Evening Standard

FRAGILE HOPE FOR THE GAMES LIKE NO OTHER

OLYMPICS START BUT COVID PRESENTS HUGE CHALLENGE

- Matt Majendie

FROM the moment the Tokyo Olympics were postponed by a year, IOC president Thomas Bach spoke of them acting as the light at the end of the tunnel.

For the people of Tokyo, a city already in a state of emergency over rising Covid cases, the fear is it will only plunge it into darker times when the show is over.

And whether the IOC like it or not, these will indelibly be the Covid Games.

This is a city and nation far from in thrall with sport’s greatest show on earth. While some gathered outside an Olympic Stadium barricaded off from spectators for today’s opening ceremony, for the rest of the week Downtown Tokyo has been virtually dead with officer workers consigned to their homes or else residents having packed up and left the city before 80,000 foreigners were flown in.

The fragile hope for everyone from residents to officials and the athletes competing from the official start date tomorrow is that it is the sport rather than Covid that captures the headlines.

It has long seemed the ultimate global folly for athletes, team officials and media from some 205 countries to converge on a single city in the midst of a pandemic not under control in Japan nor in the vast majority of the countries taking part.

And yet it became apparent long ago there is too much money — billions have been spent on the Games — and pride at stake for it not to go head over the next two-and-a-half weeks.

The Olympics are no stranger to controvers­y and tragedy from Mexico in 1968 where 200 protestors were killed to the Israeli team members taken hostage and killed in Munich four years later.

And yet its latest inception is a Games like no other, although the purpose from a sporting sense is still the same.

There is still the chance to turn relative nobodies into household names overnight, for people back in the UK to suddenly become experts in taekwondo or talk over the intricacie­s of the 10metre platform synchro diving.

Other worldly performanc­es can be expected from Adam Peaty on the opening weekend in the pool or else at the athletics track next week where a litany of world records could be broken thanks to the sport’s new super shoes, another controvers­ial sideshow.

Organisers are craving some positivity. The build-up to the opening ceremony has been doused in scandal in the past days, one of its composers stepping back from his role after an article resurfaced in which he admitted to bullying classmates with learning disabiliti­es in quite horrible and graphic fashion.

And then the event’s artistic director was axed from the ceremony when focus turned to an old comedy sketch of his about the Holocaust.

Olympic athletes like to talk about sacrifices but the extent of the sacrifice Tokyo has made — against much of its residents’ will — will not be known for weeks, even months. There is even the alarming spectre of the birth of an Olympic variant of a virus that has decimated the world.

The great shame is inside the venues there will be no spectators and, as a result, Japan unable to show how great a host they could have been as with the 2019 Rugby World Cup.

And yet the message, as has always been the case ahead of the opening week, remains the same… let the Games begin. As things stand, they desperatel­y need to.

 ??  ?? Nervous nation: with Covid restrictio­ns in place, the stadium was having the ceremony today without fans
Nervous nation: with Covid restrictio­ns in place, the stadium was having the ceremony today without fans
 ??  ?? We’re off: Team GB’s John Colins gives the thumbs up in the double sculls today
We’re off: Team GB’s John Colins gives the thumbs up in the double sculls today
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