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This is the week. This is the week when the world should've descended on the Japanese capital. Instead, the world is sat at home, focus very firmly away from the Tokyo Olympic Games.
Nobody saw coronavirus coming; nobody could've predicted half a year of face masks, hand sanitizers, and temperature checks. Athletes, after four years of Olympic preparation, are now stuck, waiting for lockdowns to end and training to resume. The games itself, postponed for a year, will now be held July 23 to August 8, 2021.
Yet, here we are.
But as time goes on, the chink of light at the end of the tunnel grows larger and larger by the day.
Sport. One of the first victims of government safety measures is returning.
In Europe and Asia, sport is back, just without fans.
Football played in empty cathedrals to a congregation stuck at home. Liverpool wins the Premier League for the first time, Leeds United champions of the English football league and back at the top table.
Lockdown has prevented fans from being there to experience those moments firsthand. The joy -- the pure happiness -- that comes with celebrating live sport with thousands of other strangers is one life's most honest of pleasures.
Basketball fans in China are feeling the same. For instance, Guangdong Southern Tigers just broke the CBA win-streak record, a superb achievement of 27 victories on the bounce. Fans in Dongguan deserve to be there to watch history, just as those Leeds fans, after 16 years of pain and misery, deserved to fully experience sport when it is emotionally most acute.
But as elite sport gets itself up to speed again, the virus is beginning to subside. From total lockdown to the slow return of personal liberty during this summer has put next summer's Olympics in focus.
Last week, the British government announced that crowds, in some capacity, would be returning to those empty cathedrals by October.
In Germany, with football season now at an end, expect small crowds in stadiums for the start of the new season too.
China, with its vast, diverse geography and cities, is not far behind, with international winter Olympic qualifying events set for the end of this year.
Normality is creaking back and Tokyo can signify the return of it.
IOC President Thomas Bach reassured the global community that he was "fully committed" to staging the Games in front of spectators.
The Olympic spirit is one of global community and friendship, and for an event that is fuelled by symbolism, then what could be better than seeing the world united together under one universal religion -- the religion of sport.
One year. 12 months. 52 weeks. That's all we have to wait. No tournament on earth inspires the same feelings of goodwill and diversity towards the rest of humanity. And for humanity, the more than a year spent apart, afflicted with the same virus, the Olympics can be the moment that we declare the end of the virus, the end of lockdown and a renaissance of universal solidarity.
(By sportswriter Jonty Dixon)
