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Tokyo Olympics 2020: Meet the Bangladesh Athletes
The Summer Olympic Games are major international sporting event in which competitors from all over the world participate in a variety of sports. The Olympic Games are held every four years and are regarded as the most important sporting event. The coronavirus epidemic prevented the 2020 Summer Olympics from taking place as planned. One year later, the Tokyo Olympics 2020 has finally started on July 23, 2021, and the tournament will end on August 8. This year's event has a total of six Bangladeshi participants. Let's take a look at the Bangladeshi athletes who have qualified for the Tokyo Olympics 2020.
List of Bangladeshi Athletes Qualified for the Tokyo Olympics 2020
Six Bangladeshi athletes are competing in archery, athletics, shooting, and swimming, at the Tokyo Olympics 2020.
Archery
Participant: Mohammad Ruman Shana, 26
Event: Men's individual & Mixed Team
Ruman Shana has won several international competitions, including gold in the 2014 First Asian Grand Prix, bronze in the 2019 World Archery Championships, and gold in the Asia Cup ranking tournament. He and Diya Siddique won silver in the recurve mixed team event at the Archery World Cup on May 23, 2021. Archery is the only sport in which Bangladesh has the possibility of winning a medal in the Olympics.
Read WHO head says Olympics virus risk inevitable
Participant: Diya Siddique, 17
Event: Women's individual& Mixed Team
Born on 19 February 2004, Diya Siddique is one of the youngest participants in this year's event. She earned a medal in the 2021 Archery World Cup at a young age. At the Archery World Cup, Diya and Ruman Shana took silver in the recurve mixed team event.
Read Olympics Archery: Bangladesh eliminated from mixed team event
Athletics
Participant: Mohammad Jahir Rayhan, 20
Event: Men's 400 m
Jahir set a personal best of 46.86 seconds in the 400m race at the 42nd National Championships in 2019, while his best time in international competition is 47.34 seconds. In 2017, Mohammad Jahir reached the Asian Youth Athletics Championship semi-finals in Thailand.
Read Olympics Archery: Bangladesh qualify for mixed doubles
Shooting
Participant: Abdullah Hel Baki, 31
Event: Men's 10 m air rifle
Abdullah Hel Baki is a Bangladeshi shooter with a lot of international experience. Abdullah Baki was a silver medalist in the 2014 and 2018 Commonwealth Games, as well as a bronze medalist in the 2010 Games.
Read Olympics Shooting: Baki eliminated from 10-meter Air Rifles
Swimming
Participant: Mohammed Ariful Islam, 22
Event: Men's 50 m freestyle
22-year-old Navy swimmer Mohammed Ariful Islam is another Bangladeshi athlete competing in the Tokyo Olympics 2020. Ariful has been participating in a French solidarity scholarship program since 2018. He has been selected to participate in the 50m freestyle event.
Read In swimming, it’s different strokes for different folks
Participant: Junayna Ahmed, 18
Event: Women's 50 m freestyle
18-year-old Junayna Ahmed has achieved considerable success on the international stage. She earned bronze medals in the women's 400-meter individual medley, 800-meter freestyle, and 200-meter butterfly events at the 2019 South Asian Games in Nepal.
Read As Tokyo Games open, can Olympic flame burn away the funk?
Bottom Line
Despite the fact that Bangladeshi athletes have competed in the Summer Olympics on a regular basis since independence, they have yet to win a single medal. There is a slim chance of winning a medal at the Tokyo Olympics 2020 for Bangladeshi participants. The main goal of the Bangladeshi athletes will be to advance to the next round. We must try to improve sports in Bangladesh as a whole in order to win a medal in a major event like the Olympics.
Read Female surfers overcome sexism’s toll to earn Olympic berth
Olympics Shooting: Baki eliminated from 10-meter Air Rifles
Bangladesh famed shooter Abdullah Hel Baki was eliminated from the qualification round of his favourite Men's 10- meter Air Rifles of the Tokyo Olympics Shooting at the Asaka Shooting Range in the Japanese capital on Sunday.
He finished 41st among the 47 competitors of the event making a worse total score of 619.8.
Read:‘The greatest honor’: Osaka lights Olympic cauldron
Top eight shooters of the event qualified for the final round.
Later, In the event's final round, William Shaner of USA clinched gold medal with Olympics record scoring 251.6, Sheng Lihao of China earned the silver medal scoring 250.9 while Yang Haoran of China, who finished top in qualification round scoring 632.7, took the event's bronze scoring 229.4.
