It was meant to be the first Games to be held beyond Europe and North America, a spectacle to showcase to the world that Tokyo had overcome the earthquake that had devastated the city some years earlier. But the 1940 Olympics was the Games that never was.
No one aged under 80 had ever lived through a time when the Olympics was postponed or canceled until Tuesday’s announcement that Tokyo 2020, originally scheduled to start this July, will now be held next year.
As a pandemic takes hold of the world and the International Olympic Committee and Tokyo 2020 organizers grapple with the complicated logistics involved in holding the greatest show on earth later than planned, a look at the past throws up some uncanny similarities between now and what has been described by some as the Lost Games of 1940.
Glory on the world stage
Before the 2020 Olympics was postponed, sport’s biggest extravaganza has been called off three times in modern history, all in wartime, and the last time being the year Tokyo was supposed to be the host city. (Text courtesy CNN)
