In the shadow of COVID Tokyo closes a Games like no other

By Eryk BagshawUpdated August 9, 2021 â€" 12.07amfirst published August 8, 2021 â€" 11.10pm

Tokyo: Japan’s Olympic marathon is over. After five years of preparation and 17 days of triumph, heartbreak and disbelief, Tokyo pulled off what few thought it could.

It brought the world an Olympics in the middle of a pandemic. It did so at considerable cost to its economy and its own health system. Japan honoured its pledge to host a Games but is now left with 15,000 coronavirus cases a day, almost three times the peak of its previous waves.

Fireworks are let off over the Olympic Stadium during the closing ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics.Credit:Getty Images

Tokyo’s hospitals are at capacity but deaths are still low. Whether they will remain that way will not be known for another month. Much depends on whether the country can conquer its lingering vaccine hesitancy in the same way it managed to pull off an epic Olympic feat.

For almost three weeks Japan’s army of volunteers and officials and thousands of athletes toiled to give the world a spectacle that distracted it from a virus that has killed more than 4 million people.

Japan’s own fans were shut out from stadiums as they were again on Sunday at the closing ceremony. They watched on TV, just as the rest of the world did for the past three weeks, marvelling at Naomi Osaka lighting the flame, Lamont Marcell Jacobs winning the 100-metre sprint and Katie Ledecky swimming every distance from 200 to 1500 metres.

In the streets around Tokyo’s Olympic stadium, the country remained as split as it first was when the flame was first lit on July 23.

Artists perform during the closing ceremony.Credit:AP

Japanese comedic trio Tan Chin Kan handed out green tea and rice crackers to passersby. “It was wonderful,” they said. Nearby a man stood in a t-shirt that said “f--- the Olympics” while about 100 protesters chanted “death to the IOC.”

Olympic volunteer Masako Miwa, who travelled to Sapporo to watch the men’s marathon final, said the Games were a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

“Many people said it was too difficult because of COVID-19, but we cannot stop,” she said.

Japan has not stopped. The Olympics may only run for 17 days, but these took up every hour of their five years in the making. The host nation crammed each of those years into 17 days and filled them with the world’s hopes, fears and gold medals.

Members of the Australian team, and the obligatory mascot, at the closing ceremony in Tokyo.Credit:Getty Images

These will be among the most controversial, expensive and divided Games ever, but also the most memorable.

Another volunteer, who asked not to be identified, said she changed out of her Olympic uniform when she left venues because she feared she would be abused by those angry the Games were taking place at all.

That a country so divided could still sacrifice so much to put on these Games is a testament to Japan’s determination to honour an obligation it made seven years before the coronavirus locked down the world.

That it could do so while it limited COVID-19 infections in the Olympic bubble to 430 out of 11,000 athletes and twice as many officials and volunteers is an extraordinary logistical feat.

Soprano Tomotaka Okamoto performs during the closing ceremony.Credit:Getty Images

The closing ceremony was no different. It praised its athletes, including Japan’s first medallist of its record 27 gold haul, judoka Naohisa Takato, and its doctors, through Yokota Hiroyuki, who carried the Japanese flag to the centre of the Olympic podium.

As the rest of the world’s athletes walked back into the stadium for the final time, including Australian flag bearer and two-time gold medallist Mat Belcher, they danced. Actually, they looked like they were having fun. There was a ska band, BMX tricks and too many jugglers. Tokyo loosened up, the athletes did too. The three-week Olympic bubble had finally burst.

Tokyo 2020 president Seiko Hashimoto thanked the people of Tokyo for hosting a Games in the most trying of circumstances. “You accepted what seemed unimaginable and understood what had to be done,” she said. “No matter how difficult the situation was, we were able to put a smile on everyone’s faces.”

International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach said in difficult times, Tokyo “gave the world the most precious of things: hope”.

“For the first time since the pandemic began the world came together,” he said. “The Japanese people can be extremely proud of what you have achieved.”

The elite aerial acrobatic team, Patrouille de France, fly by the Eiffel Tower in Paris on Sunday to celebrate the handover of the Olympic flag to the city that will host the 2024 Games.Credit:AP

Cruelly, the celebration at the end gave a glimpse of what could have been. So too did the transition to Paris 2024 â€" a video of a giant party beneath the Eiffel Tower, complete with fighter jets and breakdancing, contrasting sharply with the empty seats that filled Tokyo Stadium from the opening to the closing of the 32nd Olympiad.

Fortunately, Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge and the men’s marathon gave Japan the send-off it deserved on Sunday morning in Sapporo. Outside a stadium and in front of fans, this was how an Olympics should be.

Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge celebrates winning back-to-back Olympic gold medals in the men’s marathon. Credit:Getty Images

There were kids on shoulders, headbands made of flags, selfie sticks and a thousand mobile phones capturing every stage of this 42-kilometre epic. They watched the greatest marathon runner of all time run a flawless race in Sapporo to become the first man to win back-to-back gold.

They lined up from 6am and in return, got something special. Kipchoge led by the 16-kilometre mark, fist-bumping his Brazilian counterpart Daniel do Nascimento as he passed him. Where others sweat, bobble and breathe, Kipchoge runs like a statue. His head planted firmly on his shoulders, his body seeming to move with a centripetal force. It took him all the way to gold.

“I’m so happy,” he said.

The night before, between COVID-safe perspex screens and sushi platters, the locals gathered. The baseball was on every TV and smartphone.

Japan went 2-0 up on their way to gold against the US, at the bottom of the eighth, the sushi chefs put down their intricately sliced sashimi, stopped pouring the sake and watched.

This most revered of rituals put on pause for a game of baseball, just as families stopped to watch Peter Bol run around Tokyo Stadium, and locked-down high school students looked away from their schoolwork to watch Emma McKeon win gold.

The fish could wait.

“Sugoi!,” the crowd screamed. “Great.”

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Eryk Bagshaw is the North Asia correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

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