Sunisa Lee’s gymnastics are stunning. They’re just not “perfect.” Not technically, anyway. Thousands of hours of practice. Dozens upon dozens of competitions. And not once has a judge watched the new Olympic all-around champion do her thing — not even on uneven bars, where the 45-second set she plans doing in Sunday’s event finals is a free-flowing series of connections and releases that make it seem as if she is floating — and thought “that’s flawless.” Lee is not alone. No elite gymnast — not even American star and six-time Olympic medalist Simone Biles — has received a perfect score since the sport moved off the “10” system to a new Code of Points in 2006. Scores are now a combination of the difficulty of the routine (which is open-ended) and the execution, which is based on a 10.0 scale. In theory, “perfect” execution is possible. It’s just that no one has ever done it. A reality that long ago led Lee to make peace with the idea that a faultless routine is a myth, no matter how it may feel to her or how it may look to everyone other than the two people in blue blazers sitting at the judge’s tables. Instead, she shoots for what she considers her best, perhaps out of a sense of self-preservation more than anything. Her 15.400 on bars during the team final was the highest of the night by any athlete on any event and a spectacular display that helped the U.S. claim silver. It also included 1.4 points of deductions, and she could sense them piling up even as her teammates roared encouragement. Hard to blame her for sounding relieved on Friday when talking about her impending switch to competing collegiately at Auburn. “(I want to) kind of get away from this elite atmosphere just because it’s so, like, crazy,” Lee said. It’s a mental and physical grind. Gymnastics can wreak havoc on the body and cast doubt in the mind. Every single turn in every single rotation in every single practice every single day of your career can be tweaked. “It’s hard in that sense because it is such a sport where you’re trying to reach perfection, but perfection is unattainable,” said three-time Olympian Ellie Black of Canada. “I still struggle sometimes. It’s not like you ever get something and it’s easy for the rest of your life and the rest of your career.” Read: Olympics Latest: 6 banished for breaking COVID rules For Lee, a release of sort awaits. NCAA training is limited to 20 hours a week. The difficulty and length of routines are a step down from what Lee is used to and the 10-point scoring system remains very much alive. A shot at drilling a routine and being rewarded for it awaits, even if Lee called it “weird to think about it.” Such is the delicate psychological dance between the world’s best gymnasts and their sport. Lee has been competing under the international code for so long, she can’t even fathom the idea of seeing a score flash that doesn’t include being nitpicked to within an inch of its life. It takes copious amounts of mental strength to thrive when nothing — from a technical standpoint anyway — is up to the ultimate standard, which puts it at odds with most other sports. Tom Brady can throw a 50-yard spiral for a touchdown. Steph Curry can swish a 3-pointer. Those moments don’t exist in gymnastics. Black believes the code of points makes up for it in other ways. The open-ended nature of the system allows for more creativity in putting together routines. “That’s the part of it that’s kind of addicting,” said Black, who qualified for the Olympic all-around final before an ankle injury forced her to sit out. “There’s something new to try.” Besides, Black figures, “if you could just hit something perfectly, you’d probably lose some of that interest or motivation to keep going.” So Black — just like every other gymnast on the planet — searches for tiny moments of bliss. The stuck dismount. The mastery of a new skill. The smooth connection from one element to another. Still, the inner voice — the one that can feel the wobble or sense the imperfect hand placement — can be tough to turn off. American Chellsie Memmel won a world all-around title in 2005 and was part of the silver-medal winning U.S. team in Beijing in 2008. Memmel retired and went into coaching and judging before beginning returning to training during the pandemic. Even as her skills returned, turning the “judge” switch off was difficult. She records every routine then does a video review with her father Andy, who also serves as her coach. She loves the immediate feedback on what’s going right and what’s going wrong while trying to make a point to not be too hard on herself. Read: ‘OK not to be OK’: Mental health takes top role at Olympics “You have to give yourself some leeway and not beat yourself up about it,” said the 33-year-old Memmel, who competed at the U.S. championships in June. “You have to look at it like: ‘OK, that was fine, but where can I make those improvements? What needs to be fixed?’” Even if the fixing can feel relentless. Biles has come closer than anyone to cracking the code. During the second day of the 2015 U.S. gymnastics championships, the then-18-year-old’s Amanar vault drew an audible “ooooh” throughout the arena when her feet suction-cupped to the mat on her dismount. It looked perfect. It felt perfect. It wasn’t. She received a 9.9-E score. Asked later whether she knows where the deduction might have come from, she shrugged and laughingly suggested her toes were crossed. It’s that same vault — a roundoff/back handspring onto the table followed by 2 1/2 twists — that Biles bailed on during the first rotation of team finals in Tokyo after getting lost in the air. Her availability for the rest of the Games is in question. She already has pulled out of the all-around, uneven bars, vault and floor exercise finals. Maybe she returns for one final bow during the beam final on Tuesday, though time is running out for her bout with “the twisties,” as she described them, to subside. It’s a phenomenon that occasionally plagues gymnasts regardless of skill level, even the greatest of all time. It also highlights the sport’s own Sisyphean pursuit of an ultimate goal that can never be achieved. Maybe that’s not the point anyway. “People need to understand we’re not robots,” said all-around silver medalist Rebeca Andrade of Brazil. A concept Biles, Lee and all the others who gathered in Tokyo have long understood. If they were consumed with perfection, they would have bailed years ago. Go out there. Do you what you can as well as you can for as long as you can. The battle after all, isn’t with the judges. It’s with yourself. “I usually don’t even try and think about the score,” Lee said. “Because that’s when I come out on top.” And what could be more perfect than that?

