Domo Arigato

Well, my Olympic commentary for the 2020 - no, 2021 - Tokyo Olympics was far more measured than my commentary on previous Olympiads, but while I did more commentary on these Games that I expected to,  I certainly didn't post multiple times in one day like before, and the reality of COVID put a damper on most of my efforts at satire.  As for how the Games went, well, I have to admit, it wasn't the disaster I expected it to be.  But watching these Games wasn't the same as in previous years.

This is where I usually offer acknowledgements to those who inspired me to watch and comment.  Yeah, I have some of those - just not as much as before, again, because of the pall cast over this Olympiad - an Olympiad the Japanese people didn't really want at this time.  But it did go off with far fewer hitches than I expected.

In that spirit I'd like to thank the organizers for pulling off the Games in the middle of a worldwide health crisis.  I'd also like to thank NBC and its sister networks for all of its wall-to-wall coverage, and I'd especially like to thank NBC for cutting back on the athlete sob stories and also having virtually no Japanese travelogue stories as a result of COVID - because CBS gave us enough geisha-girl and sumo stories when it covered the Nagano Winter Olympics in 1998. 

I'd like to thank all of the athletes who competed so marvelously, though I don't remember all of their names.  (I don't remember any of them, hardly.)  But I'd especially like to thank Katie Ledecky for all of her gold-medal and silver-medal victories, including her historic third consecutive win of the 800-mter freestyle and her win of the inaugural women's 1500-meter "metric mile" freestyle a well. Let's drink to the woman who can set a record in the preliminaries on Monday and breaks it in the final on Tuesday!  You Katie, are the greatest female distance swimmer ever.  I hear you want to compete in Paris three years hence.  Go for it!  I can't wait - perhaps this time they'll have live spectators! 

And I so think you could be a great archer. 😊

(But don't worry, Janet Evans - you're still my Olympic heartthrob. I'll have more to say about that later this month. 😉) 

Special thanks go to all of the road-race cyclists for remembering that in Japan they ride on the left side of the road and avoiding collisions with each other. (Well, all of the jokes can't be good, especially during COVID, you gotta expect that once in awhile!) 

Setsuko Koike is a Japanese woman who was an exchange student at Drew University in New Jersey when I was there in the eighties.  We liked each other, and we tried to keep in touch when she returned to Japan, but we only exchanged a couple of letters.  I still think of her from time to time.  I dedicate my coverage of the Tokyo Olympics - what there was of it - to her.

Thanks also to Michael Phelps for doing commentary for NBC on swimming - good, he's still around! - and, on a more serious note, also speaking plainly and honestly on mental heath.  And finally, thanks to Simone Biles for being an inspiration to those who deal with mental-health issues on a regular basis. 

And might I make a statement in the second person to those who called Simone Biles soft for withdrawing from all of those gymnastics events?

Fellas, you got a lot of damn gall to call Simone Biles soft and attack her integrity as an athlete.   I mean . . . I mean . . . I mean . . . I mean, I'm sitting here at home watching guys like you bloviate negatively about a young black female athlete struggling with mental health and trying to keep herself physically safe - I mean, I'm watching you bash Simone Biles - because guys like you, guys who sit in a Barca-Lounger in a horizontal position and are too lazy to even get the remote on the other side of the room to change the TV channel and have beer bellies large enough to make you resemble Marcello Mastroianni in A Slightly Pregnant Man, think you're qualified experts on women's athletics!

Yeah, yeah, I know.  You don't like my kind.  After all, I stand up for black women and I like to see European movies.  Suck it up, dudes.

And thus concludes my commentary on the 2020 - no, 2021 - Olympics.  Sorry none of us spectators cold be there in person.

We'll always have Paris.

As The Tokyo Olympics Near the End . . .

First of all, Allyson Felix won a two more career Olympic medal for a total of eleven, a bronze medal in the 400m race and a gold in the women's 4x400 relay race on a team that was rounded out by Sydney McLaughlin, Dalilah Muhammad, and Athing Mu. This makes Felix the most decorated American track Olympian ever.  And if that weren't enough, Jessica Springsteen earned a silver model in equestrian team jumping. 

