea's anthem was played instead of South Korea's before a men's hockey match, prompting the stadium announcer to issue an on-the-spot apology and the Korean Sport & Olympic Committee to lodge a formal complaint demanding assurances the error would not be repeated.
The Para Games mix-up adds to a broader pattern of complaints about the Games' execution, which have also included transport delays and housing problems reported by multiple delegations. Organizing committees for major multi-sport events routinely rely on large pools of local volunteers and contractors to manage the hundreds of medal ceremonies held over the course of the Games, and anthem mix-ups, while embarrassing, are not unheard of at events of this scale — though three repeat errors involving the same wrong anthem in short succession is unusual even by that standard. Organizers said they were reviewing procedures to prevent further mistakes for the remainder of the Games.