Sure, the stadiums are mostly empty, and living in the Olympic Village will feel different with all those corona restrictions.
But the central Olympic tenet remains the same: It's a competition between the world's best athletes.
And with that come those age-old doping concerns.
To try to make sure the Games are fair, the International Testing Agency (ITA), overseen by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), says it is "leading the most extensive anti-doping program for Tokyo 2020 that has ever been implemented for an edition of the Olympic Games."
In their humble words, they want to make sure athletes using performance-enhancing substances do not stand a chance.
As DW Sports has reported, an ITA team of 24 managers and 250 doping control officers is expected to test around 5,000 urine and blood samples from over 11,000 Olympians over the course of the Games. The ITA describes the tests as "targeted and unannounced."
A positive doping test can result in an athlete being banned from their sport for years. And they have to hand back any medals they won in competition, when or wherever they tested positive for banned substances.
That may or may not be a fair way to treat cheats. But what if they never intentionally used doping agents?
Doping via handshake?
An investigation by doping reporters at ARD, a German public broadcaster, has revealed that certain doping agents can be transferred by skin-on-skin contact.
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And they say it does not take much ― a brief handshake or pat on the back may be enough.
The reporting team, lead by Hajo Seppelt, was first approached in 2016 about the possibility of doping through skin contact.
They started investigating and eventually set up an experiment in cooperation with the German Sport University in Cologne and the Institute for Forensic Medicine at University Hospital Cologne.
Twelve men between the ages of 18 and 40 had a small amount of different anabolic steroids applied to hands, necks and arms. In the weeks that followed, the trial participants supplied the lab with various urine samples.
'I wouldn't have expected this'
The results: All 12 men tested positive. Their samples indicated that they had used illegal substances ― even though they never actively ingested anything.
"When we were first approached about this, I thought 'Sure, maybe it could work here and there,'" Seppelt told DW from Tokyo, where he is covering the Olympics. "But when all of them were positive, that was a surprise. The clarity of it all really made me think."
The banned substances could still be traced in some of the urine samples trial participants handed in up to two weeks after the doping agents were applied to their skin. Even experts were shocked by the experiment's results.
"I wouldn't have expected it [to be] this way, especially the fact that the traces were visible for that long," said Dr. Martin Jübner, a forensic toxicologist at the Institute for Forensic Medicine at University Hospital Cologne, in an interview with DW.
Doping tests may have to be adjusted after the findings of a new German study into 'skin-contact doping'Image: Christian Brun/KEYSTONE/picture alliance
Avoiding the wrong kind of inspiration
None of the people involved in the experiment want to share too many details at this time.
The study is still going through a long, scientific peer-review process and it will be months, Jübner says, before the results can be published.
But the experts also do not want to give anyone ideas ― they do not want to see their work misused as an instruction manual for how to dope an unsuspecting athlete.
That is why there is no exact information on what kind of doping agents were applied to trial participants' skin. They have only said that it was anabolic steroids.
Their caution may be warranted. There have been several high-publicity cases of athletes who had medals revoked or careers ruined because of positive doping results that they said stemmed from someone slipping them banned substances without their knowledge. And that was when people thought the doping agents had to be mixed into someone's food, water or toothpaste. Now it looks like an inconspicuous handshake is all it takes.
Star athletes accused of doping
A look at some of the most famous athletes whose careers were marred by doping allegations over the last three decades.
Image: Reuters
Ben Johnson, Carl Lewis
Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson (center) was stripped of his 100 meter gold medal at the 1988 Seoul Olympics when he tested positive for stanozolol. He admitted having used steroids when he ran his 1987 world record, so that was rescinded too. His main rival, US athlete Carl Lewis (right), tested positive in1988, but successfully blamed the traces of banned stimulants on cold medication.
