In these days of Tokyo there is even for the help that actually doesn't deserve any help.

The other day while wrestling, for example: At the entrance to the so-called mixed zone, where Olympic reporters can talk to Olympic athletes, two reporters from the United States are standing and sniffing at the volunteers.

You do not have a mixed zone pass - and therefore no right to admission.

Christopher Meltzer

Sports correspondent in Munich.

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According to the rules, they could have picked up this pass at a small service stand in the hall, but they rely on a different legal basis anyway: habit.

An American interview must follow an American medal.

It has always been like that.

One of the two says to the volunteers: “You're really screwin 'this up right now!” In the polite translation that means: You're screwing this up right now!

And then they do what has not been done for the first time in American foreign history: they defy the law.

Right restored

There is probably nowhere else in Tokyo where you can see the unending willingness to help of the volunteers as well as in the mixed zone.

In the ring hall they not only let the abusive US reporters enter, but then whisper into their radios until they have even obtained official approval for them.

Right restored.

But they still have the greatest effort ahead of them.

It is one of the most self-sacrificing help of these summer games that several volunteers are always waiting in the mixed zone with trays to collect the recording devices of all reporters.

You do the same when the American wrestler comes to the interview.

She stands at one barrier, the reporters at another.

At least two meters between them.

This is where the volunteers move.

You walk to one cordon with empty trays and then to the other with a full one.

Sometimes there is a table on which they can put the trays.

But sometimes not.

At the point where the wrestler is, for example.

What are the volunteers doing?

You kneel down and hold the tray above your head - so that the wrestler can speak her answers into the microphones at mouth level.

Now they have to hold out.

American athletes tell more than most.

It takes almost ten minutes.

Longer than a wrestling match.

For that, that is the fate of the volunteers, there is no medal.