Taking bronze medals home to America are Simone Biles on the balance beam and the U.S. women's soccer team while Canada won the gold medal in women's soccer.  And in case you missed it (and you did, because all sports talk these past few weeks has been about the Olympics), the U.S. men's soccer team won the CONCACAF Gold Cup.  Amazing - they could actually be contenders in the 2022 World Cup!

The men's soccer Olympic tournament?  I don't want to talk about it.  (That is, Brazil won.)

Also, congratulations to two more bronze medalists - Molly Seidel in the women's marathon and Paul Chelimo in the man's 5,000m track race.

That out of the way, the turn for the worse in all things COVID requires me to address the Winter Olympics in Beijing.  First of all, despite COVID, they're still on.  Second of all, because the Delta variant made it over from India to China in a spectacular example of what I regard as karma, China is suffering a major outbreak they haven't seen since the Communist government invented the pandemic. Third, despite the delta corona, China is set - dead set - on having the Winter Games in 2022, as scheduled, rather than 2023 (and the pandemic should definitely be over by then).   Needless to say, a lot of people in the West and Americans in particular are ticked off about all this, and bipartisan group of lawmakers in Washington are trying to get the Winter Games postponed, canceled or moved.  Not just over COVID, but for persecution of the Uighurs un Sinkiang, threats against Taiwan, the crackdowns in Hong Kong, and everything else.   

Good luck with that. The Chinese have so much power and influence that they can get away with anything, and nothing is going to stop the Communist government from Beijing in the first place having the Winter Games in Beijing on schedule.  Nothing stopped them from getting the 2022 Winter Games in the first place, despite the fact that Beijing hosted the Summer Games only a decade or so ago.  Certainly not a bid for the 2022 Winter Games from the only other city interested  - Almaty in Kazakhstan.  So, once again, we'll have to watch athletes competing in empty stands and officials not just in face coverings but presumably, because they'll be outside at skiing and bobsled events, hazmat suits.  (Respiratory viruses can spread much faster outdoors in winter weather.)  

Oh yeah, I just found this out about the Winter Games.  Remember when winter Olympiads were only ten days?  That all changed when the organizers of the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary expanded the duration of those Games to sixteen days in part to make room for more winter sports but also to add an additional weekend of competition to please corporate TV sponsors.  And once Winter Olympiads got staggered in alternate even-numbered years, they may have become more important, but they also became more bloated.  In some respects, the change from ten to sixteen days was necessary; the Winter Olympics had gained such scant attention before 1988 that the International Olympic Committee considered getting rid of them all together.  But given that we are now seeing major cities rather than cozy mountain hamlets hosting the Winter Games - the 2026 Winter Olympics will be hosted by two Italian cities, Cortina d'Ampezzo and Milan (Cortina d'Ampezzo alone was enough for the 1956 Winter Games) - was it worth it?

Right. I've been arguing against Beijing hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics since long before COVID hit, mainly because the climate in northeastern China will require a lot of artificial snow to make it work, but now for many more reasons.  I still say, move them to Almaty - as Borat would say, Winter Olympics for make benefit glorious nation of Kazakhstan!

Nice! 

       

Olympic Performances

Okay, I have to comment on how cool this is!  When do you see the top two finishers in any Olympic race both break the world record in that particular event?   But that's what happened when Americans Sydney McLaughlin won the gold medal in the women's 400m hurdles and her fellow American Dalilah Muhammad, the previous gold medalist in this event from 2016, won gold and silver, in that order, at the conclusion of that race.  Since she came in first, McLaughlin set the new world record in the women's 400m hurdles.  The record she broke was her own.

And how about Athing Mu, huh?  The Sudanese-American runner became America's newest track start by winning the women's 800m race in stellar fashion.  Oh yeah, I should mention that both Mu and McLaughlin are from New Jersey. 

Track star turned commentator Sonya Richards-Ross punningly called a "Athing of beauty."

Whole we're on the subject of New jersey, I must acknowledge an equestrian Olympian with Jersey roots - Jessica Springsteen, daughter of Bruce.  

