Welcome to the five-ring Tokyo circus: Delayed Olympics depart Japan with no live cheers, plenty of intrigue
Let the world bid an odd farewell to the Tokyo Olympics, the first in history where the best seat in the house came with a TV remote.
The world’s greatest athletes gathered in eerily empty venues for the 32nd edition of the Summer Games, delayed for a full year by the COVID-19 pandemic and chockful of enduring and unprecedented scenes: Simone Biles’ gutsy withdrawal from competition, followed by her gutsier return and a bronze medal to end her Olympic career.
Athletes required to take daily spit tests for the coronavirus. A Canadian soccer player named Quinn, the first openly transgender Olympian to win a gold medal. Two giddy high jumpers hugging after opting to share the gold medal.
The gold in America’s pastime went to the Japanese, as they defeated the U.S. baseball team, 2-0, in the finals. Brooklyn Nets star Kevin Durant led the U.S. basketball team to gold. Born to ride Jessica Springsteen, daughter of rock star Bruce and E Street Band member Patti Scialfa, captured a silver medal with her American teammates in the equestrian team jumping competition.
The U.S. appeared poised to collect the most medals, with 108 heading into the final day of the global competition. The Americans captured 36 gold, 39 silver and 33 bronze — none more dramatic than the one captured by Biles, her seventh Olympic medal.
Biles returned to the balance beam after withdrawing from her other events due to mental health issues, placing third after overcoming a bout of what she called “the twisties” in her Tokyo debut. Her decision to sit out ignited a global debate, with supporters like Michelle Obama and the head of the World Health Organization hailing her courage while trolls like British television personality Piers Morgan took cheap shots at the 24-year-old athlete.
“It was something that was so out of my control,” Biles explained. “At the end of the day, my mental and physical health is better than any medals.”
As always, there was a bit of political intrigue, this one reminiscent of the Cold War: Sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya of Belarus defected to Poland after publicly criticizing her coaches. The athlete balked at a menacing order to return home — delivered by national officials who knocked on her door.
Tsimanouskaya’s pushback eventually landed the sprinter and her husband in Poland after they received political asylum, safe from the harsh 27-year regime of Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko. The Olympic credentials of the two Belarus officials who approached Tsimanouskaya were revoked and they were banished from Tokyo.
Ex-President Donald Trump emerged to fire off a cheap shot at U.S. women’s soccer legend Megan Rapinoe after the team collected a bronze medal. The colorful Rapinoe made good on her promise to steer clear of “the f-----g White House” after the U.S. won the 2019 World Cup, earning her the portly ex-commander-in-chief’s undying enmity.
“The woman with the purple hair played terribly and spends too much time thinking about Radical Left politics and not doing her job!” offered Trump.
Rapinoe, with a laugh, replied her golf-playing nemesis took “a real sad dig into an old bag. I’m just like, ‘You’re rooting for people to do bad?’ Yikes.”
One moment provided the sort of globally resonant sportsmanship that can happen only at the Olympics.
Italian high jumper Gianmarco Tamberi won the gold medal in his event, as did competitor Mutaz Essa Barshim of Qatar in the same event.
The two wound up dead even after each failed in three attempts to set a world record. When an Olympic official proposed a jumpoff to settle the competition, Barshim posed a question: “Can we not have two golds?”
Turns out they could. The two competitors shared an emotional hug and the top prizes to cheers from living rooms around the world.
Japanese Olympic organizers reported a total of 404 positive COVID-19 tests among people associated with the Games since July 1, even as Tokyo remained under a state of emergency. Yet International Olympic Committee head Thomas Bach put a strange spin on the strange games.
“In many cases you did not realize there were no spectators,” he insisted. “Maybe in some cases, you could even experience the feelings of the athletes closer and better than surrounded by so many spectators.”
Or not. Scientific America weighed in with a piece on “social facilitation,” described as “a change in a person’s performance that occurs when others are around compared to when a person is alone.”
The Games come to a close Sunday, but fear not: the Winter Olympics return in a mere six months.
