The Isolation Olympics
Simone Biles has put mental health in focus in Tokyo, and the discussion needs to be quickly broadened
The Commentators
Every four years, the normal calendar goes out the window, and athletes, journalists and fans move on to a 17-day Olympic calendar when days do not matter, but the hours and the minutes and the seconds are counted and guarded jealously.
For some athletes, that means that three years of preparation can come down to the 10 or 20 or 60 seconds their event might take. Their involvement might be over after a minute of action, if even that, and they may never return to the Olympics - a lifetime of work, over in a flash.
Much is made of how it is every four years, and how fleeting these chances are, which is why the decision of Simone Biles - a generational talent in sports - to forego the opportunity to compete to protect her mental health has been greeted with a mix of wonder and incredulity.
Biles - a young, Black woman ostensibly at the peak of her powers - has changed the game for all of us. For the first time, it is truly OK not to be OK.
Of course, the Gammonati will have its say, the knee-jerk responses of racists and misogynists will be to call her a failure and a loser and a disappointment, which is why we need to switch the camera from the athletes to the media, in more ways than one.
I don’t for one second believe that a journalist or commentator needs to have been an elite athlete to comment on or write about a sport; we are, after all, talking about very separate skill sets. I have met players whose analysis of the game is unerring; I have also met international footballers with over 100 caps whose understanding of it is limited to their own narrow view of it.
But what can be questioned is the motives behind their commentary. When some corpulent irrelevance, whose only work of note is belching contrarianism to an audience that gets more ill-informed with their every utterance, gets up on their soap-box, it is completely valid to ask them what gives them the right to question the character of an athlete, and why.
The biggest victory of this Games so far - and perhaps any Games this century - is Biles taking back control of her own wellbeing, of which the Olympics is supposed to be a celebration.
Gradually, we are eradicating the tired, yet still-booming voices of empty jingoism and hubris and replacing it with a compassionate view of humanity.
That would be worth its weight in gold to all of us.
The Movie Cliché
I haven’t watched it since it came out, but there’s a reason everyone is referencing Sofia Coppola’s Lost In Translation in relation to these games. Not only is the movie set in Japan - like the film, the recurring themes of these Games are isolation and disconnect, caused in no small part by the pandemic.
The little Olympic bubble we inhabit is working. Positive Covid test rates are at about 0.02%, compared to around 15% for the general population of Tokyo - that said, we’re doing a lot more tests in the bubble, but there are still surprisingly few positives.
That, however, comes at a price.
I spoke to a journalist the other night and she seemed very angry and sad. She had had an argument with the hotel staff, she wasn’t enjoying the Games and she couldn’t get food delivered (we’re not allowed to go to restaurants during our first 14 days here), so she was starving all the time.
“I think I’m just lonely,” she said, and that is the root of everything.
It’s not a plea for sympathy. We are privileged to be here, even if many Japanese people would prefer that we weren’t.
But the Olympics for journalists is about meeting people you don’t see very often. It’s about sharing a bus ride or a breakfast, and maybe a few quotes or a drink in the evening. It’s about telling human stories of Games and tournaments past, of giving tips about openings that might be coming up at a media organisation, or head-hunting someone to your own. It’s about the fleeting connections that make life worth living.
None of that can happen here.
We troop off to the venues, do our work, troop off the busses back from the venues and keep our distance while waiting for the elevators back to our single rooms.
Sometimes we might meet someone while nipping down, masked up, to collect an Uber Eats in the lobby or on a short visit to the nearby supermarket (the only one we are allowed to go to). But other than that, isolation.
This is not, of course, limited to journalists.
The whole world has been isolated for more than a year as this virus has raged, and everything points to having to do so for a considerable period yet.
I’ve seen my friend the journalist more often since. We chat. We sat apart and had a bit of a gossip on the bus last night on the way back. It certainly brightened my day, and I hope it brightened hers.
This sense of disconnect and isolation is at the heart of Lost In Translation. We all want to mean something to somebody, not least to ourselves. We want to feel that what we do has meaning and that we’re not just wasting our time.
Very few of us have the self-assurance to tell ourselves that we do matter, and so does what we do in this world. We need to hear it from other people. We need to be seen. And it’s hard to be seen when you’re locked inside a hotel room most of the day.
Some of us choose this way of life precisely for that reason. I’m here because I want to be here, because I feel that bringing you these stories is what gives my life meaning, and because it satisfies my long-held curiosities about the world we live in.
If there’s a gap in your schedule - it’s the Olympics, so there really shouldn’t be - check out Lost In Translation. There’s no satisfying climax to the whole thing, no reveal that tells us everything will work out in the end.
And maybe that’s the point.
The Podcast
… this week is an audio postcard from Tokyo. Somehow I’ve managed not to recount all the tales in it here, so it’s still worth a listen if you haven’t yet done so.
The Week Ahead
It’s just coming up on 8 AM on Sunday as I write these lines, the jet lag still poking me awake at 5 AM every day.
I’m in Enoshima, south-west of Tokyo city, to cover the sailing, which has ten medal races after a seemingly endless series of opening races. The first medal races were held yesterday, and they’ll now rattle off at a rate of two a day until Wednesday.
After that, it’s back to Tokyo and four days of boxing, my first indoor sport at any Olympics (other than a single ice hockey game) and something I’ve wanted to do since I was a child.
Be good to each other, wherever you may be - and see if you can reach out a hand to someone who might be feeling lonely this week. They’ll thank you for it.