She did very well n the jumping event but failed to qualify for the final.  But I'm sure she'll have other opportunities.  If not in these Games, maybe in Paris. 

Funny, though, if I were to guess which rock star would have a child competing in Olympic equestrian events, I would have have guessed Stephen Stills.

Because Stills himself is an equestrian! 😃

Don't look at his shadow, it's behind him.  😊 

Right, so how about Allyson Felix? 😊 

Miscellaneous Olympic Musings

The Olympics started having mixed medleys - both men and women competing side by side - with the Tokyo Games.  Oh, I get it.  That way, the American women can carry our guys when the guys start falling behind their male counterparts from Croatia.

From a distance, it appears at first glance that there are people in the stands at Tokyo's Olympic Stadium during competition, though we already know that's not the case.  Ironically, it turns out that the seats are of different colors to create the illusion that the stadium is always full - a subtle touch by the stadium's architect, Kengo Kuma.  The deceptive optics of people in the stands at the Olympics are sort of the equivalent of fake engine noises in electric cars. 

The ROC?  What, the Republic of China, also known as Taiwan?  No, the Taiwanese compete under the code TPE.  The refugee team, then? Nope.  Well, what does it stand for, then? The Russian Olympic Committee.  Russian athletes compete as neutral athletes. representing no country, because f the anti-doping ban imposed on Russia.  Sort of like when the twelve countries of the former Soviet Union competed as the Unified Team.  Now the Russians are only unified by shame.

I heard the announcer on NBC announce "France's boss" before a track qualifier.  Macron?  No, Pierre-Ambroise Bosse, a French track runner.  Funny how paying half-attention while you're working on your blog can cause mishearings like that. 

I never seem to be able to catch an Olympic soccer game, men's or women's.  Ironically, watching the Olympics has caused me to miss the CONCACAF Gold Cup, in which the U.S. men's national team has been playing.  As for the men's soccer tournament in Tokyo, I am, as always, rooting for whoever can beat Brazil.   

This post is as close as you will likely get in these 2020 - no, 2021 - Tokyo Olympics to satire.

P.S. Congratulations to the the winner of the men's 100-meter race, Lamont Marcell Jacobs of Italy. He's originally from the United States; he's half black and and half Italian and was born in El Paso. I'm sure a lot of Americans are as happy with his victory as well as the Italians are. And don't expect some sort of witty or sarcastic comment about this.

Black Days In July (and August)

Katie Ledecky won the first women's metric-mile freestyle swim race at the Olympics as well as a silver in the 400m free.  And I'm glad.  Suni Lee won the gold medals in women's all-around gymnastics.  And I'm happy to hear that.  I was also pleased to see that Caeleb Dressel set new world's record in the men's 100m butterfly.  But there's a reason why my response are so low-key they end in periods rather than exclamation points.   

It's COVID, of course.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is obviously not living up to its name of late has declared that the delta corona is spreading as fast as chickenpox, meaning that one person can infect eight.  And even though most vaccinated people don't get breakthrough infections. those who do can spread COVID to the unvaccinated . . . and also vaccinated people.  Therefore, the CDC has recommended that everyone in counties, parishes (in deference to Louisiana) and boroughs (in deference to Alaska) that have substantial or high COVID spread ought to wear face coverings (FCs) in public indoor spaces.

That translates into 75 percent of counties, parishes and boroughs where you have to start dressing like a ninja warrior again.  Even if you're at an event where the unvaccinated aren't allowed. 

And to think President Biden declared independence from the virus at the start of the month. This was like what would have happened if President Abraham Lincoln had declared that the Union won the Civil War after Grant won at Shiloh but just before McClellan got his butt kicked by Lee and Jackson at the gates of Richmond.

Oh, yeah, there's another reason my mood is dark and getting darker.  While the hurricane predicted by the Old Farmer's Almanac for next week is obviously not going to come to pass, we had the next worst thing in my area - a tornado.  A tornado warning was issued for my county in New Jersey, and we had to spend an hour in the basement before the warning expired. A tornado in a town two miles away was later confirmed.  I went there on my bicycle yesterday.  There's a house there that may have to be demolished. 

The world is going to hell, and America will get there first.

