‘World Really Needs This Olympics’: What the Tokyo Games Mean for Athletes

As Japan counts down to the Olympics this summer, the air in Tokyo is filled with something unusual for the run-up to a global sporting spectacle: doubts and silence, punctuated with the sound of distant ambulance sirens.

A little more than two months before the Tokyo Games are set to kick off on July 23 after they were postponed in 2020, the world is still grappling with the devastation left by the coronavirus. Normally, the Olympics are where the cream of the crop gather to compete as the whole world watches with bated breath. But this year’s games, which prohibit overseas spectators and confine athletes to the perimeters of the Athlete Village, will look very different.

After the wrenching year and a half since the pandemic took hold around the world, these restrictions may feel fitting. Why should we watch the fittest and fastest compete with one another for medals and glory when thousands succumb to COVID-19 every day? And what if the Olympics worsen the pandemic and bring even more misery?

But according to some of the athletes training for the event, the Olympics may be just the sort of celebratory distraction the world needs.

“I think the whole world really needs this Olympics, maybe more than anything else, due to the difficulties in the past year and a half,” Jonathan Groth, a Danish table tennis player who competed in the 2016 Rio Games, told VICE World News. “I think, really, the world needs to come together for one event and have something to focus on together,” he said.

He likened the Olympics to “a sports party for the whole world.”

The Tokyo Games are also a major goal for some athletes, including those who have already made it in other prestigious events.

“This is for me the big one,” Roger Federer, Swiss tennis player and winner of 20 Grand Slam titles, said of the games during a chat with Japanese tennis player and Olympic medalist Kei Nishikori. Federer is seeking his first Olympic gold in singles after missing the 2016 Rio Games due to a knee injury.

For Teddy Riner, France’s two-time Olympic gold medalist in Judo, the games mean more than simply breaking his numerous records.

“The Tokyo Olympic Games are without doubt what I’ve waited for the most. They represent so much: the biggest competition in our judo careers—this is Japan, the land of Judo. There is no more beautiful symbol for me,” Riner, the world’s only judoka to have won 10 World Championship gold medals, told VICE World News.

Though athletes have cheerfully taken on the role of mood lifter, much of Japan is fiercely against the Olympics taking place.

National polls consistently show a majority of Japanese people want the games cancelled or postponed again, citing fears of more contagious variants of COVID-19 spreading domestically. As it stands, less than 2 percent of the entire population has been vaccinated.

Naomi Osaka, Japan’s very own tennis star, has expressed doubt over holding the Olympics in the middle of a global pandemic. 

“I'm an athlete, and of course my immediate thought is that I want to play in the Olympics,” Osaka told BBC Sport.

“But as a human, I would say we’re in a pandemic, and if people aren’t healthy, and if they’re not feeling safe, then it’s definitely a really big cause for concern,” she said.

Fast-spreading COVID-19 variants are what Nikola Girke, Canada’s four-time sailing Olympian, points to when describing her hesitation. 

“On one hand, I don’t feel that COVID is under control enough to warrant the coming together of so many nations when so much of the world is still in lockdown,” she told VICE World News.

“On the other hand, the Olympics bring a much-needed injection of hope, inspiration and something to watch, whilst giving the athletes that have worked so hard and for so long, including a bonus training year, a chance to fulfill their dream,” she said.

43-year-old Girke, who sees the Tokyo Games as her last, plans to make this opportunity count.

“Being an Olympian no longer defines me and when the opportunity to qualify Canada and myself in windsurfing, my passion sport, it seemed like an opportunity to finish my Olympic career on my terms and in a healthy frame of mind. My goal was to enjoy the journey, to have fun and do my best,” she said.

Joseph Schooling, the Singaporean swimmer who beat his hero Michael Phelps at the 2016 Rio Games and won the country its first-ever Olympic gold medal, will miss the usual crowd-filled stands.

“I’m the kind of guy that likes to get up on a big stage in front of a crowd. It helps me put myself in the mode that I need to where I thrive. I feed off the crowd, I feed off the energy, and so having kind of a silent arena, I wouldn’t say it puts me at a disadvantage, but it’s something that I have to adapt to,” he told VICE World News.

For some young athletes, a postponed Olympics actually gave them a chance to compete on a global stage sooner than they had imagined. 

Lana Pudar, a 15-year-old swimmer from the Bosnia and Herzegovina team, was just focusing on the European and World Junior Championships. But when the games got pushed back, the Olympics were now on the table. 

“Honestly, if the games hadn’t been postponed last year it’s very likely that I wouldn’t have had a chance to perform at these games,” she said. 

It was always Pudar’s dream to compete in the Olympics, and having just swum an Olympic qualifying time in March, Pudar can’t wait for the summer. It gave her “additional motivation to work better every training,” she said.

“This is definitely a special feeling and I really want to enjoy these moments because I can freely say that I am living my dream.”

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Collage: VICE / Photos (from left): Michael Reaves / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP; KARIM JAAFAR / AFP; Martin BUREAU / AFP; Samer Al-Rejjal / Qatar Tennis Federation / AFP