Image: picture-alliance/Sven Simon
Jailed for lying about doping
US track and field world champion and Olympic gold medalist Marion Jones forfeited all prizes dating back to 2000, admitting in 2007 that she’d been doping that far back. She confessed to lying about it to a grand jury investigating performance-enhancer creations by the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO), which supplied more than 20 top athletes, and was sentenced to six months in jail.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Katrin Krabbe
The German sprint star and world champion in 1991 for the 100 and 200 meter distance tested positive for clenbuterol in 1995. A comeback attempt failed.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Suspicious toothpaste
Dieter Baumann, German 5000-meter Olympics champion of 1992, later tested positive for Nandrolone and was banned for two years in 1999, causing him to miss the 2000 Sydney Olympics. He argued that someone had contaminated his toothpaste. He came back in 2002, at the age of 37, to win silver over 10,000 meters at the European Championships in Munich.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Running away to avoid testing
Ekaterini Thanou and her training partner Konstantinos Kenteris failed to attend a drugs test on the eve of the Athens 2004 Summer Olympics. Later that day they were hospitalized, claiming they’d had a motorcycle accident. They withdrew from the Games, and investigators ruled the accident had been staged and they were criminally charged with making false statements to authorities.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Professional cycling's most notorious
The most high-profile case in professional cycling: The US Anti-Doping Agency in 2012 found Lance Armstrong guilty of using performance enhancing drugs, stripped the seven-time Tour de France winner of his titles and banned him for life. In January 2013, Armstrong told US television personality, Oprah Winfrey, how he lied without detection for years between 1998 and 2004.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
The risk of drug abuse
Argentine football legend Diego Maradona tested positive for Ephedrine at the soccer World Cup in the US in 1994 and was excluded from the tournament. Three years earlier he had been found to have taken cocaine.
Image: imago sportfotodienst
Still claiming innocence
Claudia Pechstein is the most successful Olympic speed skater, ever. In 2009, she was accused of blood doping and banned from all competitions for two years. She claimed an inherited condition was the reason for irregular levels of reticulocytes but failed to win a long legal battle. She returned to competition in 2011, winning bronze in the 5000 meter event at that year’s World Championships.
Image: picture alliance/AP Photo
Russian athletes notorious for doping
Russia’s Svetlana Krivelyova won shot put gold at the 1992 Olympics and the World Championship in 2003. At the 2004 World Indoor Championships she was awarded gold after the winner was stripped of her title for failing a drugs test. In Athens, 2004, she won bronze only after the winner was disqualified for doping. A re-test then found drugs in Krivelyova’s, and the medal was rescinded.
Image: imago/Chai v.d. Laage
Gert Thys won his case
South African long-distance runner Gert Thys entered World Championships and Olympic Games. He won the 2006 Seoul International Marathon but was disqualified after testing positive for the steroid Norandrosterone. Thys contested the ban, pointing to laboratory errors: the same technician had analyzed both his samples, a breach of testing rules. In 2012 he was exonerated.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Most recent scandal
Jamaican former 100-meter world record holder Asafa Powell, his teammate, three-time Olympic medalist Sherone Simpson, US American sprinters Tyson Gay and Veronica Campbell-Brown all failed doping tests this summer. Powell was one of the world’s most-tested athletes in the run-up to the London 2012 Summer Olympics. He is exploring legal options.
Image: Reuters
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A strict principle of liability
Experts suggest the findings may lead to changes in how doping allegations are handled by sports courts.
As things stand, the system used with doping allegations is not, as in criminal law, "innocent until proven guilty," but exactly the opposite.
In sports, there is a strict liability principle that says when an athlete tests positive for banned substances, it is first presumed they did in fact dope to have an unfair sporting advantage. And if the athlete claims that they did not dope, the onus is on them to prove they are innocent.
Strict liability, as WADA explains on its website, "means that each athlete is strictly liable for the substances found in his or her bodily specimen, and that an anti-doping rule violation occurs whenever a prohibited substance … is found in a bodily specimen, whether or not the athlete intentionally or unintentionally used a prohibited substance or was negligent or otherwise at fault."
So, they are basically saying a doped athlete is a doped athlete and whether they wanted to or not, they got an unfair advantage. Proving that they did not dope on purpose may later only spare them the public shame of being banned from their sport. But in WADA's eyes, the race was still run unfairly.
After a positive doping test, the onus is on the athlete to prove that they did not use illegal substances to beat their rivalsImage: Michael Kappeler/dpa/picture alliance
Does sports need a whole new system?
If it is this simple to produce a positive test in an athlete, how could they still be asked to prove their innocence? Pinpointing that one crucial physical contact that might have been responsible for the doping agent in your body would be all but impossible.
Jübner says there may be ways to prove it, though. People have tried to look how doping agents are processed by an athlete's metabolism to "determine how a substance made it into the body. That's one thing we really have to look at."
The ARD's TV documentary may lead to more public scrutiny and pressure WADA and international sports courts to re-examine their systems.
But then it may just as well do nothing.
In 2020, when a team of Italian scientists published a study that also revealed that skin-application of a doping agent could induce a positive test, nothing much happened as a result.
Superwomen of sport
For decades, women have fought for gender equality in sports - and there's still a long way to go. Several high-profile female athletes have shaken up the establishment, but they've not always enjoyed lasting success.
