Sports
Olympic swimming ends with splashy new records, US gold
American Caeleb Dressel finished off his gold rush at the Tokyo Olympics with two more dazzling races, and Australia’s Emma McKeon won seven medals, more than any other female swimmer in a single games.
Now, when the greatest swimmers are mentioned, there are two new names on the list.
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Taking his place alongside Michael Phelps, Mark Spitz and Matt Biondi, Dressel captured his fourth and fifth gold medals of the pandemic-delayed games on the final day of swimming at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre.
With victories Sunday in the 50-meter freestyle and 4x100 medley relay, the 24-year-old Floridian joined a truly elite club of swimmers who won at least five gold medals at one games.
Phelps did it three times, of course, highlighted by his record eight golds at the 2008 Beijing Games. There’s also Spitz (seven golds in 1972), East German Kristin Otto (six golds in 1988) and Biondi (five golds, also in ’88).
Dressel starred at the pool with McKeon, who also won two more golds Sunday to push her overall total to seven — four gold and three bronze. She is the first female swimmer to win seven medals at a single games. The only men to do it are Phelps, Spitz and Biondi.
“It still feels very surreal,” the 27-year-old from Brisbane said. “It’s going to take a little bit to sink in. I’m very proud of myself.”
Mirroring Dressel’s final day, McKeon won the 50 free and took the butterfly leg on the Aussies’ winning 4x100 medley relay team on the women’s side.
In the men’s medley — a race the men have never lost at the Olympics —the Americans were trailing two other teams when Dressel dived in for the fly. Just like that, he blew by Britain and Italy with a blistering leg of 49.03 seconds, more than a second faster that anyone else.
Zach Apple made the lead stand up on the freestyle to give the Americans a world record of 3 minutes, 26.78 seconds -- eclipsing the mark of 3:27.28 they set at the 2009 Rome world championships in rubberized suits.
Read: ‘OK not to be OK’: Mental health takes top role at Olympics
Ryan Murphy and Michael Andrew joined Dressel and Apple on the winning team, ensuring the Americans remained unbeaten in the medley relay — the final swimming event at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre.
In the first event of the morning, Dressel won the 50 free for his third individual title of the games.
Dressel cruised to a relatively easy win in the frenetic dash from one end of the pool to the other, touching first in the 50 free with an Olympic record of 21.07.
When he saw his time and, more important, the “1” beside his name, he splashed the water and flexed his bulging arms.
He also won gold in the 100 free, set a world record in the 100 butterfly and took part in the winning 4x100 free relay.
A few minutes after Dressel climbed from the pool, McKeon completed her own freestyle sweep. She touched in 23.81 to add the 50 title to her victory in the 100.
In the medley relay, McKeon entered truly rarified territory. She is only the second woman in any sport to win seven medals at an Olympics, joining Soviet gymnast Maria Gorokhovskaya, who claimed two golds and five silvers at the 1952 Helsinki Games.
McKeon took the butterfly leg before Cate Campbell anchored the Aussies to a victory over the two-time defending champion Americans.
“I don’t know how she does it. I’m exhausted,” said Kyle Chalmers, one of the McKeon’s teammates. “To win one gold medal or an Olympic medal, it’s very, very special. We’re lucky to have her on the team.”
Read: Tokyo Olympics 2020: Turkmenistan Wins its First Olympic Medal
In keeping with the theme of the day, Bobby Finke pulled off his own sweep in the two longest freestyle races.
With another strong finishing kick, Finke became the first American man in 37 years to win the 1,500 freestyle. He added to his victory in the 800 free, a new men’s event at these games.
Mushfiqur misses out for BCB pandering to Australia
Right after arriving in Bangladesh, the Australian cricket team went into a three-day quarantine in a hotel in the capital from Thursday. This is dictated by Bangladesh government's Covid-19 protocol, and the Bangladesh cricket team, which arrived back from Zimbabwe the same day, is also now going through the mandatory quarantine of three days.
That should be straightforward enough, but what is proving a far bigger ask is maintaining the strict bio-secure bubble, or biobubble, according to Australia's requirements, and Mushfiqur's exclusion from it.
The experienced wicketkeeper-batsman sought to enter the bubble on July 22, two days after it came into effect.
As per the agreement between the two cricket boards, both the squads have to maintain a ten-day bio-secured bubble ahead of the series. Since both Bangladesh and Australia were touring Zimbabwe and West Indies respectively, it was not possible for them to maintain a ten-day quarantine period in Dhaka ahead of the five-match T20I series-opening game on August 3.
