The Olympics Hit Different This Year, Don’t They?
At a time when Australia feels smaller than ever, the Tokyo Games are a reminder that there’s a whole wide world out there.
In any other circumstance, at any other time, I might be a little concerned that I’ve been watching eight hours of TV a day.
Open in the tab beside my email, blinking in the background while I fold washing, sitting opposite me over dinner, the Tokyo Olympics have been my companion through what could have otherwise been a depressing week.
Having spent most of 2020 quarantined inside my New York apartment, I approached Sydney’s latest lockdown with empathy for others, but apathy for myself.
But as the weeks wind on, and the Australia I fought so hard to return to feels a little smaller and less functional every day, I’ve allowed myself to turn an emotional corner. It seems there are only so many times you can quote the opening lines of Bo Burnham‘s “Shit”, saying How we feeling out there tonight? Yeah, I am not feeling good! out loud, to nobody, before you begin to genuinely wonder if perhaps you’re not coping as well as you thought you were.
I’ve always loved the Olympics. In 2000, school holidays were brought forward to coincide with the Sydney Games, and I watched them the same way I’m watching now — the way I think all Olympics should be watched — in my living room, wholly consumed. When I’m in my most dissociative state, I like to imagine the Tokyo Olympics were held off just for me, in this lockdown, as a little treat.
For those of us finding joy in the Games, gold medals fill deep cracks in our psyche, left wide open by a global pandemic and a dizzyingly dysfunctional government — a glinting practice of kintsugi that helps us feel whole again.
Global Citizens Trapped In A Political State Of Origin
To be in Australia right now is to be inside a sticky-floored nightclub with a strict one-in-one out rule — a club that, despite becoming less fun with every passing hour, isn’t worth leaving unless you have no plans of ever coming back.
In the past 10 years, we’ve seen leadership spills, a parliamentary sex ban, and literally watched our prime minister eat a raw onion on live television, but the political discourse has never been this bitter.
During the first wave of the pandemic, it was us against the world. Now, it seems it’s just us against ourselves.
At a time when it feels like Australia is slipping behind the rest of the world, it’s nice to be ahead.
In the past two months, major news outlets have published op-eds that pit our major cities against each other. And on Twitter, things have felt even more twisted, as my timeline flits between words of encouragement from earnest Melburnians and armchair expert opinions on everything Sydneysiders are personally doing wrong, from getting an ice cream on a walk to daring to complain about what lost months could mean for single people. Sifting through the endless political and online discourse, it feels like a lot of Australians have forgotten about the global in global pandemic.
In Tokyo, things are different.
At the Games, Sydney and Melbourne are simply two major cities in medal-winning Australia. At the Games, people are going places, doing things. On my TV screen, the rest of the world feels within reach.
Swimming filled most of the first week of the Tokyo Olympics, and our Australian team are now the most successful in history. At a time when it feels like Australia is slipping behind the rest of the world, it’s nice to be ahead.
Every win, hug, and handshake is, in all seriousness, the highlight of my day. While my personal life is starved of meaningful interactions, the Olympics fill the gaps with big feelings, with rivalries and emotional backstories, with friendships, with things to text my friends about.
To log on and see a timeline celebrating athletes — female athletes, queer athletes, Indigenous athletes — has been a delightful reprieve from reality.
After all, it’s my Olympics and I will watch a five-minute YouTube video detailing every flirty Instagram exchange between Sam Kerr and an American women’s football player if I want to. Because what is life in lockdown without reminders that online exchanges can turn into joyful real-life encounters?
The Australia We Wish We Were
Shined, buffed, and ready for TV; the Olympics are a gleaming projection of the Australia we want to be.
To log on and see a timeline celebrating athletes — female athletes, queer athletes, Indigenous athletes — has been a delightful reprieve from reality. In Tokyo, we’re a nation that values diversity and adversity in equal measure (if you can squint and look beyond Seven’s almost completely white hosting panel, that is).
Of course, the Olympics aren’t without their own issues. At their core, the Games are rotten with corporate greed, racism, and misogyny. Tokyo being forced to hold them at all raises a number of ethical questions. But at a time when it’s worryingly easy to look around and see nothing that’s worth celebrating, it’s within my best self-interest to make allowances that create space for joy.
There’s an indescribable comfort in knowing that when I look back on this lockdown I will think of the Matildas; Patty carrying our flag; Emma, Arnie, and Kaylee; and the joy of yelling at a TV screen. The Tokyo Olympics might not be happening for those of us in lockdown but, for now, they’re the best thing we’ve got.
Gyan Yankovich is the managing editor at Junkee. She’s on Twitter and Instagram.
Photo Credit: Getty Images/Tim Clayton/Atsushi Tomura