Delayed Tokyo Olympics spring to life as coronavirus stalks the hinterland

Doubts and counterclaims have plagued the Tokyo Olympics right up to their starting date. Toshiro Muto, chief executive of the organising committee, said their cancellation was possible as the number of athletes testing positive to Covid continued to rise.

The Tokyo Olympics in 2020 were postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic. A year later, the disease is still rampant throughout the world, but organisers have refused to cancel the event. REUTERS - KIM KYUNG-HOON

However Thomas Bach, boss of the International Olympics Committee, which has ultimate responsibility for the biggest sporting show on earth, repudiated Muto.

It was another fine mess for the double act especially after the softball and football competitions had been launched.

Not even Thursday – a Japanese national holiday – brought respite before Friday’s official launch.

Kentaro Kobayashi, director of opening ceremony, was fired after a joke he made about the Holocaust as part of his comedy act in 1998 resurfaced in the domestic media.

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a Jewish human rights organisation, made its feelings clear.

Abraham Cooper, the centre’s global social action director, said: “Any association of this person to the Tokyo Olympics would insult the memory of six million Jews and make a cruel mockery of the Paralympics."

Sayonara Kobayashi. He was the third high profile figure to leave the organisation under a cloud.

Yoshiro Mori, the former head of the Tokyo 2020 organising committee, resigned in February after making sexist remarks. 

That was soon followed by the departure of Tokyo Olympics creative head Hiroshi Sasaki, after derogatory comments about a popular Japanese female entertainer.

Who scrutinises these characters before their appointment?  

Rethink

And while corrections and repositioning are the prelude to any prestigious spectacle, the need for uber squeaky-clean was crucial for the Tokyo Games in 2021. 

Over the past seven months, a plethora of surveys and opinion polls have highlighted public opposition to the staging of the Games which were postponed from July 2020 due to the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic. Influential newspapers have urged a rethink too.

But Yoshihide Suga's government has barrelled on despite the lurid predictions from scientists and epidemiologists of coronavirus mutations after assembling so many people from around the world in Tokyo.

Following Kobayahi’s departure, the opening ceremony at the empty Olympic Stadium will be pared down.

Restrictions and that void - especially that void - will snarl throughout the Games no matter what sporting heights are achieved there and at the other 40 venues housing the 33 different sports.

Change

Five years ago, in a louder reality, the Olympic Stadium in Rio was packed for the opening ceremony. 

Four years before that, the Olympic Stadium in London – full, full, full of people – was treated to a quirky and compelling narrative of a nation.

As for Beijing in 2008, events at the Bird’s Nest Stadium redefined a genre and organisation that 13 years later must make a virtue of confinement. 

Athletes and coaches as well as the attendant media have to go through regular tests for coronavirus, movement is limited and once athletes have finished their events, they must leave Tokyo within 48 hours.

No jolly tales of mingling à la Bolt. 

It will be an Olympic Village with prison-like conditions.

Bach has vowed these will be safe games. But what else could he declare? 

Speaking after a meeting with Suga, Bach said: “These will be historic Olympic Games … for the way the Japanese people overcame so many challenges in the last couple of years.”

However, infections driven by the more transmissible Delta variant are increasing in Tokyo, even though the city is under emergency measures that include a ban on alcohol sale at bars and restaurants and early closing times until 22 August. 

Fan zone

Organisers gamble on intoxication from the fumes of athletic testosterone and a reluctance to be such salient failures before an expectant world.

Once the competitions begin, billions are likely to watch the array of events until 8 August on TV. 

In Paris, the city council has set up a Live des Jeux fan zone in Les Jardins du Trocadéro.

A giant screen will broadcast the action from Japan and triumphant French athletes will appear to brandish their medals and answer questions in front of an adoring public. And why not?

Touchy-feely Olympians oozing Everyman allure can only lubricate the bandwagon’s wheels rolling towards the next stop in three years in Paris.

Tony Estanguet, the former canoeist in charge of bringing that jamboree together in the French capital, hailed the Japanese effort during the 138th session of the IOC in Tokyo. 

“The observation programmes set up here in Tokyo will enable us to enrich our knowledge,” said the three-time Olympic gold medallist.

“It will help us to gain precious time on situations already experienced by Tokyo organisers on all aspects of the organisation that the sanitary conditions have not altered.

He added: “We are also in Tokyo to take over.”

Difference

And what a takeover it will be. Plans are being lined up for an opening ceremony in 2024 that is not limited to the main stadium. The concept is for city-wide festivities in which more people can feel the Olympic joy.

By then, the coronavirus may be a thing of a nightmarish past. 

In the here and now of hot and steamy Tokyo, athletes prepare not only to battle with rivals on the track but to evade a silent adversary that will terminate without prejudice.

"After five years of training and preparation, I’m absolutely devastated to say that  I’ve had to withdraw from Team GB’s shooting team,” said Amber Hill after learning of a positive test.

The 23-year-old Briton was, as world number one in the skeet competition, tipped for a medal.

"I will be back from this,” she added. “But right now I need some time to reflect and take in what has happened.”

For many other athletes, this will be their last chance to participate in an Olympics.

The next 16 days will, for all the defiant rhetoric and self- congratulatory hype, be measured for fault lines and fractures. 

Such a shame. It really is supposed to be about goals, golds and glory.