Tokyo Olympics 2020: World’s greatest party comes to town, but the hosts are not invited

Tokyo: The greatest party on earth is about to start in Tokyo. But the hosts are not invited. For the host city, just as for the athletes, an Olympic Games is a culmination of a cycle of meticulous preparation. When Tokyo was awarded the Games in 2013, members of the Japan delegation openly wept, showing just how much these Games meant to them. Since that heady day, there has been an eight-year wait to host an event which the country and the city have fond memories of from 1964.

The 1964 Games are credited with re-energising the sagging Japanese economy and the country’s hurt morale, both of which were devastated by World War II. But Tokyo is unlikely to have that moment of catharsis this time around. In most venues, fans will not be in attendance when the Tokyo Olympics starts tomorrow. The coronavirus pandemic has cast too big of a shadow. First, it forced the Olympics to be postponed by a year. Then it forced the hand of the organisers to bar foreign fans and then local spectators from stadia. Those who have come to Tokyo, athletes, officials and journalists, are being subject to restrictions that could fill out dossiers. This will be a Games where the hosts and the visitors have to settle for an uneasy co-existence. Parallel worlds with little overlaps. What’s in a nickname? When Japan won the bid to host the Tokyo Olympics, the government was quick to try and brand it the Recovery and Reconstruction Games. The Olympics, they said, was Japan’s opportunity to showcase the Fukushima region’s recovery from the earthquake and tsunami of 2011 that triggered a meltdown at a nuclear plant. The 2020 edition of the Olympics has earned many nicknames over the last year. Most of them are not flattering. The Postponed Olympics. The Pandemic Games. The Lowkey Olympics. The Ghost Games. The Zombie Olympics. The Asterisk Olympics. The Cursed Olympics. The Quiet Olympics. The Exclusion Games. The Socially-Distanced Olympics. The made-for-TV Olympics. The new normal Tokyo residents will have to catch all the action of these Olympics live on television (if they want to catch it, that is). But for athletes too, this will be a different experience. When an athlete wins a medal at the Tokyo Olympics, they will have to put on their own medals at these new-normal Olympics. None of their family members will be in the venues. There are to be no handshakes during the medal ceremony. No hugs either. “We could hear each other; we could hear our own breaths a little bit,” said USA’s Christen Press after competing in an empty stadium against Sweden on Wednesday, where they lost 3-0. Understandably, many of the big names like Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, LeBron James have chosen to give these Games a miss, citing one reason or another. Novak Djokovic flirted with the idea of skipping the Games, but eventually, the lure of completing a Golden Slam brought him to Japan. “I feed off the energy of the crowd, whether it is in favour of me or not. This is one of the biggest reasons why I play professionally. So that was my biggest issue with playing at Tokyo,” said Djokovic at a press conference on Thursday. “But being at an Olympic Games and competing as part of a team is a unique experience. It gives you wings.” Japan holding its breath Japan, meanwhile, feels nervous. On the edge. Almost like this party that they’re hosting is starting to get out of hand. There are no such things as innocent sniffles. Not anymore. A dry cough makes everyone sit up and look around nervously. Hand sanitisers are ubiquitous. At the Main Press Centre, every seat gets wiped down after a press conference. The microphone and even the stand get zealously sanitised after every question. So far, 10 athletes are among the 87 Tokyo 2020-related stakeholders who have tested positive this month, as per figures released by the organisers on Thursday. Tokyo registered 1,979 new cases of the virus until 5 pm (JST) on Thursday. For many months now, local residents have made their displeasure of these Games known. Multiple polls conducted by Japanese media organisations have shown that as many as 80 percent of locals are against the Games being held this year. In the city of Mito, an elderly woman called Kayoko Takahashi squirted water from a plastic gun on the torchbearer during the Torch Relay in an attempt to extinguish the Olympic flame. She is reported to have shouted, “No Olympics. Stop the Games.” As the Games have inched closer, it seems as some of the sponsors too are feeling jittery, with Toyota and Bridgestone stating that they will not run commercials on TV related to Tokyo 2020. “We have been cornered into a situation where we cannot even stop now. We are damned if we do, and damned if we do not. The IOC also seems to think that public opinion in Japan is not important,” Kaori Yamaguchi, a bronze medallist judoka at Seoul 1988 who is currently a member of the Japanese Olympic Committee, wrote in a recent editorial published by the Kyodo News. With that backdrop, the Games will officially begin with the Opening Ceremony at the Olympic Stadium on Friday. The longstanding cliche that sportswriters usually like repeating is that sport has the power to change the world. At Tokyo, sport has a different mission: to change Japan’s opinion about the Games. Click here for our complete Tokyo 2020 coverage