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British Olympic team sends heartfelt message to Tokyo one year before the opening ceremony

Oona McGee Jul 24, 2020
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Tear-jerking video draws striking parallels between the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and the 2020 Games now scheduled for 2021.

If it weren’t for the coronavirus pandemic, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics would have kicked off today, with the opening ceremony scheduled to be held on 24 July 2020 in Japan’s capital.

Sadly, the opening ceremony has now been pushed back to 23 July 2021, and while that’s been disappointing news for many of us, it’s been particularly hard for the athletes who’ve spent years training to compete at the Games.

Like the athletes, Tokyo also spent years preparing for the big event, and one Olympic team is empathising with the city’s setback, reaching out to keep spirits up as what was meant to be a happy year proves to be one of the worst in recent memory.

The message to Tokyo comes from “Team GB“, which covers Olympic athletes from Great Britain and Northern Ireland, with a video featuring 29-year-old Lutalo Muhammad, a British taekwondo athlete who won bronze at the 2012 Summer Olympics and silver at the 2016 Summer Olympics.

The video touches on a number of topics, and even takes us back to Tokyo in the ’60s, when the Olympics was first held in Japan, but the overriding message is one of hope and solidarity, and it’s expressed so beautifully it might even have you shedding a tear.

Take a look at the “Dear Tokyo…” video below:

Muhammad begins the love letter to Japan’s capital by recalling that first meeting back in 1964, when the Tokyo Olympic Games became the first to be held in Asia, 19 years after the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed in World War II.

The 1964 Olympics really helped bring Japan into the modern era, prompting extensive reconstruction efforts in the lead-up to the Games that included the inaugural run of the Shinkansen bullet train, which opened to the public just nine days before the opening ceremony.

The black-and-white images in the Team GB video blur the past with the present while also looking towards the future, to a time when we can all travel beyond borders again. And the message of hope that was there at the post-war 1964 Olympics is just as relevant today, as Muhammad says:

“The world is hurting right now and it needs time to heal…23rd of July 2021 stands as a beacon of hope to the world, an unparalleled celebration of unity and it will be you who brings us all together once again.”

That’s a lot of pressure to put on a city, Team GB! But if the past is anything to go by, Tokyo will be ready to rise to the occasion. And with the 2021 Games set to go ahead with the 2020 branding, it’s a fresh chance for all of us to get this lost year back in a brighter, more hopeful way.

Source: YouTube/Team GB
Top image: Pakutaso (edited by SoraNews24)
Insert images: YouTube/Team GB
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