The Winter Olympic Virus: Day -6

• In what may be a vision of the future of the Games:  A guest list of the dignitaries for the Opening Ceremony next Friday is reported to be filled with authoritarian leaders.  I reiterate:  I do firmly believe the funereal theme of the Tokyo Opening Ceremony was at least a harbinger of the death knell of the Games as even a supposed beacon of the free world.   
• IOC President Thomas Bach is hailing a new (Chinese) winter sport audience for these Games.
• In a move I and many athletes are certain is a joke, Inside the Games is reporting that pillow fighting (serious pillow fighting) is being proposed as one of the modern pentathlon replacements.
• Drone racing is another possibility.
• Modern pentathlon is being thrown off the Olympic programme after Paris, after the horse-abuse controversies in Tokyo.
• 54 Olympic competitors, officials, and coaches have tested positive for COVID, 19 yesterday.
• Canada has reported five.
• We are about 72 hours from the opening events of the Games.  Wednesday morning, our time, will be the beginning of the mixed doubles curling events -- like the last games, the amount of curling in the Games requires, much like the hockey of both genders, an extended tournament past the Opening Ceremony.