Today, Explained - Were the Olympics worth it?

Episode Date: August 9, 2021

The pandemic Olympics have come to an end. NPR’s Tom Goldman provides a highlight reel and an evaluation from Tokyo. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. The 2020 Olympics drew to a close Sunday night in Tokyo. We've done two episodes about the controversies and the COVID, but we wanted to do at least one that was primarily about the sports. So we reached out to a sports guy.

My name is Tom Goldman. I'm a sports correspondent for National Public Radio. We reached out to this particular sports guy because he wasn't just watching on TV like the rest of us. I am in Tokyo, Japan. Which means you've seen a lot of incredible stuff in the past two weeks. How many highlights do you have for us, Tom? You know, a billion, Sean. Maybe we should distill that down to maybe four. How about four?

I like four. Which four you got? Let's talk about the high jump. Can we talk about the men's high jump first? Sure. Barsham on the runway. The legend of this event. As he comes in, beautiful and relaxed. Oh, my.

That is how to high jump. After battling in that event, an athlete from Qatar, Mutaz Esa Barsham, and Italy's Gianmarco Tamberi, agreed to share the gold medal. They were tied for the lead, and an official started talking to them about having a jump-off.

We can continue with the jump-off? And Barsham asked, Can I have two gold? And the officials said, yeah, that's possible. And they looked at each other and they nodded and Tambury jumped into Barsham's arms and screamed. They were already good friends. So I guess they'd done that kind of thing before.

They've agreed to share the gold medal. And they had both come back from tough injuries. And then Tambury, you know, was just rolling around on the track, just screaming and crying and laughing. They were both excited. They decided to share this greatest moment between themselves. They raised their clasped hands on the medal stand. And Sean, I'd say it was definitely one of the top Kleenex moments of the Games.

It was really special. And all the more special because to us, these athletes might be, you know, perfect strangers, one from Italy, one from Qatar. But that was the moment we realized that these are fierce competitors as well as two people who really care about each other. Somewhere, International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach was watching that and weeping tears of joy, not like the rest of us, but he said, you know, he was probably thinking, this confirms what we are always trying to say

about the Olympics, which often sounds very grandiose, but we bring the world together, you know, and you have these moments. And there really are these moments. And it's very small. It's a small moment. But it does kind of, you know, if you can put aside all the cynicism, it does make you think, wow, there is hope. Look at these two people from very different parts of the world. They are friends. They are clasping hands and sharing this momentous occasion.

Yeah, it was great that way for the performance that we've been putting i deserve that goal and he did the same things i know he deserved that goal so it wasn't even a question it's it's this is really i know this is also beyond sport you know this is a true sportmanship this is the message we deliver to the young generation and everything so guys i think another reason we watch these games is not just to see the world come together, but to also see incredible athletic feats that make no sense to lay people, like when a Dutch runner ate it.

Here comes the bell. They cover the bell. Bill, 59.2, the final lap in the first team. Down goes Hassan. There's a fall on Hassan. Oh, my goodness. It was a chain reaction. It started with... Trampled over another runner.

And now look at the work she has to do. And then somehow got up and just passed the world's fastest runners to win the race. Can you tell us what exactly happened there? You were speaking, of course, of Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands. Yeah, she fell during her 1,500-meter heat. She was one of the favorites. She fell on the last lap. And when she fell, she said to herself, and I'm quoting,

okay, life doesn't always go the way you want, an understatement. So she got up, as you said, and just started picking them off. Here comes Hassan. All these runners who'd passed her. And the last, you know, 100 meters were amazing. She just blazed by a bunch of runners. She went on to win the heat. Going from on the track to cross the line first in a matter of about 62 seconds.

And maybe it took too much out of her because she, and I'm going to put this in quotation marks, only took a bronze in the final. But it was remarkable. Talk about getting back up on the horse. She did it immediately. And it was one of those stirring moments. I should also add that Sifan Hassan also won gold in the 5,000 and 10,000 meters. So she had a remarkable medal haul and another memorable moment. Yeah, yeah, I'm really,

I think they had really a lot of fear. I think the fear is what makes us strong and the doubt and like, unless if we doubt, if we fear and we stop it, we don't know what, but the fear makes you strong if you just keep going. Let's talk about some of the events that were new to these games. I know this was the first skateboarding at the Olympics, the first surfing at the Olympics, but you, I think, specifically wanted to talk about karate. I fell in love with karate, the ancient Japanese martial art that had its Olympic debut, as you mentioned, in Tokyo. Very fitting, because it was born in Japan. Disclaimer, I had never seen the Karate Kid movies. Wax on, wax off.

Or more recently, Cobra Kai. So this fascinating sport was new to me, and I was excoriated by my lead editor here for never seeing those movies, but whatever. So, I brought a freshness to it and I found it mesmerizing, especially the discipline of kata. I don't know if you got to see any of that, Sean. It involves a lone competitor. They're in the middle of the mat. They're executing highly stylized and controlled movements and then these crisp, violent punches against an imaginary opponent and some of the moves are punctuated by these fierce screams it's just amazing

this imaginary fight with these assailants he is in a battle. He can feel it. He can see them. He's making his defenses, his strikes in his mind. And the men's kata competition had a very fitting champion, Ryo Kiyuna from Okinawa, where karate originated centuries ago.

