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In defence of Tokyo 2020, the loneliest Olympics
Japan was right to go ahead with the Games despite opposition, empty venues and a one-year Covid-19 delay.
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Japan did not get to show itself to the world in the way it expected when it won the vote in 2013. But it did the best with the hand it was dealt.
PHOTO: IOC
Gearoid Reidy
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The 2020 Tokyo Olympics
In July 2021, as Japan prepared to host the year-delayed event, the drumbeat of a disaster waiting to happen was overwhelming. No comparison was too outlandish: The pandemic-era Games would be as bizarre as the “Nazi 1936 Olympics in Berlin,” while the sense of a government dragging an unwilling public to disaster was compared to World War II “when the Japanese public did not want the conflict but no leader dared halt it”.
