The real winners and losers
The Tokyo Olympic Games went ahead despite heavy odds and provided a much-needed diversion for a world filled with negative news. The only disappointment were the fans.
By Hari Kumar
It was an Olympics that reflected the time we live in almost every sense. The heavy shadow that the Covid-19 pandemic had cast over the world continued to loom large.
Still, the best of the youngsters from around the globe gathered to compete in sports and games. With participants confined to protective bubbles competing in stadiums without spectators to cheer them, the Tokyo Games was a pale shadow of its predecessors. But the Olympic spirit was there in full vigour for all watching on TV screens to acclaim.
After over a century, the Olympics saw two top athletes agree to share the gold medal. The high jump contenders Mutaz Essa Barshim of Qatar and Gianmarco Tamberi of Italy decided not to go into a showdown after all their best efforts left them equal.
The pure joy radiating from their face and the excitement it generated among distant viewers spoke of how the underlying quality of the human race – the spirit of accommodation and respect for rivals – captured the essence of the Olympics, where fairness in competition is paramount.
There was more to cheer for in this Olympics. For example, the admiration and warmth that US gymnast Simone Biles and her Chinese rival Guan Chenchen elicited during their balance beam performance. It was a far cry from what one would expect from many people who claim to represent their country in other forums and the patriot brigade on social media.
Fans were kept out of the stadiums to keep the Covid-19 at bay. But there was plenty of fans online who were spreading much more vicious viruses in the name of nationalism, patriotism, and even religion. From the safety and comfort of their home, many of them quickly nit-picked performances of these Olympians and chastised them, forgetting how much painstaking training they had undergone to qualify for the Games.
Some participants were driven to tears by inconsiderate online trolling. The expectations of some fans were so high that China’s table tennis pair, Xu Xin and Liu Shiwen, apologised publicly more than once – for not winning the mixed doubles gold and finishing with just silver. The fact that they lost in the final to a Japanese duo dragged into focus the historical rivalries between the two nations and added another dimension. Some angry Chinese posted pictures of the Hiroshima bombing as retaliation for criticism against their trolling.
Some online cheerleaders, who should have known better, were quick to post utter garbage from the very start. But with ultra-nationalism running high in the country, Chinese fans were touchy and vocal from the start about everything from the opening ceremony onwards. Even Chinese officials could not resist entering the brouhaha.
When China’s Hou Zhihui won gold in weightlifting, the Chinese embassy in Sri Lanka jumped in. It blasted the Reuters news agency, and CNN for carrying what it claimed was an “ugly” picture of the winner, though the picture was of her in action during the event. Diplomacy should have been their forte, but the embassy people decided to resort to their Wolf Warrior tactics over a picture from a sporting event, which by all evidence, they had no clue about as it is an event where participants undergo considerable stress and strain.
Of course, the tweet by the embassy people also implied that women should be presented in their most attractive pose, confirming the image that prevails in male-dominated societies. It also revealed that any achievement of women is always overridden by the impression they have of women in such societies.
In Hong Kong, a politician, perhaps aiming to earn brownie points from Beijing, was quick to slam badminton player, Angus Ng, for wearing a black T-shirt without the city’s emblem during an early-round match. His social media comment said the player intentionally chose black, the colour associated with the 2019 anti-government protesters.
But it later emerged that the particular player was caught in the red tape, leaving him without a sponsor to supply attire and leaving him to his own means. The politician retracted his charges after it became controversial, but the damage was done. Ng lost his next match. The controversy, Ng later said, did affect his concentration.
But such reactions were not confined to China alone. The US social media pounced on Simone Biles after pulling out of an event citing her mental stress. Even bizarre was the South Korean fans demanding a gold-winning archery champion hand back her gold medals because of – wait for this – her short hair.
Biles, who some hail as one of the most extraordinary gymnasts of our times, was criticised relentlessly for putting herself above her country. But as a cynical comment on Twitter pointed out, most of her critics were sitting in front of their television sets with a beer in hand and would have trouble getting on to a balancing beam, but were sure what she was going through at the highest level of the competition. The polarisation of the US society and the race divide also added an edge to the debate.
The targeting of double gold medal winner from South Korea, An San, was also linked to the convulsions that the society in that country is witnessing. A rising movement against gender discrimination and a culture of sexual assaults has been happening in the county. Many women had resorted to adopting short hair in visible support of such efforts. But this has led to a backlash in the deeply conservative society and a rising anti-feminist movement as authorities promote women’s rights.
In India, a controversy that caught much media attention was the abuse of a top women’s hockey player after the team could not get even a bronze medal. Vandana Katariya had become the first Indian woman to score a hattrick in the Olympics in just the previous match, but when India lost in the clash for the third place, two men harassed her family. Their rouse was that there are too many lower caste women in the team, which they said cost India a medal.
Even worse was a video made by a widely followed online news portal in Kerala, where the anchor went on to slam praise for the best moment of the Tokyo Olympics: when the top contenders for the high jump medal decided to share the gold. But this self-proclaimed “news channel” went on to slam praise for the sportsmanship exhibited by the two and claimed that it was nothing but a quirkiness of the rule that led to the decision.
His main grouse was that people were praising what appeared to be the quick decision made by Qatar’s Barshim. It was being used by “jihadists” as propaganda and some politicians to woo Muslim voters; he went on.
These are the kind of reactions that make one feel sick and wonder how much bigotry and venom these kinds of people are capable of spewing over the internet in the name of religion, patriotism, and tradition. In even the most beautiful moment of the Olympics, where idealism and spirit of two competitors at the highest level triumphed over rivalry, these twisted minds see only tainted images and refuse to acknowledge what was on display.
Before this edition, the International Olympic Committee has updated its motto to “Faster, Higher, Stronger - Together.” The IOC said the new slogan would highlight the need for solidarity during difficult times such as the current pandemic. Thus, despite several hurdles and general scepticism, the organisers of the Tokyo Games were able to host the event, which provided some welcome diversion from the daily gloom and doom that has engulfed the world in the past one and half years.
The participants in the Tokyo Games also rose to the occasion by displaying memorable performances and left very little room for any major controversies – unlike some other Games – as they chalked up new records and stunning performances.
But the real let down of the XXXII Games were the fans whose distorted and perverted views dragged their own champions to the mud over nationalism, religious bigotry and gender discrimination.
Politics is now part of sports and games.
But, Japan did a good job in organising the Tokyo olympics
successfully