Tokyo 2020 will forever be known as the spectatorless Olympics, a beautiful spectacle of sport performed in silent stadiums in front of only a handful of people.
Amid all the pandemonium created by the COVID-19 pandemic, international spectators were banned in March from attending the Olympics, but there was still hope that domestic spectators would be able to attend the Games in limited numbers.
That hope vanished on July 9 — two weeks before the opening ceremony — when Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced that Tokyo would enter a fourth state of emergency due to increasing COVID-19 cases, and Olympic venues in the capital and its neighboring prefectures would be barred from admitting spectators.