As far as COVID goes, well, having the privilege of pre-pandemic life was fun while it lasted, but the fun's over . . . possibly for longer than the thirteen months of my state's original FC mandate.  That means . . . back to the drive-thru at the bank to avoid a possible robbery.  And I'll be damned if I go to the 2021 New York auto show when I don't have to. 

At this point, who really cares about the Olympics? 😢

Simone Alone

Simone Biles, on whose shoulders rested the hopes for a repeat of the legendary gold-medal victory of the 1996 "Magnificent Seven" U.S. Women's Gymnastics Olympic team (I'll give a shout-out to anyone who can name all seven members of that squad), withdrew from team competition.  The team took silver behind the Russians.

Biles just wasn't feeling it, and the lack of alternatively gasping, murmuring, and cheering crowds obviously didn't help her concentrate. Indeed, the added pressure of the extra year of waiting to take part in the Olympics because of COVID might have been part of it  But she has had many personal issues as well.  She just wasn't feeling it, as her mind was preoccupied with an array of concerns that undercut her ability to compete.  It all boiled down to her state of mental health, plain and simple.

"There’s more to life than just gymnastics," the 24-year-old Biles said. "It’s very unfortunate that it happened at this stage, because I definitely wanted it to go a little bit better. Take it one day at a time and we’re gonna see how the rest goes."  She is also skipping the individual all-around, but she might compete in the individual apparatus finals.

I think I can relate to Biles' troubles to some extent.  I think we all can, in this age of COVID - especially now that the Delta variant has upended everything and makes it feel like March and April 2020 all over again.  Mental health has become a serious problem during the pandemic as everyone tries to deal with this perpetually mutating virus and hoping - often, seemingly, against hope - that the pandemic will be over by the time we have another Summer Olympics.  Except that Biles has problems most of us can never expect to comprehend - yes, she was sexually abused in that gymnastics abuse scandal.  😢 But, as indicated by the quote above, Biles seems very mature and quite philosophical about everything that's going on right now.

Not a good subject for my usual satire, I know, but then you can't make fun of something like this. 😢

Congratulations to American swimmer Lydia Jacoby for her victory in the 100-meter breaststroke.  And congratulations to  American swimmer  Bobby Finke for that incredible come-from behind victory in the men's 800-meter freestyle.

Straight Back to Tokyo

Well, things have been going okay at the Olympics so far.  Swimmer Chase Kalisz (below) won the first gold medal for the United States in the men's 400m individual medley, and Jagger Eaton - named for Mick Jagger - moved like Jagger enough to earn a bronze in skateboarding.  As I type this, I'm watching, for the first time since 2016, Simone Biles doing gymnastics routines in something other than a commercial featuring the always annoying Jonathan Van Ness.  

But it's early yet, and troubles abound.  Japan is still dealing with a worse COVID crisis than even the United States, and now the Japanese have another problem coming up - the weather.

It looks increasingly unlikely that the hurricane threat predicted by the Old Farmer's Almanac for the American Northeast in early August will come to pass, but Japan could be hit by a typhoon later this week.  See, eastern Asia is in the middle of typhoon season, which is precisely why the first Tokyo Olympics of 1964 were held in October (and why the 1988 Olympics in nearby Seoul were held in September).  Attention shoppers: just because the Olympics are called the "Summer Olympics" doesn't mean they have to be held in the summertime! They're not even officially called that, they're called the "Games of the Olympiad."  The first modern Olympiad of 1896 in Athens, remember, was held in April! 

COVID, of course, hardly pertains here.  Everyone in Japan has to be aware of what the weather is like at this time of year, and if COVID didn't exist, a possible typhoon would still be a problem.   So why hold an Olympiad in Tokyo in late July and early August in Japan when the autumn was clearly a better time?  My guess is that it has to do with TV scheduling.  I have a theory - feel free to disprove it with a comment - that rival commercial networks in Western countries but especially in the United States don't want the Olympics screwing up their season premieres, which are usually in the fall.  That was obviously not a problem in 1964, when satellite broadcasting was in its infancy.  So ABC in the U.S. had to air the 1964 Tokyo Games in October and crowd out counterprogramming on CBS and NBC; it's not like it adversely affected the chances of one of CBS's new sitcoms that fall - "Gilligan's Island!"

