First, the sun. Now: the wind and the rain. The Tokyo Olympics, delayed by the pandemic and opened under oppressive heat, are due for another hit of nature’s power: a typhoon arriving Tuesday morning that is forecast to disrupt at least some parts of the Games. “Feels like we’re trying to prepare for bloody everything,” said New Zealand rugby sevens player Andrew Knewstubb. Don’t worry, Japanese hosts say: In U.S. terms, the incoming weather is just a mid-grade tropical storm. And the surfers at Tsurigasaki beach say Tropical Storm Nepartak could actually improve the competition so long as it doesn’t hit the beach directly. But archery, rowing and sailing have already adjusted their Tuesday schedules. Tokyo Games spokesman Masa Takaya said there were no other changes expected. “It is a tropical storm of three grade out of five, so you shouldn’t be too much worried about that, but it is a typhoon in Japan interpretation,” Takaya said. “This is the weakest category, but this is still a typhoon so we should not be too optimistic about the impact of the course.” On the beach about 90 miles east of Tokyo, the competitors want the change in weather so long as the rain and wind don’t make total landfall. The surfing competition was delayed Monday because of low tide. But if the storm hits as expected, it could deliver waves twice as high as expected. “As a homeowner I say, ‘Oh no, stay away!’” said Kurt Korte, the official Olympic surfing forecaster. “But as a surfer, ‘OK, you can form if you stay out there,’ Everybody can agree a storm out in the distance is the best.” Also read: Tokyo Olympics 2020: Meet the Bangladesh Athletes The Japan Meteorological Agency said Nepartak was headed northwest over the Pacific Ocean east of Japan on Monday with landfall expected Tuesday afternoon. The storm could bring strong winds, up to 5.9 inches (150 millimeters) of rainfall and high waves as it cuts across Japan’s northeastern region. In advance, organizers made the first major alterations to the Olympic archery schedule because of weather. There was an hour delay at the Beijing Games in 2008. Here, the Tuesday afternoon sessions have been postponed until Wednesday and Thursday. “We’ve heard that storm could be anything from rain or 80-mph wind,” said American archer Jack Williams. Added Brady Ellison, his teammate: “Unless there’s lightning, right here, we’ll shoot it. We’ll deal with whatever it’s going to be. Rain just starts to suck in general.” Beach volleyball plays in everything but lightning. Both the women’s final at the Beijing Games and men’s final at the Rio Games were held in heavy rain. At Ariake Tennis Park, center court has a retractable roof that can be closed for inclement weather, but play on outer courts would have to be suspended. Also read: Tokyo Olympics begin with muted ceremony and empty stadium “They can move every match, I think, if there is really going to be a typhoon with rain,” said Daniil Medvedev, the No. 2 player in the world. “We never know. I guess they will maybe try to move six matches, but it depends how long the matches will be." Any sort of rain — typhoon, tropical storm, or even light sprinkling — will be a wild swing from the first three days of the Games.   Svetlana Gomboeva collapsed from heatstroke on the first day of archery but recovered to win a silver medal. Top-seeded Novak Djokovic and Medvedev, who who complained his first round match was “some of the worst” heat he’d ever played in, successfully leaned on the International Tennis Federation to give Olympics players extra time during breaks to offset the high temperatures. Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova had resorted to shoving bags of ice up her skirt, and fiddled with a tube blowing cold air next to her seat. At skateboarding, the intense sun turned the park into a furnace, radiating off the light concrete with such blinding effect that skaters complained the heat was softening the rubber joints on their wheel axles and making the boards harder to control. July and August in Japan are notoriously hot and humid. Japan has faced criticism for not accurately describing the severity and instead, during the bidding process, calling it mild and ideal. Daytime highs regularly hit 95 degrees (35 Celsius) but have exceeded 104 degrees (40 Celsius) in some places in recent years. The Environment Ministry began issuing heatstroke alerts in July 2020 for the Tokyo areas and in April for the entire nation. Japan reported 112 deaths from June to September last year, as well as 64,869 people taken to hospitals by ambulance for heat-related issues. Tokyo logged the largest number of heat stroke sufferers at 5,836 during the three-month period. Australian canoeist Jessica Fox, the gold medal favorite in the kayak slalom, said the wild weather swings have been a disruption to the Olympic event. “It is like a bath,” she said. “It is like paddling in bathwater.” And the impending typhoon disruption? “I am a bit concerned about that,” Fox said. “I saw the surfers and they were all excited about the weather, which isn’t ideal for us.” If Tuesday’s bronze medal softball game is postponed, the Canada team worries it could get stuck in Japan because members had flights the following day. “We very much hope that the game goes (Tuesday) so that we can get on a plane and go home,” coach Mark Smith said. “As you probably know, with the pandemic, that flights are very hard to come by.” The weather extremes are just another obstacle Olympic organizers have faced during these beleaguered Games, already delayed a year because of the coronavirus pandemic. Asked on Monday if Tokyo officials feel they can’t catch a break, Takaya said they’ve had to be flexible. “I mean, you know, we’re supposed to react to any situation, that’s one of our jobs,” he said. “This is absolutely a regular exercise we have to face.”

