Final whistle Half-baked Olympics would be meaningless

AIt is a source of much sadness to imagine sport’s grandest feast reduced to a gutted shell

s belief that the Tokyo Olympics will be staged this summer shrinks to little more than blind faith, it is apt to ask, for whose benefit are these star-crossed Games being salvaged?

This is one spectacle that derives its credibility not just from the understanding that we are witnessing the finest athletes at their physical peak,

Negative response: Surveys show that 80 per cent of the local population want the Tokyo Games to be cancelled or postponed again but from the unquestioning buy-in of the host country.

Look at the latest surveys in Japan, and we find that 80 per cent of the population believe their Olympics should be cancelled or postponed for a second time. The sanctity of the competition is under threat, too, given that Dina Asher-smith, Britain’s great hope for a first female sprinting gold in 61 years, is among countless others denied a world-class race for 16 months.

The united front shown by local organisers and the International Olympic Committee, insisting that the Games will go on irrespective of progress in the pandemic or vaccination programme, is increasingly meaningless. Even as athletes were being locked out of their own training bases last March, Thomas Bach, president of the IOC, was still blithely parroting the idea that Tokyo 2020 should be preserved as a source of light for a damaged world.

Bach should know by now that a virulent pathogen, one that respects neither borders nor calendars and that has killed almost 2.1million people in 10 months, is not about to heed his abstract ideals.

Not that designing a vast end-of-covid jamboree is an ignoble idea, merely unrealistic. It should be evident by now that the virus has no intention of ending with a big bang, one that might enable a sporting Glastonbury with zero restrictions. Significant obstacles will still exist come July, making an event on the scale of the Tokyo Games, requiring the convergence of over 200 nations on the world’s densest megalopolis, almost unthinkably difficult.

This week’s scenes in Melbourne will give the IOC pause for thought. Officials at the Australian Open thought they had created a fully biosecure envelope when they arranged for 12 charter flights to transport a 1,270-strong tennis entourage to their city, ready for a fortnight’s quarantine. All it took was one asymptomatic case, and an entire planeload was forced into 14 days’ hard lock-up, while their rivals retained daily dispensations to train outside.

Forget any suggestion of mental hardship, as so memorably parodied by the lament of Bernard Tomic’s girlfriend that she had to wash her own hair. The real problem is the lack of any equality of opportunity.

While Rafael Nadal can go through practice drills to his heart’s content for five hours a day, Pablo Cuevas is reduced to thwacking single-handed backhands against his hotel-room wall. If they are drawn together during the first week of matches, is this truly a fair fight?

The singles tournaments in Australia involve 256 athletes. For the Tokyo Olympics, there are due to be more than 14,000. Nobody disputes that major compensations must be made for international sport to happen amid this crisis, but the Games should be the one stage resistant to any shortcuts.

If we do not see the best at their best, then the Olympics’ founding principles would cease to apply. It is a possibility that should keep the suits in Lausanne awake at night. And yet it does not deprive them of half as much sleep as the prospect of all those lost broadcast and sponsorship contracts, or a potential hit to the Japanese economy of over £10billion. With this in mind, it remains probable that a much-streamlined Olympics will be preserved.

It is a source of much sadness, though, to imagine sport’s grandest feast reduced to a gutted shell. Tokyo was poised to deliver a wonderful Games, with all the fiendish logistics managed with polish and vibrancy.

All the mitigation strategies now advanced, such as banning fans from singing or chanting for fear of spreading virus droplets, are anathema to everything these Olympics were supposed to signify.

It would be a labyrinthine challenge, but by far the most sensible option would be to defer Tokyo to 2022 and Paris to 2025. For this is one sporting glory that deserves to be performed to its fullest expression, or not at all.