"Companies and people need to think seriously about how to live," the Japanese carmaker's President asserted, "and then change what they are doing".

Since Toyota is a worldwide sponsor of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and not the least important, this started me thinking about how Olympic Games organisers should change what they are doing, once human beings are able to mingle freely again, like in the old days three or four months ago.

It is easy enough to dream up platitudinous visions such as, "We must do away with the win-at-all-costs mentality that permeates contemporary sport".

But this is of limited usefulness: on the same day that Toyoda was speaking, I found myself writing about an International Federation that had last year budgeted to spend 93 per cent of forecast revenues on anti-doping.

Statistics like that imply strongly that "win-at-all-costs" is too deeply ingrained to be torpedoed by anything as trifling as a global pandemic.

There is though a much more modest adjustment which could be implemented with a few strokes of the right people's pens and which would, I think, go a surprising distance towards restoring the Olympic Games' standing as a genuinely unique event, rather than just another staging-post in elite sport's money-grabbing global peregrinations.

This would be to make it a condition of participation that athletes stay for the duration of the Games, and reside in the – or an – Olympic Village.

For good measure, there should also be a day free from competition after the Opening Ceremony, to enable more of those competing on days one or two to attend.

But-but-but, I can hear the cries, to condemn athletes to 16 days with no pay is unconscionable; three or four days is bad enough.

Conditions in the Village, moreover, are typically no better than a cheapish hotel; why should star turns be expected to sleep in beds that risk giving them a bad back?

To these voices, I would offer the following responses.

1. For the vast majority of competitors, who earn relatively little from their sporting exploits, whether they stay a few days or the full two weeks-plus makes little material difference to them.

And of course, if they perform well, their post-Games marketing value will be enhanced, though not by as much as some might expect.

2. For those relatively few athletes whose performances have made them well-off or downright wealthy, well you are quite at liberty to give the Games a miss.

It would be a respectable, and in some ways an understandable, choice; it will not be held against you.

Most of all, 3. Elite athletes tend to be self-centred: to perform at the necessary levels, they almost have to be; they tend also to be monomaniacal: ditto.

To be obliged to spend two weeks, some of it with little to do but kick their heels, in a multicultural environment with other athletes from all nations and dozens of sports, living together as equals (more or less), just might be a life-changing experience – and, yes, very much in a good way.

And if you cannot bear to get off the merry-go-round and take some time to think and enjoy the company of your peers for a week or two every four years, well perhaps the broader aspects of the Olympic ideal are not for you.

There is one important quid pro quo that would have to be addressed by the IOC were such a change ever, I suspect, to be acceptable to star athletes or their representative bodies.

Namely, there would have to be far more transparency about what the money generated by the Games is actually used for and how much really ends up in the pockets of hard-up athletes and impoverished countries with few facilities.

It would no longer be good enough to parrot the 90 per cent line and channel cash through myriad bodies whose running costs reduce how much ends up where it is truly needed, even when the motivation of the bureaucrats who populate them is unimpeachable. 

I cannot see even this modest reform happening, sadly.      

Imagine the faces of broadcasting executives when told that many of the tiny handful of names they regard as "box office" had decided to give the Games a miss.

And we all know how much clout the big broadcasters have in Olympic circles nowadays, in some ways understandably, given the size of the cheques they write.

The reservation can also legitimately be made that the Olympic Village would have to be quite a lot bigger if most athletes stayed there for two or three weeks.

This would have obvious consequences for construction costs and environmental impacts.

But it could be done, with relatively little fuss and would, for my money, alter the character of the event significantly for the better.

If it is to be worth clinging on to after the plague-days have passed, the Olympic Movement needs to be more than just a business, much more.