LET THE GAMES BEGIN (AT LAST!)
SPECTACULAR OPENING CEREMONY KICKS OFF THE TOKYO OLYMPICS
THE Tokyo Olympic Games finally launched today with a spectacular show — and a message of hope for the world to move on from the coronavirus pandemic.
Organisers of the opening ceremony evoked the spirit of John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono, 50 years after they wrote the peace anthem Imagine. A procession of flag bearers from 207 nations was being led by eight children, symbolising that the future is now in their hands.
The Games were delayed for a year because of the pandemic and many in Japan have called for them to be cancelled — but they were being officially opened at the Olympic Stadium in Tokyo. Olympic chief Thomas Bach began proceedings with the words: “Welcome to the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020! Finally, the moment has arrived.”
He called the global event “a light at the end of this dark tunnel” only made possible because of the Japanese people’s “incredible ability” to overcome adversity. Tennis star Naomi Osaka, 23 — one of Japan’s top athletes — was expected to have a starring role. The ceremony was set
to start with four athletes carrying the Japanese flag into the stadium, followed by a person with disabilities and a health worker who cared for victims of the pandemic.
British rower Mohamed Sbihi, 33, and sailor Hannah Mills were making history leading out Team GB — the first time there have been male and female flag-bearers.
The Olympic flame was then being lit in a sun-like cauldron created by Japanese designer Oki Sato, which opens like a flower to embody “vitality and hope”. As the greatest show on earth got under way, Tokyo 2020 chiefs said they wanted children to be at the forefront of a “peaceful” and “more diverse” fresh start post Covid-19.
They likened it to the future that Beatle Lennon and his Japanese activist wife Ono imagined without “borders, nationalism, warfare, religious constructs or ownership, where life and all its riches are shared in peace and harmony”. Imagine, co-written by the couple at their Berkshire home, was then being performed in front of a crowd of just 950, with numbers in the stadium restricted to stop the spread of the virus.
US First Lady Jill Biden, Emperor Naruhito and French President Emmanuel Macron were among the VIPs, officials and media guests allowed inside.
More than 11,300 athletes, who have had to wait more than a year after the Games were postponed in March 2020, will compete over the next two weeks — with medals to be won in 33 sports.
Sbihi, from Kingston upon Thames, was Britain’s first Muslim flag-bearer. He won gold in the men’s coxless fours in Rio and will compete in the men’s eight at Tokyo 2020. Mills, also 33, who will be defending her title in the women’s 470 class, said she was “overwhelmed, honoured and proud” to be a flag-bearer.
She said: “I will carry the flag for Team GB, the athletes and the whole of the UK, for the Olympics and what they represent and for the planet and the changes we need to make.”
Star names competing for Team GB include swimmer Adam Peaty, cyclist Laura Kenny and sprinter Dina Asher-Smith. Even before the opening ceremony started, Team GB was already in action. Sarah Bettles, from Harold Wood, near Romford, finished 15th of the 64 competitors in the opening ranking round of archery at Yumenoshima. British rowers also started their campaign with Vicky Thornley making a strong start in the women’s single sculls. Thornley, the first British female single sculler to gain Olympic selection for 20 years, crossed the line first in her heat nearly three seconds ahead of Switzerland’s Jeannine Gmelin. British duo Graeme Thomas and John Collins made it through to the semi-finals in the double sculls, finishing second in their heat behind the Dutch.
A series of testing measures have been brought in to stop the Games becoming a “super spreader” event but despite the restrictions, the virus has already hit the Olympics. Twelve new cases of Covid-19 were reported yesterday, bringing the total related to Games personnel to 87. There have been eight positive cases among athletes.
US tennis player Coco Gauff had to pull out after testing positive before arriving in Tokyo, while Team GB’s Dan Evans and Johanna Konta and world No1 shooter Amber Hill withdrew for the same reason. Meanwhile, opposition to the IOC’s ban on protests intensified with more than 150 athletes, academics and social justice advocates signing an open letter demanding changes to Rule 50. Games chiefs earlier this month relaxed the rule to allow athletes to take a knee for racial justice.