As for TV coverage in 2021, NBC and its sister cable and Spanish-language networks are doing a halfway decent job of covering them so far, though I sometimes suspect if some of the sportscasters hosting the coverage are actually in Tokyo.  Rebecca Lowe, for all I know, could be in a TV studio in Miami, the one where the moon landing was faked.  (That was a joke.) If that's the case, she's more likely to get COVID there than in Japan.  (That was not a joke.)     

Even if all goes well, the Japanese people have every right to be ticked off about the Games still going on, but, as I said before, there's too much money involved.  And if everything does work out, it'll be a shot in the arm (a metaphoric one) to know that nothing other than German megalomaniacs can stop the Olympics.

Not even terrorism, which I will talk about tomorrow as I look back at Atlanta in 1996.

Discovering Japan

The 2020 - no, 2021 - Olympics in Tokyo are underway, and I can already tell that there won't be much to make light of in this dark era of COVID.  Even the opening ceremony, which under perfect circumstances would be perfect to ridicule, doesn't offer many opportunities for satire - except for maybe the human pictograms, which I saw a bit of online, which of course I found completely ridiculous.  Mummenschanz they ain't.

It was sad, though, to see the athletes of the world - at least those whose events are within five days of their events, the rest arriving later to stop the spread of COVID - walking into an empty stadium looking like armed bandits and waving to TV cameras.  The torch lighting?  Didn't see it.  I know Naomi Osaka was an appropriate choice, but after Ali, all subsequent choices are second rate.

But how about those fireworks, eh?  The only part of the ceremony Tokyo residents could actually see! 

Okay, maybe there are things about these Games I can make fun about . . .

Right, the competition.  I saw the U.S.-Japan women's water polo game, and at one point they should have stopped the play when it became apparent that the Japanese ladies were getting their bathing caps blown out of the water.  The U.S .women's soccer team seems to be on its way back to glory.  The men's team?  Uh, yeah, well, they're busy competing in the CONCACAF tournament where they're holding their own and hoping to get their reputation back.  Not that their reputation was all that great in the first place . . . 

And now, for the first time in the Olympics, for your entertainment, ladies and gents - skateboarding! 

Bloody hell, show me Katie and be done with it. 

The Olympics. Meh.

Don't except much of the usual acerbic or insightful commentary on the Olympics from me this time like you're accustomed to.  I'm going to keep the commentary I make low-key, and I probably won't comment about the Games all that much.  The biggest reason is obvious: COVID, COVID, COVID, as the guy living in the White House this time last year liked to say. And the specter of the virus is casting a long shadow over these Tokyo Games.

Of course, there are a whole lot of other reasons not to care about the Olympics so much this time, and Bret Stephens of the New York Times summed them up very nicely yesterday in his weekly column with Gail Collins: "Too many doping scandals and questionable medals, too much corruption at the International Olympic Committee, too many top athletes pulling away, too much unconscionable abuse of young athletes, too much self-serving nationalism. Maybe someone could restore the original high-minded spirit of the games, but I really struggle to see the point of them today, especially in an era where there’s no shortage of venues for high-level international sports."

Much of that is the fuel for my zingers, of course, but zingers seem mostly inappropriate right now.   Oh, there may be some zingers from me in the next two weeks - there's enough tomfoolery at the Games that even a pandemic doesn't excuse - but any withering witticisms this time (and likely during the Beijing Winter Olympics in February) are likely to be more in sorrow than in any other mood.

Besides, I'm going through an extraordinarily tough time right now and I'm not in the spirit to crack jokes about the Olympics.  A year an a half ago, before COVID hit, I had high expectations for teh immediate future, but no I have absolutely no expectations for anything.  I've been struggling with problems too personal to mention here, and every day seems as bad as the day before.  A lot of the satire I point at the Olympics is in good fun, but these Olympics are bond to be neither good nor fun.  In fact, I still think it: These Games will be the worst Games in a hundred years.  If, at the closing ceremony, International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach calls the Tokyo Olympics the greatest Games ever, that could be the moment my old satirical sprit comes back.     