So both the boards came to an agreement to include their respective bio-bubbles in Zimbabwe and the West Indies as part of the pre-series ten-day quarantine in Dhaka which is mandatory.
“It’s really unfortunate for Mushfiqur. He had to come back from Zimbabwe as both of his parents were sick, and while staying with them, he missed the quarantine deadline. He was so eager to take part in this series. In that sense, it’s very unfortunate and unfair for him,” Faruque Ahmed, former Bangladesh captain and former chief of the national selector panel, told UNB.
Read: BAN vs. AUS 2021: How Bangladesh Team Shapes Up Without Tamim, Mushfiqur?
“We know that before a series, all the involving boards came to an agreement. I’m sure it took place ahead of this series as well. Since we have been living in a pandemic for more than one and a half years, Australia came up with some conditions to ensure their safety, and BCB agreed to that as Australia are visiting Bangladesh after a long time,” he added.
Mushfiqur had earlier decided to skip the T20Is against Zimbabwe to be fit and available for the Australia series. However, he had to come back from Zimbabwe early for his parents’ sickness.
Bangladesh team members also believe that it was unfair that Mushfiqur was not allowed to enter the bio-secure bubble. Some of them pointed to the absurdity of not allowing Mushfiqur to enter the bubble following appropriate testing, when the entire team had gone through four airports - Harare, Johannesburg, Delhi and Dhaka - on their return trip from Zimbabwe, and that didn't violate the bubble apparently.
“We came in a commercial flight passing through three airports so I don't know if it makes much sense to keep Mushfiqur out of the series. He went back home from the middle of a tour for a family problem. So to not allow him to enter the quarantine after just two or three days, is not right,” a Bangladesh team member was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo.
Read: Mushfiqur to miss T20 series against Australia over isolation norms
Bangladesh are going to miss the services of Tamim Iqbal and Liton Das as well. Mustafizur Rahman is also doubtful for the first couple of matches as the pacer has been suffering from an ankle injury sustained during a tour match in Zimbabwe. There are worries over Shakib Al Hasan’s fitness as well.
Indeed to fulfil Australia’s demand, Bangladesh had to manage quarantine for match officials, ground staff, and technicians who operate DRS. Bangladesh also managed a direct path for the Australian team to get to their team hotel from the airport tarmac, bypassing immigration.
The five-match series will be packed into a week, with the first match on Monday, August 3. Then again on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and the final fixture on Sunday, August 9. All the matches will be hosted at the single venue— Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium.
BPL Football put off at the last moment
The Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) Football 2020-21, which was scheduled to resume Friday, was postponed at the last moment.
The Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) announced a new BPL fixture for the 20th and 21st round matches Thursday night to restart the league today. However, the postponement came just 60 minutes before Friday's matches had been due to start.
The BFF today postponed the remaining second phase BPL matches saying, "We will keep everyone in the loop after reviewing the overall situation."
Read: BPL Football defers by six days
The BPL, which had earlier been scheduled to restart on July 24 after the Eid break, was deferred to July 30.
As per the latest fixture, Chittagong Abahani were scheduled to face Uttar Baridhara Club at 4pm at the Kamalapur Stadium and Rahmatganj MFS were supposed to play against Brothers Union Club at the same time at the Bangabandhu National Stadium today.
Soumya takes big leap in ICC T20 rankings after Zimbabwe series
Bangladesh batsman Soumya Sarkar has made big strides of nine places to take the 34th position in the latest ICC rankings for T20 international batsmen.
The southpaw hit two fifties in the three-match T20 series and had an average of 42.
While Soumya rose to 34th place from 43rd, Bangladesh T20 captain Mahmudullah Riyad and left-hand opener Mohammad Naim slipped a few spots.
Read: Soumya hit fifty but Tigers lose T20Is series against Kiwis
Mahmudullah went down three places from 33 while Naim dropped to 32 from 29.
At the end of the Zimbabwe series, Shakib Al Hasan occupies the number one bowler position of Bangladesh after being placed at 21 in the T20 bowler rankings. Also, he remains number two in the T20 all-rounders' rankings.
Bangladesh won the three-match T20 series 2-1 against Zimbabwe.
Read: Soumya, Abu Jayed help Tigers get back control
The Tigers' next assignment is against Australia who are scheduled to arrive in Dhaka later this week.
