Clean, repeat: At Tokyo Games, virus is Olympians' chief foe

TOKYO (AP) — Holding each other tighter than lovers, the wrestlers smear each other with sweat, spittle and — when they inadvertently cut each other — sometimes blood. Lungs heaving, mouths agape, they huff and puff into each others' flushed faces. On their glistening bodies, it's impossible to tell their opponents' fluids and theirs apart.

Underscoring the health risks of such proximity: They are the only people in the cavernous hall not wearing face masks.

Watching Olympic wrestling in the midst of the pandemic of a deadly airborne disease feels like being part of a virological experiment, a real-life study of droplets, aerosols and fluid dispersion.

A germophobe's nightmare, it's a messy spectacle best observed from the stands where volunteers hold signs reading "keep physical distance” for non-existent crowds, barred from the Tokyo Games because of surging coronavirus infections in the Olympic host country where less than one-third of the population is vaccinated.

But because wrestling is the most close-contact sport of the Olympics, it also speaks loudest of the all-out war against the virus that athletes have waged to get to Tokyo and, once here, continue to fight to stay free of infection and compete.

Wrestlers are the Games' equivalent of the canaries that alerted coal miners to noxious gases in the air of closed-in mines. That even they say they feel safe going body to body in combat testifies to extraordinary efforts that Olympians are making to stay healthy, exercising a sanitary discipline that has made competition possible but has also squeezed a lot of fun from their Olympic experience.

Which Brazilian wrestler Aline Silva says is a necessary price to pay. She hopes the Tokyo Games will serve as a counterweight to COVID-19 fatigue by sending a sobering...