Because I don't see how he or anyone else will be able to say such a thing with a straight face.

Land Of the Setting Sun

You knew this was going to happen.

The organizing committee for the 2020 - oops, 2021 - Tokyo Olympics just announced that, due to a COVID emergency in Japan, no Japanese spectators will be allowed at any of the venues for the events.  The surge of the virus has just gotten too much out of hand, and most Japanese people remain unvaccinated.  Therefore, there will be no spectators whatsoever.

And how did that happen?  How can a country famous for its exacting manufacturing standards, a country so obsessed with punctuality it times the trains on its national railway system down to the nanosecond, and a country with so much grit and tenacity that they were a bitch to defeat in the Second World War (even the geisha girls were ready for hand-to-hand mortal combat in the event of an Allied invasion) fail to get COVID under control?  They once controlled the whole damn Pacific Ocean but they can't get a hold on this virus?

Be that as it may, the Games will go on, but watching them on TV will feel more like watching a documentary on athletic practice sessions than watching actual competition.  It must be noted that other countries have managed to hold sporting events with spectators with relative ease since the global vaccine rollout started.  If other countries can pull that off, why can't Japan?

Tokyo got the 2020 Olympics by default, you will recall, because only two other cities wanted them and probably couldn't afford it; other cities had already decided not to bid for the Games because they knew they couldn't afford them.  At this point, with the Games having been delayed a year, there are now calls for the Tokyo Olympics to be postponed again, or canceled altogether, mainly by the Japanese people themselves.  But the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is going full steam ahead to hold these Games for reasons that boil down to money, because delaying them until 2022 (and now we have medical experts saying we could still be dealing with a global pandemic when Paris is scheduled to hold the Summer Olympics in 2024!) or canceling them altogether would lose more money for the IOC than having them now.  The princes, presidents and potentates who run the IOC also want the show to go on because they're only concerned with indulging in the good life of exotic travel and personal perks - and keeping the Olympics going allows them to keep all of those fringe benefits.  Because it's not about the athletes, even though it's supposed to be.  Incidentally, the athletes have to quarantine themselves from each other and can't go out and enjoy the city while in Tokyo because of the virus - one more reason to try for next year rather than now.

Alas, the Japanese people can't stop the Olympics, no matter how much they want to.  Only one Japanese person was ever able to stop the Summer Olympics.

And he did it twice.  The first time, in 1940, the Olympics were scheduled to be held in . . . Tokyo.  He also stopped the Winter Olympics twice.  (And the 1940 Winter Games were going to be held in Sapporo.)

Oh yeah, the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics are expected to be held under similar restrictions.  To think they could have been held in Almaty, Kazakhstan instead.  Kazakhstan?  Only half a million cases since the pandemic started.  China?  The Chinese won't even level with us regarding how many COVID cases there are.

As for Tokyo . . . Sha'Carri Richardson, you're not going to miss much.

Sha'Carri On

Champion sprinter Sha'Carri Richardson, who was considered a favorite in the women's 100-meter dash at the 2020 - no, 2021 - Tokyo Olympics, has been suspended by the United States Anti-Doping Agency for a month for smoking pot when she tested positive for THC, the chemical in marijuana.  The suspension, as mandated by global anti-doping bodies, rules her out for the 100-meter race at the Olympics.

This is one of the biggest acts of stupidity that I've seen in recent years.  How could anyone be so dumb?

Not Richardson.  The anti-doping authorities. 

Richardson (above) has accepted her suspension, lamenting that she's human and makes mistakes, but the anti-doping authorities are making the mistake.  Anti-doping governing bodies were set up to catch cheating athletes using steroids designed to make them perform better.  Marijuana does nothing to make you perform better.  If you're a track runner, marijuana is going to make you make a 270-degree turn while you set off at the starting line at six yards an hour.  No sprinter is going to smoke pot right before an important meet or practice session.  Does anyone really believe that Richardson has a joint before going out and waiting for the starting gun to go off?