Australia will play a five-match T20 series against Bangladesh.
The first match will take place on August 3, while other matches will be played on August 4, 6, 7 and 9. All the matches will be played at the Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium.
IPDC Extends Partnership with NEF Sports Academy
To promote sports in Narail district, the IPDC Finance Ltd signed an agreement with Mashrafe Bin Mortaza’s Narail Express Foundation (NEF) at IPDC Head Office in Gulshan.
The private sector NBFI has come forward to ensure all kinds of support to NEF in order to maintain the standard of the sports training facility since 2018. Last year, IPDC helped the Foundation build a gymnasium in Narail, the inauguration of which is to take place by the end of the year.
Under the new agreement, IPDC Finance has committed to extend its support for NEF's vision of providing sports training in the district for the next five years.
Read: Play with the right ball to become cricketers: Mashrafe
NEF Founding Chairman and the former captain of Bangladesh national cricket team, Mashrafe said: “I had only dreamt of changing the landscape of Narail in terms of education, health, ICT, culture, and sports through NEF. My heartfelt gratitude to IPDC Finance for coming forward in raising the bar that will inspire others to pick talented players across the country.”
IPDC Manager Director and CEO, Mominul Islam said, "IPDC, with its focus on youth and the underserved, has always strived to create groundbreaking opportunities for them. We are pleased to have a credible platform led by the captain himself in this journey."
Read: IPDC Finance Ltd wins Intellectual Property Protection Award 2021
The sports academy currently trains 60 cricket, football, and volleyball players between the age of 16-18 years. The group is being trained to introduce strong international players in the future, besides supporting their education, accommodation, and health care.
Mashrafe Bin Mortaza and IPDC Finance Managing Director and CEO Mominul Islam signed the partnership agreement on behalf of their respective organizations. Other high officials were also present at the signing ceremony.
Tokyo Olympics begin with muted ceremony and empty stadium
Belated and beleaguered, the virus-delayed Tokyo Summer Olympics finally opened Friday night with cascading fireworks and made-for-TV choreography that unfolded in a near-empty stadium, a colorful but strangely subdued ceremony that set a striking tone to match a unique pandemic Games.
As their opening played out, devoid of the usual crowd energy, the Olympics convened amid simmering anger and disbelief in much of the host country, but with hopes from organizers that the excitement of the sports to follow would offset the widespread opposition.
“Today is a moment of hope. Yes, it is very different from what all of us had imagined,” IOC President Thomas Bach said. “But let us cherish this moment because finally we are all here together.”
“This feeling of togetherness — this is the light at the end of the dark tunnel of the pandemic,” Bach declared. Later, Japanese tennis star Naomi Osaka received the Olympic flame from a torch relay through the stadium and lit the Olympic cauldron.
Trepidations throughout Japan have threatened for months to drown out the usual packaged glitz of the opening. Inside the stadium after dusk Friday, however, a precisely calibrated ceremony sought to portray that the Games — and their spirit — are going on.
Early in the ceremony, an ethereal blue light bathed the empty seats as loud music muted the shouts of scattered protesters outside calling for the Games to be canceled. A single stage held an octagon shape meant to resemble the country’s fabled Mount Fuji. Later, an orchestral medley of songs from iconic Japanese video games served as the soundtrack for athletes’ entrances.
Mostly masked athletes waved enthusiastically to thousands of empty seats and to a world hungry to watch them compete but surely wondering what to make of it all. Some athletes marched socially distanced, while others clustered in ways utterly contrary to organizers’ hopes. The Czech Republic entered with other countries even though its delegation has had several positive COVID tests since arriving.
“You had to face great challenges on your Olympic journey,” Bach told the athletes. “Today you are making your Olympic dream come true.”
Organizers held a moment of silence for those who had died in the pandemic; as it ticked off and the music paused, the sounds of the protests echoed in the distance.
Protesters’ shouts gave voice to a fundamental question about these Games as Japan, and large parts of the world, reel from the continuing gut punch of a pandemic that is stretching well into its second year, with cases in Tokyo approaching record highs this week: Will the deep, intrinsic human attachment to the spectacle of sporting competition at the highest possible level be enough to salvage these Olympics?
Time and again, previous opening ceremonies have pulled off something that approaches magic. Scandals — bribery in Salt Lake City, censorship and pollution in Beijing, doping in Sochi — fade into the background when the sports begin.
