So what will the Tokyo Olympics be like?
Let's ask someone who is there, at least almost.
Annika Bruhn, freestyle swimmer, is still training with the German team in Kumamoto, more than 1000 kilometers away from the Japanese capital, but what she has to say about her first days tears open the panopticon of these games in the coming weeks will take place.
When she arrived at the airport, Bruhn explains, she “did not have the impression at all that we were not wanted here.
People with flags were standing there and welcomed us, it was a very warm welcome. ”On the one hand.
On the other hand: In the “top training routine” in Kumamoto, with “great food and a huge indoor swimming pool”, she “has no contact with the Japanese, we only come through the back entrances and are not allowed out”.
Exception: "Fresh air on the terrace."
Defined by opposites
Bruhn is still one of the numerous athletes who are happy to say that the Corona Games are even going to exist. Others are deprived of the chance of this experience. The image that German football in general and the Bundesliga clubs in particular offer when they have just 15 field players allowed to travel to Tokyo is embarrassing. The DFB, the largest individual sports association in the world, hardly finds any players to compete with, for example, the Brazilians. This crowns the unsuccessful collage of impressions that the number one sport in this country is putting together in this pandemic summer.
But the contrasts that will define these games are not only fed by pandemic parameters. For example, freedom of expression: while soccer players will be allowed to kneel in protest, swimmers will be explicitly forbidden. The press department of the International Olympic Committee sent another telling example on Thursday. Not alone, but with reference to the sponsor Airbnb, where Olympic athletes can be hired. One hour of digital session, the athletes share their experiences.
Former NBA professional Scottie Pippen is available for 30 euros, an hour from the wealth of experience of swimmer Yusra Mardini, who will be starting in Tokyo for the refugee team on July 29, in the middle of the games, costs 50 euros, the number of participants is ten People limited. For the athletes this is an opportunity for “additional income”, writes the Olympic headquarters. Mardini would like to donate their proceeds, it says in addition. The other side of the coin: athletes who offer something like this in the next few weeks on their own initiative, with their own sponsor, would be strictly sanctioned. Why do athletes have to accept that? Ask yourself for a long time.
The field of tension at the Olympics, which is defined by the IOC under its President Thomas Bach, is heavily charged. Beijing will follow Tokyo in just over six months. There it is not just Corona that dictates the conditions.