Are the Tokyo Olympics cursed?

Despite mounting pressure this spring for the cancellation or postponement of the Tokyo 2020 Games, the International Olympic Committee sashayed ahead with its plans with seeming nonchalance. As late as March, IOC President Thomas Bach brayed that members hadn’t so much as uttered the words “postponement” or “cancellation”.

But pressure from athletes and national sport bodies finally forced Mr Bach’s hand. Then Canada vowed not to send its athletes to Tokyo, followed by Australia, Germany, and Portugal. With the five-ring dominoes falling, the IOC and organisers in Tokyo relented to reality on March 24, delaying the Games to 2021.

It was the first time in the history of the Olympics that the games were postponed. But it was not the first time Tokyo had its Olympic experience scuppered by calamity. In 1940, too, the city had been slated to host the Summer Olympics — before misguided IOC management exacerbated external circumstances and got in the way.

It’s a pattern we’re likely to see again, because the Olympics are rooted in arrogant fantasies about the power of the Games to soar above the limitations of other human enterprises. The Olympics couldn’t transcend war in the 1940s, and it can’t transcend epidemiological science today.

The modern Olympics were the brainchild of Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a French aristocrat who believed that the rigorous discipline and outward displays of masculinity could help reinvigorate

France after its humiliating drubbing in the Franco-Prussian War. In 1894, he assembled officials from sports organisations in Europe and North America along with fellow aristocrats — including the King of Greece, the Prince of Wales, and a Russian grand duke — to restore the Olympics.

The Games were built on a bedrock of contradictions: the Olympics were to symbolise peace but were also a way to toughen up “a flabby and cramped youth” for war, as the Baron put it. The Games were anchored in a rhetoric of inclusion even as Coubertin railed against the participation of women. The Olympic rings were to represent the continents of the world linked in peace, but the Games were organised by nation, encouraging chauvinism.

In 1936, the IOC picked Tokyo to host the 1940 Games, over Helsinki. It was a controversial choice. In 1931, Japan had aroused international consternation when it invaded Manchuria and installed a puppet government. The IOC’s oftproclaimed aim of fostering peace and goodwill apparently didn’t outweigh its desire to spread across the globe — Tokyo would be the first city in Asia to host the Games. Rome had also expressed interest in hosting the 1940 Olympics, but behind the scenes, the Tokyo team cut a deal with Benito Mussolini: Il Duce backed their bid in exchange for Japanese support for

Rome’s effort to secure the 1944 Games. In the end, IOC members chose Tokyo over Helsinki by a vote of 37 to 26.

But Japan attacked China in July 1937, setting off the Second Sino-Japanese War. Critics demanded that Tokyo be forced to relinquish the Games. Athletes from France, Great Britain, and the United States threatened a boycott. But the IOC didn’t budge. It was never particularly bothered by Japanese bellicosity, and doubled down on its support for Japan by handing the 1940 Winter Games to Sapporo in June 1937, even as threats of war filled the air. The IOC averred, as it still does, that when it comes to the Olympics, politics and sports shouldn’t mix.

The IOC also seemed smitten with Tokyo’s dedication to Olympic tradition. Grandiosity and pomposity are the IOC’s id and ego — and Tokyo bidders planned to spend 10 million yen (equivalent to more than 1.9 billion baht today) to enlarge stadiums. The Tokyo Prefecture plunged an additional US$100,000 into the city’s bid, no small sum at the time (it would be nearly 64.8 million baht today). Tokyo also planned to repeat the Olympic torch relay, a ritual instituted by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis at the 1936 Berlin Games.

But Tokyo 1940 was not to be. Tellingly, the Japanese, not the IOC, pulled the plug. The country’s Minister of

War, General Gen Sugiyama, insisted that Tokyo withdraw its Olympic responsibility in order to focus on war. Eventually, Tokyo issued a statement that read, “We deeply regret to have to abandon temporarily the privilege of holding the first Olympics in Asia.” They added, “We promise to make every effort to bring the 1944 Olympics to Japan as we firmly believe peace will return to the Far East before long.”

The IOC shifted the 1940 Summer Games to Helsinki, and the 1940 Winter Games to Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Germany, thus demonstrating the Olympics had no qualms about the Nazi regime. Eventually both 1940 Games were cancelled after Russia invaded Finland in 1939. The Olympics wouldn’t be held again until 1948 in London.

Much has changed since the 1940s. The Games have been transformed into an expensive, money-making behemoth. The economic stakes are higher for host cities. When Tokyo postponed in 2020, it had already plunged billions more than intended into the Olympic project. During the bid phase of the Tokyo Games, the price tag was $7.3 billion, but today, according to a government audit, the Olympics are on pace to spend more than $26 billion. The recently announced postponement will add another $2 to $6 billion in costs, say Japanese media.

Japan’s Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso recently suggested that the Olympics were cursed every 40 years — from the 1940 Tokyo cancellation, to the boycottplagued 1980 Moscow Games, to the Tokyo 2020 postponement. But the problem is nothing so magical: what has truly cursed the Olympic Movement is its dismal combination of outsized ambition and subpar leadership.

‘‘ The Olympics couldn’t transcend war in the 1940s, and it can’t transcend epidemiological science today.

Jules Boykoff is a former professional soccer player and teaches political science at Pacific University in Oregon.