In the six-round 60-shoot qualifying series, Baki scored 102.8 in the first series, 103.4 in the 2nd series, 102.9 in the 3rd series, 103.8 in the 4th series, again 103.8 in the 5th series and 103.1 in the 6th and last series.
Read:Olympics, pandemic and politics: There’s no separating them
Commonwealth Games silver medalist Baki finished 25th among 50 participants in the Men's 10- meter Air Rifles scoring 621.2 in the Rio de Janeiro Olympics' 2016 in Brazil.
Meanwhile, a three-member Bangladesh athletics team due to fly for Japan Sunday afternoon to compete in the ongoing Tokyo Olympics.
Read:Zero risk? Virus cases test Olympic organizers' assurances
The athletics events of the Tokyo Olympics will begin on August 1.
Bangladesh Athletics team comprises team leader Advocate Abdur Rakib Montu, coach Abdullah Hel Kafi and athlete Mohammad Jahir Raihan.
Olympics Archery: Bangladesh eliminated from mixed team event
Bangladesh got eliminated from the first round of recurve mixed team event (mixed doubles) on the 2nd day of the Tokyo Olympics Archery losing to stronger South Korea by straight 0-6 set points on Saturday.
Bangladesh’s celebrated Archer Ruman Shana pairing with talented woman archer Diya Siddique lost to Korean pair An San and Kim Je Deok in the round of 16 at the Yumenoshima Park Archery field in the Japanese capital.
Bangladesh suffered 30-38 defeat in the first set, conceded 33-35 defeat in the 2nd set and eliminated from the event conceding a narrow 38-39 defeat in the 3rd and final set to Korean pair.
South Korean partner finally clinched the event's gold medal beating their Netherlands rivals by 5-3 set points in the event's final on Saturday noon.
The Bangladeshi pair Ruman and Diya earlier played in the mixed team event final of the Archery World Cup Stage 2 held in Lausanne, Switzerland last May.
Earlier on Friday, the two Bangladeshi archers made a total score of 1297 to finish 16th and qualified for the round of 16 of the mixed event as the last team.
Ruman finished 17th among 64 competitors in the ranking round of recurve individual scoring 662 while Diya finished 36th among 64 participants in the ranking round making her career best score of 635.
In the recurve singles on July 27, Ruman will face Tom Hall of Great Britain while Diya will play a Belarus rival.
Archer Ruman directly qualified to compete in the Tokyo Olympics after winning the bronze medal in the recurve men 's singles of the Archery World Championship held in June, 2019.
Diya earned opportunity to complete in the Olympics after getting the wild card.
Olympics Archery: Bangladesh qualify for mixed doubles
Bangladeshi celebrated archers Ruman Shana, and Diya Siddique qualified for the round of 16 of the recurve mixed event (mixed doubles) of the Tokyo Olympics Archery at the Yumenoshima Park Archery field Friday.
Diya finished 36th among 64 participants in the ranking round of recurve individual, shooting a career-high 635 points.
Ruman finished 17th among 64 competitors in the ranking round of recurve individual, scoring 662. His career-best is 686 points.
Read: Archery World Cup: Bangladesh recurve men's, women's teams eliminated
The two Bangladeshi archers scored 1,297 to finish 16th and qualified for the round of 16 of the mixed doubles as the last team, knocking out their nearest rival Canada (1295).
In the mixed doubles, the Bangladeshi pair will face South Korea Saturday.
In the recurve singles, Diya Siddique will play against her Belarusian rival while Ruman will face a British archer.
Read: Asia Cup Archery: Bangladesh team earn two silver, one bronze medal
Ruman Shana directly qualified to compete in the Tokyo Olympics after winning the bronze medal in the recurve men's singles of the Archery World Championship in June 2019 while Diya Siddique earned the chance to compete in the Olympics after getting a wildcard entry from the organisers.
As Tokyo Games open, can Olympic flame burn away the funk?
Disputed, locked down and running a year late, the Tokyo Games begin at last on Friday night, a multinational showcase of the finest athletes of a world fragmented by disease — and an event steeped in the political and medical baggage of a relentless pandemic whose presence haunts every Olympic corner.
As the first pandemic Games in a century convene largely without spectators and opposed by much of the host nation, the disbelief and anger of those kept outside the near-deserted national stadium threaten to drown out the usual carefully packaged glitz and soaring rhetoric about sports and peace that are the hallmarks of the opening ceremony.
“‘The festival of peace’ is now starting in an unimaginably disastrous state,” the Asahi newspaper said in an editorial, citing “confusion, distrust and unease.”
