For weeks, as the coronavirus spread across the world, Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee, held on to the dream that opening an Olympic Games on July 24 in Tokyo could serve as a celebration of triumph over a pandemic that has killed thousands of people, closed down countries and devastated the world economy.

By Monday, it appeared that a decision on whether to postpone the Games had become a matter of when and how, rather than if, and on Tuesday night in Tokyo, the deed was finally done. After a phone call with Bach, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan said that he had proposed a one-year postponement and that Bach had agreed “100 percent.”

The I.O.C.’s slog to a decision that so many saw as inevitable for weeks and its slow public responses to the coronavirus were the latest examples that the organization often seems out of step with much of the world.

For more than a century, this group, which has always included a healthy representation of royal families and society’s wealthy upper crust, has held on to the idea that the Olympics are about values. That the Games are a symbol of peace that is larger than any sports competition. That the power of the Olympic flame and the Olympic rings can unify and repair the world, even in the face of brutal dictatorships and virulent disease.