Games close as they began: Odd, empty but still a global spectacle

Spotlight shifts to mental health, best of human athleticism of 206 National Olympic Committees; Tokyo hands over Games baton to Paris for 2024

It began with a virus and a yearlong pause. It ends with a typhoon and, still, a virus. In between: just about everything.
 
The Tokyo Olympics, christened with “2020” but held in mid-2021 after being interrupted for a year by the coronavirus, glided to their end on Sunday night as an often surreal mixed bag for Japan and for the world.
 
Held in the middle of a resurging pandemic, rejected by many Japanese and plagued by months of administrative problems, these Games presented logistical and medical obstacles like no other, offered up serious conversations about mental health — and, when it came to sport, delivered both triumphs and a few surprising shortfalls.
 
From the outset, expectations were middling at best, apocalyptic at worst. Even Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, said he’d worried that these could “become the Olympic Games without a soul.” But, he said on Friday, “what we have seen here is totally different.” “You could experience and feel and see and hear how much they enjoyed to be together here again,” Bach said.
 
At these Games, even the word “together” was fraught. Spectators were kept at bay. A patchwork of rules kept athletes masked and apart for much of medal ceremonies, yet saw them swapping bodily fluids in some venues. That was less about being remiss than about being real: Risks that could be mitigated were, but at the same time events had to go on.