Tokyo 2020 was an Olympic miracle, and the challenge now is to get back to normality

TOKYO - Behind the scenes at Tokyo 2020 many things happened, small or big stories that television didn’t get to show in a Games that was a true Olympic miracle.

- Scene 1: Alexander Zverev was just two matches away from winning gold in tennis, but the bus driver who was supposed to take him to the Olympic Village didn’t care. He left on time and paid no attention to the desperate gestures of the German, who was rushing him on the concrete beach. Zverev had to wait half an hour longer at the Ariake Tennis Center until another bus was available. Two things were evident in that scene: the Olympic spirit - there are no stars here - and the inflexible Japanese scrupulousness.

- Scene 2: Another bus, this one with a handful of journalists inside, moves late at night between Tokyo venues. On the street, a handful of Japanese take pictures of it, some even applaud. They think there is a big sports star inside. They are in favor of the Games and would like to have entered the stadiums. They were also seen on the day of the opening ceremony politely greeting the handful of people who entered the stadium. “Thank you for coming,” said those Japanese citizens. Two things were also evident in that scene: they were Games without spectators in the stadiums - something unprecedented - and not all Japanese were against Tokyo 2020.

- Scene 3: On one of the usual hot and humid nights in Tokyo’s summer, a generously sized cockroach moves into the security checkpoint area of the beach volleyball stadium. The reporter brings it to the attention of one of the attendants. To his astonishment, he does not step on it, but takes it lovingly in his hands and deposits it outside on the grass. What is obvious? Japanese politeness is extreme, and there is something very special in their people.

The endless list of controls and limitations to move in the Olympic bubble determined that the vast majority of athletes, leaders, technical officials and journalists lived a paradox: they were in the Olympic Games, but they were not in Tokyo. It seems the same thing, but it is not.

In this context of inevitable tension, the invariable kindness of the hosts was key. The same situation in a country that did not treat its visitors so well might have taken the mood of the Games in another direction.

Olympic spirit, scrupulous, uncompromising and polite Japanese: to a large extent, Tokyo 2020 was that. All this was also an essential part of the “Games with soul” praised by the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Thomas Bach. And the question of what a Games with an audience on site would have been like remains unanswered. A dream that the pandemic shattered.

What was seen on television was not, of course, the complete Tokyo experience, even if it was perfectly real. And what was experienced in Tokyo was a great exhibition of sport that could be summarized in three points: the new additions to the Olympic program are a success, the athletes longed for -and deserved- to have a Games, and the lack of adequate training during part of the last year and a half affected less than expected, because there were great records and great performances.

Bach pointed out that 93 countries won “at least one medal”, a record number for the Games, which were the most “digital” in history, as could not be otherwise: 5.7 billion engagements on social networks, 250 million videos of fans sent to the athletes from all over the world. And nine out of ten Japanese who at some point sat in front of the TV to see what was happening in the capital of their country, the site of a huge celebration of sport that was forbidden to them while its athletes achieved great success.

The famous “Olympic bubble” worked: out of more than 600,000 tests, only 138 tested positive. A tiny number and a success of the cumbersome but very effective system imposed by the Japanese government on its Olympic visitors. After postponing them for a year in 2020, the easiest thing for Japan would have been not to hold the Games, but it kept its commitment.

It did so even in the face of the incomprehension of a large part of a society that, without being vaccinated at the expected levels, feared visitors from abroad.

”Tokyo 2020 were Games of hope and inspiration, shared by the entire world,” assured Tokyo 2020 CEO Toshiro Muto. Much of that is true, though for obvious reasons it was not the Games they had dreamed of.

On one of those sweltering hot nights in Tokyo, a senior official of Paris 2024 was asked a tricky question by a foreign journalist: After a Games with no audience in Tokyo, and probably also in Beijing, which will also be highly politicized, do you feel an obligation to save the Olympics?

Without saying it, the senior official made it clear that the Olympic Games should not be saved from anything. And on Sunday night in Tokyo, with the remarkable performance given by Paris at the closing ceremony, it was clear that, a century after it happened there, it is great news that the Summer Games are returning to the French capital.

In any case, the only thing that Paris, the IOC and sports fans are asking for 2024 is that the world is not in the midst of a pandemic like the one that complicated the life of Tokyo, the Games that were a true Olympic miracle.

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