Opinion: Olympics likely to be the largest peacetime gathering with no gathering

The most unusual Summer Olympic Games in history are now just two and a half months away. As Tokyo prepares to host the first-ever postponed Olympics, an unsettling realization has fallen upon the Games’ stakeholders: they are in for a restrained, rule-laden and austere experience very much in keeping with the world’s earliest and strictest pandemic precautions prior to the emergence of the vaccines.

This will be nothing like any previous Summer Games, according to 11 officials, coaches and other experts interviewed by USA TODAY Sports. To win a gold medal, or even to just get to the starting line, athletes will have to navigate a maze of detailed rules and regulations that threaten to drain the life out of much of their Olympic experience.

As the rules stand now, the athletes will live a spartan existence. They will go from their Olympic village room to a practice or a competition, then return back to their room. The same goes for coaches, officials and journalists, by and large. They will all move around in buses, a traveling bubble if you will, with COVID-19 tests and temperature checks a major part of daily life.

Perhaps the young athletes will be able to leave their rooms to mix with their countrymen and women in the hallways of their Olympic village building, or in a common area, before going back to their rooms to sleep and get ready for another day of competition. 

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