Sporting drama looms as Games saviour
As turmoil reigns in Tokyo, only sport can save these Olympics writes Oliver Brown in Tokyo
It falls to the athletes to save the Olympics from being derided as a marriage of convenience.
The drumbeat of doom is an immutable backdrop to any Olympic prelude. In Beijing, it was outrage over mass evictions. In London, it was anxiety at botched security arrangements. In Rio, it was creeping terror about the Zika virus.
All such concerns, however legitimate, were ultimately swamped by teary montages of gold rushes. But here in Tokyo, the curse is everywhere you look, from empty stadiums to oppressive Covid protocols, from self-isolating athletes to a local population uneasy at the sight of 206 nations converging on a city in a state of emergency.
Never mind four horsemen of the apocalypse, these Games have already summoned up an entire cavalry.
It falls to the athletes, then, to save them from being derided as a marriage of convenience. It will require a triple-double floor stunt from Simone Biles to elevate them beyond the piped-in crowd noise, and a sub-57-second breaststroke masterclass by Adam Peaty to help replace a story of horror with one of wonder. History, at least, is a consoling guide, in that a breathless 17-day sweep of 33 sports has a habit of winning over even the most obstinate doubters by the end.
Despite the prospect of Tokyo medal-winners being forced to collect their precious metal off a tray, due to fears around Covid transmission, the strangeness does not dilute the
sanctity of the sport. It does not diminish the five years’ toil that Dina Asher-Smith hopes, in next Saturday’s
100m final, to channel into just under
11s.
Even at these ghost Games, one timeless sentiment by Dawn Fraser, the great Australian swimmer, still applies. “The Olympics remain,” she once said, “the most compelling search for excellence that exists in sport, and maybe in life itself.” A dose of such idealism can hardly come
soon enough. Hosts are supposed to be gripped by irrepressible joie de vivre at these moments.
London 2012 will forever be remembered by the unheard-of novelty of people smiling at each other on the Tube. But a delayed Tokyo 2020 is taking place in a climate of mutual resentment, between Japanese understandably aggrieved at being shut out of their own party and foreign visitors bewildered as to why, after multiple
tests just to board the plane, they must still start their days by providing samples of barcoded saliva.
Rules around the virus are so riddled with contradictions as to make the UK’s look sensible. Covid checks at Tokyo’s airports are taking up to four hours. Arrivals are herded onto buses to a central checkpoint, only to be told they must make the rest of their journeys in individual taxis due to distancing laws.
The “playbook”, a document held up as a quasi-religious text, declares that you must have zero contact with Japanese people for 14 days, while hotels insist you redeem breakfast vouchers at cafes populated, rather unavoidably, by locals. Allied to this is an explicit threat of being shamed on social media for any infractions. It all makes for an atmosphere that is, to put it politely, tense.
And yet there is a time-honoured ritual of these anxieties evaporating once the competition starts.
Thousands of charming Tokyo volunteers deserve it, such is their forbearance in dealing with guests grappling with red tape.
Today, we ask why the Games are taking place at all, when at least 60 per cent of the Japanese public are stubbornly opposed. But tomorrow, the thorniest dilemma will be whether to watch the 3x3 basketball or who can grasp gold in the men’s road race. The dial moves quickly.
In 1996, there were pleas to abandon the Atlanta Olympics when a bomb exploded in Centennial Park on the middle Saturday. Within four days, those pleas had been forgotten amid the euphoria of Michael Johnson winning the 200m in a world-record time.
A powerful motivating force in Tokyo is money. The Japanese government has spent tens of billions on these benighted Olympics and cannot conceive of the loss of face that would come from cancelling them outright. Equally, the International Olympic Committee relies on vast broadcast contracts, with NBC’s deal for Unites States rights worth $10 billion over the next 11 years.
But the Games are still worth having, still capable of generating their own momentum. Many sports need the financial windfall that only the Olympics can create.
Demands for Tokyo to be scrapped also neglect the reality that, for 70 per cent of the 11,000 athletes competing, this is the one chance of Olympic glory they will have in their lifetimes. After 16 months of discord, one hope, above all, must be sustained: that now the Olympic cauldron has been ignited, the athletes can reclaim their rightful place as keepers of the flame.