Tokyo 2021: an opening ceremony for the Games between Covid and resilience
An athlete from the Egyptian delegation during the opening ceremony of the Tokyo 2021 Olympic Games on July 23 at the Olympic Stadium.
AP - Hannah McKay
Text by: David Kalfa Follow
4 min
The opening ceremony of the Tokyo 2021 Olympic Games, very sober, took place on July 23 in an almost empty Olympic Stadium, because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The event, which kicked off the Games of the 32nd Olympiad, focused on the theme of resilience through sport.
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From our special correspondent in Tokyo,
Many will have seen it but few will have been there: the opening ceremony of the Tokyo 2021 Games took place on July 23 in front of a small audience.
While hundreds of millions of people are in front of their screens, this Friday between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. GMT, the Olympic Stadium and its 68,000 seats are almost empty.
The heads of state and government present, like French President Emmanuel Macron, were asked to come with a small handful of accompanying persons.
Many athletes absent from the parade of nations
Even the athletes engaged in these
2021 Olympics
are not all there, in the enclosure.
Of the 11,000 or so participants, only a part parades in the center of the field.
Symbolically, Ethiopia only presents itself with its two flag bearers even though it has 38 representatives at these Games.
These principles of social distancing are quickly forgotten, however, amid applause, hugs and other selfies.
As tradition dictates, Greece, the cradle of Olympism, sees its champions appear first.
Then it's the turn of the refugee team.
Then follow the countries according to their name, according to the Japanese syllabary
[1]
.
The Japanese, them, close the ban, in the Tokyo humidity.
The United States, which will host the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, and France, which will host those of 2024 in Paris, came just before.
Note that
Guinea-Conakry, a time announced package, is there.
" Go forward "
Before this parade of nations, the ceremony organized in the presence of the Emperor of Japan Naruhito, sober, was clearly centered on the theme of resilience through sport and on the courage of athletes. “Going forward” is the credo of these Olympic Games, when the Covid 19 pandemic officially killed more than 4 million people and disrupted the daily lives of billions of people.
Even these 32nd Olympiad Summer Games
[2]
, which also commemorate the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident in Fukushima, have been postponed for a year because of the novel coronavirus.
A first in the history of the biggest sporting event in the world.
Its outright cancellation was demanded
until the last second by opponents of the Olympics.
Present in droves around the Stadium, we could also hear their cries of protest in the early evening.
At 9.48pm UT, the Olympic flame is brought into the stadium.
Then it is to the tennis player Naomi Osaka that returns the honor of igniting the Olympic cauldron.
Fifty-seven years after the 1964 Olympics, the Games are back in Tokyo.
[1] Japanese writing is not based on a system of letters (alphabet) but largely on systems of syllables (syllabaries).
[2] The 1916, 1940 and 1944 editions did not take place because of the two World Wars.
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