Athlete Jahir Rayhan will compete in the heats of his lone event Men's 400-meter run of the Tokyo Olympics'202O at the Olympics Stadium in Tokyo on Sunday morning. He will compete in lane-2 of the event's heats number-3 at 8:O1 am (Bangladesh time) along with the athletes of USA, Brazil, Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobacco, Slovenia and Congo. Jahir is keen to display his career best performance in his favourite 400-meter in the Bangladesh's last event in the ongoing Tokyo Olympics.  He will be the 3rd Bangladeshi athlete to compete in 400-meter of the Olympics after 29 years after the participation of Mehdi Hasan in the Bercelona Olympics'1992 and Milzer Hossain in the Seoul Olympics in 1988. The present best timing of Jahir is 47.34 second. Earlier on last Friday, five Bangladeshi athletes out of  six--archer Ruman Shana, Diya Siddique, shooter Abdullah Hel Baki swimmers Ariful Islam and Junaina Ahmed-- completed their Tokyo Olympics assignments. Except shooter Baki, all the Bangladeshi athletes performed their best show in the mega games. Two Bangladeshi swimmers--M Ariful Islam and Junayna Ahmed were eliminated from their respective heats of the men's and women's 50-meter freestyle swimming of the Tokyo Olympics'2020 making their career best timings at Tokyo Aquatic Center on Friday. Read: Tokyo Olympics 2020: Meet the Bangladesh Athletes Ariful Islam, who had the honour of carrying the Bangladesh national flag in the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics, finished 3rd in heats number- 4 among eight competitors scoring his career best timing of 24.81 seconds. In the overall ranking, Ariful was placed 51st among 73 competitors of the event. His previous best timing of the event was 24.92 seconds made in the World Swimming Championship in South Korea in 2019. In the Women's 50- meter freestyle, Junayna Ahmed, a Bangladeshi origin London- based swimmer, finished 5th among eight swimmers in heats number 3 scoring her career best timing of 29.78 seconds. The overall ranking of Junayna in the event is 68th among 83 competitors. The previous best timing of Junaina Ahmed in the event was 30.96 second made in the World Swimming Championship in South Korea in 2019. Earlier Thursday, Bangladeshi promising teen-age archer Diya Siddique eliminated from the women's recurve singles after making a brilliant fight in shoot-off stage of Tokyo Olympics '2020 Archery at the Yumenoshima Park Archery field in the Japanese capital. Read: Olympics Archery: Diya Siddique eliminated from recurve singles in shoot-off The 17-year-old talented archer from Nilphamari District, Diya lost to her much superior opponent  Karyna Dziominskaya of Belarus by 5-6 set points  in a nerve shattering ups and downs elimination round match of the women 's recurve singles amid huge appreciations from games lovers. She made a good start beating her superior rival by 23-22 points in the first set, suffered 25-26 points defeat in the 2nd set, played 25-25 in the 3rd set, conceded 25-27 defeat in the 4th set and earned a 27-25 victory in the 5th set to tie the match 5-5 set points. Later, in the match fate-deciding shoot off, Diya, was miserably eliminated from the event in the very first attempt scoring 9 points against her opponent's score of 10 points. Earlier, Bangladesh’s 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 last Sunday. He finished 41st among the 47 competitors of the event making a worse total score of 619.8. Country's celebrated archer M Ruman Shana was eliminated from round of 32 of the men's recurve singles losing to his Canadian rival Duenas Chispin by 4-6 set points in a keenly contested match  last Tuesday. Ruman smartly advanced to the round-32 of the event eliminating Tom Hall of Great Britain by 7-3 set points in the elimination round Tuesday morning. On last Saturday, Bangladeshi archer Ruman Shana pairing with woman archer Diya Siddique lost to event's gold medalist South Korean pair An San and Kim Je Deok in the round-16 of the mixed team event (mixed doubles) of Olympics. The two Bangladeshi archers made a total score of 1297 to finish 16th and qualified for the round of 16 of the mixed team event. 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.