Hand in hand with this feeling of calamity is 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 it be enough?
Read: Olympics, pandemic and politics: There’s no separating them
“It,” in this case, is the product that’s being packaged and sold, the commodity that has saved past Olympics when they’ve become mired in problems: the deep, intrinsic human attachment to the spectacle of sporting competition at the highest possible level.
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.
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.
The sports have already begun — softball and soccer, for example — 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 is an isolated militarized zone, surrounded by huge barricades. Roads around it are sealed and businesses closed.
Read:Australia’s Brisbane selected to host 2032 Summer Olympic Games
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.
“We will continue to try to have this dialogue with the Japanese people knowing we will not succeed 100%. That would be putting the bar too high,” said IOC President Thomas Bach. “But we’re also confident that once the Japanese people see the Japanese athletes performing in these Olympic Games — hopefully successfully — that then the attitude will become less emotional.”
Japanese athletes, freed from onerous travel rules and able to train more normally, may indeed 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.
Read:Japan girds for a surreal Olympics, and questions are plenty
Still, while it’s possible that “people may come out of the Olympics feeling good about themselves and about Japan having hosted the Games against all odds,” Koichi Nakano, a political science professor at Sophia University in Tokyo, believes that such a scenario “is way too optimistic.”
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.
“But for the Japanese people, who will have a much more direct experience and feel more viscerally the empty stadiums and the strange contrast between this spectacle and their own continued struggles with controlling the pandemic, it may not have the same impact,” said Daniel Sneider, a lecturer in East Asian Studies at Stanford University.
In swimming, it’s different strokes for different folks
The Hungarians like medleys. The Dutch have been known to dominate in sprinting. The Japanese specialize in breaststroke. The Swedes excel at butterfly.
In a sport like swimming, where medals will be handed out in a whopping 35 different pool events at the Tokyo Olympics, it makes sense that many countries focus on a single stroke or event.
“It’s all about which role models you have when you grow up,” said Sarah Sjöström, the Swedish standout who has won one Olympic gold and seven world titles in butterfly events.
Also read: Which Swimming Style Is Best For Fat Loss?
Sjöström’s idols as a kid were six-time Olympian Therese Alshammar, Anna-Karin Kammerling and Josefin Lillhage. Alshammar and Kammerling swam the fly and freestyle sprints and Lillhage did the 200-meter freestyle.
No wonder why Sjöström has built her career around the fly and free sprints, as well as the 200 free.
“I wanted to race Therese. I wanted to race Anna-Karin Kammerling and Josefin Lillhage,” Sjöström said. “In Sweden the girls look up to me. They want to race me in the future, so they want to race the 50 and 100 fly.”
Also read: Former Olympic swimming champion van der Burgh has virus
Butterfly is popular in Hungary, too, although that’s part of a bigger tradition that’s all about the grueling medley events that feature all four strokes: butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle.
Tamás Darnyi swept gold in both medleys (the 200 and the 400) at the 1988 and 1992 Olympics and Krisztina Egerszegi won the 400 IM in 1992 to add to a bunch of backstroke medals.
Four of the six Olympic medals won by László Cseh between 2004 and 2012 came in IM and then Katinka Hosszú swept gold in the IMs four years ago in Rio de Janeiro.
“For us Hungarians, we are very stubborn and very much hard-working and we can just grind it out,” said Hosszú, who is nicknamed the “Iron Lady.”
“The 400 IM is where Hungary gets a lot of respect, because a 400 IM is really about how much work you put in,” Hosszú added.
Dutch veterans Ranomi Kromowidjojo and Femke Heemskerk grew up idolizing sprinting legends Inge de Bruijn and Pieter van den Hoogenband and train in a pool named for the latter.
“We are tall people and we are a very small country, so we have to train wisely,” Heemskerk said. “In Hungary they’re used to hard work from a very young age. We don’t do that, so maybe that’s why we sprint.”
Russia also has a tradition of producing great freestyle sprinters, led by Alexander Popov; as do the French with Alain Bernard and Frédérick Bousquet paving the way for current contender Florent Manaudou.
There are exceptions to the rule, of course.
Kira Toussaint is the rare Dutch backstroker and Arno Kamminga, another Dutch swimmer, races breaststroke. While Toussaint is the daughter of an Olympic backstroking champion, both she and Kamminga attribute their stroke choices to their body sizes: they are shorter and stockier than their sprint teammates.
“I’m not that long or tall,” Kamminga acknowledged. “But I always loved the breaststroke. … I’m just happy to be competing with the best of the world.”
