Late June will mark 400 days to go until the Paris Olympics, followed as usual by the Paralympics. The Olympic ‘movement’ – the global network of sports, sports professionals, athletes, federations and related staff who coalesce around the Switzerland-based International Olympic Committee – will be breathing a sigh of relief after the terrifying chaos leading up to Tokyo.
The 2020 Games, held in 2021, was in danger of being outright cancelled several times due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. If it had, the fallout for the sports world would have been catastrophic. Ultimately, hundreds of thousands of people’s jobs worldwide rely on the Olympics and the revenue it generates, mostly via television rights. In the end, the Japanese government managed to marshal an extraordinary plan, staffed