THE Olympics have always had to overcome problems, both political and sporting. There were the boycotts in 1976, 1980 and 1984, the endless controversies over drug-taking and foul play, and most distressing of all, the killing in 1972 of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists.
The difficulties of staging the Tokyo Games have been of a different dimension. It has been a protracted struggle, beginning with their postponement for a year because of Covid-19, the belief by up to 80 per cent of the Japanese public that they should not even be held now, some highly publicised resignations of leading officials and the absence of all spectators from events.
The usual feverish atmosphere will be muted over the next fortnight. The medals will be picked off trays, there will be no handshakes and everyone will wear masks. Only about 30 British competitors will attend the opening ceremony today, when usually there are more than 200. The Olympic experience will be restrained.
Even as the 11,000 competitors, taking part in 33 sports over 17 days, have gathered in Japan, amid the tightest possible hygiene restrictions, we have witnessed withdrawals because of positive tests. Amber Hill, the British skeet shooter and favourite for the title, being one of the most unhappy.
She said: “There are no words to describe how I am feeling right now. I will be back from this but, at the moment, I need some time to reflect.”
For someone like Hill, it is the end of five years of training for her attempt for a brief moment in the sun. Yet, for those who are competing in this, the grandest of all sports events, the occasion will be a highlight and often the highlight of their young lives. To be an Olympian is to be a member of a select club.
The chosen 376 UK competitors, 175 men and 201 women, are the inheritors of a national tradition that has encompassed generations of successes, from the 1924 “Chariots of Fire” Games, through to the 1964 Olympics, the last ones to be staged in Tokyo, when the gold medals of Lynn Davies, Mary Rand, Ann Packer and Ken Matthews, helped make those Games the most successful in athletics for Britain from 1908 to the present day.
Since 1964, we have had the memorable duels of Sebastian Coe and Steve
Ovett, the shoal of medals in rowing, cycling and sailing and so many more. In the last 12 years, we have indeed been privileged to witness Britain rising in 2016 to second place in the medal table, an achievement unthinkable as recently as 1996 when just one gold was secured.
It is not just the money from the National Lottery that enabled this success to take place but the way it was carefully allocated by UK Sport. After all, the United States has far more financial resources for the development of competitors but only the success of their swimmers allowed them to finish ahead of Britain five years ago. Even if I do not expect Britain to get this time anywhere near the number of medals of 2016 (67) or 2012 (65) or probably even 2008 (51), there will certainly be triumphs to savour and, anyway, the attraction of the Games is their international aspect.
Athletes of other countries become celebrated—like Olga Korbut and Simone Biles in gymnastics, Mark Spitz and Michael Phelps in swimming and Emil Zatopek and Usain Bolt in athletics. If they had walked down Oxford Street in their prime, they would have been saluted. And rightly so.
But for those sportsmen and women, who do not get medals, many still have the satisfaction of having tried and frequently succeeded in fulfilling their potential and to have done their best, even their duty, for their country.
In 1968, John Akhwari of Tanzania, injured his knee when he fell in the marathon. With blood seeping through his bandage, he finished more than an hour after the winner. When asked why he had not given up, he said: “My country did not send me away 7,000 miles to start the race. They sent me 7,000 miles to finish it.”
This approach was also summed up by American Al Oerter, who in 1964, while winning the third of his four successive discus titles, had to overcome both a damaged neck and torn rib cartilage. Full of pain-killers and his body wrapped in ice between throws, he managed an Olympic record. He pronounced: “These are the Olympics. You die for them.”
John Goodbody is former sports correspondent at The Times and author of several books on the Olympics
One record breaker, full of painkillers and wrapped in ice, said: “These are the Olympics. You die for them”