Olympics open with nod to virus’s ravages
TOKYO — Dozens of men and women run across the field in a darkened stadium, keeping their distance from each other. They symbolize all the athletes who have trained in solitude during the pandemic.
The Japanese flag comes into view, borne by a small group of young people and health care workers. The national anthem is sung as if in prayer.
The Tokyo Olympics began Friday night the only way they could have, with an occasionally somber opening ceremony acknowledging the ravages of COVID-19 that forced this global sports event to be postponed a year.
With new cases surging throughout Japan and much of the country in a state of emergency, there were few spectators in the
stands, mostly just broadcast cameras, officials and reporters watching from the upper deck of Olympic Stadium, a gleaming if largely deserted venue in this city’s fashionable Shinjuku district.
“It was a very challenging year,” Toshiro Muto, director general of the Tokyo 2020 organizingcommittee, said a few days earlier. “How can we make the Games something acceptable to the people? This is indeed a true test.”
For the next 16 days, local officials and the International Olympic Committee will conduct what amounts to a carefully monitored, made-for-television event.
Athletes will be tested daily and yanked from competition at the first hint of infection. Masks and social distancing will be enforced away from the field of play.
Crowd noise recorded at previous Olympics will be played over the public-address system at arenas, taking theplace of real fans who have been barred from attending.
“No spectators is disappointing,” said Yukiko Ueno, a softball pitcher who led Japan to victory over Australia in a preliminary game earlier this week. “It’s definitely sad that they won’t be in attendance to support us in this Games.”
None of this quite elicits the joyous and often raucous celebration that has marked opening ceremonies of the past. On Friday, the Japanese were forced to strike a different chord.
They offered a moment of silence to honor those lost to the coronavirus, then looked back to happier times when Tokyo first hosted the Summer Games in 1964. A performance of the “Kiyari Uta,” a work song dating to the Edo period, paid homage to traditional crafts as giant wooden rings were carried in on a platform, surrounded by glowing paper lanterns.
Competitors were asked to arrive in Tokyo no sooner than five days before their event and depart within 48 hours of finishing competition. That meant less than half of the 613 athletes on the U.S. roster made the ceremonial march. Some countries brought only a handful of representatives.
Team USA made its arrival near the end of the parade of nations. Basketball player Sue Bird and Cuban American baseball player Eddy Alvarez were the flag bearers.
The U. S. men’s and women’s gymnastics teams didn’t attend the Opening Ceremonies, but the athletes held their own private parade of sorts. The gymnasts dressed in the apparel given to Team USA athletes for the ceremonies, and three-time Olympian Sam Mikulak served as a flag bearer with Simone Biles behind him.
In the hours before darkness, excited residents gathered in the Shinjuku district, gravitating toward a grassy plaza where they posed for snapshots in front of the Olympic rings. Some looked toward the stadium as if they might catch a glimpse of what was transpiring inside, gasping as fireworks exploded in the sky.
“I haven’t seen fireworks in ages,” said Jun Mabuchi, who came with his friend from college and stayed past the8 p.m. state-of-emergency curfew.