The view of the starting line ahead of the men’s 100m in a completely empty Tokyo Olympic Stadium.Melissa Tait/The Globe and Mail
Of the many unintentionally hilarious signs they had posted around Tokyo 2020, the most on point was one they had stuck up at the front of the media buses: “Please tell me if you begin to feel worse.”
The sign assumes you already feel bad, and doesn’t provide any direction as to who exactly you’re meant to complain to. Is it the bus driver? What’s he supposed to do? Drop a plastic tarp over you while he’s driving the bus?
This sort of well-intentioned nonsense was the beating heart of our first COVID Olympics. An event no one wanted, that probably should not have been staged, held in the midst of a seething local populace, bumbling along for two weeks until everyone got the hint and left. Hooray!
It started off dour, with a truncated opening ceremony whose melancholic tone better suited a Nick Cave show than a global extravaganza.
Tennis player Naomi Osaka, who represents Japan, lights the cauldron to open the Tokyo Olympics at an empty Olympic Stadium. Due to COVID-19 the organizers banned spectators from the stadium.Melissa Tait/The Globe and Mail
Like every other venue here, the Olympic Stadium was empty for the big opener. But several thousand locals gathered in the streets surrounding it to bear (mostly) silent witness. It would be the biggest crowd anyone would see anywhere.
Most of the venues were clustered around a stretch of Tokyo’s industrial docklands. Without spectators, that lent the landscape nearby the feel of a moonscape. On the court, Olympic tennis. Just off the court, new condo builds and a truck dealership.
If you could walk around – and no new arrival was permitted to do so – you’d be the only one on the streets.
People – that was one absence. A couple of others – Olympic signage and air that didn’t feel like you were sucking on a hairdryer as you breathed it in.
Canada’s women’s soccer team celebrates winning the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics.Melissa Tait/The Globe and Mail
How hot is it in Tokyo in August?
“The shade’s hot,” Canadian decathlon gold medalist Damian Warner said after competing. “What are you supposed to do when the shade’s hot?”
Tokyo is so scorching that people don’t stop and wait for red lights. They look for the nearest covered area near an intersection – no matter how far away – and wait there instead.
The heat worked as a nice metaphor for the athletes’ experience. The vast majority came here with every intention of making the best of an event pre-ruined by circumstances beyond anyone’s control. They couldn’t go out, couldn’t socialize, couldn’t have sex with each other, couldn’t share a meal, couldn’t do anything but hurry up and leave. But still – soak it all in!
The same can-do types scoffed at the heat. Then they played in it. Tennis player Daniil Medvedev captured the mood when he turned to the umpire during a break in play and said, “I can finish the match, but I can die.
As things ground on, a general dissatisfaction began to find cracks in the Olympic experience and leak out. The American gymnasts abandoned the athletes’ village at the first opportunity. A British race walker likened the accommodations to a prison. A bunch of Australians turned their flight home into a sodden ship of the damned.
Meanwhile, the memorable moments being logged were not the sort the IOC will want to use in promotional literature sent to prospective future hosts.
Simone Biles was the face of the Games when she showed up. She became even more so once she announced there’s more to life than competing, even at the Olympics. That must’ve gone over like a flaming lead balloon back at Lausanne HQ.
Russia was banned from this Games, but somehow still managed to win dozens of medals. Cool trick. Maybe next time the IOC can have the Russians compete in pantyhose facemasks, call themselves Country X and turn this thing into a proper Monty Python skit.
Empty stands, COVID-19 restrictions and the creeping presence of geopolitics seems to have taken some of the fun out of the Tokyo Olympics. Globe sports columnist Cathal Kelly gives his ideas for how to inject more fun into future Games, including dropping new judged sports that spark interest initially but then flare out.
A lot of records fell, which is a great thing for an Olympics. But it wasn’t such a great thing coming after a year and a half of erratic international drug testing. A few competitors on the losing end of unusual results made accusations. Most often what you got was a raised eyebrow and a tilt of the head across the fence in a mixed zone. You were left thinking a few of these accomplishments are not going to ring out for all of history. They might not withstand six months of concentrated scrutiny.
Things would have got a lift if a little luck had broken the Japanese way. But, of course, it didn’t. Why start now?
Torch lighter Naomi Osaka was jettisoned in the tennis competition in the early going. Masters champion Hideki Matsuyama was in on a golf gold, but faded late. The men’s soccer team bombed out in the semis (that seemed to really bother people around here).
The standout athletes of the Games from a local perspective were a gaggle of teen and pre-teen skateboarders. Skateboarding is ridiculous as an Olympic sport – too many opportunities to smash yourself in the crotch to be taken seriously – but it is diverting to watch. Japan was in bad need of diversion.
Tweens such as Momiji Nishiya and Kokona Hiraki, and new events such as sport climbing, injected some lightness into what sometimes played like an employee adventure weekend put on by an insurance company.
On the ground, nothing rose to the level of “Olympic” because, as just one example, Olympic track and field does not work without fans. They have a place where they do track without fans already. It’s called high school.
Every time a camera toggled a couple of degrees upward, catching the sea of empty seats or, worse, a few scattered positions occupied by bored looking officials, half the joy was drained from whatever was going on in the field of play below.
Until there are fans, there should be no more Olympics. Either that or figure out a way to make the production look less bush league. The whole enterprise needs a very quick, very radical rethink.
Damian Warner of Canada poses for a photo around the track after winning the gold medal in men's decathlon in an empty Olympics Stadium.Melissa Tait/The Globe and Mail
If you’ve stuck in this far you’re thinking, “He hated it.”
No, hate is a baseball road trip to Baltimore in August.
This was a bad Olympics. But covering a bad Olympics is better than covering just about anything else. Everywhere you go, someone is having their dreams realized or destroyed.
British boxer Ben Whittaker got himself in trouble by refusing to wear his silver medal on the podium. After the usual online hysteria came something better than the usual apology.
“I felt like a failure,” Whittaker said.
You wouldn’t hear that in an NHL locker room. That’s why the Olympics works.
The most indelible memories of covering a Games are never sporting. Among the things that will stick with me – the midday roar of the cicadas; driving through the city on elevated highways that make it seem like a life-sized Lego set; being ruined forever for convenience stores by the holy Tokyo trinity of 7-Eleven, Lawsons and Family Mart; getting lost coming out of the opening ceremony and walking two hours through a completely still Tokyo night to get back to the hotel; first noticing, and not quite believing, that no one in this city locks up their bike; sushi from the source; that someone greets every arriving bus with a deep bow; the looks of pity a grown man gets from locals when wearing shorts out of doors to go to work (which is as it should be, and I feel properly ashamed).
At root, the true disappointment of this Games was that it existed in two states at once. There was the Olympics Tokyo had; and there was the Olympics Tokyo should have had. That Olympics would have been incredible. Best ever, maybe.
In the end, it was okay, which seems like a minor triumph when you consider the obstacles and how grim it might’ve been.
But don’t worry. If you missed one, there’s another Olympics coming right along in seven months. That one will be held in a police state during an ongoing global health emergency. I’m sure that one will be a barrel of laughs.
Cathal Kelly