Read: Olympics ceremony uses music from Japanese video games
But with people still falling ill and dying each day from the coronavirus, there’s a particular urgency to the questions about whether the Olympic flame can burn away the fear or provide a measure of catharsis — and even awe — after a year of suffering and uncertainty in Japan and around the world.
“Today, with the world facing great challenges, some are again questioning the power of sport and the value of the Olympic Games,” Seiko Hashimoto, president of the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee, said in a speech. But, she said of the Games’ possibilities, “This is the power of sport. … This is its essence.”
Japanese Emperor Naruhito declared the Games open, with fireworks bursting over the stadium after he spoke.
Outside, hundreds of curious Tokyo residents lined a barricade that separated them from those entering — but just barely: Some of those going in took selfies with the onlookers across the barricades, and there was an excited carnival feeling. Some pedestrians waved enthusiastically to approaching Olympic buses.
The sports have already begun, and some of the focus is turning toward the competition to come.
Can the U.S. women’s soccer team, for instance, even after an early, shocking loss to Sweden, become the first to win an Olympics following a World Cup victory? Can Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama win gold in golf after becoming the first Japanese player to win the Masters? Will Italy’s Simona Quadarella challenge American standout Katie Ledecky in the 800- and 1,500-meter freestyle swimming races?
For now, however, it’s hard to miss how unusual these Games promise to be. The lovely national stadium can seem like an isolated militarized zone, surrounded by huge barricades. Roads around it have been sealed and businesses closed.
Inside, the feeling of sanitized, locked-down quarantine carries over. Fans, who would normally be screaming for their countries and mixing with people from around the world, have been banned, leaving only a carefully screened contingent of journalists, officials, athletes and participants.
Olympics often face opposition, but there’s also usually a pervasive feeling of national pride. Japan’s resentment centers on the belief that it was strong-armed into hosting — forced to pay billions and risk the health of a largely unvaccinated, deeply weary public — so the IOC can collect its billions in media revenue.
“Sometimes people ask why the Olympics exist, and there are at least two answers. One is they are a peerless global showcase of the human spirit as it pertains to sport, and the other is they are a peerless global showcase of the human spirit as it pertains to aristocrats getting luxurious hotel rooms and generous per diems,” Bruce Arthur, a sports columnist for the Toronto Star, wrote recently.
How did we get here? A quick review of the past year and a half seems operatic in its twists and turns.
A once-in-a-century pandemic forces the postponement of the 2020 version of the Games. A fusillade of scandals (sexism and other discrimination and bribery claims, overspending, ineptitude, bullying) unfolds. People in Japan, meanwhile, watch bewildered as an Olympics considered a bad idea by many scientists actually takes shape.
Japanese athletes, freed from onerous travel rules and able to train more normally, may enjoy a nice boost over their rivals in some cases, even without fans. Judo, a sport that Japan is traditionally a powerhouse in, will begin Saturday, giving the host nation a chance for early gold.
The reality, for now, is that the delta variant of the virus is still rising, straining the Japanese medical system in places, and raising fears of an avalanche of cases. Only a little over 20% of the population is fully vaccinated. And there have been near daily reports of positive virus cases within the so-called Olympic bubble that’s meant to separate the Olympic participants from the worried, skeptical Japanese population.
For a night, at least, the glamor and message of hope of the opening ceremonies may distract many global viewers from the surrounding anguish and anger.
“After more than half a century, the Olympic Games have returned to Tokyo,” Hashimoto said. “Now we will do everything in our power to make this Games a source of pride for generations to come.”
Olympics ceremony uses music from Japanese video games
The athletes of the Tokyo Olympics were greeted by a few familiar notes Friday night.
Those video game songs that get stuck in your head.
An orchestral medley of songs from iconic Japanese video games served as the soundtrack for the parade of countries at the opening ceremony. The arrangement included songs from games developed by SEGA, Capcom and Square Enix.
Video game themes are often maligned as annoying earworms, but in Japan, the music that accompanies games is considered an art form.
Video game composers are famous in Japan, and NieR, one of the series featured in the parade, has seen three of its soundtracks appear on Japanese music charts.
Read: Tokyo Olympics begin with muted ceremony and empty stadium
The first song played Friday was “Roto’s Theme” from the Dragon Quest series. Dragon Quest was enormously influential as the first console role-playing game, launching a genre. The series became so popular in Japan that 300 students were arrested for truancy after they left school to purchase Dragon Quest III.
