San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
No-Fun Olympics: With the athlete experience muted, Games have a somber feel.
First off, forget about the condoms.
One of Olympic journalists’ goto angles is noting how many free condoms are distributed in the Olympic Village, in case the torch wasn’t the only spark being lit.
But at the Tokyo Olympics, there will be no encouragement of that kind of global connection.
And those stories of all the competitors who have finished their events getting wild and being out on the town? No
chance. In Tokyo, athletes must be on a plane out of the country within 48 hours of the conclusion of their event.
Those are just a few reasons why these are the NoFun Olympics.
This will be an Olympics stripped bare of the things that make the Games wonderful. All the reasons that, despite the corruption and greed and cheating and bias that permeates the International Olympic Committee and its events, we still find the Games irresistible. The sense of a global brotherhood. The sight of a proud host showing off its city. The inter
actions between athletes from different sports, different countries, different cultures. The international friendships made over breakfast, on the bus, in line.
Instead, this is what the Tokyo Olympics will be boiled down to: a highly produced NBC television show, where the characters are rotated in to compete and then quickly dismissed.
“It certainly seems they’re trying to eliminate a lot of the fun,” said softball pitcher Monica Abbott, who experienced a different kind of Olympics in 2008.
Abbott, a Santa Cruz native who grew up in Salinas, has played professionally in Japan for years and is keenly aware of how its citizens feel about hosting the Olympics during a pandemic. But the decision is controlled by the IOC.
“They don’t want it,” she said. “But they have no out.”
That is one of the most heartbreaking parts of the NoFun Olympics. There will be no joy or pride in hosting for the Japanese people, who are almost monolithically opposed to the Games. Sold originally as a celebration of resilience, of the nation’s rise from the devastation of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that killed an estimated 20,000 and set off the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the Games are instead becoming one more challenge for Japan to bear.
Japan’s bill for hosting the Games has now risen to an estimated $26 billion. The event carries the specter of a COVID superspreader event. A state of emergency will blanket the Olympics, meaning the streets of one of the world’s most fascinating cities will be muted, businesses will close early, the visitors who are allowed will be restricted in their movement.
Journalists have been told that security guards will be stationed outside their hotels to track their movement and that they are not allowed to go for a walk, except to a convenience store, “and be sure to return within 15 minutes.” Any violations of the “Playbook” protocol will be reported, and this draconian language was included:
“The people of Japan will be paying close attention to your every move. … In the unlikely event that you are suspected or found to be in infringement of the Playbook, such activity may be photographed and shared on social media by bystanders.” Welcome to Tokyo! That the Tokyo Organizing Committee is threatening to enlist “the people of Japan” for help is somewhat ironic, considering that virtually everyone in the country thinks the Games are a bad idea.
“We are worried about the coming situation,” one Tokyo citizen, Yoichi, wrote to me. “The IOC and the Japanese government have no ears to listen to our voice.
“We will stay home and watch Shohei Ohtani on TV, while the Games are on.”
In a sportscrazy country, there will be no spectators. No cheering. No joyful waving of the Japanese flag, as I witnessed at the Nagano Winter Olympics in 1998. No crowd rising as one to cheer the final meters of a swim race or a track event.
There will, of course, be joy for the athletes. They have trained for this for years — and then had to add another year onto that training. They will be singularly focused on competition.
“I’d appreciate having the whole Olympic experience,” said first time Olympian Wes Kitts, a weightlifter who trains in San Ramon, “but I’m just going there to do my job.”
Like many single event competitors, Kitts expects to be in Tokyo for only about six days. Only teams, like U.S. women’s soccer and men’s and women’s basketball, which can expect to have deep runs, will have extended stays. Though there will be a “parade of nations” at the Opening
Ceremonies on Friday, nobody is quite sure how many athletes will actually participate. Though there is an Olympic village, many athletes will stay in hotels.
“We’re staying in a hotel,” Stanford gymnast Brody Malone said of the entire U.S. gymnastics delegation. “I’m definitely upset that it won’t be the traditional Olympics, but at the same time I’m super grateful to even go. To be able to call myself an Olympian.”
But in March 2020, Malone’s father was booking tickets for himself, his other children and Malone’s grandparents to attend. Now there will be no families cheering on their loved ones. For parents in America, many will be experiencing their children’s moment in the dark of night in front of their television.
It makes those who had the other kind of Olympic experience sad for the 2021 group.
“The village turns into a giant party on about Day 5,” remembered softball player Jessica Mendoza. She participated in the 2004 and 2008 Olympics and had about 30 family members in the stands when she won gold in Athens.
“Besides winning gold, my favorite memory was sitting down with Iraqi athletes in the dining hall in Athens,” Mendoza said. “It was mindblowing to be able to have those conversations. To make that connection. “That’s the Olympics.” That was the Olympics. But not this year.