Going for gold under the cloud of COVID-19 makes the Tokyo Summer Games an Olympics like no other. This newsletter is here to help you make sense of it all, with original stories from Globe reporters in Canada and Tokyo, tracking Team Canada’s medal wins, and past Olympic moments from iconic performances. Tokyo Olympics Update is sent every Tuesday and Friday in July and twice daily during the Games, which run from July 23 to Aug. 8. You can sign up here. Let us know what you think by e-mailing audience@globeandmail.com.
Good afternoon, and welcome to the latest edition of The Globe’s Olympic newsletter.
As an Olympic canoeist and her parent head to Tokyo, both are fulfilling lifelong dreams and breaking barriers
Haley Daniels and father Kimberly Daniels at the Canadian Sports Institute in Calgary.Dave Holland/Canadian Sport Institute Calgary
For Haley Daniels and her dad, Tokyo will represent a pair of firsts. Haley will compete for Canada in the first women’s Olympic canoeing event, and her experienced gate-judge dad – a transgender woman now going by Kimberly – is believed to be the first transgender official ever to work the Games.
The pair had originally planned to share Kimberly’s truth after the Olympics, for fear of disrupting Haley’s training and preparation, but pandemic delays and a bit of serendipity linked to a Pride photo shoot changed that. “Today I can be myself,” Kimberly says now. “I always had a male and female voice in my head, and I only have that female voice.”
How Team Canada is shaping up
The Tokyo Games are 10 days away. Here’s how Team Canada is looking:
- Canada is sending it’s largest team to the Summer Olympics in 37 years. The Canadian Olympic Committee has announced the 371 athletes who will compete in Tokyo, of which 225 women and 146 men have been named to the team. This will be Canada’s largest since the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Games.
- The risks of travelling to a country struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic were too much for a Canadian tennis star hoping to fulfill childhood dreams. Bianca Andreescu announced her decision Monday to withdraw from the Olympics, the second Canadian tennis phenom to opt out after Denis Shapovalov made a similar decision last month.
- Nikola Girke was done with competitive sailing after a disappointing outing at the 2016 Rio Olympics. She’d competed at four Games in three different disciplines and, while the results hadn’t been what she’d hoped for, she was ready to retire. But after taking a three-year leave from the sport, Girke, 43, is ready to compete in women’s windsurfing at the Tokyo Olympics.
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Two more prefectures ban fans as Tokyo Governor Koike assures “safe and secure” Olympics
The latest information you need to know about Japan, COVID-19 and the Olympics.
To totally round out spectators being barred from the Tokyo Games, two more prefectures outside of Tokyo have banned fans from attending the outlying venues. There is confidence in the games going off without a hitch though, Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike explains that a sufficient number of hospitals combined with a speed-up in vaccination rollout means Tokyo will be able to hold “safe and secure” Olympics in 10 days.
Meanwhile, the Nigerian men’s basketball team that got obliterated by the USA in 2012 by 83 points pulled off a stunning victory in a Saturday exhibition game, defeating an NBA-laden USA team, 90-87. And in their next exhibition game against Australia Monday, the star studded USA team lost to the boomers 91-83. This marks the first time Team USA has lost back to back exhibition games since NBA players started playing in 1992.
Summer Olympic time capsule
Women of the Canadian Olympic team wave to the crowds as they depart Montreal’s Olympic Stadium following the opening ceremonies on July 17, 1976.The Canadian Press
July 17, 1976: The 1976 Montreal Olympics get off the ground
In front of a live audience of 73,000 and an estimated half-billion watching on television, the 1976 Montreal Olympics opening ceremony marked the first and only Summer Games held in Canada. The Queen officially opened the Games after having entering the Olympic Stadium to trumpets and the echo of the Snowbird planes that had performed an air show beforehand. Among those at her side in the Royal Box were Prince Philip, Prince Andrew, and Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.
While the Games went on without any major hiccups – save for a rainstorm dousing the Olympic flame, resulting in an official using his cigarette lighter to bring it back to life – the legacy of the ’76 Games is complicated. Athletically, Canada finished the Games with five silver medals and six bronze – but no gold medals, a performance replicated 12 years later when it hosted the 1988 Winter Games in Calgary, making the pair of Canadian-hosted Olympics only two of three in history in which the host didn’t win gold. But the financial legacy perhaps stung more: The Olympic Stadium was dubbed “The Big Owe,” which alluded to both the building’s size and cost of the Games at US$6.1-billion in 2015 dollars. The stadium’s costs were paid off 30 years later in 2006. Its size is also often credited to the failure of the Montreal Expos baseball club, because of the stadium’s sheer size, which often felt cavernous at ball games.
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