Today in a nutshell: the Roman god Janus of Tokyo briefings, looking backwards, looking forwards.
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Next week’s key moments: your daily Tokyo briefings will resume on Monday, the Paralympics opening ceremony is on Tuesday 24 August at 8pm in Tokyo, and the sport begins the following day with track cycling, swimming, goalball, table tennis, wheelchair basketball, wheelchair fencing and wheelchair rugby among the events that start straight away.
Olivier Hendriks of the Dutch Paralympic athletics team training for the Tokyo. Photograph: Sander Koning/EPA
It’s been just over a week since the Tokyo Olympics finished, and it is just over a week until the Tokyo Paralympics begin. How are we all feeling? Thanks for sticking with these emails.
I’ve been jokingly calling this the intercalated email because it isn’t quite the Olympics and it isn’t quite the Paralympics. In 1906 they got over-excited and following 1896, 1900 and 1904 decided to hold another Olympics in Athens in 1906. The aim then was to hold the Games every two years – once internationally, then back to Athens, then internationally, then back to Athens and so on. Clearly impractical, and those 1906 Games in Athens [...]