Sport is also entertainment.

Exciting, dramatic, sometimes a great, wonderful theater.

With experts, actors, divas, tragic and glorious heroes.

A material that moves people, tears them out of their seats, makes them despair, cheer and hope.

In the best case scenario, it moves them - for a lifetime.

Mostly it distracts from everyday life, from strokes of fate, from injustice, humiliation, from Corona, for a moment.

Even those who watch, millions.

It can be a good rest for the soul.

The opening ceremony of Tokyo on Friday evening, local time, was an ideal opportunity to immerse yourself in Thomas Bach, President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), that the Summer Games would be the “light at the end of the dark tunnel”. After the budget cuts due to the postponement of the games by a year, the Japanese presented a pleasantly modest show compared to the thundering spectacle in Rio 2016 and London 2012, colorful, full of quiet moments and powerful effects, often underlaid with symbolism. Probably the most significant: around 40 dancers, captured and linked by red threads of light. All people, that is to say, are connected to one another.

The television viewer may be gripped by it.

Seen from the stadium square, this wonderful scene drew attention to what is so painfully missing from the main characters of the Games these days;

To people who watch them close up, who become part of the experience in small and very big moments when they absorb each other's vibrations, let themselves be moved when they succeed and fail.

Feel the Olympic spirit

In these moments, the performers and the recognizable audience merge into a moment of togetherness that connects them for a lifetime. It is also this encounter that Olympic participants and viewers of the past games rave about even after decades, often with tears in their eyes. They then talk about what makes the Games special: their feeling of having felt the Olympic spirit.

How should it come when, because of the Corona emergency in Tokyo, with incidences rising rapidly every day, no one is allowed into the stands for good reasons? If Bach and his IOC get caught in the crossfire of at least half the nation because of the relentless attitude of pushing through these games against the worries of large sections of the population; if, like on Friday, only about 1000 instead of 70,000 get lost in the huge concrete bowl at the festive reception of the athletes, these athletes unfortunately have to stay to themselves for another two weeks in the most important moments of their careers?

At the side of her fellow flag-bearer Patrick Hausding, Laura Ludwig had relied on the momentum that can develop in a stadium full of happy, courageous, determined athletes. They struggled, the Argentines danced on the course into the light and back out into the dark. The first of the 207 nations formed a line for the following. Athletes applauded athletes from all corners of the world. They constantly saw what the TV directors kept fading out with close-ups: empty stands.

The opening ceremony, at least in the stadium, made it clear that all attempts to cover corona distances with the virtual world are doomed to failure. People need closeness. This is not a new finding. But for now the best news from Tokyo. And finally, a serious message: learn to live with the virus. Now that there is no turning back, that must be the hope for the next two weeks.