The conclusion sounded sobering.

"28 world records were set in these two Olympic weeks, but never and nowhere did the sparks jump from the spectators to the competitors, encouraging them to perform at their best." This is how the German press agency judged the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo, a major event , which was characterized by the reserved mentality of the Japanese, an audience often ignorant of the subject, the exact but rigid organization and unmanageable dimensions with more than 8,000 people in the Olympic Village alone.

All of this had seriously impaired the overall impression: "The world's largest sports festival became less of what it was supposed to be, a celebration of friendship and understanding, but more of a medal hunt."

Bernd Steinle

Editor in the section “Germany and the World”.

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The FAZ correspondent apparently also felt little Olympic enthusiasm in Tokyo. “The obsession with the preparations to surpass everything that has gone before, to make it bigger, more beautiful and more important, certainly not only served the higher glory of the games. In the past two weeks it has often become clear that there was a considerable degree of national need for recognition associated with all of this. It was not the pride of modest complacency with which what was achieved was offered. It was seldom neglected to point out that the greatest thing that ever existed was offered here: the most important games that have ever taken place, the best institutions that have ever been created, the highest national participation, it was indulging in superlatives.“After the Games in Tokyo in 1964, many people had a wish that sounded familiar 56 years later: the wish for smaller games, for a more modest setting. "What use are the biggest and most expensive games", the FAZ said on October 27, 1964, "what use is a unique and perfect show if the heart remains uninvolved?"

No room for spontaneity and flexibility

At that time, of course, the heart did not remain uninvolved in all of them.

Certainly not with Hans-Joachim Klein at least.

Klein, then 24 years old, was one of the best freestyle swimmers in the world in 1964, and he had come to Tokyo to swim for a medal, perhaps even an Olympic victory.

Cool atmosphere, need for national recognition, soulless medal hunt?

Klein experienced it differently.

“The enthusiasm in the population was huge,” he says.

“I got the impression that all of Japan was happy that it could host the Olympic Games.

The population was really proud of it. "

The technical achievements were impressive, the ultra-modern train from the airport to the city, the new Shinkansen high-speed train, the satellite transmissions all over the world, the electronic timing mats while swimming. But in Tokyo Klein also experienced how the seemingly perfect planning left little room for spontaneity and flexibility, how suggestions and requests for changes fizzled out: "You always just smiled friendly and then said 'No'."