The music of the Final Fantasy series is among the most familiar to western audiences. The parade included the main Final Fantasy theme and “Victory Fanfare,” the song that plays when a player wins an encounter. Both arrangements have been part of the series from its first to its fifteenth installments.
Another well-known song that was featured was “Star Light Zone,” from the original Sonic the Hedgehog. In addition to appearing in the original game, a remixed version appeared in the DS version of Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games.
Many of the iconic themes from other Nintendo games, such as Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda, weren’t played in the parade. And producers didn’t include many of the shorter jingles from early video games, such as Pac-Man and Asteroids.
Chakabva, Raza, Burl propel Zimbabwe to 298 in 3rd ODI
Zimbabwe put up a total of 298 runs in the third match of the three-match series against Bangladesh on Tuesday at the Harare Sports Club.
They lost the toss and batted first in this match.
Bangladesh made two changes to their playing XI from the last match. Mehidy Hasan and Shoriful Islam were rested to pave way for Nurul Hasa Shohan and Mustafizur Rahman.
Regis Chakabva, who opened the innings for the hosts today, struck 84 off 91 balls with seven fours and one six. It was his second fifty in the event.
Read: Bangladesh-Zimbabwe T20 series rescheduled
In the sixth wicket stand, Sikandar Raza and Ryan Burl added 112 runs, the highest runs in a single partnership in Zimbabwe’s innings. The stand was broken by Mustafizur, who was playing his first ODI in this series, removing Raza for 57 off 54 balls.
But Burl was there in the middle. Before falling prey to Saifuddin, Burl posted 59 off 43 with four fours and as many as sixes.
Saifuddin bagged three wickets in the 48th over removing Burl, Donald Tiripano and Tendai Chatara. Saifuddin conceded 87 runs in 8 overs to take three wickets. Mustafizur also bagged three wickets conceding 57 runs.
They eventually ended up on 298 all out in 49.3 overs.
Read: BAN vs. ZIM 2021: Shakib Breaks Kallis' Record
Bangladesh won the first two matches of this series and won the series as well.
This series is a part of the World Cup Super League. The top seven teams of this event along with the shots, India, will qualify directly to the World Cup 2023.
After the three-match ODI series, both teams will lock horns in three-match T20 series. All of those matches will take place at the same venue. Before the limited-over series, Bangladesh took on the hosts in a one-off Test and won that match by 220 runs.
Female surfers overcome sexism’s toll to earn Olympic berth
Johanne Defay of France was devastated when the mega sponsor Roxy dropped her right before she became a pro surfer in 2014, shattering her confidence and threatening her career altogether.
“They were just like ’Oh, you don’t look this way, you know, for, like, pictures,” Defay said. “And I just felt like I was never doing enough or I wasn’t fitting in, in the way that they wanted for their brand.”
Now, Defay is headed to the Tokyo Olympics for surfing’s debut at the Summer Games, buoyed by an upset win against reigning world champion Carissa Moore at the high-intensity Surf Ranch competition last month.
Though there’s much excitement and renewed enthusiasm for the women’s game, years of objectification, pay disparities and an opportunity gap have taken their toll. Industry leaders from the professional World Surf League and the developmental USA Surfing say they’re committed to righting the wrongs that have long held female surfers back in the male-dominated sport.
Read:Japan girds for a surreal Olympics, and questions are plenty
The mental, financial and logistical roadblocks for women in surfing date back centuries.
Hawaiians who invented the sport treated it as an egalitarian national pastime that all genders, ages and social classes enjoyed, according to Isaiah Helekunihi Walker, a Hawaii surfing historian. But Christian missionaries who arrived on the island tried to ban surfing in large part because of nudity — surfing naked was common at the sports’ inception. Though locals largely defied the colonizers, female surfers saw their ranks shrink disproportionately.
“When it comes to controlling nudity, it’s about controlling female bodies,” said Walker, also a BYU-Hawaii history professor.
Even for Moore, the child prodigy who could beat the boys before growing up to be — at 18 years old — the youngest World Surf League champion in history, she’s said she’s also struggled with her body image. Moore is 28 now and has spoken openly about starving herself as a teenager, only to binge eat later, and once even trying to force herself to throw up.
