The Perseverance Games: Surreal Olympics approach their end

The cauldron will be snuffed Sunday on the exhausting, enlightening, sometimes enraging 2020 Tokyo Olympics — held, actually, in 2021. Imperfect but not impossible, these Olympics — willed into existence despite a pandemic that sparked worldwide skepticism and hard-wired opposition from Japan’s own citizens — just might go down as the Games that changed sports for good. The Olympics where mental health became as important as physical.