He was masterful in winning gold. He trains for six hours a day technical, two hours a day physical, 365 days of the year. No breaks for him. It all came to fruition. He was a three-time world champion, and now he won Olympic gold.

And on the medal stand, he held a framed photo of his mom, who died a couple of years ago. And he said about that, quote, I felt I wanted to report my triumph to her. A really cool moment. Now, unfortunately, karate is the only one of these Olympics new sports. Climbing, surfing, skateboarding, and three-on-three basketball are the others. And it's the only one that won't be on the program at the next Summer Games in 2024 in Paris. This is a bummer for fans, old ones and new ones like me. And it's especially perplexing because it's popular in France and it's

popular throughout the world. You know, we're hoping that it'll come back for 2028 in L.A. Okay. We'd be remiss to not talk about Simone Biles, perhaps the athlete who got the most attention, at least here in the United States, throughout these games. Sometimes you get caught up in that moment, and it's just scary because I go out and I'm like, can I do it again?

Can I be this good? And can I repeat what I did last Olympics? Why was it so important to Simone Biles to return to the Olympic Games this year? Well, it was important because she's only 24 and she had a masterful performance at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016. And I think she still rightly so felt on top of her game. And there is your state of the art. You know, to be honest, I'm a little bit at loss for words because all you can say is wow. I think it was also important for her to make a statement to come back after she acknowledged

that she was one of the many victims of sexual assault by the now- former team doctor, Dr. Larry Nassar. And so I think it's important, it was important for her to show that gymnasts are standing and thriving and doing well. I definitely think we're on the right road for a different path. And the next generations, you can already see it, They have some different rules in place for basically everything now. So we just have to keep them held responsible and just move on. What happened, I don't think she predicted. And it was the story of the games. You know, it really was the story of the games and not just because it happened to one of the big stars going into the games, but because of the experience and how it resonated with so many other athletes, not just in gymnastics.

To quickly recap, she basically did one vault in the women's team competition and then pulled herself out of that competition. Because as she explained to her coaches, the coaches were saying, you're okay, you're okay. She was saying, I'm not okay. And what we found out was, and this term has now become part of the lexicon, she had the twisties. I went to do a floor pass and I just got lost in the air. And I was like, okay, it was a fluke. And what happens when you get the twisties is your brain interferes and it starts to think about things and you lose kind of the muscle memory and you start thinking. And that's the worst thing you can do when that happens.

And then I just could not get a sense of where I was in the air. She withdrew from that competition. Then, of course, she decided, nope, I can't do the individual all around. I can't do the uneven bars. I can't do the floor exercise. I can't do the individual all around. I can't do the uneven bars. I can't do the floor exercise. I can't do the vault. But at the very end, the last individual apparatus, the balance beam, we were all waiting for her to pull out of that, too. She said, nope, keep me on that start list. I'm going to do it.

The final event in women's gymnastics has become the most anticipated event of the games. And as we learned afterwards, and of course she came back, she got a bronze medal, which was, you know, perhaps most memorable of all the medals she won after what she'd gone through. Yes, I'm pretty happy. I wasn't expecting to medal. I just came out here and just tried to do a good beam set. I switched my dismount last minute because of everything going on. But to have these two next to me, I'm excited. Absolutely amazing. She sent a powerful message in Tokyo to all athletes that you may think you have to do it

because the country expects you to perform a certain way. But in the end, all these athletes were human. And if we're not feeling right, we need to remove ourselves from this and we need to take control of the moment. And that's what she did. Put your mental health first. It doesn't matter if you're on the biggest stage. That's more important than any other medal you could win.

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a sportsbook worth a slam dunk and authorized gaming partner of the NBA. BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Tom, how many Olympic Games have you covered?

This is my 13th. 13th? 13th. Started with the Winter Games in Albertville, France in 1992. Wow. Okay. And you've been going to them all these years? I certainly have.

How different did these games feel the second you landed in Tokyo? This was unlike anything I'd ever been to. And it was confirmed by people who dwarf my statistic. I talked to a guy from the Boston Globe, John Powers. This was his 22nd. And he said, oh yeah, no, never anything like this. Wow. Mostly, as a journalist, it was incredibly frustrating because we were really limited in our access to athletes. Athletes were cocooned and kept in what the Olympic organizers like to call a bubble. The protocols called for them to leave Japan no longer than two days after their last event. So there wasn't a lot of hanging around and partying and hanging out with other athletes, getting to tour around Tokyo and so on. So very strict limitations. And that made our jobs

