Well, the 2020 Summer Olympics have finally arrived in Tokyo. Let the naysaying games begin.
Once again we’ve heard about the tyranny of the International Olympic Committee, which is more interested in maintaining its power and money than in the athletes it purports to represent; nations trying to medal in the game of under-the-table bribery in a bid for host city status; boycotts by politicians and other world leaders, including South Korean President Moon Jae-in, miffed by a remark made by a Japanese diplomat; and the usual weird Olympic Village stuff, like the recyclable, cardboard beds that were thought to deter any extracurricular nooky by the athletes. (As if anything could deter people from having sex, as a world population of 7.7 billion can attest.)
The presence of the coronavirus in Japan, a country in which most people have not yet been vaccinated and do not want the games, underscores the flaws in the Olympics just as the virus underlines the disadvantages in everything else. The daily protests outside the new Japanese National Stadium remind us of the human as well as financial costs of hosting the games.
And yet, watching the opening ceremony on Friday you couldn’t help but be struck by the idea that if you had the opportunity to participate in these games, you would do it. It’s not just the stars who are chasing history like tennis’ world No. 1 Novak Djokovic, who has a chance to become the first man to win the Golden Slam — the Grand Slam plus the Olympic gold medal — if he succeeds in Tokyo this month and at the US Open the next. (Steffi Graf — who now prefers to be called Stefanie Graf — did it in 1988, the year after Djokovic was born. Don Budge (1938) and Rod Laver are the only men to win all four majors in a calendar year, with Laver doing it twice. — 1962 and ’69.)
It’s all those athletes who have no chance at a medal, who have trained in war-torn countries and refugee camps, who have sacrificed much and risked more to get there. You could see it on their masked.faces as they entered a stadium whose 68,000 seats were mainly empty — the beaming pride, the excitement, the esprit de corps.
Forget the corruption, the dictatorial I.O.C., the jingoistic blathering by NBC and the rest of the American media, which seem to focus on only a handful of athletes and teams — including the thus-far equally underwhelming Simone Biles, American women’s soccer and American men’s basketball, as well as the ever-contradictory Naomi Osaka. Just look at the moving faces of those marching with flags in piquant costumes you see only every four years for countries you may know nothing about or never even heard of.
They are faces that say, Yes, there are hardships. Yet here they are.
Here you are.
Here we are.