Without fans, the Games seemed as empty as their venues despite record shattering performances.
As athletes and media climbed off buses outside the Olympic Stadium for the opening ceremony two weeks ago, they were greeted by a young boy, maybe 4, standing with his parents. “Hi, how are you?” he said with a wide smile. “Hi, how are you?” He would prove a tough act to follow. As he welcomed the world to his home town, the young boy stood behind one of the many barriers erected to keep the Japanese public away from the first Olympic Games held during a state of emergency because of COVID-19 cases in the host city surging to record levels. The 2020 Olympic Games, delayed a year by a pandemic, will be remembered for the courage of Simon Biles and Allyson Felix, the record-shattering brilliance of hurdlers Karsten Warholm and Sydney McLaughlin, the relentlessness of distance runners Eliud Kipchoge and Sifan Hassan, the domination of swimmer Caeleb Dressel and the U.S. women’s basketball, water polo and indoor and beach volleyball teams. But the legacy of Games, which wrapped up Sunday night with a glittering if disjointed and flat closing ceremony, will also be their failure to connect with the very people hosting them and who now have to pick up their projected $25 billion tab. The vibe around these Games was as empty as the stadiums and arenas they were held in. The protests outside Olympic Stadium that from three blocks away drowned out parts of the opening ceremony even inside the stadium, or greeted International Olympic Committee officials as they came and went at their five-star hotel, soon gave way to indifference. Before the Games, some Japanese media polls reported that more than 80 percent of the Japanese public opposed the Olympics. Once they started the Japanese tuned in on some nights in record numbers. But the curiosity or interest reflected in the ratings was not evident on busy Tokyo streets, subways, stores or restaurants. It was only outside Olympic venues that there was a sense that the Japanese felt like they were missing out on something. There were children and their grandparents waving at and taking photographs of buses shuttling athletes into the Tokyo Aquatic Centre and the gymnastics arena. And every night a few dozen people stood and gazed through a 20-foot high reinforced chain link fence, past the armed soldiers, at the Olympic Stadium towering before them; the devoted locked out of their shrine. Not that any of it seemed to matter to IOC president Thomas Bach. “After we had to accept the decision by the Japanese authorities to have no spectators, I must admit we were concerned that these Olympic Games could become an Olympic Games without soul,” Bach said. “But fortunately what we have seen here is totally different. Because the athletes gave these Olympic Games a great Olympic soul.” No one more so than gymnast Biles, the biggest star heading into the Games who loomed even larger after them without winning a single gold medal, further establishing herself as the ultimate champion of the MeToo era. These Games will be remembered when the Olympic movement was forced to take a long hard overdue look at mental health issues in the post-Nassar, post-Karolyi era, a reckoning forced by Biles taking herself out of the team competition citing safety and mental health concerns and her subsequent comments on the issue. She also forced an equally long overdue discussion at home, finding herself at the center of the latest culture war along the way. “To bring the topic of mental health, I think should be talked about a lot more, especially with athletes,” said Biles, after returning to competition to win a bronze medal on the balance beam. “I know some of us are going through the same things and we’re always told to push through it.” Biles’ concerns would be echoed through the Games at the pool, track, courts and pitches by other athletes. Biles, however, wasn’t the only icon who delivering a message that resonated beyond the Games. The Olympics bid farewell to two other American women’s icons—quarter-miler Felix and the U.
