The first Summer Games in 1896 did not have women athletes. It was because of a questionable set of beliefs held by the Olympics’ chief architect, Pierre de Coubertin. According to a document published by the United Nations in 2007, he had said: “No matter how toughened a sportswoman may be, her organism is not cut out to sustain certain shocks." Even though women were allowed to compete from 1900, there was prejudice.
That historical wrong, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) says, will be corrected in 2024. The body is aiming for true gender parity for the first time at the Paris Games (it's about 51:49 in Tokyo).
To recognise Coubertin’s role in the Olympic movement, his statue is installed at Japan Sport Olympic Square, a stone’s throw away from the national stadium that will host the Opening and Closing Ceremony. When the athletics events begin on July 30, one can reasonably assume that the likes of Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Sifan Hassan and Allyson Felix will see that statue on their way in and on their way out. At the Olympics, the three are not just expected to medal but expected to medal in a way that could break several records.
What would Coubertin think?
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For all the emphasis on participation, the Games have always been defined by the superhuman feats of the athletes. These feats, some achieved against extreme adversity, have gone on to define the legacy of the Games(Michael Phelps in Beijing, Paavo Nurmi in Paris, Jesse Owens in Berlin etc. etc). In that context, picking a legacy for the Tokyo Games will be easy. Covid-19. The Games could easily be called the 'The Pandelympics'.
Several officials, including Tokyo governor, Yuriko Koike, had attested that the Games going ahead would mean people coming together to celebrate defeating the virus. If anything, the virus continues to defeat humans. The Games will be played to a soundtrack of zero cheers, the eerie silence a reminder that the world is still battling one of its gravest crises of recent times.
Rick Burton, who was the chief marketing officer for the US Olympic Committee in Beijing in 2008, wonders if Covid won't hold centre-stage. "Wonder if centre-stage will not be held by the pandemic and Covid-19," he told The New Indian Express. Academic Simon Chadwick echoes the same feeling. "I don’t think the athletes will necessarily be centre-stage anywhere, because I think the virus & the ramifications of the effects of the virus will be the big star of the games," Chadwick, who has worked in sport for the last 25 years, tells this daily.
Keeping Covid-19 to one side, the one theme that is likely to emerge from Tokyo is the preeminence of women athletes. While this doesn't necessarily mean they will break records on a never-before-seen scale — they very well might — this goes over and beyond that. This means women will likely lord over men in advertising campaigns (Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka), scale new medal hauls (Felix), stand up for injustice (too many to mention) create classic rivalries (Hassan v. Letesenbet Gidey, Kate Ledecky vs Ariarne Titmus), challenge sports policies (Laurel Hubbard), pen impossible stories (Fraser-Pryce) and bring in Generation Z (Sky Brown).
Chadwick, director of the Centre for Eurasian Sport, agrees. "This Olympics could be a major tipping point," he says. "Whereby women are more prominent, they are commercially valuable as endorses and as brand ambassadors. Their activism, their values and their voices mark them as being different. Their voice is really important as people are beginning to listen. There are changes taking place in the world. So it could well be that we see the likes of Biles and Ledecky being prominent in people's minds."
One of the main undercurrents that will be visible throughout the Games is the way athletes protest racial injustice or any injustice. After being mainstreamed by Colin Kaepernick in the US, this will be the first Summer Games where athlete activism could be prominent. That's another reason why women could be more front and centre. Why is that so? " I think it's just the first time what they have to say is being heard and embraced," Chadwick opines. "Osaka is also interesting, she seeks to communicate a set of values that mark her out as being an activist. We are going to see potentially those athletes who have a very strong activist standing rising to the fore."
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If Phelps and Usain Bolt were the biggest names of the last couple of editions, it's hard to look beyond Biles this time. She's so sure to win gold the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) may not even give her correct credit for some of her moves because they are so complex, so hard to master, her competitors wouldn't even dare dream.
On top of that, she will likely perform the 'Yurchenko Double Pike', a manoeuvre so tricky to execute only one woman has performed it before in a competitive event: Biles herself.
If she does pull it off, expect the fandom for her to reach fever pitch. "Because these Games have been so fraught with challenges, I imagine that great performances in both genders will be celebrated but particularly those of the women who will amaze us," Burton, a professor at Syracuse University these days, says. "As an FYI, the highest TV ratings during the Olympics have almost always featured the performances of women (gymnastics during the Summer Games and figure skating during the Winter Games)."
Biles doing this in front of a world audience expected to go into the millions... do the math.
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Sky Brown, a skateboarder, is 13. Sometime in the next few weeks, she is expected to walk away from Tokyo as one of the youngest medallists in the history of the Games. But that isn't why her story is special. Athletes like Brown will come to define the world of sport. Chadwick explains. "I think she embodies the new age. She is a skateboarder, a relative newcomer. The Games had to change to meet the needs and engage new audiences." Skateboarding as a sport lends itself to go viral because of the daring mid-air moves. Brown's various contortions and dalliances with gravity will cater to Generation Z. It's why her sport is there in the Olympics in the first place.
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The pages of Olympic history are littered with high profile women athletes and rivalries -- both Burton and Chadwick cite the example of Olga Korbut v. Nadia Comaneci in 1972 and 1976 -- so what has changed in 2021?
Chadwick explains. "What we are beginning to see is that the female sport is gaining in parity with the male sport. This is not just due to socio-cultural pressure, it's also due to economic pressure because what we are seeing for the first time is an acknowledgement of the economic value of women's sports.
"We still live in a white male-oriented world, so I'm not about to suggest that the world is changing but we are in the thralls of a revolution. It's shaping the way media reports, it's shaping the way social media users post and it's shaping the way fans engage with sports. So for the first time, we are heading into the Olympics with arguably more standout female athletes than male ones."
What would De Coubertin think?