The Olympics during war and during COVID

Inspired by the ancient Olympic Truce – the tradition whereby wars were halted while the athletes competed – Olympic and Yugoslav officials agreed that the boycotted Yugoslavs would compete as individuals representing themselves, rather than their country.

Some 90 Yugoslav athletes thus competed, and won eight medals, all – how proverbial – in pistol and rifle shooting.

In 1992, then, war failed to disrupt the Olympics, but that was hardly the rule.

The two world wars canceled three Olympiads. The Cold War led to the Western countries’ boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games and the East Bloc’s boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Games.

The 1976 Montreal games were boycotted by 28 African countries due to New Zealand’s participation, despite its rugby team’s tour in South Africa, and the 1972 Munich Games were ruined by Palestinian terrorists’ murder of 11 Israeli athletes.

Recalling this troubled history, the question now is what happened when the Olympic Truce was challenged by the war on the coronavirus, and the answer, as of now, is that the virus won.

THE GAMES that will open today will be the saddest since the Olympics’ beginning in the days when Isaiah roamed the streets of Jerusalem.

An Olympiad without fans is like a school without children. It’s like a couple trying to kiss through a sheet of glass. It’s the sterilization of spectator sports.

No, this is not to say that the virus should have been ignored. This is to say that sterilizing the Tokyo Games instead of delaying them is historically unfair and socially tragic for Japan, and morally ruinous for the Olympic ideal, which is to foster international solidarity.

The least important, and yet very valid reason to spare Japan this ordeal, is that it invested heavily in this event – more than $7 billion – and there is no reason its money should go down the drain. This is of course beside the fact that the Japanese can be counted on to have organized a flawless and heartwarming event that would have thrilled mankind for a month.

More importantly, Japan is a society in crisis. The heady 1980s, when postwar Japan boomed and talk of the Japanese eclipsing America was rife – are long gone. The Japanese economy has since stagnated, reflecting a demographically shrinking society’s declining demand, endemic deflation and huge debt.

With more than a quarter of the population past retirement age, and with children up to age 14 now comprising about 12% of the population – half their share 50 years ago – Japanese society is the oldest in the world. Demographers say that if current trends persist, today’s 125 million Japanese are set to plunge by the middle of the century to fewer than 100 million.

The games were supposed to give this struggling society a moment of happiness, and also help spark a new sense of optimism, a message that was to be transmitted through the slogan “Japan Is back.” Instead, the sterilized games will feel like a requiem for a country gone from bad to worse.

Japan deserves better, not only because of its crisis, but also because of the moral journey it has made since the 1930s. The country that once embraced militarism and bullied an intercontinental ring of nations, has transformed into a worshiper and builder of peace.

Japan fulfilled to the letter the pacifist constitution the American occupation imposed on it. It really stayed away from conflicts, and it established itself as one of the world’s most generous donors of foreign aid, spending annually more than $15 billion in more than 150 countries.

It is therefore downright unfair that Japan’s games, deprived of the thrill and commotion that were all other Olympiads’ hallmarks, will now become a perversion of what they were meant to be.

THE OLYMPICS have transformed markedly since their renewal 125 years ago.

Originally the games celebrated amateurism, so much so that super-athlete Jim Thorpe was forced to return his gold medals in the 1912 Stockholm Games’ decathlon and pentathlon because he had previously played in several minor league baseball games.

That legacy was first mocked by the communist bloc’s deployment of athletes who were full-time, state-paid and also state-drugged racing dogs, and then was altogether shed when millionaires like Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson studded the American Dream Team that won the 1992 Games’ gold.

The abandonment of amateurism was preceded by the games’ commercialization in 1984, when American entrepreneur Peter Ueberroth turned the Los Angeles Games into a corporate cash machine, after selling advertiser sponsorships that are now a fixture of all major sports events.

Before that, the games’ televising – which began in 1960 with broadcasts from Rome to hardly 20 countries that generated a mere $1.2 million – became a multibillion-dollar celebration of kitsch, greed and cash.

And lastly, the games that once involved minimal policing became – following the Munich Massacre – a security jamboree involving hundreds of sniffing dogs, thousands of detectives and billions of dollars.

Little, in short, is left of the innocence that animated the Olympic Games’ renewal in 1896. Little, that is, except the celebration of international solidarity the games have inspired ever since, if one sets aside the 1936 Berlin Games’ Nazi disgrace.

Now, letting Japan suffer not despite, but because of the Olympiad it organized, would be a travesty of the Olympic ideal. That is why the next three scheduled hosts – Paris, Los Angeles and Brisbane – should voluntarily delay their games by four years each, so that Japan can host a proper Olympiad in 2024.

It’s the least the world can do to help Japan, fight the virus, and save what little is left of what once was the Olympic ideal.