They always tell you it is going to be an Olympics like no other. That sport will be faster, higher, stronger than ever before. That everything from the opening ceremony to the records shattered will be bigger and better than anything you’ve ever seen.
But Tokyo 2020 is truly going to be an Olympics and Paralympics like never before. Delayed by a year, largely spectator-free, and predominantly taking place in a city currently experiencing emergency measures to try and curb the outbreak of the Covid pandemic that is growing in Japan.
One thing hasn’t changed though – the Guardian’s commitment to bringing you the best possible coverage of the Olympics and the Paralympics, and our Tokyo 2020 daily briefing will be your daily guide to what has just happened, and what you can look out for the following day.
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The best of our journalism, direct from Japan
Due to the pandemic, covering Tokyo 2020 is not quite the same experience for journalists as it usually is either. Sean Ingle, our chief sports reporter, has arrived in Tokyo, where he will spend much of his time confined to quarters in a hotel when he isn’t in the sterile media zones at venues.
The rules are no less strict for the athletes themselves, as he writes in a scene-setting piece you’ll be able to find in our special Olympic print supplement, available with the Saturday Guardian in the UK:
The 11,000 competitors at the Games must eat alone, be tested daily, and refrain from talking in confined spaces such as elevators under the joyless Covid rules. Waving to the world at the Opening ceremony, competing in packed stadiums, and letting their hair down in karaoke bars and tourist traps is all off limits.
Our Tokyo correspondent, Justin McCurry, has been reporting on the troubled build-up to the Games for months. He told me:
The contrast in the public mood between now and 2013, when Tokyo was awarded the Games, couldn’t be greater. Since then, the road to 2020 – or 2021 – has been long and dotted with Olympic-sized potholes: allegations of bribery, a complete stadium redesign, a plagiarised (and then replaced) logo, sexism rows and, to top it all, we now have the prospect of a fortnight of elite sport taking place behind closed doors, and in a country in the midst of yet another wave of Covid-19 cases. Japan’s gaffe-prone deputy prime minister, Taro Aso, has described the Games as “cursed”. He is right about that … if precious little else.
How have the final Tokyo preparations been going?
Well, for a start, International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach has probably had better weeks. Having promised a safe and secure games, he also made the embarrassing gaffe of referring to his Japanese hosts as the Chinese people. He was then accused of “holding of the Olympics by force under the pandemic” by a Hiroshima survivors group who objected to his planned visit to the site of the nuclear bombing 76 years ago.
There are also already a flurry of positive Covid cases, including a cluster of infections emerging at a hotel hosting Brazilian team members, and eight athletes from the Kenya women’s rugby team were classified as close contacts after a positive coronavirus case was found on their flight to Tokyo.
This morning, Australian basketball star Liz Cambage has withdrawn, citing concern for her mental health if she were to go into a bubble at the Games with no support other than from her team. And Japan’s TV Asahi has reported that a member of the Nigerian Tokyo Olympics delegation has become the first Olympics visitor admitted to hospital with Covid. A non-athlete in their 60s, they tested positive on Thursday evening at the airport with only mild symptoms, but were hospitalised because of their age and pre-existing conditions.
What should you read to get you in the mood?
As well as tomorrow’s print supplement in the UK, we’ve already published a range of preview pieces to whet your appetites for the Games. Few teams can ever have had such an uncertain build-up to an Olympics as the Team GB women’s football side. They essentially haven’t existed since the London 2012 Games.
The world player of the year Lucy Bronze put a kind spin on it, joking that they were undefeated in nine years, but the reality is that while 19 of the 22 players heading to Tokyo are England internationals, and England have played only three times in 2021.
They will open their campaign in Sapporo against Chile on Wednesday 21 July. Suzanne Wrack has assessed their chances of gold for us.
Tim Lewis has written for us about skateboarding, which will make its Olympic debut in Tokyo.
Whether you think this development is brilliant or abhorrent – and many skateboarders are ambivalent – it is a major step change for an activity that has often prided itself on being a subculture. Skateboarders are athletes now; some even, whisper it, do dedicated training. So there’s a lot to process for skateboarders right now, not least the question: can skateboarding be both mainstream and also subversive and cool?
I enjoyed the piece a lot, not least for the extremely optimistic valuation that the Sunday Times once put in 2003 on the then-19-year-old skateboarder Lucy Adams’ potential earnings by the year 2020. They predicted, with the growth of the sport that she was a rising star of, she would be a multimillionaire by about now. SPOILER: she is not.
And whatever chaos ensues in Tokyo – at least on the sporting side – it surely can’t end up as disorganised and bizarre as the St Louis Games in 1904? Andrew Lawrence has a brilliant overview of that astonishing Olympics for us, including these gems
A boxing winner was caught using a false name. Thirteen runners vied for medals in the 400m on a track without lanes. Swimming heats were held in an asymmetrical lake. A German-American gymnast named George Eye won six medals that year on a wooden left leg, including gold in the vault after jumping over a long horse without a springboard.
Live Olympic event: book now
You can also join us online on Tuesday for a special event. Our panel, including British Olympians Mary Peters, Fatima Whitbread and Alistair Brownlee, will be marking the build-up with an analysis into the controversies that have surrounded Tokyo 2020, as well as a celebration of the biggest sporting tournament in the world. Tickets are available here.
What will you get in the Tokyo 2020 daily briefing?
At the end of each day’s action, I’ll be in your inbox, summing up the day’s events for you in a nutshell, sorting the joy from the despair, explaining what mattered, and highlighting the best of our journalism from Tokyo. I’ll also be helping you plan what you need to pay attention to the following day, with a detailed guide to the events schedule, and pointers for the medal hopes and most interesting stories from 17 days in 33 Olympics sports. And then we’ll do it all again for the Paralympics.
Naturally, as we have our offices there, I’ll be keeping an especially keen eye on the fortunes of Team GB, Team USA and the Australian team, but this will be a truly international round-up, and perhaps the overall success of an Olympic Games has never depended quite so much on the host nation getting off to a good start.
How you can join in?
Just because there’s not going to be any audience participation at the Games themselves doesn’t mean I’m not looking for it here. Every nation on earth will be looking on at their athletes competing in the Games while their own country is at a different stages of coping with the pandemic. There are two things in particular I’m interested in hearing from you right now as we await the opening ceremony:
1) How has the coronavirus pandemic affected the way you feel about the Games, and is it having an impact on the way you would normally enjoy them?
and
2) Away from the big names of Simone Biles, Caeleb Dressel, Emily Seebohm, Ariarne Titmus and Laura Kenny, who are you most looking forward to seeing in Tokyo? And who should I be keeping an eye on who isn’t in the spotlight yet?
Feel free to email me at [email protected]. I look forward to hearing from you and picking up on your suggestions in the briefing as we go along.
See you next week
So, a week to go. It’s difficult to say what this year of the Olympics and Paralympics is going to feel like. I’d like to promise that from the off we’ll be caught up in the excitement and achievement of elite sport, and that the Games will help people all around the world put aside their cares for a couple of weeks.
On the other hand, we may find ourselves with escalating positive tests in the camps leading to withdrawals, increased public anger in Japan over the burden the Games have put on their resources in a time of national emergency, and a feeling that victories in empty arenas and the medal ceremonies that follow them ring hollow in a pandemic year. We shall see. Whatever Tokyo 2020 brings, I look forward to sharing it with you in our daily briefing.