Right now, it's the fans that are going off.  Richardson, as well as being black, is also a lesbian.  Is this suspension a heavy dose or racism and homophobia on top of a shingle of sexism?  Seems that way, doesn't it?  Especially when Richardson only smoked pot to calm herself down upon learning of the death of her biological mother and did so while in Oregon, where recreational marijuana use is legal.  Legal!

Richardson has made no excuses for what happened, saying she knows what she did.  Give her credit for being mature about it.  The one-month suspension does leave the door open for her to compete on the women's 4x100 Olympic relay team, as it ends just before that event.  But I still say she should compete in the 100-meter race in the Tokyo Olympics.

She won't, of course.  But then, neither may anyone else.  A Serbian athlete already in Japan has tested positive for COVID ahead of the Games, and Japan remains a COVID hot spot.  Two other athletes had previously tested positive for the virus.  Seems that this unnamed athlete may have more consequences for the Games than any Serb since Gavrilo Princip, the fellow who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife and started World War I, effectively canceling the 1916 Games in Berlin.

No Fans Allowed?

The Japanese government is making every effort to make sure the 2021 (yeah, yeah, I know, it's still officially 2020, but it's 2021) Olympics in Tokyo go off without a hitch - despite a bad ongoing COVID outbreak in the country and despite the ban on foreign spectators at the Games.  Now this guy has suggested that the Olympics should be held without any fans in the stands at all.

This is Shigeru Omi, an infectious disease expert who is leading Japan's government COVID subcommittee. He and other specialists urged the the government to limit spectators at the Olympics at an even lower number than the current maximum in place currently for large-scale events in Japan.  But ideally, Omi doesn't think even that is enough; he thinks that having zero spectators would be the most desirable scenario.

I can think of another desirable scenario.  Wait until 2022.

The organizers of the Games have decided not to go as far as to ban fans from the stands (I'm a poet, and I know it) but instead will allow no more than 10,000 spectators at an event at one time.  Despite that, this is easily going to be the worst Olympiad since Antwerp in 1920, when the Games were held right after World War I (and another pandemic) in an unfinished stadium and a decrepit pool filled with cold water.  The Japanese government is already ending the state of emergency in eight of the country's prefectures, including Tokyo, but the Delta variant remains a concern and could make the COVID situation even worse.

How can the fans party in an atmosphere like that?

They can't, of course, and if the Tokyo organizing committee members change their minds  and end up banning fan attendance at the Olympics, a gold-medal victory won't feel like a moment of glory.  It will feel like a practice session.

Let The Games Begin? Really?

The Tokyo Olympics are still on as of this writing.  And no one knows why.

Japan is still experiencing a COVID surge big enough to remind the rest of the world that the pandemic isn't over.  The Japanese government can't distribute vaccines fast and efficiently enough - a peculiar situation in a country known for making car parts fit to the attometer and where the rail system is so punctual that a train entering a station half a second is considered late.  Most Japanese citizens want the Games delayed again or put off entirely.

So why do the organizers plan to go ahead?  Money.  It became very lucrative for advertisers and TV networks to profit from the Games when the Winter and Summer Olympics were staggered biennially rather than taking place in the same calendar year every leap year.  Holding the Summer Olympics in Toyo five months after the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing - which would mark the first time the Games have been held in the same calendar year since 1992 - doesn't square with the International Olympic Committee's or the Tokyo organizers' venal schemes.  Making a profit off these Games is already in a precarious state, what with non-Japanese spectators not allowed due to COVID and the prospect of in-person spectators for the Games dim due to the same acronym.   It would seem to suggest that the organizers think it would be more profitable to have the Games now than later, in spite of the pandemic.

Look, I want to see the Summer Games too. I want to see Katie Ledecky swim again, man!  (Though, I can Simone Biles any time in those Uber Eats commercials.)  But it would make more sense to delay the Summer Olympics just one more year, so then foreigners can travel to Japan and feel more comfortable going there, as would the broadcasters.  I'll bet the Tokyo Games could still make money for all of those involved if they're held in 2022.

And if it turns out that Tokyo has to cancel the Olympics entirely, well, then, we'll always have Paris.

In 2024.