I have never been scared about catching the virus – until now

➤ In the first of a series of columns, our anonymous athlete gives the inside view on competing in Tokyo

Iam at the Olympics and my overriding thought is that it is just so boring. The Covid rules mean you cannot go into the Olympic village until a certain number of days before you compete, so I am stuck outside of Tokyo at a training camp.

I probably had not taken that much notice of what life would actually be like out here until I arrived. Essentially, you sleep, eat, train and sit in your room. That is it. There is nothing else allowed.

There are security guards every 100 metres or so and if you veer off for a walk they will radio to another security guard and tell you to come back. There is also a metal fence around the place where we are staying, which makes it look and feel like a prison, even if the Covid protocols were not in place.

I needed some toiletries the other day and I had to set up an account with Amazon Japan because there is no way of getting out to buy anything. There is not even a supermarket we can go to.

I guess, once I get into the Olympic village, it will feel a bit more real but, for the moment, I am just in the middle of nowhere. I may as well be anywhere in the world. The only sign I am in Japan is because the water bottles have different writing on them.

It definitely does not feel like an Olympics – this is not what I signed up for! Right now, it is very much sitting in isolation in a room, so I cannot wait to just get out and actually compete even more than normal. I just hope that does not get taken away from me.

The whole Covid thing has not really been an issue for me until recently. I am young and fit so should be OK if it does happen. But the Olympics are the pinnacle; the biggest competition of my life. So it is not so much being ill that I am scared of – it is the possibility that I might miss out on competing.

Hearing that Sam Kendricks has had his Olympics ruined by testing

positive is gutting. Then there are others who have had to go into isolation just because they are close contacts of someone who gets Covid. It genuinely scares me.

I have travelled a lot this year to train and compete. It is probably a bad thing to say, but I have not been that careful when it comes to Covid. You go to different countries and life is just normal in so many of them that it is hard to shut yourself away, so you almost forget it is a thing.

Obviously that is not an option here, so this is the only real time I have been wary of doing everything I can not to get Covid.

I have never competed at an Olympics before and it is really hard not to be disappointed that this is going to be my experience, rather than five years ago in Rio. And imagine what all the Team GB athletes would have felt when their names were announced at London 2012. That must have been amazing and we miss out on that totally.

I have competed at big events where there have been pretty much empty stadiums and it is such a let-down. My dad was in the stands at one and, when he shouted out, I remember thinking how ridiculous it was that I could hear him so clearly at what was meant to be such a big competition. When it is packed, it is the best feeling in the world; when it is not, it is really disappointing.

A lot of this Olympic experience will come down to adapting to inconvenience. You cannot have any downtime out of your room to take your mind off competition. Who can cope with that the best?

The other day, a few of us were having a conversation about the fact that Covid cases are going up in Japan and lots of people do not want the Olympics to take place. As selfish as it sounds, from an athlete’s perspective, it does not matter what is going on in Tokyo, because we are inside the bubble in the Olympic village.

No one can leave, so the only thing that really matters for us is how many cases there are inside the village. As long as you do not catch Covid or get pinged, you should be fine. If you do, it could ruin everything.