Jake Wightman fears Friday’s Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games may be a disappointing and deflating damp squib rather than igniting the flames of those taking part.
Sailor Hannah Mills and rower Mohamed Sbihi will serve as the chosen flagbearers for the UK as the curtain is officially raised on the Tokyo Games that Covid propelled out of 2020 with a new script required.
But the two Olympic gold medallists are expected to be among just 30 British hopefuls marching through a fan-less stadium for a scaled-down show on the theme of ‘United Through Emotion’ - a far cry from the 12,000 sportsmen and women who rocked up in Rio for the pre-Games carnival in 2016.
“This isn't the Olympics you wanted to come to,” said Wightman, who will run the 1500 metres on the athletics track later in the Games. “You wanted it to really be the spectacle that you imagine Olympic Games to be.
“I've been lucky enough that I went to watch in Beijing. I went to watch in London. And both of them were incredible just to watch. So I can't imagine how good it must have felt to be an athlete.
“Since the Covid stuff came in, we've known that it was going to be scaled back. But the disappointing one is the fact there is no crowds at all. With the 10,000 Japanese, whatever it was originally meant to be, at least that was something.”
The 27-year-old will instead watch the ceremony on television at the British training base in Yokohama as a Games like no other splutters, precariously, into life.
But the Scot said: “It's still an Olympics. I'm still going to be an Olympian off the back of it. There's still Olympic medals. So I'm holding that pretty close to the forefront of my mind. It's not like my motivation’s dropped at all.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here