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

The calendar has flipped over in the Land of the Rising Sun, marking the beginning of Japan’s Olympic Month. The 2020 summer Olympic Games are supposed to kick-off on July 23 with a watered-down grand opening at the newly built national stadium in Tokyo. Japan had won the bid to hold this sought-after event in Tokyo in September 2013 and since then the metropolitan government as well as the central administration had taken a number of bold measures to ensure a successful holding of this grand sporting celebration on a global scale. Everything was moving almost in a seamless manner well until the unfolding of a great tragedy that the world started encountering in the form of coronavirus, which eventually had upturned many of our plans; including the 2020 Olympic Games. As a result, the Olympic Games that Tokyo was looking forward to, was postponed for a year and the dates and schedules for all related events were shifted to 2021. The organizers, though, kept the old name of Tokyo 2020 unchanged. During the subsequent year-long period of slow down and emergencies, the organizers of the games were busy finding ways that would allow the events to go ahead and also would not pose any serious health threat to participants, officials, spectators, as well as people of the host city. At the height of the infection during the second half of last year, nobody was able to foresee convincingly about the future of the Games in Tokyo. There were wild card calls for a blanket cancellation or indefinite postponement, as the virus started travelling all over the places causing rampant devastation and increasing the fear that a large-scale gathering like the Olympics might turn out to be suicidal. It should be noted that a second postponement would have virtually killed Tokyo 2020, as the busy window of international sporting events would probably have little option to allow the game to be held at different times other than the following year, and thus killing Tokyo 2020 altogether. Fortunately, this did not happen, though uncertainty remains over the important question of how the events are eventually to be held. Also read: Olympic Day 2021 observed in Dhaka For Tokyo, the Olympic debacle is not something completely new. We all know Japan not only successfully staged the 1964 summer Olympic Games, but did it with a tremendous success that raised the profile of the country and also that of the Asian continent, to the extent that the successful holding of 1964 Summer Olympics became synonymous to Japan’s miraculous economic progress. The bullet train Shinkansen is a product of 1964 Tokyo Olympic games, so are many of the country's industrial and consumer products with which the name of the country later became closely associated. The 1964 Tokyo Olympics, thus, marked Japan’s rise as a dominant force in the global economy. The country since then has been playing an expanded role not only in fostering a balanced global growth, but also in finding ways for helping nations that are still in need of help. In the subsequent decades since the 1964 Olympic Games, Japan has become more involved in global issues like combating global warming and environment pollution, disaster reduction and mitigation, public health, urbanization, sustainable development, as well as peace-keeping. Compared to that, Tokyo 2020 had a real rough ride. The name of the game had been tainted right from the beginning with a number of scandals, ranging from the initially approved logo and scrapping of the already decided plan for a new national stadium to the forced resignation of a number of high officials who were closely involved in the handling of preparations of the games. However, right at the moment when it looked as if Japan had successfully managed to overcome most of the difficulties, the advent of coronavirus dealt a severe blow and the games prospects once again turned extremely bleak. Though a number of issues, including how many spectators will be allowed to each of the Olympic Venues and how to ensure that the incoming flow of athletes and guests from overseas will not fuel further the spread of virus, it now looks like a definite conclusion that Tokyo 2020 will mark the start on July 23. Japan in general seems to be not lucky enough for what accounts to be hosting the Olympic Games. The rocky road that Olympic preparations had to go through during the last two years speaks all about that. But this is not the first time that Japan’s Olympic luck came across formidable obstacles. Also read: Tokyo shapes up to be No-Fun Olympics with many rules, tests Tokyo’s first successful Olympic bid was for the 1940 games, the right Japan had won during the controversial 1936 Berlin Games. The country was earnestly looking forward to the arrival of the game in Asian soil for the first time ever, and a number of new venues were already underway when the start of World War II in European soil in September 1939 effectively put an end to that ambitious dream of Tokyo. For Japan, the year 1940 was earmarked as 2,600th anniversary of Emperor Jimmu’s accession to the throne as the first emperor in Japanese history and the government planned a number of events coinciding with the hosting of the 1940 Olympic Games. But all that eventually turned out to be shattered dreams and as the consequences of the war for Japan had been extremely devastating, Tokyo for a number of years did not have any opportunity to revive that lost hope and go for another bid. However, the country eventually could realize that dream within two decades. The Olympics are also a time for hope for many of the athletes who participate. A near empty venue is not what they would expect and welcome. However, at the time of distress, it is definitely better than dumping the hope for good. Let this spirit of Olympic participation remain high, not only until the flags are raised, but also throughout the whole period of two games – 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics.

The organizers of this summer's Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics will hold an online meeting on Saturday and most likely agree that overseas spectators will not be allowed to attend the games amid the coronavirus pandemic, officials familiar with the schedule said Thursday.

The Tokyo Games organizing committee said Monday the Olympic torch relay's opening ceremony on March 25 will be held without spectators in the northeastern Fukushima Prefecture to help prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Athletes barred from entering Japan due to coronavirus-related travel restrictions may be permitted to do so after the current state of emergency is lifted, sources with knowledge of the matter said Saturday.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Japan reiterated on Friday their commitment to hosting the Tokyo Olympics this year and denied a report of a possible cancellation.

The Olympic flame is going on display in Tokyo, not far from the new National Stadium where it was supposed to be burning a month ago.

Tokyo Olympic organizers and the International Olympic Committee said Friday there is no "Plan B" for the 2020 Games, which open in just over five months and have been jolted by the outbreak of a virus in neighboring China.

Tokyo Olympic organizers reiterated their message on Thursday at the start of two days of meetings with the International Olympic Committee: the Summer Games will not be waylaid by the coronavirus that is spreading from neighboring China.