The Games of the XXXII Olympiad are well underway in Tokyo, having escaped repeated calls for cancellation but not, alas, a full year’s postponement that resulted in heavy financial losses for the Japanese organizers. The manifold ills plaguing this current iteration of the five-ring circus may remind us that the modern Olympic movement has long been the victim of costly crises beyond the control of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and national organizing committees. There have been outright cancellations during the two world wars, large-scale international boycotts, and even terrorist attacks. These agonizing developments have damaged the Olympic project’s (aspirational) image as a promoter of international harmony and goodwill, as well as its viability as a commercial enterprise, which, despite pious claims to the contrary, it most certainly is.
While the circumstances behind and motivations for the cancellations, boycotts, and violent attacks have varied over the years, the Olympic movement has been rendered more vulnerable to such intrusions by one key dimension in its DNA: mobility. Unlike the ancient Olympics, which transpired every four years in one location, the modern Games, as we all know, move from city to city, nation to nation, even continent to continent. Among other problematic consequences of this setup, venue variation has encouraged municipal and national organizers over the years to engage in escalating—and economically negligent—one-upmanship in matters of representational theater and physical infrastructure.
