The contract between us and them was called the Playbook, a stern document with an active metabolism. Composed by the Tokyo 2020 Olympic committee, it was 35 pages long when it appeared in February, overflowing with insistent terms and conditions. By the time the final edition landed a couple of months later, it had nearly doubled in size.
It wasn’t just the media: every branch of the so-called Olympic “family” was being held accountable to a playbook. What it amounted to was a high-wire act in biosecurity. Tokyo 2020 was going to create a bubble in which tens of thousands of people from around the world could safely co-exist for a month, without spreading Covid-19 among themselves or to the population at large. It depended on rules, guidelines, penalties, obedience, tests, more tests, apps, quarantine, curfews and trust.
At the centre of it was a giant database in which everybody’s health profile would be inputted before they arrived, and updated during their stay. It was described as an “infection control” system, which sounded like something from HG Wells.
This virus had circulated the world for more than 18 months, defying “control” in every territory. Why should it be compliant now, at the single biggest congregation of people since the pandemic began? Didn’t they say the virus loved a crowd?
In the final weeks before the Games, emails kept landing from Tokyo, sometimes in flurries, always with an instruction and a deadline. Every travelling party was required to have a Covid liaison officer [CLO], who would be responsible for logging the health details of their flock. If you were travelling alone, the CLO was you. Your CLO application entered a process. It had to be approved.
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That pattern continued. You were required to lodge a 14-day activity plan, in which every event you might attend in the first fortnight was laid out. The Tokyo 2020 committee needed to approve this plan, as did the Japanese government. Without this green light, you were grounded.
Soon the system in Tokyo was overwhelmed. Uploading activity plans proved impossible, so the authorities agreed to accept emails. Some plans went missing, others were only approved at the last minute. Mine came through at 2pm on a Sunday, less than 22 hours before I boarded the plane. Other reporters received their approval while they waited in the airport, wondering if they would be turned back.
The system they had put in place was complex and fiddly. In the last couple of weeks, fuses kept blowing. Yet still the requests kept coming, such as logging our temperature each day for 14 days before departure. We were required to have a negative PCR test 96 hours before our flight, and again a day later. The tests could be conducted at only half a dozen Irish clinics approved by the Olympic committee, and the results could be recorded only on a sheet provided by the Japanese health ministry. The Japanese airlines would accept nothing less.
What started as a paper trail had turned into a paper chain, to which we were tethered. Who could blame them? This was a desperate exercise in self-defence. The notion of thousands of people landing in one place, from all over the world, in the middle of a global pandemic, was ludicrous.
Finally we left, and we landed. Early travellers had sent reports of chaos at the airports, a maze of checks and screenings. One person from the Olympic Federation of Ireland took eight hours to navigate the process. That included a lateral flow test for Covid-19, for which you spat into a tube until your saliva crossed a certain threshold. Then you waited. Results were promised within 45 minutes. If your number appeared on a big screen, you were free to proceed to the next station. If not? Hold tight.
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We got through Haneda airport in less than three hours, and then the strangest thing: we were herded onto buses, cheek by jowl, with no social distancing, as though the high alert had been stood down. The buses brought us to a large car park where complimentary taxis were waiting to ferry us to our hotels. Then we were separated again: only one passenger per taxi.
The first three days were spent in a light-touch quarantine. We were obliged to give a saliva sample every morning, and allowed to leave our room for breakfast, the only meal served in the hotel. Uber Eats filled the cracks. We could leave the hotel for 15 minutes to gather provisions in nearby shops. Before leaving, we had to sign out at a Tokyo 2020 desk in the lobby, manned by two security guards, and sign back in. It soon became clear that more than one walk outside was permitted, but nobody knew the limit, and nobody asked. On day three a new question appeared on the surveillance sheet at the security desk: is your GPS turned on?
For the first 14 days, we weren’t permitted to use public transport, go for recreational walks, visit cafés, bars or restaurants, or go shopping downtown. Two Swedish reporters were caught in a department store, we heard, and had their Olympics credentials seized. They had been warned.
Then the Games began. This is the sixth Olympics I have covered for The Sunday Times. Is it different? Not by as much as you might think. Airport-style security was introduced at the entrance to every Olympic venue after 9/11; in Tokyo they have added a digitised temperature check, face recognition technology and a sanitiser station. If you’re carrying a bottle of water you will be asked to take a sip in front of the four army personnel at each X-ray machine, just in case it contains liquid bomb- making material. But they couldn’t be friendlier. The security guard wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying a long stick doesn’t feel menacing.
Even before Covid, there had always been an Olympics bubble. You may think I’m in Tokyo, but I’m actually in “the Olympics”, a place with accredited hotels, buses, bespoke venues, a 24-hour media centre, dining halls, helpdesks, souvenir shops. It is easy to feel disorientated: there is always somewhere else to be, and the buses can never take you fast enough. The stories don’t wait.
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The saliva tests continue, though. Every four days.