IN A benign universe, Sunday would have marked the closing ceremony for Tokyo’s much awaited Olympic Games. Running from July 24 to August 9, Tokyo seemed poised to deliver a return to form for the Games after a disappointing Rio 2016. Instead, we’ve had to content ourselves with reruns from the BBC’s dusty London 2012 archives. So what were we meant to witness, and will Tokyo 2020 ever go ahead?

What was planned for Tokyo 2020?

Preparations commenced on the back of London 2012, when the IOC announced the following year that Tokyo had beat Madrid and Istanbul for the host rights. Tokyo 2020 would have been one of the largest Olympics ever, with 206 nations and over 11,000 athletes, and an estimated budget similar to London’s £10 billion. The Games would have featured 339 individual events in 33 sports, alongside five ‘new’ sports proposed by Japan: karate, roller-skating, rock climbing, wakeboarding and wushu, a Chinese martial art. In Britain, Tokyo 2020 was scheduled to be broadcast ad-free by the BBC.

What happened?

With Covid-19 it became increasingly clear that there was no way forward for the Games. Across the globe, national qualifiers were postponed or cancelled, and several teams including Great Britain threatened to withdraw. With billions of dollars (and trillions of Yen) on the line, neither the IOC nor Japan wanted to take financial responsibility for postponement, but eventually an agreement was reached to delay the Games to July 2021.

Can we expect to see the games as normal next year?

Japan have decided to rebrand their Games as “2020+1”, steadfastly restarting their Olympic countdown and promising that the Games will go ahead no matter what. It’s estimated that the country has already lost $5.8Bn due to the postponement, and a cancellation could cost up $41.5bn accounting for lost tourism income. However, the future of the Games is less than set in stone. Covid-19 is still running rampant with cases exceeding 20 million as of this week. And even countries that appear to have the disease under control, such as the UK, are still stuck in a state of semi-lockdown-limbo.

Covid might be gone?

It’s hard to believe Covid-19 won’t still be lurking in large parts of the globe by next July. Solutions such as a vaccine still seem a good few years away. Japan has done a fairly good job of managing the crisis so far, and the idea of taking in 11,000+ athletes, their entourages, global media teams and, most difficult of them all, the planned millions of tourists, will not be popular – regardless of how crucial for the economy the Japanese government will insist they are. The modern Olympics have only been cancelled three times before (in 1916, 1940 and 1944), but with Paris 2024 in the pipeline, Japan may be staring down at trillions of Yen wasted on a cancelled Games, a tragic end that will be received bitterly by athletes and sports fans around the globe.

FINLAY SCOTT