Christopher Pyne: Before the opening ceremony, there were already 110 positive cases of Covid-19 in the Olympic Village

Letting the Tokyo Games go on was the wrong call and will have an enduring pandemic legacy, writes Christopher Pyne.

The Olympics and Paralympics are outstanding events, but now is not the right time for them to be held.

I don’t for a moment begrudge the Australian Olympic and Paralympic teams competing in Tokyo.

When it comes to misty-eyed pride in the achievements of my countrymen and women, I’m up there with the best of them.

Who can forget Norman May’s emotion-charged commentary of the 4x100m men’s swimming medal relay when Australia’s last swimmer, Neil Brooks, beat Russia’s local hero Sergey Koplyakov at the Moscow Olympics?

I can still hear May’s “gold, gold to Australia, gold” that rang out from every Australian’s kitchen radio when they woke to the news that day in 1980. I still get goose bumps remembering.

Years later, at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, US 4x100m men’s freestyle swimming champion Gary Hall Jr boasted that the undefeated US team was going to “smash them like guitars”, referring to their Australian rivals. Well, they didn’t. Australia won gold again. I doubt there was a dry eye in the stadium.

Australian swimmers Emma McKeon, Bronte Campbell, Meg Harris and Cate Campbell of Team Australia celebrate after winning the gold medal in the Women's 4 x 100m Freestyle Relay Final. Picture: Getty Images

In both cases, they were David and Goliath battles. We are just 27 million people, a lot less in 1980 and 2000.

To think little Australia could beat the behemoths of the US and Russia was the stuff of dreams.

Yet we did it.

I could retell countless such moments across many sports – Cathy Freeman winning the 400m at the Sydney Games or the women’s sevens rugby team winning the inaugural gold medal at Rio in 2016.

There is something that lifts our national spirit when Australians compete against the odds and win.

Doing well in sport is one of our defining national characteristics. Finishing high on the medal table has always warmed the cockles of our hearts.

But, and it’s a big but, am I the only person who thinks the Tokyo Olympics going ahead is bizarre?

I feel like the boy watching the parade of the naked Emperor and being the only subject naive or brave enough to call out, “the Emperor’s got no clothes on!”

Don’t mistake me, given they are being held, Australia has got to be at the Tokyo Olympics.

I hope we acquit ourselves well and, while it isn’t the most important part of competing, I hope we bring back a bag of gold, silver and bronze medals.

The Opening Ceremony of the Tokyo Olympic Games. Picture: Getty Images

But Tokyo is like a human petri dish! There are 205 teams involving 11,326 athletes competing in 339 events. The Paralympics will follow the summer Olympics, and they include another 4400 athletes competing in 540 events. That’s almost 16,000 athletes, not including their support teams, swirling around together in that miasma.

North Korea is the only country not competing in this year’s Games, so 192 other nations are represented. There are more teams than countries because some regions send teams but they are not officially recognised nations. For example, Taiwan competes as Chinese Taipei.

Once both the Olympics and Paralympics are concluded in September, all of those athletes and their retinues will return to their countries of origin.

If you believe that the Tokyo Olympics will not be a superspreader event then you are the kind of person who responds to the spam emails telling you that the heir of some kleptocracy has left you $10m!

Before the opening ceremony, there were already 110 positive cases of Covid-19 in the Olympic Village. That’s before one event!

There were 19 new cases just last Friday. There will be many more.

The enduring legacy of the Olympics will be delivering the global pandemic to hitherto uninfected populations when their teams return.

It seems most people don’t want to acknowledge this reality.

I get that the Olympics are a year late. I understand that people want to get on with their lives and stop being curtailed by Covid-19.

There are no spectators at the Games. Just empty, expensive stadiums.

I don’t understand why the Olympics could not have been delayed another year to 2022.

The fact is the world is in the grip of a global pandemic. It is much worse than the Spanish flu in the early part of the last century.

There is a long way to go before the world’s population is successfully vaccinated.

Right now, South Australia, Victoria and NSW are in lockdown. The seven-day average of new cases in Australia is 136. In Tokyo alone it is 1373. The seven-day average of new cases in Tokyo is 10-times worse than our entire country.

Just in the past week, according to John Hopkins University in the US, the number of new cases of Covid-19 has increased in the US, Britain, Indonesia, Spain, Iran, France, Mexico, Thailand, Malaysia, Turkey, Iraq and Kazakhstan – the list is much longer than that.

There have now been more than 193 million cases recorded globally, including 4.1 million deaths, let alone the countless unreported cases and deaths across the world.

In their rush to hold the Games, the International Olympic Committee has made the wrong call. The Games should have been delayed another year.

There is no gold medal for pretending the world has returned to normal when it hasn’t.