The torch relay for the postponed Tokyo Olympics began its 121-day journey across Japan on Thursday and is headed toward the opening ceremony in Tokyo on July 23. The relay began in northeastern Fukushima prefecture, the area that was devastated by the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and the meltdown of three nuclear reactors. About 18,000 died in the tragedy. Also Read: Tokyo Olympics postponed The first runner with the torch was Azusa Iwashimizu, a key player in the Japan team that won the Women’s World Cup in 2011. Wearing a white track suit, she carried the torch out of the J-Village indoor soccer training center and was surrounded by 14 other members of that 2011 World Cup squad and coach Norio Sasaki at the rear. They were also decked out in white track suits. Also Read: Speculation over Tokyo Olympics: 2021, 2032 or not at all? The ceremony was closed to the public because of the fear of spreading COVID-19 but was streamed live. “The torch of Tokyo 2020 will become a bright light for hope for Japanese citizens and citizens in the world and a light at the end of the tunnel,” said Seiko Hashimoto, the president of the local organizing committee and a former Olympian herself. Homare Sawa, the biggest star on the 2011 team, missed the ceremony. She is being treated for a condition affecting her inner ear and had to withdraw from the event. Fans were told to social-distance along the roadside as the torch passes, and they were to refrain from loud cheering. Organizers have said they will stop or reroute the relay if crowding becomes a problem during the four-month parade. Spectators cooperated in Naraha Town, just down the road from where the torch started its trip. A few hundred people stood on the roadside and were safely spread out. “At first I didn’t think much of it,” said 20-year-old Takumu Kimura. “But when I actually saw it, it felt like: — yes, it’s the Olympics.” Setsuko Hashimoto, a 63-year-old local resident, was emotional as the torch passed. “Ten years ago there was a nuclear accident so (seeing the torch) it felt like I could really look forward to something and live,” she said. “When you become my age, this is the last Tokyo Olympics and it’s here. It was very touching.” Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga chimed in from Tokyo with a statement. “The Olympic torch relay starting from today is a valuable opportunity for the people to get a real sense of the Olympics and Paralympics that are approaching,” Suga told reporters. Local organizers and the International Olympic Committee hope the relay will turn public opinion in Japan in favor of the Olympics. Sentiments expressed in polls in Japan so far are overwhelmingly negative with about 80% suggesting another delay or cancellation. The relay and the Olympics both stir fear that the events could spread the virus. There is also opposition to the soaring cost of staging the Olympics, now put officially at $15.4 billion. Several audits suggest it’s twice that much and a University of Oxford study says these are the most expensive Olympics on record. The relay is a big test for the upcoming Olympics with fear among the public that the event could spread the virus to rural and more isolated parts of the country. Vaccinations have not been rolled out yet in Japan to the general public. About 9,000 deaths in the country have been attributed to COVID-19. About 10,000 runners are expected to take part, with the relay touching Japan’s 47 prefectures. After the postponement a year ago, there was early talk of eliminating the relay to save money. However, that idea was quickly dropped with the relay heavily sponsored by Coca-Cola and Toyota. The relay is a prelude to the difficulties the Olympics and Paralympics will present with 15,400 athletes entering Japan, along with thousands of other officials, judges, VIPs, media, and broadcasters. Athletes will be kept in a “bubble” like atmosphere in Tokyo and will be limited to the Athletes Village on Tokyo Bay, the competition venues and training areas. Most others will be outside the bubble and will be kept at a distance from the athletes. Organizers announced a few days ago that fans from abroad will be banned from attending the Olympics and Paralympics. Most volunteers from abroad have also been ruled out. Organizers are to announce the venue capacities in April. Ticket revenue for the Olympics was to be $800 million but will be severely reduced by the lack of fans. Japanese government entities will have to make up the shortfall.