By Victor Mather
TOKYO — A most unusual Olympics ended with a fitting closing ceremony: the usual speeches, performances, parades and tributes played in front of tens of thousands of empty seats.
For the past two-plus weeks, the athletes performed, often at the top of their games, and records and hearts were broken. And on television around the world, it may not have looked so unusual.
But on the ground there was an undeniable feeling of absence. An absence of cheering fans in the seats, an absence of parents embracing their medal-winning children, an absence of the buzz that takes over Olympic cities, which makes taxi drivers, hotel clerks and other residents want to eagerly talk handball or table tennis with each other or a visitor from another country.
Save the masks on the participants, the closing ceremony mostly avoided the coronavirus pandemic. I.O.C. President Thomas Bach did laud the athletes for providing “hope” during dark times.
But for the most part, the familiar elements played out as if nothing was different. Flags were raised and lowered, anthems were sung, speeches were made and the flame was doused with everyone playing their parts as if nothing were wrong, with the Olympic movement or the world.
The entertainment included the familiar — dancers and jugglers. It included the representative — drumming on a huge taiko. And it had the unexpected — a ska band. For pandemic-related reasons many segments that might normally have involved scores of costumed cavorters in the stadium were shown on video.
When the Olympic cauldron was extinguished, the organizers quickly moved to a highlight reel for the Paralympics, which begin on Aug. 24, and some fireworks.
As usual, there was a segment devoted to the next Olympics host. But this year, the video peek at Paris 2024 offered not only a sense of excitement about the next Games on the horizon. It also speculated that maybe, just maybe, there will soon be a Games that will be about running and jumping rather than testing and quarantining.
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