Were this year’s Olympic Games really necessary?

Tokyo Olympic Games

The Refugee Olympic Team's delegation parades during the opening ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, at the Olympic Stadium, in Tokyo, on July 23, 2021

Photo credit: Franck Fife | AFP

What you need to know:

  • Countries such as Guinea have been going back and forth about whether to send their star athletes into what could potentially be a harmful environment.    

Should the Tokyo Olympics have been held? It’s a question that has been plaguing its organisers since 2020, when it was first cancelled. And this year, the signs don’t look fortuitous at all – the creative head of the opening ceremony was fired over an anti-Semitic slur, a day before the opening ceremony.

The head of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics committee was switched out because he had said something derogatory about women (and now the head is a woman). Already, there have been cases of Covid-19 within the bubble, and the infections reported continue to increase even as volunteers, such as translators, according to the BBC, continue to drop out.

Countries such as Guinea have been going back and forth about whether to send their star athletes into what could potentially be a harmful environment.    

Were the Olympic Games completely necessary in the middle of a pandemic?

According to the first world, yes. The Olympic Games have long been touted as an essential sporting event for decades. They showcase the best of what athletes have to offer, on a spectacular playing field – literally the crème de la crème from around the world.

It’s a magnificent sight. It’s exciting. It’s supposed to bring countries together in a show of unity, and particularly this year, showing what is possible when we forge ahead in times of a health crisis. Showing that we can work together, that we are one, all those nice slogans that only apply when the first world wants to pat its back.

Because, really, that’s what it looks like. Sporting – and indeed, leisure, entertainment, and exercise – are essential to the human experience, even in the middle of a pandemic – which is why parks were not closed, for example, so that people could walk around. These are things we need to survive and thrive.

But large-scale global sporting events like this or a populated NBA or football premier league? I don’t think so, to be honest. And I don’t think it’s fair to the athletes, either.

I wouldn’t be able to resist the call of an Olympic stadium if I were an African athlete. There’s no way I wouldn’t be going to try and bag a medal. But again I say, just because I can go, doesn’t mean the event should be held.

On top of that, it’s a bit of a lie, isn’t it, that we’re all one and united? Because if one thing has been made painfully obvious throughout this whole pandemic, it’s that the first world doesn’t care at all about anyone else, which is how the term vaccine apartheid came to be in the first place.

When I say the first world, I mean the US and the UK, predominantly. I’ve talked about this in previous blogs – as soon as it could, the UK listed Kenya as a red country, meaning unsafe for travel or movement, regardless of the fact that the vaccine the British are using was in part researched and tested here.

The US has done no better, insisting that people from countries like ours, which have had surprisingly safe protocols in comparison, be refused entry - to a group of states that have had the highest numbers of deaths since March 2020.

And then there are countries like Canada, which insist on buying more vaccines than their citizens could ever possibly need, just to hoard them. For kicks, I suppose. And then proceed to insist that the paltry vaccines we’re getting are still not valid for cross-country travel. Where’s the unity in that?

So I find it highly improbable that this show of unity at the Olympics is meant to include my country, or my continent. Yes, Kenya will definitely get several medals, as these underpaid and highly talented men and women always do.

But let’s not pretend that the Olympics is anything but a convenient ruse to provide the first world with – well, actual steeplechase competition, entertainment, self-righteousness, tenders for uniforms, I don’t know. Whatever it is, it’s not a bigger dream, but it’s definitely a pipe one.