When Tom Daley spoke to the media after winning his second medal at Tokyo 2020, he marvelled at the fact he had been able to compete at all. “Every single Olympian should be extremely proud of the fact that they made it here,” he said. The Olympics are not usually an event where you hear the phrase “It’s the taking part that counts”. At any normal Games, Daley’s words might have seemed clichéd, corny, even insincere. In Tokyo, however, they were poignant and true.
The athletes competed to nothing but the sound of the summer cicadas and the air filled not with applause but with a powerful sense of relief. Tears, always a regular feature at finish lines, became sobs, raw, uncontainable emotion that told of more than just the joy of winning.
I have interviewed Team GB athletes throughout the pandemic, from the first lockdown, when they were reeling from the news that the pinnacle of their careers would be put on hold. I Zoomed them from their sofas and kitchens as they talked about training sessions in their garages and gardens. I felt I got to know many of them better than I ever had in years of interviews and competitions. Their lives had become, suddenly, just like everyone else’s, their fears of illness and pain of being separated from loved ones the same.
Their task in Tokyo, however, was unique. They were going to the most important competition of their lives at the hardest time in recent history and, back home, people were desperate for a good news story, for distraction during a summer in which everyone seemed to be simultaneously pinged. They had to be superhuman in their performances but relatable in their struggles. Tired tropes about triumphing over adversity and the nebulous concept of the “Olympic spirit” had taken on new symbolism.
Team GB delivered all of it, dazzling with 65 medals from the swimming pool to the BMX track and the baffling brilliance of the modern pentathlon, as many as were won at London 2012. It was, sport bosses said, nothing short of a miracle.
I felt invested in the athletes’ performances in a way I never had before. As a journalist, you feel bound to maintain a certain air of neutrality, displaying professionalism above national pride. With no crowds, however, and after watching these athletes go through so much, it was hard to swallow a yelp or a gasp as I watched their dreams dashed or, finally, come true. When Jade Jones’ taekwondo fight went down to the wire, I thought I was going to be sick on the person next to me in the press tribunes; when Laura Muir sped past her rivals to claim silver and collapsed, sobbing into the track, I felt the tears brimming in my own eyes.
I am often sceptical of imbuing sport with too lofty a meaning, assigning it the grand task of transcending everyday problems and uniting humanity across the globe. For once, though, for a fortnight in Tokyo, it felt like it actually did. Whether it was BMX rider Kye Whyte scooping Bethany Shriever into his arms or the big tears rolling down Tom Daley’s cheeks into the material of his facemask, Team GB offered us precious moments of joy and hope to share with them.
They also allowed us to see them as mortals. Gold medal-winner Adam Peaty joined other high-profile names, such as Simone Biles, in speaking openly about the need to take a break for his mental health, while his swimming teammate and breakout star of the Games Tom Dean spoke movingly about fighting back from two bouts of Covid-19, after which he’d struggled to walk up the stairs.
With the last athletes now home, the medal table will fade in the memory and the average member of the public will not be able to recall whether we came third or fourth or beat another nation’s number of golds. They will remember, though, how they felt, how their stomach lurched as they sat on their sofa or squinted at their laptop in the middle of the night, and they will remember that, for that hour or minute, they didn’t think about Covid or lockdowns or getting pinged. They thought only about the athletes, being both human and superhuman, mortal and immortal, giving their all and giving us so much.
Rebecca Myers is a journalist for The Sunday Times.
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