Let the games be gone!

Some say the Olympics are built on excess, tangled in geopolitics, and rife with corruption and cheating. With each cycle, uncomfortable questions are raised about sustainability, environmental damage and human rights. But can they change, asks John Branch

Only 22 per cent of people in Japan thought the games should go ahead (AFP/Getty)

In the middle of the night nearly two years ago, construction crews gathered near Senso-ji, Tokyo’s oldest Buddhist temple and a popular tourist site. The streets were empty, the air was sultry and the workers hoped it would not rain. Machines rumbled to life. It was a little thing, barely noticed. But it was a sign of the sometimes futile and farcical lengths taken to put on the biggest show in sports.

More than 1,000 Japanese workers died of heat-related causes in July and August of 2018 and 2019, and several Olympic test events in Tokyo had made athletes ill and had scuttled schedules. Drastic measures for the upcoming Olympics were required.

Among them was this project, resurfacing the 26.2-mile marathon course with a shiny, reflective coating meant to bounce the heat away. It was a small expense for an event that would cost billions, and officials were not entirely sure it would do much good. But inch by inch, with large machines making whooshing noises over several hot August nights, the marathon course was unveiled in a silvery stripe.