At the Tokyo Olympics I hid from the sun; now, in quarantine, I long for it | Kieran Pender

For the past three weeks, I cowered from the summer sun. The temperature during the Tokyo 2020 Olympics rarely dipped below 30C – the blazing heat and oppressive humidity was ever-present. Mercifully, most of the sports I covered were indoors (swimming, track cycling) or in the evening, once the sun had dipped (athletics, hockey). That meant my encounters were typically brief – waiting for a shuttle bus, navigating a maze of security checkpoints.

But last Friday, reporting on the beach volleyball final, there was nowhere to hide. It was hard enough being a journalist in the sun-drenched stands; I felt immense sympathy for the volleyballers, playing for a gold medal on the red-hot sand. With every point that was won, I longed to return to the air-conditioned bliss of the media centre. The land of the rising sun had certainly delivered on its name.

It is quite the irony then that, as I move from one bubble to the next, the sun has come to define my day. In hotel quarantine in central Sydney, I look out on to the harbour. Throughout the morning the sun stares down on me as it rises in the sky. It brings a sense of normality and some welcome vitamin D. But just before midday, the sun edges behind a building and its calming rays disappear until the following morning. In Tokyo I hid from the sun; now, in quarantine, I long for it.

About 2,000 Australian Olympians, staff and journalists (including me) have returned from the Tokyo 2020 Games. Athletes were required to leave within 48 hours of their competition concluding, meaning Australia’s early heroes – including our swimmers and rowers – are already reaching the halfway stage of their stint. For those like me who stayed until the closing ceremony, our isolation has just begun.

Some athletes have busily documented their days on Instagram – BMX gold medallist Logan Martin, in his second quarantine period in three months, has a penchant for puzzles, while swim star Cate Campbell joked: “Yeah, sex is good, but have you ever opened your door to find a surprise parcel?” One news site is doing nightly live interviews with confined athletes, dubbed #QuarantineQuestions. Other Olympic stars, after two weeks under the bright lights of the global media spotlight, are enjoying a reprieve from scrutiny.

The oddity of two weeks in hotel quarantine is a fitting end to an Olympics like no other; a gilded cage for Tokyo 2020 athletes and observers to reflect on a unique experience. These were a Games defined as much by Covid tests and social distancing as remarkable athletic achievements (although there were plenty of those, too – albeit in empty stadiums). The first-ever Covid Games but not necessarily the last, with the Beijing winter Olympics now six months away.

In my first column from Tokyo, I wrote that just turning up was the real test. After a year of uncertainty and manifold pandemic-related hurdles, making it to the start line was a real achievement for the world’s top athletes. Yet the challenges did not end on day one in Tokyo.

For athletes confined to their Olympic accommodation and competition facilities, Tokyo 2020 was like nothing they had previously experienced. Some spoke of their gratitude that they were finally allowed to compete, restrictions notwithstanding. Others admitted the mental turmoil had got the better of them.

“It took a toll on me that I did not expect,” Ollie Hoare, an Australian 1,500m runner, told me after his final last Saturday. “It was just a week of thinking about [the race] every day, every hour, every minute. You can’t really go anywhere; you’re in your room thinking about it.”

For my first 14 days in Tokyo, I was restricted to my own “Olympic bubble” – my hotel room, official transport, Games venues and one daily visit to a nearby convenience store. Those visits were a welcome supplement to my Uber Eats diet; the Konbini, as they are known in Japan, became the real hero among visitors who could not otherwise eat freely (a New York Times headline ran: Tokyo Convenience Store Chicken Gizzards Saved My Life). Paired with a vending machine beer as I wrote my last story each night, the Konbini’s culinary options were palatable – if not always nutritious.

But the layer of Covid complexity took an unexpected mental toll on all of us. Trying to report on a major international sporting competition is challenging in ordinary circumstances (not that I am expecting sympathy). But this was compounded by the daily Covid tests, the terse emails after I forgot to log my temperature one morning (“someone has not entered their Health Information…”), the need to plan five steps ahead (we could not just hail a cab and hop from one venue to another) and a constant fear of being sent into isolation for drawing the short straw in the Covid close contact lottery. Fortunately, my phone never pinged.

After the closing ceremony concluded Tokyo 2020 on Sunday night, Monday was a strange liminal day. I walked the streets of Tokyo free from my bubble, but knowing that freedom had a strict shelf life – I flew back to Australia, into my next bubble, that night. Perhaps unsurprisingly, in a city cut off from their own Olympics due to Covid counter-measures, there was little sign around Tokyo that the city had just taken centre stage for global television viewers. The Olympic bubble that I had been inhabiting, literally and figuratively, felt like a different world.

These Games have been a Rorschach test for all of us. Some saw an unaccountable International Olympic Committee imposing its will on a sovereign state, whose people did not want the Games to proceed; an act of sheer folly, oblivious to the medical guidance, in thrall to television dollars. Others saw an inspirational message to the world in a time of upheaval, a reminder that perseverance can triumph over adversity. In any case, much food for thought as I wait for the sun to rise again on day three in quarantine.

Guardian Australia at Tokyo 2020 in numbers
Days in the Olympic bubble: 14
Covid tests taken: 24
Olympic taxi and bus trips: 100+
Words written: ~50,000