Tokyo Big Picture: Covering the Olympics is a game of chance

‘Chance hai?’ ‘Chance hai!’ For three heady weeks, those two words, with all the promise they hold, dictated my life, just as they lorded over the lives of every journalist who made it to Tokyo for the Olympics. This phrase, this question, this word — chance — took me from the Olympic Stadium in Shinjuku-ku to the Kokugikan Arena in Sumida’s Ryoguku to Musashino Forest Sport Plaza in Chofu to the Asaka Shooting Range in Nerima to the Kasumigaseki Country Club in Saitama to Makuhari Messe Hall in Chiba to the Oi Hockey Stadium in to Yumenoshima Park Archery Field in Koto. Tokyo isn’t one city as you’d imagine. It’s a sprawling metropolis spread over 2,191 kms containing 26 cities in itself, not to mention a few towns and villages, divided across 23 central wards. For context, Tokyo’s geographical area is over twice that of Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and Thane put together.

And as if the logistics of covering a multi-disciplinary event like the Olympics, spread across a megalopolis like Tokyo, wasn’t already tricky enough, Tokyo 2020 had a mandatory 14-day soft quarantine in place for journalists. This meant we could only travel in special buses for the first 14 days in Japan. No local transport. No metro rides to venues for the first 14 days like you could in previous editions of the Games. This meant long detours. Longer travel times. Games buses from one venue took you first to the Media Transport Mall where you took another bus to your second venue of the day. Your other option was taking a special taxi using the 10,000 yen (₹6700 or $92 USD) coupons given to you by organisers for your first 14 days. But given how long distances were, and how expensive Japan can be, those coupons ran out faster than a 100m race.

One day after #Tokyo2020 #Olympics #ClosingCeremony. Last two journalists left behind at Tokyo's Main Press Centre. Photo clicked by one of the 20-odd volunteers manning the help desk. pic.twitter.com/KpKnEqNx0Y

— Amit Kamath (@jestalt) August 9, 2021

Since the day I arrived in Tokyo, my phone battery perpetually seemed to hover at 10 percent while my own bodily and mental battery dropped even lower some days. But throughout the Olympics, somewhere, some Indian athlete or team always had a chance to do well, to win, to medal, to make history. So off we went, cell phone and cellphone-owning human with perilously low batteries, to watch someone playing for the Tricolour grappling against chance. Chance is a concept that kept not just journalists occupied during the Games. Back home, people woke up at 5-6 AM to catch a glimpse of sporting history. This business of chasing chance had those in Tokyo sleeping for three hours some days. Your Mondays seamlessly transitioned into Tuesdays without you noticing. Breakfasts were a luxury. Lunches turned into hastily eaten brunches. You caught up on sleep on bus rides, if you were not typing out copies or transcribing, that is. Everything happened on the fly. And if that was not overwhelming enough, this year the organisers had to introduce a new system to ensure no event had overflowing press tribunes and venue media centres given the pandemic . This meant logging into a portal every day before 4 pm to apply for venue access for the next day’s events. Given how much Japan worships punctuality, the portal would shut at 4 pm sharp (after which you could only write pleading emails to venue media managers requesting access. Most of these requests would be accepted. But there was a chance some wouldn’t.) This meant, knowing one day before exactly what you wanted to do the following day. This also meant, that sometimes you played chance against chance. You know Mirabai Chanu could sleep-lift her way to a silver in her weight class. But at that same time, there’s a boy, Saurabh Chaudhury , 19 years of age, shooting at a venue 30 kms away, who has a chance to do better: he can win gold. So that’s who you took a chance on. Chance though is a fickle paramour. Chaudhury topped qualification, but in the final, finished seventh . Meanwhile, at the Tokyo International Forum, Mirabai did exactly what she was supposed to do: lift enough to win silver . You apply everything you have learnt about an athlete and a team over the entire Olympic cycle into making a decision. India’s young shooters have been phenomenal. So you go, repeatedly, to Asaka Shooting Range, which is now a mausoleum for the ambitions of India’s much-vaunted shooting contingent . But some days you are also drawn by the prospect of the occasion. You go to the Makuhari Messe Hall to watch Bhavani Devi —India’s first fencer ever to compete at the Olympics—stand en guard against the world’s best. You go the Ariake Gymnastics Centre to watch Simone Biles defy gravity . You go to the Oi Hockey Stadium, again and again, to watch the men’s and women’s hockey teams take their shot at India’s medal in the sport since 1980, never mind the overpowering evening heat. You make peace with the fact that you will miss more than you catch. When Atanu Das upsets South Korea’s Jinhyek Oh , a two-time Olympic champion, you are at another venue. When Aditi Ashok plays the golf of her life in the opening rounds , you follow via live updates on your phone because you have decided to be elsewhere. (But when she appears poised to win a medal, you wake up at 5 am, travel for two hours to get to the Kasumigaseki Country Club in Saitama and then walk one step behind the young golfer for five more as you watch her come agonisingly close to a medal and history .) When the Indian men’s hockey team defeats Great Britain in the quarter-final, you’re at the badminton venue watching PV Sindhu defeat He Bing Jiao to claim her second Olympic medal. On the last day of the Games, you get to make another tough decision.

Hi @Abhinav_Bindra can you please let in @Neeraj_chopra1 into that lonely club? pic.twitter.com/7VFSgC7YaN

— Amit Kamath (@jestalt) August 7, 2021

At the Makuhari Messe Hall, wrestler Bajrang Punia, still sore from his defeat to Haji Aliyev in the semis, is going to compete for a bronze medal through the repechage rounds. But over at the Olympic Stadium, javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra — billed as the best bet for India’s first track and field medal at the Olympics since Independence—will be cranking his arm for a shot at history. This time, you get lucky. You pick Neeraj. The rest is history .