Tokyo To World - Stay The Hell Home!

If you bought tickets to events at the 2020 - now 2021 - Olympics in Tokyo, and you had everything booked, and you're whining because you can't go in person, because the Japanese government isn't allowing foreign spectators at the Games due to the pandemic, I have one thing to say to you:

I don't care.

I've never attended the Olympics in person, and I've never traveled outside North America.  If you can afford to do either - indeed, if you've already done both - then you have no right to complain.  Especially when you're getting your money back for your very expensive tickets . . . so you can go to Paris for the Games in 2024.

You elitist bastards! 

Nolympics 2020

Four years ago this time, I expected to be providing my usual satirical comments on about the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.  But of course, I don't need to tell you again that the Games were postponed until 2021 as a result of COVID-19. Though, to be honest, the chances of this damn virus affecting the planet this time next year as it is now are, alas, pretty good, so it's possible if not likely that the Olympics will be canceled entirely - which would be the first time that's happened since 1944. 

I'm relieved, actually, because I tend to go over the top in my Olympic commentary in an effort to cover as many different events and competitions as possible, and it's quite exhausting.  And as you already may have gathered, I'm not very confident in Tokyo pulling the Games off in 2021, either.  Good grief, why are the Olympics being held in Tokyo exactly one year from now?  Bear in mind that 1940 Olympics and the 1964 Olympics were both given to Tokyo, and both were scheduled for early fall.  As with the 1944 Games, the 1940 event was canceled due to World War II; the 1964 Games were in Tokyo as planned.) This is because eastern Asia is known for lousy weather in the summer.  Not only that, the chances of getting the pandemic behind us ("us" meaning the seven billion-odd people on this planet) are much better for the autumn of 2021 than for the first three seasons of the year.

One other thing I'd like to say, despite the controversy it might cause, is that I think it's also time to move the 2022 Winter Olympics from Beijing.  China's leaders are wholly responsible for letting this virus escape their borders and infecting everyone else, and the Chinese leadership has to answer for that.  Also, Beijing already held the Summer Olympics only twelve years ago (2008), the city itself is in a less-than-ideal climate for winter sports, and unlike previous Winter Olympic cities, it's just too damn big for an event that is considerably smaller and more intimate than the main Olympiad.  Let Pyeongchang hold the Winter Games again, or better yet, give them to 2022 bidder Almaty in Kazakhstan - because why should Russia  be the only ex-Soviet republic that gets to hold the biggest international sporting event in the world?  (Sochi was ridiculous, given its mild climate and its inability to keep enough snow on the ground for the outdoor events.)  I know Trump is on record as supporting a move of the 2022 Winter Olympics to somewhere else, but I really don't mind agreeing with him on this issue.     

Let the Games Begin Later

The International Olympic Committee has postponed the Tokyo Olympics.  Note that I did not refer to them as the "2020 Tokyo Olympics," as the coronavirus pandemic that necessitated the delay is not expected to subside before the end of this year.  Sports reporters are already saying that the spring of 2021 is the likeliest time the Games will be held.

And since the Olympic flame had already been lit in a solemn ceremony, there might as well be another solemn ceremony in which the flame is quietly put out before it even reaches the stadium.

I never understood why the Olympic organizing committee in Tokyo thought it would be a good idea to hold the Games in  late July and early August in the first place.  East Asian summers are notorious for their volatile weather, which is why the 1964 Tokyo Olympics were held in October and why the canceled 1940 Tokyo Olympics (Japan was too busy conquering the Pacific to stage them) had been scheduled for late September and early October.  Had the Chinese gotten ahead of this virus sooner, as they did with SARS in 2002 and 2003 and H1N1 in 2009, or even if the rest of the world had done so and followed the example of South Korea, which was on the virus crisis in a New York minute, it might have been possible to postpone the Tokyo Olympics until early fall. Now that the virus could hit in a second wave by then, 2021 is thus the target date.  Heck, I'd bet on 2022, because who knows if the virus will be under control by next year?  Speaking of 2022, Beijing is holding the Winter Olympics that year, which seems rather foolish in light of the foul-ups, bleeps and blunders in China's initial handling of the outbreak and already seemed foolish given that Beijing already held the 2008 Games (which wasn't too long ago in the Big Bang scheme of things).  Now is the time to move the Winter Games.

