What’s changed since the last Tokyo Olympics?

Waiting Games

What did Japan, and the world, look like the last time Tokyo held the Olympics in 1964?

— As this year, Tokyo had to wait to hold the Games. It was awarded the 1940 Olympics, but the offer was withdrawn after the Japanese invasion of China (before the 1940 Games were abandoned altogether).

— South Africa was banned for the first time for refusing to send a single, multiracial team to the Games.

— In spite of it being three years since the building of the Berlin Wall, East and West Germany entered a single ‘united’ team.

— They were the first Games broadcast around the world by satellite.

— They were the last Games to use a cinder athletics track.

—The Games marked the inauguration of the bullet train between Tokyo and Osaka.

Tickets please

Most popular

Douglas Murray

Britain is losing friends – and making enemies

The Tokyo Olympics is to have no spectators.