Tokyo Olympics begin on Friday.

 Tokyo Olympics begin on Friday.

For those who still believe that the Olympic Games will always be burdened with the ever present threats of doping scandals, despicable drug taking, endless cheating and a complete flouting of the Olympic spirit then you may have the opportunity to pass judgment on this new edition of the Olympic Games which begins on Friday in Tokyo. 

Now owing to the medical intervention that was Covid 19 which completely put paid to any hopes of the Games ever starting last year, Tokyo 2020 had to sit and wait for permission to start and a year later Baron Pierre De Coubertin's famous statement about the taking part in sport that counts will be re-enacted once again. It's been a tough and emotionally excruciating year for British athletes and the rest of the globe but finally the Olympic torch will be lit again and the spirit of De Coubertin's wise words will be hovering around Tokyo. 

The last time Tokyo held the Olympic Games a Welshman by the name of Lyn Davies almost jumped out of a sand pit in his now celebrated long jump. It doesn't seem like 57 years ago but Davies epitomised all of the Olympian ideals that have straddled the decades since then. Davies was modest, honest and sincere, a brilliant technician, a natural athlete, fit, powerful and strapping, an Olympian whose excellence and expertise in his chosen sport could never be questioned. Davies won gold and went back to Wales as the hometown boy made good, a lifetime hero and one of the finest of all Olympians.

On Friday though it'll be business as usual in Tokyo. An athlete in a track suit will run into the main stadium with a torch in one hand and sporting history right beside them at all times. You can still remember the heartbreaking sight of Muhammad Ali, the world's greatest heavyweight boxer of all time, jogging into a stadium in Atlanta for the 1996 Olympic Games. Body shaking and hands trembling, Ali approached the steps leading up to the Olympic cauldron before reaching the top and slowly lighting the Olympic flame, almost a symbolic moment in Olympic history. It was one of the most poignant sights ever seen in sport. 

But then your mind wandered back to the sheer pomp and ceremony of the Olympic Games, the colour and pageantry of it all, the feeling of solidarity and togetherness that only an Olympics can generate. On Friday whole processions of teams from around the world will congregate on an athletics track. Led by their upstanding flag bearer the athletes will march honourably around the stadium, national jackets, shirts, ties and, quite possibly, socks all washed and dry cleaned, faces glistening with pride.

They will come from Australia, Belize, the Cayman Islands, the Solomon Islands, Burundi, Fiji, Ghana, South Africa, Hong Kong, the Maldives and the Seychelles. They will know that in most cases none of their representatives have got any kind of chance of even seeing an Olympic medal let alone winning one. But they will all be there because they love sport, the participation in sport, being there, sampling the Olympics and having the best time of their lives since that's what it's all about. 

You remember the ghastly and unforgivable abominations committed by the terrorists who killed 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics of 1972. It was the darkest moment in Olympic history. You remember the graceful and gracious Olga Korbut at the same Olympics on the gymnastics mat, the darling of a million observers who enchanted everybody. They were the ones who witnessed her supple flexibility, the acrobatic dexterity, those astonishing somersaults, back flips and all manner of improvisation. 

Four years later in Montreal, a Romanian girl called Nadia Komaneci, performed the same miracles of athletic prowess, a tiny, slender frame capable of the fabulous and the miraculous. Komaneci swung on parallel bars with breathtaking conviction, then tumbled, somersaulted, twisted hands on the pommel horse with bewildering speed and then bowed to her audience as if it had just come as second nature. 

Back in the Munich Olympics of 1972 an American swimmer called Mark Spitz had swum like a fish to win a record breaking seven gold medals. With that distinctive moustache bristling, Spitz powered through the water with front crawl, breaststroke, back stroke and butterfly that barely seemed possible at the time. But Spitz was the finest of all exponents in the pool and Olympic historians will always be grateful to him if only because he was the personification of everything that was clean and legal about the Olympics. 

Meanwhile in both 1980 and 1984 Russia and the United States took it in turns to boycott their respective Games and this may well have been the only time when the Olympics had to be thoroughly ashamed of itself. Nobody had seen such ugly and spiteful scenes at any of the Games and for a while the political machinery that had so threatened to bring the Games to a halt, kept lurking in the background, a sneering and sinister presence. 

In the 1980 Moscow Games two British gentlemen went head to head in one of the most dramatic collisions on an athletics track ever seen. Steve Ovett was a long legged, long striding middle distance runner who had run at both 800 and 1500 metres. Ovett was tall, imposing, impressive and a giant in his field. Then there was Seb Coe, middle class and respectable, well organised and, in later years as an International Olympic Committee member, articulate, forthright and straight to the point. 

The history books will tell us quite categorically that both Coe and Ovett stole a gold medal from each other in both 800 and 1500 metres. In the disciplines they should have won gold both won gold the wrong way around. But those thrilling sprints to the finishing line will forever be etched indelibly in the mind's eye because they were pretty special. 

Then there was Mary Peters, the Irish shot putter who heaved her shot putt right into a Bavarian beer keller in the Munich Olympics, the smile as wide as the River Liffey, blonde hair flowing and charm in her heart. There was Daley Thompson, that most extraordinary decathlete who so dominated track and field in both the Moscow Olympics of 1980 and Los Angeles Olympics of 1984 that many thought he was the most versatile sportsman of all time. 

And so we move finally to Sir Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsett, two of the most stupendously talented rowers ever to get into a boat. Both won a handsome collection of Olympic gold medals between them and both were models of utter dedication and sacrifice. When Redgrave declared that if anybody saw him in a boat they could shoot him. it almost seemed as if no rower could ever emulate their achievements ever again. 

On Friday then the Tokyo Olympics will be cranked into life yet again. We can only hope that nobody will upset the apple cart, nobody will try to poison the Games with large cocktails of marijuna and ephedrine. There will hopefully be no underhand or clandestine activity, none of those athletes who just want to cheat or ruin the Games because their egos tell them to do so. The crowds of course will, sadly be missing but if Baron Pierre De Coubertin can still be fondly remembered, this Olympic Games will be in capable hands.