Image: Tim Goode/empics/picture alliance
Victory in the Grand National
On April 10, 2021, Rachael Blackmore broke down one of the biggest gender barriers in sports by becoming the first female jockey to win England's grueling Grand National. Blackmore, a 31-year-old Irishwoman, rode Minella Times to victory at Aintree in the 173rd edition of the steeplechase run. "I don't feel male or female right now. I don't even feel human," she said. "This is just unbelievable."
Image: Tim Goode/empics/picture alliance
King's challenge
In the early 1970s, Billie Jean King fought for equal prize money for male and female tennis players. In protest, the 12-time Grand Slam winner, along with other female players, set up their own tournaments which later became the Women's Tennis Association (WTA). In 1973, their efforts paid off as the US Open awarded equal prize money for the first time.
Image: Imago Images/Sven Simon
Against all odds
Despite the best efforts of the furious race director (in jacket and hat) to rip away her start number, Kathrine Switzer became the first woman to compete in and successfully finish the Boston Marathon. With women only permitted to compete up to 800 meters, she had to register secretly. A few years later, women were officially allowed to compete in long-distance events.
Image: picture alliance/dpa/UPI
First Down!
Sarah Thomas became the first woman to be part of the officiating team at the Super Bowl in 2021. In making her way up the ladder, she's had to overcome several prejudices but says she's now accepted. "Colleagues, coaches and players now simply see me as an official. That's how I want it to be," she said. "I have never allowed my gender to be an excuse or a pretext for people."
Image: Aaron Josefczyk/Newscom/picture alliance
Crowd favorite
The Italian cyclist Alfonsina Strada registered for the 1924 Giro d'Italia under the name of Alfonsin Strada - tricking the organizers into believing she was a man. When they discovered the truth, Strada was still allowed to start, becoming the only ever woman to have started a men's race. She was disqualified after exceeding a time limit but despite being officially out, she still finished.
Image: Imago Images/Leemage
The sky's the limit
Until the early 1990s, women were not permitted to take part in ski jumping, but Eva Ganster became the first female "pre-jumper" in 1994. In 1997, the Austrian became the first woman to jump from a ski flying hill, as the women's sport continued to develop. The first World Cup took place in 2011, the first Olympic event in 2014. Ganster's wish is for there to be a Four Hills Tournament one day.
Image: Imago Images/WEREK
Between the pipes
Manon Rheaume made history in 1992 by becoming the first woman to try out for a team in the National Hockey League. She played one period of a preseason game for the Tampa Bay Lightning against the St. Louis Blues. Later that same year she became the first woman to play in a regular season professional game, when she took the ice for the Atlanta Knights against the Salt Lake Golden Eagles.
Image: Getty Images/S. Halleran
The woman in charge
In 1993, Switzerland's Nicole Petignat became the first woman to referee a men's Champions League football match - a UEFA Cup qualifier between AIK of Sweden and Fylkir of Iceland. She also refereed in the Swiss league as well as women's World Cup and European Championship finals. Despite her achievements, female referees remain a rarity. Germany's Bibiana Steinhaus was a prominent exception.
Image: picture-alliance/Pressefoto ULMER
Women drivers
Italy's Maria Teresa de Filippis was the first of only two women to have ever driven in Formula One. Between 1958 and 1959, she competed in three Grands Prix. Her compatriot Lella Lombardi followed her lead, featuring in 12 races between 1974 and 1976, but no woman has since sat in the cockpit in elite motorsport.
Image: picture-alliance/empics
Bull's-eye!
On December 17, 2019 Fallon Sherrock made history by beating Ted Evetts in the first round of the 2020 World Championship at Alexandra Palace in London. This made her the first woman to beat a male opponent at the PDC World Championship. To prove it was no fluke, she went on to beat Mensur Suljovic in the second round before losing to Chris Dobey in the third.
Image: Getty Images/J. Mansfield
Making women better
German football coach Monika Staab is a true pioneer. For years Staab has been traveling the world organizing training programs for women and girls. Staab is of the view that "positive feedback in sports boosts self-confidence. You need this to go through life."
Image: FAYEZ NURELDINE/AFP
Making men better
On August 4, 2014, Corinne Diacre became the first woman to coach a game in the top two tiers of a European men's league, when second-division Clermont Foot lost 2-1 at Brest. She spent three years at Clermont before taking over as manager of the French women's national team in 2017. Diacre remains the rare exception in men's football, and even now, many women's teams are coached by men.
