The Star Tribune is sending Rachel Blount and me to Tokyo on Monday to review the new Olympic motto: Faster, Higher, Stronger, Greedier.
We are flying around the world to visit a country that does not want us there, to work in a city experiencing a COVID-19 shutdown, for an event that will make the richest people at the IOC and NBC richer.
My emotions aren't mixed — they're segregated.
The whole thing promises to be a terrible idea poorly executed, and I can't wait to get there.
Even under the best of circumstances, the Olympics can be strange, and by the best of circumstances I mean when the Games are in Vancouver or London, places where you stay in a decent hotel and the natives are not wishing you stayed home.
Covering American sports is like going to your neighborhood grocery store. Covering the Olympics is like foraging. You might find delicious berries. You might find poisonous berries. You might run into strangers and exacerbate a global pandemic.
To be clear, the athletes are always spectacular, the stories are always compelling and I'm glad we're going. It is always good to have covered the Olympics. It's just not always good to be covering the Olympics.
My first Olympic experience was in Turin, where I learned that the Italians manufacture buses that can execute a hairpin turn on the Alps while the rear portion of the bus — where novices like me chose to sit — swings out over a 2-mile drop.