“Everyone had this idea of what a surfer girl should look like. And there were a lot of ‘hot lists’ or the ‘cutest surfer girl list,’” Moore said. “I never made them, but then you see who actually made them and you feel like: ‘Oh, I guess, like, that’s what I should look like.’”
Modern day professional surfing in a previous iteration had a decentralized approach that left brand sponsors in charge of many of the competition logistics, which would vary widely from one event to another, said Greg Cruse, USA Surfing CEO. And though it wasn’t an official rule or standard, there was clearly a preference for the men’s game.
Surfing schedules are determined in the morning based on what the ocean waves are like, and it was no secret that the boys’ and men’s competitions would be given the best surf conditions, usually in the morning. Female surfers took the scraps, if they were invited at all.
“There’d be the event directors and they would kind of schedule things the way they wanted to schedule and there would be bias from the outdated patriarchy. It’s changed immensely,” Cruse said. “It took a while for the women to complain about it.”
A turning point came in 2013, when new ownership took over the professional league and the rebranded WSL began to prioritize standardizing the competitions and rebuilding the women’s events, said Jessi Miley-Dyer, a retired pro surfer who now runs the WSL’s competition as senior vice president.
In 2019, the WSL as the leaders of the $10 billion surfing industry also began offering equal prize money for all its events, making it one of the few professional sports leagues to achieve pay equity.
“It was an important statement to make around the value of our athletes. More than anything, it speaks to the emphasis on women’s surfing. We believe men and women are valued the same,” Miley-Dyer said. “It’s the right thing to do.”
Read: Zero risk? Virus cases test Olympic organizers' assurances
The announcement was emotional for many, including Miley-Dyer. Back in 2006 when she won a pro event, she earned just $10,000 — a third of what the top male surfer took home.
“I cried because it means so much,” Miley-Dyer said. “I had also retired, so it wasn’t something for me, but it felt something to me and so many people like me.”
Next year will be the first time the WSL will include its women surfers at the famous Pipe Masters competition, allowing them the chance to ride the Banzai Pipeline in Oahu, Hawaii, considered by many the best waves in the world.
The WSL has also committed to hosting the same number of events and in the same locations for both the men and women, though the competition at the highest level today still has twice as many male competitor spots — 36 — compared to the women’s game.
In terms of skill and experience, the damage caused by decades of sexism has not yet been fully reversed.
It used to be that girls could begin competitive surfing training at about 11 years old while boys began as early as 4, Cruse said, adding that USA Surfing has closed this experience gap.
And surfboard makers, like many male leaders in the sport, used to believe that girls and women weren’t strong enough to paddle or ride powerfully enough to pull off airs, or aerial maneuvers, so they were given bigger surfboards that are physically easier to ride, but limited their ability to progress into more explosive moves.
So while airs have for years become the gold standard in the men’s competition, it is rarely done by the top female surfers today. Moore, the U.S. surfer to beat at the Olympics, is among the first women to land an air during competition, a milestone she achieved just recently but has no doubt electrified the women’s game and its future.
“They started demanding getting the same type of equipment that allows you to generate more speed and turn sharper and harder,” Cruse said. “Right now, there’s a group of girls coming up. The girls under 16 are better at airs than any of the women in the WSL. They already have the air game and it’s next level and there’s going to be a changing of the guard.”
For Defay, she persevered during her first year without corporate backing. She remembers feeling humiliated hearing others take for granted their private car services arranged by their sponsors after Defay arrived on a two-hour bus ride in order to save money.
She’s thankful fellow pro surfer Jeremy Flores helped sponsor her “insane” rookie season, as a nine-month season can cost as much as $80,000 in travel costs alone.
Read:Tokyo's daily COVID-19 cases top 1000 for 3rd straight day
Now, they’re equals, teammates in Japan on the French Olympic surfing team.
The 27-year-old Defay’s journey to the pros has made her hungrier than ever to prove her talents and worth at the world’s most elite sporting event. And she’ll do it with the body she has learned to appreciate, regardless of how any sponsor may have judged her before.
Though Roxy didn’t respond to requests for comment on Defay’s past sponsorship deal, the surfer declares this:
“I like my shoulders now and my butt,” Defay said with a smirk. “It’s just what it is and what makes me surf this way, so I try to celebrate it.”
Japan girds for a surreal Olympics, and questions are plenty
After a yearlong delay and months of hand-wringing that rippled across a pandemic-inflected world, a Summer Games unlike any other is at hand. It’s an Olympics, sure, but also, in a very real way, something quite different.
