Along with the start of the cherry blossom front, which brings the Japanese islands to bloom from the southwest to the northeast, the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Torch Relay began on 25 March with a year’s delay.
There is no going back now! The 121-day countdown, for which extensive hygiene measures have been taken in the host country, undoubtedly poses an enormous challenge until proof can finally be provided – on 23 July, in the National Stadium in Tokyo – that the Olympic Games are able to be celebrated even under the conditions of a global pandemic.
As far as Olympic history is concerned, however, given the current problems, we should not forget an important anniversary. The reference here is to the Olympic premiere in Athens 125 years ago, which people outside Greece often only found out about after weeks – mostly through the reports of a few participants.
How much courage, optimism, and thirst for adventure must have been needed back then to travel at one’s own expense to a country on the periphery of Europe and compete in an event, which IOC founder Pierre de Coubertin had called the Olympic Games in order to impart them with a “halo of grandeur and glory” and thus place them under the protection of classical antiquity? One of these Olympians, the road cyclist Anton Gödrich, is remembered in this issue.
While half of the participants in Tokyo this summer will be women, in 1896, only men were admitted. Entirely in the spirit of his caste, Coubertin considered women’s sport to be impractical, uninteresting, and even indecent. His ideal remained the ceremonious performance of male athletics “with the applause of women as a reward”. It was a 17-year-old English woman named Helen Preece who refused to accept this barrier. She registered in 1912 for the Modern Pentathlon, which was first held in Stockholm. One suspects that her application was rejected at this juncture, if not before, but it nevertheless earned her a place of fame in the history of women’s sports. Her biography is told for the first time in this issue, using previously unpublished memoirs and family documents.
Another female pioneer who made Olympic history is Ágnes Keleti. A Hungarian Jew, she survived the Holocaust by assuming a false identity, and afterwards displayed great ambition and patience in order to still fulfil her Olympic dream as a mature woman of 35 years.
The second part of Dick Pound’s Olympic TV history begins with the 1964 Tokyo Games, which marked a milestone. For the first time, there were transcontinental broadcasts. Four years later, the Games in Mexico were aired in colour, and, in 1972, there was “wall-to-wall TV”.
The “Television Games” have been a reality ever since, and this time too, despite the coronavirus, it will be possible for billions of people to experience the competitions on screen.
A lot will be different this time. But Tokyo 2020 could be a glimmer of light that strengthens hope for the light at the end of the tunnel.
– Volker Kluge, Editor
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