as journalists that much tougher. And that was something we had to get used to very quickly. We had to huddle up, my NPR colleagues and I, figure out, okay, how are we going to get around this? And we found ways, but I think in a lot of ways, we felt like it ultimately wasn't all the great reporting that we usually do. I mean, NPR has this tagline, NPR takes you there. We often weren't able to get close enough to competitions or to athletes to truly take people to the events like we wanted to. What kind of toll did being cocooned take on the athletes? What was it like for them to not be able to get out into the world and to see other people for weeks. You know, I think the biggest thing that they had to deal with was in many of the venues,

there were no fans, as you probably saw. To me, it was most telling at things like swimming or track and field, these enormous stadiums that are basically empty, or the football matches, soccer matches, you know. But interestingly, I think the people who suffered most, you know, I talked to a lot of my colleagues and we talked about, oh, it's so sad. But you know what? The athletes, and I think this is a real big point we want to make about these Olympics, the athletes still performed. And it showed that, yes, they like people cheering for them and firing them up and clapping for them and screaming for them. But when it comes down to it, they have worked four years, and in this case, five years or even longer to get to this one

moment. And in fact, the statistic says that over 70% of them will only participate in one Olympic game. So it is one moment and they they wanted to come. And they're not going to be mopey about no fans. They are still going to try their best. And they did. And a lot of them performed their best. And you still saw world records. And you saw amazing performances. And so the athletes brought it. And the other part of that that was really endearing and which really left its mark on these Olympics, and the International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach, talked about this several times, is that being deprived this extra year because the Games were postponed a year for the pandemic,

many of these athletes trained in isolation. Many of them missed competitions leading up to the Games because those competitions were canceled. So they really weren't able to connect with fellow athletes. And so there was this longing to be together. And I think they were really grateful to be here. And so that made it extra special on top of the great athlete performances. Do you think lessons were learned for the, you know, winter games in Beijing, which I believe are just six months away or so, or Paris in 2024, when who knows, we might still be dealing with this pandemic? Was this a useful experiment for the IOC in the

Olympics? It was suggested to me that Beijing would be good to look at the lesson of Tokyo as far as the pandemic. And I think the lesson is when the games were canceled in March of 2020, the Olympic organizers and the Japanese government, they were saying, okay, people are going to come here in a year. We have to do everything within our power to get this under control with the world coming here, which means testing, which means when the vaccines became available, get people vaccinated. Before the games, the percentage was like 5% of the population had been vaccinated. Now we're above 30%. But the fact is that the Japanese government, for whatever reasons, and a lot of people will tell you there's a lot of corruption, it's a pretty scandal-heavy government, they just didn't do enough to get things together to try and get this under control. Had they gotten it

under control, you would have had, most likely, you would have had the spectators, the foreign spectators, the domestic spectators. That would have helped with the money, the financial part. And I think with an authoritarian government like China versus what they have in Japan, I think it might be easier to crack down and make sure that you have things in order. And in that case, it may be a different Olympics, even though the pandemic may very well still be with many parts of the world. I know, you know, there's a real joy in hosting the Olympic Games and showing off your city and, you know, stimulating the economy, businesses, everything else. But there is this seemingly growing movement or idea that the Olympics should just be held

in one city. Maybe the summer games should be in Athens every year and the winter games should be in, who knows, Antarctica or something like that, where we can rely on there being ice. For a while. Has there been like a tangible shift towards that line of thought? Oh, you know, Sean, there's talk about it. There's always talk about it. And while Olympia, doing it in Greece would be so dramatic and meaningful, because that's where the modern games originated back in 1896. But, you know, really, more practically, you should probably hold it in LA every year. A city like LA, which is ready-made, and that's the appealing thing of having a games there, because, you know, they've got venues ready. In 2028, I think they're going to use the dorms at UCLA for

the Olympic Village to house athletes. I lived in those dorms. All right, there you go. So, yeah, now think of the Slovenian shot putter who's going to be sleeping in your bed that you slept. But the IOC wants to show that it is truly a global thing and wants to share the wealth. Or in this sense, share the cost. So I think while it's an idea that seems at times to be gaining traction, I think within the IOC, I think they're fine to just keep on bidding. Right now, while we were here in Tokyo, Brisbane in Australia won the 32 Summer Olympics. So at least through 32,

we're set up to keep having it around the world. What would actually be best for the athletes, for the individuals who, you know, year in and out will remind us why this is actually worthwhile, because they create these incredible moments and tell these incredible stories. What would be best for them? Sean, honestly, I think it matters not to the athletes. You know, you could have Mars hosted and athletes will do what they can to get there. Based on this climate report that dropped today, we might actually need to start holding the games on Mars. Absolutely. You might absolutely have to do that. But I think athletes will go anywhere. What they have showed us in Tokyo, they will perform in

empty arenas and still manufacture moments and world records. I think the hand-wringing is by we in the media, but the athletes will do whatever it takes. Tom Goldman is a sports correspondent for NPR. You can hear his work on the radio and on a daily news podcast we love called Up First. I'm Sean Ramos-Firm. This one's Today Explained. you