Even the United States and Australia, swimming’s two powerhouse teams, have their pet events.
For the U.S., it’s the men’s 100 and 200 backstroke, where the team’s last Olympic loss for both events came in 1992. Ryan Murphy, who swept both races in Rio, will attempt to keep the streak going next week, building on a legacy that has also included doubles from Lenny Krayzelburg and Aaron Peirsol.
Between 1992 and 2004, Australian men won the 1,500 free — the longest race in the pool — at four consecutive Olympics. Kieren Perkins (1992 and 1996) and Grant Hackett (2000 and 2004) each won consecutive golds in the event.
These days, Italy is a force in the distance events, with both Gregorio Paltrinieri and Simona Quadarella medal favorites in the 1,500.
In breaststroke, the host country’s rising star is 20-year-old Shoma Sato. The bar was set high by Japanese great Kosuke Kitajima, who swept both breaststroke events at the 2004 and 2008 Games.
“(Kitajima) transformed the way breaststroke was swam,” said Christian Minotti, Quadarella’s coach. “He modernized the stroke and made it more creative and fluid.”
WHO head says Olympics virus risk inevitable
The Latest on the Tokyo Olympics, which are taking place under heavy restrictions after a year’s delay because of the coronavirus pandemic:
The head of the World Health Organization says the Tokyo Olympics should not be judged by how many COVID-19 cases arise because eliminating risk is impossible.
WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told an International Olympic Committee meeting that how infections are handled is what matters most.
Also read: Japan girds for a surreal Olympics, and questions are plenty
“The mark of success is making sure that any cases are identified, isolated, traced and cared for as quickly as possible and onward transmission is interrupted,” he said.
The number of Games-linked COVID-19 cases in Japan this month was 79 on Wednesday, with more international athletes testing positive at home and unable to travel.
Teammates classed as close contacts of infected athletes can continue training and preparing for events under a regime of isolation and extra monitoring.
Host Japan is off to a winning start as the Tokyo Olympics get underway, beating Australia 8-1 Wednesday in softball behind 39-year-old pitcher Yukiko Ueno, who won the 2008 gold medal game against the United States.
Also read: Tokyo's daily COVID-19 cases top 1,000 for 3rd straight day, just a week before Olympics
The game was played in a nearly empty stadium. Fans were barred because of the coronavirus pandemic. Many in Japan have questioned whether the Olympics should take place at all with low levels of vaccination in the nation.
Ueno allowed two hits over 4 1/3 innings and struck out seven, throwing 85 pitches for the win.
Minori Naito and Saki Yamazaki hit two-run homers off loser Kaia Parnaby. Yu Yamamoto, who had three RBIs, added a two-run drive against Tarni Stepto in the fifth that ended the game under a rout rule.
Japan is defending softball gold medalist after upsetting the U.S. in the 2008 final. Softball and baseball were dropped for 2012 and 2016 and restored for these Olympics. They already have been dropped for the 2024 Paris Games but are likely to be restored for 2028 in Los Angeles.
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.”
Chess World Cup begins in Russia
FIDE Men's and Women's World Cup 2021 began in Russia's Sochi Monday.
In the first round of the FIDE World Cup, GM Murshed is playing against Paraguay's GM Delgado Ramirez Neuris (rating-2622) and GM Ziaur Rahman (rating-2429) is facing Iran's GM Idani Pouya (rating-2614).
In the first round of the FIDE Women's World Cup, WIM Sharmin Sultana Shirin (rating-2011) is playing against the US GM Yip Carissa (rating-2430).
In the first round, each player will play two matches, one with the white pieces and one with the black pieces. If the first round produces equal results, the winner of the second round will be determined through rapid and blitz chess.
Two hundred and six players are participating in the FIDE World Cup and 103 players in the FIDE Women's World Cup.
The Chess World Cup, a knockout tournament, is held every two years.
Asian Chess for Disabled: Marufa finishes 6th
Marufa Azad Sukanya of Bangladesh has finished sixth in the women's section of the Asian Chess Championship for Players with Disabilities 2021, securing three points from five matches.
The tournament took place from July 9-11 online; two male and two female players from Bangladesh took part in it.
READ: How will the virus emergency affect the Olympics?
Apart from Marufa, another Bangladesh female player Sharmi Roy collected two points from the competition.
In the men's section, Bappi Sarkar of Bangladesh secured two points from five matches while another Bangladeshi Md Ali Newaz Sarkar bagged one point.
READ: Nazmus Shakib elected Asia Rugby development committee member