Stop the Olympics.
It’s time to press pause and reimagine them. Maybe even give them up for good.
When I wrote that in April and asked for suggestions on how to fix the Games, readers responded in droves with ideas for how the Olympics could evolve to remain relevant and, yes, morally defensible in future years.
It did not take long for a consensus to emerge.
Readers questioned the ethics of holding the Tokyo Games during a summer in which Japan is still grappling hard with the coronavirus pandemic.
They lamented the long Olympic history of bloated budgets, the doping and bribery scandals, the forced removal of residents in host cities to make way for massive new venues, the decision to award the Games to countries with autocratic regimes and shoddy human rights histories, like Russia and China.