No foreign fans. No local attendance in Tokyo-area venues. A reluctant populace navigating a surge of virus cases amid a still-limited vaccination campaign. Athletes and their entourages confined to a quasi-bubble, under threat of deportation. Government minders and monitoring apps trying — in theory, at least — to track visitors’ every move. Alcohol curtailed or banned. Cultural exchanges, the kind that power the on-the-ground energy of most Games, completely absent.
And running like an electric current through it all: the inescapable knowledge of the suffering and sense of displacement that COVID-19 has ushered in, both here and around the world.
Read: Zero risk? Virus cases test Olympic organizers' assurances
All signs point to an utterly surreal and atomized Games, one that will divide Japan into two worlds during the month of Olympics and Paralympics competition.
On one side, most of Japan’s largely unvaccinated, increasingly resentful populace will continue soldiering on through the worst pandemic to hit the globe in a century, almost entirely separated from the spectacle of the Tokyo Games aside from what they see on TV. Illness and recovery, work and play, both curtailed by strict virus restrictions: Life, such as it is, will go on here.
Meanwhile, in massive (and massively expensive) locked-down stadiums, vaccinated super-athletes, and the legions of reporters, IOC officials, volunteers and handlers that make the Games go, will do their best to concentrate on sports served up to a rapt and remote audience of billions.
Since the pandemic canceled the originally scheduled version in 2020, the Japanese media have been obsessed with the Games. Will they really happen? If so, what will they look like? And the endlessly fascinating — shocking, really, to many here — prospect of staging an Olympics during what can seem like a slow-motion national disaster has permeated the society nearly as thoroughly as the virus.
“The mindset that the Olympics can be pushed through by force and that everyone should obey the order has invited this mess,” the Asahi newspaper said in a recent editorial. IOC and Japanese officials “should learn that their absurdity has deepened the public distrust in the Olympics.”
Of course, it’s too early to predict what, exactly, will happen when these cross-currents converge during the Games, as about 15,000 athletes and, by some estimates, nearly 70,000 officials, media and other participants insert themselves into the flow of Tokyo life in sequestered and limited, yet ubiquitous, ways.
Read:Tokyo's daily COVID-19 cases top 1000 for 3rd straight day
Will the normally hospitable Japanese people warm to the visitors or become increasingly infuriated as they watch fully vaccinated guests enjoy freedoms they haven’t experienced since early 2020? Will the Olympians and others play by the rules meant to protect the country they’re visiting? Will they bring in variants that will spread through Japan? Will the effort to vanquish the coronavirus be impeded?
One thing seems certain: These games will have far less of what the world has come to expect from the Olympics, with its attractive mixture of human competition at the highest level amid celebrations and cultural exchanges on the sidelines by fans, athletes and local people.
Usually, the Olympics are a vibrant time — a two-week party for a host city eager to show the world its charms. They teem with tourists and all the fun that an exotic locale and interesting visitors can bring. This go-round. though, will be strictly choreographed for TV, with the skeptical people of Japan largely isolated as yet another state of emergency places more constraints on their daily lives.
The story that foreign visitors focus on for these Games will also be very different from the reality on the nation’s streets.
Barring catastrophe, the IOC, local newspapers (many of which are also sponsors), Japanese TV, and rights holders like NBC will likely be unified in their message: Just getting through will be cast as a triumph.
Not many visiting journalists, however, will linger in ICUs or chase down interviews with angry residents who feel these Games were hoisted onto the nation so that the IOC could collect its billions in TV money.
Read:6 athletes to represent Bangladesh in Tokyo Olympics
More likely, there will be plenty of made-for-TV images of a tour-book version of Japan, one that mixes shots of ancient history, tradition and natural beauty with a high-tech, futuristic sensibility: Think of a sleek, silver bullet train, for instance, streaking past a snow-capped Mount Fuji. A reality, in other words, riddled with easy-to-digest cliches and predictable establishing shots.
As Tokyo grapples in coming weeks with the intrinsic oddness of these pandemic Olympics, the disconnect between sports and sickness, rhetoric and reality, visitor and local will be hard to miss for many here.
Just how a reluctant Japan will weather a high-risk experiment that might come to define the coronavirus pandemic in future years, however, must wait until the visitors pack up and go home. Only then will the true price that the host nation must pay for these Surreal Games come into focus.