Given the fragility of the environment and the numerous health crises we've had on this planet in the past decade, I would expect to see the Olympics revert to their original state as a low-key sporting event without a lot of pomp and circumstance.  A few of the first Olympiads were in fact held as world's fair sideshows.  The staging of the Games as a grand spectacle actually started with Adolf Hitler's display of nationalism at the 1936 Berlin Games (below), with the 1936 Winter Olympics in the German skiing town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen having offered a sneak preview of the bigger event.  (Nineteen thirty-six was the third - and, understandably, last - time in which the Winter and Summer Games both took place in the same country in the same year.)

So, yes, all of the gaudy opening ceremonies of subsequent Olympiads were the unintended consequence of Berlin 1936.  Heck, the Atlanta Olympic opening ceremony of 1996 was so overblown it seemed like the only thing that could redeem it was if Muhammad Ali were to light the cauldron; thankfully, that's exactly what happened.  And the expensive facilities, the outrageous ticket prices, and the asinine coverage offered by corporate television helped make the Games into a huge, bloated affair, even the once-intimate Winter Olympics.  It just gets more and more costly to stage them; Tokyo got the Games of the XXXII Olympiad by default, because so few cities were interested in bidding for them due to concerns over cost.  It's time to scale them back, bring them back to where they were in the early decades of the Olympic movement, and concentrate on the whole raison d'être for the Games - sport.

And now for something completely different - sport! ;-)  

Go East, Young Athlete

With the 2016 Rio Olympics coming to a close soon, attention shifts east . . . far east.

The next three Olympiads, winter and summer, take place in eastern Asia, and in all three countries Americans once commonly referred to as the Orient - Korea, Japan and China, in that chronological order.   The 2018 Winter Olympics take place in Pyeongchang, South Korea, which is too small to be seen on this map but is about 110 miles east of Seoul.  It's already a ski resort town, so that makes sense.  The 2020 Olympics are to be held in Tokyo, which last hosted the Olympics in 1964.  I guess Tokyo is overdue for a repeat, but there's still the problem of the Fukushima nuclear power plant site being just up the coast. But given that the alternatives were Madrid and Istanbul - Spain has been mired in a big recession, and there was the proximity of Istanbul to Syria at a time when it was becoming apparent that the Syrian civil war wasn't going to end any time soon - it still made sense.

But Beijing hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics so soon after it hosted the 2008 Summer Games?  

You know, the Chinese have a lot of damn gall wanting to host another Olympiad in the same city only fourteen years after hosting the first one.  They couldn't wait awhile and give someone else a chance?  I know, I know, Innsbruck, Austria hosted the Winter Games twice within twelve years - 1964 and 1976 - but it hosted the 1976 Winter Games in an emergency after the residents of the original city of choice - Denver - said no to the bonds necessary to make the Winter Olympics happen.  And, of course, the Americans hosted the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta a mere twelve years after Los Angeles hosted the 1984 Summer Games. That shouldn't have happened either, something then-IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch acknowledged with great subtlety once the Atlanta Games ended, refusing to call them the greatest Games ever at the closing ceremony, as had been his custom at previous Summer Games closing ceremonies.  (Atlanta is Los Angeles with more cars and fewer health nuts.)  So why go back to Beijing so soon?

Oh yeah, another thing.  Winter Olympic cities tend to be smaller places, since the Winter Games have fewer countries and fewer athletes. Winter Olympiads tend to be, in comparison to the regular ones, cozy and intimate, like a comfortable ski lodge. Beijing, home to 21.7 million people, is not a cozy or intimate city. Unlike Pyeongchang, it's not hard to find on a map.

As it turns out, the logistics and the cost of staging even the Winter Games have gotten so out of hand that, when it was time to decide on a site for the 2022 Winter Olympics, there was only one other bid - from Almaty, Kazakhstan, a city whose biggest claim to fame is being the place Stalin banished Trotsky to before Trotsky made his way to Mexico.  So why not Almaty?  It would have been the first city in a former Soviet republic other than Russia to host an Olympiad, winter or summer, and it would have continued the streak of Olympiads in Asia - central Asia, yes, but still Asia.  Why not Almaty (population, 1.7 million people, twenty million fewer than Beijing), indeed?

Was it because of Borat? 

Aside from Beijing, though, I have no problem with the next Olympiads being held in three consecutive Asian cities.  After all, back in the 1920s, five consecutive winter and summer Olympiads were held in European cities, and no one had a problem with that.

Except maybe the Chinese and the Japanese . . .