Tokyo 2021 is golden chance to close Big Sport circus and give the Olympics back - MW

Cican. Altius. Remove by a bat virus. In the end, the decision to postpone the Olympic Games did not surprise anyone. Tokyo 2020 struggled vigorously, just like the last Japanese soldier was still fighting in the Second World War from within a small island policeman in the Pacific in 1974. But never There is now any doubt as to which direction this is headed.

The global plague stumbles global sport all the time and the level of delay and fraud is only a function of the political and financial capital involved, need to erect enough litigation shields and anti-dumping mechanisms error.

No one wants to be a general who declares defeat.

The suggestion is that Tokyo 2020 can now be rescheduled for the spring of 2021. In the meantime, sympathy will be deeply felt for the athletes, as it will give others hope for The future, the daily routine and basic means were torn apart by the Covid-19 pandemic

However, though. This is also the time for unborn truths. Whenever it ends happening Tokyo 2020 will provide the usual mix of human inspiration and mild economic stimulus. But it will also - and we can say this right now - crammed with bullshit, emerging on the ultra-flashy and self-catering Big Sport model, these four-year events around the globe as mobile cities are cleaning up fields, raiding public stores, backing local Maharajahs with their magic dust.

The Olympic rearrangement could cost an additional 2 billion pounds, which in itself suggests the whole thing was too big. God only knows how to look or feel in times of global anxiety and deep economic recession. Is this an opportunity to do different things?

It is fascinating to imagine the old certainties that could be swept away in times of macro catastrophe, that there is also a kind of freedom here. In London Blitz, George Orwell wrote about the railings going down from the city's private squares when the military was responsible for all of the backup iron. Suddenly every squit and herbert and passers-by can play in previously closed spaces. Orwell imagined squares still like this, how an egalitarianism could change lives for everyone, an obsession with public land also touched his inexorable hatred. ta towards the golf course.

The iron railing goes up. Today, the city is opaque and more unacceptable than ever. But it is not like this. In Big Sport, as in many areas of life, there is an opportunity here to make mass adjustments, for a gradual change in what we see as acceptable. Peel it back. Release the dark corners. Get rid of all the things you never need. Do we have the courage and the will to make it that way?

Here, a more fun reform. The question for Tokyo 2020 is simple enough. Would it like to end up like something along the line of Nazi World Cup lost Fifa in 1942, a rather monumental comment, misappreciated, overthrown by the collapsing world? it?

Or may it be based on the spirit and practice of the 1948 Austere Olympics, perhaps the most advanced of all the modern Olympics, held at a time when the world was still in turmoil? ?

There are no new locations built for these games. The Olympic torch falls into the River Thames in a rowboat. Athletes came to Fenchurch Street Station to be greeted by village-level celebrities and then placed eight in a room on wartime tubular steel beds.

Everyone looked skinny and pale and happy desperately to go out and run. Harrison Dillard of the United States won the 100m man on the sodden racetrack, causing him to be covered in mud. Fanny Blankers-Koen won a thrilling women's double but almost missed the relay final because she turned out to buy raincoats. The race takes place by torchlight.

According to all accounts, it's fun and catholic and an experience that comes from a place completely different from the mechanical world of modern Big Sport, the global circus that constantly tells you this, can athletic, belongs to someone else, that it is simply a circus being consumed at a price.

Olympic Games is not the worst crime. It still provides moments of personal inspiration. But it also tends to amplify the malice of those who seek to present it. Beijing is an incredible program of state power but it costs £ 40 billion and most of its locations are decaying. Greece 2004 helped kill the local economy. London 2012 was a victory of style, but left behind the diminishing participation and a more passive population than ever before. Rio 2016 is an excellent case study of elite level corruption.

Why propagate this? Why allow it to be model? Nobody really likes the way Big Sport is arranged now, apart from the small minority to benefit from it.

There is still a chance to reset, to eliminate the crooks and the gallows. To rebel, for example, against Fifa's £ 1.5 billion reserve and demand a refund; or to escape the dangerous influence of gambling sponsors (if you need to gamble to care about sports, you are not interested in sports).

And besides this to rewrite the terms of every competition to support inclusion and access, constantly asking how all members of society can play and watch and enjoy this sport easily. .

People will say this is impossible, that nothing can be changed. But does it really feel that way right now? Sport in the intended form, sport with unhealthy additives removed, sports in the spirit of London's railings ED48 and Orwell. This is one thing we can still have.

MW