Tokyo Olympics

Tokyo Olympics 2020+1

Final medal count

When?

Finally!! Opening ceremonies will be on Friday July 23 and closing ceremonies will be on August 8th.

But did you know, the soccer and softball tournaments will actually start before the Opening ceremonies. They start on Wednesday with the round robin rounds. The first medals given out will be for road cycling Weightlifting, 2 in Taekwondo, 2 in Shooting, 2 in Judo and 2 in fencing all on Saturday. The final medals awarded will be 1 in athletics, basketball, 4 in boxing, 3 in track cycling, 1 in rhythmic gymnastics, 1 in handball, 1 in volleyball, 1 in water polo. A total of 339 medals will be given out. The most medal events are in Athletics with 48, swimming with 37 and cycling with 22.

There will be 33 sports competed this year. The new sports this year are: baseball/softball, karate, sport climbing, surfing and skateboarding. Other new events are the 3×3 bball competition, freestyle BMX and Madison cycling. Swimming and Athletics have also added coed relays.

Russia will not be competing under the Russian flag again; they will compete as the ROC ‘Russian Olympic Committee’. Although you might see Russia on some uniforms, there must be ‘neutral athlete’ or something similar in just a prevalent font and sizing. This will continue through the 2022 Beijing Olympic games.

Olympics in numbers

  • 32nd Olympiad
    • 52nd modern Olympics
  • 33 sports
  • 19 days of competition
  • 206 National Olympic Committees participating
    • North Korea will not be participating. Making it the first Olympics without them since 1988
    • Russia will be under the ROC acronym
    • North Macedonia will be competing for the first time under this name. It was previously the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia

  • 339 gold medals up for grabs
  • 1964 – only other Tokyo Games
    • Japan has hosted 3 Olympic games: 1964 Tokyo, 1972 Sapporo and 1998 Nagano
  • 11,091 athletes (as of 4.23.21)

https://slate.com/culture/2021/07/tokyo-olympics-dispatch-japan-covid-climate-evictions.html

Controversies during these games:

  • First of all, having these Olympics is a bit of a controversy during the global pandemic. As high as 80% of Japanese and Tokyo residents have expressed that they would like to cancel/postpone the games. This continues to rise along with the country’s COVID cases.
    • To combat the global concern for the pandemic, only local volunteers and fans will be allowed to attend the games and even that is unlikely at this point.
  • South Korea put forth a formal compliant to stop the use of the Rising Sun Japanese flag. South Korea claims the flag elicits pain as it is used in imperial war like situations in the pacific islands and was used during Pearl Harbor. They equated it to the swastika after WWII. TBD if it will be used.
  • Taking a knee or the Black Panther fist raise is not allowed during medal ceremonies or inside stadiums at all.

  • Caster Semenya, a South African runner, has become the face of transgender equality in athletics. Although technically she is cisgender, she is intersex, which means she has elevated levels of testosterone that as of 2019 makes her ineligible to compete in her signature event, the 80m. According to the IAAF, female athletes have to have below a certain testosterone level to compete in events 400m to 1600m (one mile). She can compete in the 800m if she agrees to take hormones to lower her testosterone to the required level.
    • To all of you who think it shouldn’t matter, she was undefeated in every 800m race she ran from her gold medal in Rio. She won the 2012 and 2016 800m Olympic gold medal.
    • The NCAA requires transgender females 1 year of hormone treatment testosterone suppression to participate. Transgender males are allowed to compete in the women’s category if that’s the sex they were assigned at birth and before they begin transitioning with hormone treatment.
    • My opinion: there needs to be more studies done to determine where the unfair advantage is for transgender females. I am all onboard with the hormone suppression and monitoring to make sure there is a level playing field. As the IAAF determined, transgender women have an advantage in the 400m-1 mile distances. I do think everyone deserves to have a place to compete but I also think that we need to protect women’s sports. Title IX was introduced in 1991 to give women’s sports equal rights; as we saw this year with the March Madness tournament, it is not equal (but we can get into that later). Women have a hard enough time getting exposure and money for their sports without allowing physical-males from competing.
      • I do also think the few ruin it for the many. I think there will absolutely be actual men who will take advantage of this if we allow there to be no hormone therapy involved.

  • Sha’Carri Richardson has been given a month long suspension which will take her out of the W 100m after testing positive for THC (found in marijuana). Like it or not, that is a rule. The ban is only 30 days if you have it in your system but weren’t intending to use THC for performance-enhancing purposes. The USATF solidified this decision with also not putting Richardson on the 4x100m relay, even though that event fell outside her 30 day ban. Many athletes (and politicians even though this does not concern them) have spoken out on her behalf but rules are rules.

Sports:

  • The only sports that have been in every modern Olympics (1896) are athletics, artistic gymnastics, fencing and swimming
  • Detailed Sports descriptions coming next week!

Athletics

Gymnastics

Swimming

Do you know what the difference is between the Super G and the Downhill? Think the Flying Squirrel is just a fluffy mammal? Wonder how surfing is going to work in the Olympics? Then you’ve come to the right place!

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