Lamont Marcell Jacobs’s victory in the men’s 100m could be near Joe Wicks’s home workouts, Mutaz Barshim’s decision to split a high jump gold medal with Gianmarco Tamberi right beside Gal Gadot’s celebrity singalong Imagine. Piece the Games back together and they still seem like a fever dream, 17 days of sport in deserted stadiums built especially for the event, in the middle of a city that was in a state of emergency. Everyone was on edge. There were more protesters outside the main stadium than there were spectators in it. A stray black bear was seen prowling around the softball arena, local officials started letting off firecrackers at night to scare him away. There was a surfing competition on tiny waves and a skatepark full of prodigiously talented teenage girls pulling backflips. Russia seemed to win everything, despite being officially banned from competing. Somewhere in among it all, a German modern pentathlon coach caused an international scandal by punching a horse. When it was all over, the few people allowed in for the closing ceremony were asked to stand up for the International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach, while he waved to all four quarters of an imaginary crowd and then gave a speech during which he said “we did it”, with palpable relief. Understandably so.
The Tokyo Games was one of the great logistical feats and when it was over it was possible to believe, for a precious moment, it really had served some higher purpose and that everyone who participated left with a feeling of global community, a sense we were one people confronting one common problem. Just so long as you forgot, as Bach seemed to, the Games were held against the wishes of a huge number of Japanese citizens, they went ahead only because of the hosting contract signed with the IOC and the country spent $6bn of public money on a party its own people weren’t allowed to attend. Once it was over, the hosts were so very keen for everyone to please leave that they gave athletes 48 hours to get out of the country. A year later, the Associated Press quoted a Japanese academic studying the legacy of the Games as saying “people don’t want to talk about it or even think about it”. That was before the police started arresting members of the organising committee as part of an investigation into an enormous bribery and corruption scandal. Soon after, Sapporo’s bid to host the Winter Olympics in 2030 was quietly shelved for want of public support. By then, Bach, the IOC and everyone else had long since moved on.
