Still rooting for the Olympics

The Tokyo Olympics aren’t doomed, but to go ahead successfully they will need to be a shining example of ‘‘less is more’’. They’ve been cancelled three times in the past, once during World War I and twice in World War II, and now, in a time of pandemic, there’s real pressure that last year’s postponement becomes a cancellation, acknowledging the event as a lost cause unworthy of the abiding risk.

Covid-19 has put colossal pressure on Japan’s health system and polls show most Japanese are unhappy at the prospect of the summer Games proceeding.

Warnings have also issued from our own shores. Epidemiologist Michael

Baker has cautioned against valuing the symbolism of the event higher than the realities of risk. This, he says, is not a time for mass gatherings involving a huge amount of global travel.

It’s a serious question but finely judged – the Games deserve their defenders.

Here is where we must drill into the essential heart of the Olympics, because in the end this relies more on excellence than on scale.

Pared back, as they already have been, with potential for more restrictions to come, they can still deliver great uplift and reward.

A made-for-TV Olympics would still be capable of retaining the essential appeal that comes from the feats of the athletes themselves. Therein lies the thrill, the purpose, and the reward of it all – even if the roar of the crowd is replaced by smatterings of applause.

If the Olympics do go ahead, international tourist spectators won’t be there. And organisers are waiting until June before deciding whether Japanese spectators will be admitted, and in what numbers. So it is entirely possible that events will essentially be behind closed doors.

Many thousands of athletes and their support personnel will still be inbound, it’s true. The International Olympic Committee has pledged tightened restrictions to minimise the risk of infection. Athletes and those in contact with them will have daily tests, there are bans on using public transport, and limitations on where to eat.

Baker perhaps draws on New Zealand’s own experience when he says that mistakes happen.

Granted. So this is surely a case in which not merely the host nation and the IOC, but the entire international community, need to scrutinise more than the stated intentions, but the level of support that exists to realise them. And do so on an unprecedented scale and depth. Is this not achievable?

It’s not necessarily a bad thing that the wider Japanese public is openly suspicious about the implications of the event. Too often in the past, Olympics have seen a superabundance of patriotic self-comforting to the extent that hard-nosed standards of delivery haven’t been monitored or maintained as closely as they should.

This time, there’s motivation aplenty to do that. You don’t have to look too far back to a time when the IOC was reaching for the sort of inspirational rhetoric that portrayed the Games as nothing less than humanity’s victory over the virus.

That rather vainglorious approach has been replaced, and a good thing too, by evidence of a more steely approach to identifying and reacting to the restrictions that would be necessary.

The Olympics hold the potential to be a triumph over adversity, but one achieved by bending the event to comply with the rules that the virus is imposing on us all, rather than kidding ourselves that we have cast it over the horizon.

The Games aren’t an indulgence. They are inspirational for reasons that have a lot to do with discipline, focus and an informed awareness of what human endeavour can render achievable. We must continue to value that, and pursue such possibilities, without being damned fools about it.

It is entirely possible that events will essentially be behind closed doors.