”Best games ever.”
This is what the Olympic presidents used to say during the closing ceremonies.
That title the games in Tokyo are nowhere near. Instead, the 2021 Games, still called Tokyo 2020, are set to be the worst in Olympic history.
In that case, it will be a team winner.
The International Olympic Committee, the Tokyo Olympic Organization and the Japanese government are pulling the load together. I wrote before the inauguration that these substitute games should not start this year. After being here for a little over a week, the feeling has only intensified.
It’s usually great to be at an Olympics. Now it’s most interesting. I would not want to be without these strange weeks but never want to do it again. Because this is not a real Olympics. In a real Olympics, the games and the city flow together and form an unbeatable experience. Now it’s different worlds.
I have never felt so welcomingly unwelcome anywhere in the world.
I have never felt so politely hated.
Because despite all the smiles and the bows, all friendly volunteers, so the feeling that constantly hangs like an Olympic backpack is that we foreigners should not be here.
All these rules about what we Olympic travelers are not allowed to do, where we are not allowed to be, who we are not allowed to talk to and above all where we are not allowed to go are restrictive in a way that destroys the feeling of being at an Olympics.
It is an interesting – and not at all positive – experience to be in a life and see how everything goes on as usual out there without being able to take part in it.
After 14 days, the bubble opens and you get to go out in the usual Tokyo, I’m not there yet but I have close colleagues who can play Guns N ‘Roses on tour on Saturday.
– Despite a number of strict requirements for social distancing, it has sometimes been crowded on the media buses in Tokyo.
Photo: Joel Marklund / Bildbyrån
The 1996 Atlanta Olympics are in media circles infamous. That it is named by many as the worst games is connected with the transport chaos.
And of course, here it can be just as difficult to know how bus times change as for the table tennis players to know when their matches start. Getting someone to book a taxi can be at the solve-mystery level.
In order not to annoy the people of Tokyo more than necessary, many did not want the games here, so there are no special Olympic files in the traffic.
It had been needed the other day. An accident meant that a trip that would take just over an hour took almost four. Then I and colleagues from Lithuania had to watch the swimming races we did not have time for on my computer.
The top cover was about to go on a Chinese journalist in the bus.
“OPEN THE DOORS.”
He yelled at the poor driver a couple of times. After the third roar, the Chinese got what he wanted.
We were a few hundred meter from the Olympic area and there, on the street, was a reason why this is really about to become the worst games.
And photo spy.
They are here and there and they are looking for misses against the covid rules of us foreigners. It can be a lowered mouth guard. Then a picture is taken.
What happens to the image and who is behind it is unclear. The hottest track is that the Japanese government has called for espionage.
But the scandal is that the IOC knew about the phenomenon and did not react in advance. Instead, we journalists were told that we could be prepared to be hung out on social media if we broke any rules.
This would not have surprised me if it had happened in the upcoming winter games in China. If it had been done by the Stasi in Erich Honecker’s GDR, it would have been a normal everyday life. But this is the Summer Olympics for sports.
I think that (almost) everyone who is here does everything to follow the rules to keep the level of infection down.
The illogical lines however, are not easy to follow. People have to be crowded to get a ticket to a mixed interview zone where there can then be as much space as possible. We are encouraged to keep our distance in rooms as large as exhibition halls, but are crowded with buses on the way there.
On Tuesday we were some who would go to Izu to watch mountain biking. I went the day before to the transport desk in the Main Press Center to ask how the buses were going.
– There is only one bus and it is full. You can take a taxi, said a volunteer.
– You can put in an extra bus, I tried.
– We have only received money for a bus, said a transport manager I got on the phone.
This in games that will be the most expensive in history. The final bill is expected to land above the equivalent of SEK 200 billion.
– During the mountain bike competitions in Izu, ten miles outside Tokyo, spectators were allowed.
Photo: Greg Baker / AFP
When we got to Izu seemed something familiar and long-awaited.
A queue with an audience. The 10 miles from Tokyo were enough to allow an audience and after the competition I got to know the difference in competing with and without an audience.
When the Swiss winner Jolanda Neff was to describe the feeling of competing in front of an audience for the first time in almost two years, then all the emotions came at once. She started crying.
Another who knows the difference is the Netherlands’ Eva de Goede, one of the biggest stars in field hockey. Put a field hockey club in the hands of Caroline Seger and you will know what kind of player de Goede is.
The day after mountain biking I do what I like best with the special spectacle called the Summer Olympics. Going to a sport I otherwise do not follow to see the sport’s beauty and excitement, experience the atmosphere together with the audience.
It’s not possible here. Part of the spontaneity disappears when you have to book what to do the day before and the only traces of the audience are that the signs remain, they show where the spectators would go.
On the way to the field hockey arena, I see the banners for Tokyo 2020. “United by emotion.” Here, no emotions are united between players and spectators. None of the 4.5 million tickets sold to Japanese alone are used.
Every shout between the players, every ball hit on the field. Everything is heard in the stands. It’s a useless sports sound, it’s not how an Olympic match should sound.
– The Netherlands’ Eva de Goede tries to take the ball from Ireland’s Lizzy Holden in an earlier match in the Olympics.
Photo: Luis Acosta / AFP
The Dutch women’s team has played four straight Olympic finals, won in 2008 and 2012. Five years ago, there was a final loss against Great Britain after a penalty shootout.
Eva de Goede makes her fourth straight Olympics. After 5-0 against South Africa in the team’s third victory in three matches, the 32-year-old says:
– It’s so sad that there are no spectators here. It really makes a big difference. This is a very special Olympics and I tell the younger ones who are doing their first Olympics that even though there are many restrictions, we must make sure that we can be here and play.
– And after all – it’s still an Olympics.
– Empty stands at the field hockey arena.
Photo: Ina Fassbender/AFP
Finally: The reason why this can be the worst Olympics of all time is that virus that can shatter Olympic dreams even for athletes who have not noticed any disease.
Pole vaulter Armand “Mondo” Duplanti’s friend and biggest competitor Sam Kendricks has left a positive covid test and misses the Olympics. The news came on Thursday.
Duplantis and Kendricks would have met the day before for a coffee in the Olympic village but Mondo got a call from his girlfriend. The coffee hour did not end.
That’s how “Mondo’s” Olympics were saved.
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