Sports Reporter :
The Olympic Games, which originated in ancient Greece as many as 3,000 years ago, were revived in the late 19th century and have become the world’s preeminent sporting competition. From the 8th century B.C. to the 4th century A.D., the Games were held every four years in Olympia, located in the western Peloponnese peninsula.
The first modern Olympics took place in 1896 in Athens, and featured 280 participants from 12 nations, competing in 43 events. Since 1994, the Summer and the Winter Olympic Games are being held separately and have alternated every two years. The 2020 Summer Olympics was delayed for one year because of the Covid-19 pandemic, ended on August 8, 2021 in Tokyo, Japan.
Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937) of France is the father of the modern Olympics. In this respect France has an extraordinary contribution to sports. Sir Julio Rimet, another French is the architect of the World Cup Football. The trophy Julio Rimet Cup being won by Brazil forever in 1970, the present trophy has been named after FIFA. The European Football Championship also is the contribution of France.
The success of the Tokyo Olympics is that the devastating Corona could not stop the journey of the games. Over 11,000 athletes from 206 countries and regions participated, rejoiced and exchanged views and compassions with one another. They were fearless, determined and free from politics.
By this time, the world has known the results that the USA finally superceded China to remain at the top of the world of sports. The USA, China and hosts Japan captured 39-41-33, 38-32-18 and 27-14-17 medals respectively. Great Britain who surprisingly finished ahead of China four/five years ago got 22-21-22 medals.
In 2016, the USA got 46 gold medals, Great Britain 28 and China 26 only. If the results are compared, then it will be seen that China improved a lot, but both the USA and Britain produced poorer performance.
As continent, Europe retained their supremacy with 139 gold medals (West Europe 85 and East Europe 54 only); Asia captured 93 gold medals (East Asia 75, Central Asia including Iran 10, West Asia including Israel 4, South East Asia 3 and South Asia one only); North America 56, Oceania including Australia 25, South America 15 and Africa 11 only.
One of the most attractive disciplines was soccer. Brazil captured the gold medal back to back. They beat Spain by 2-1 in the extra time match. Brazil has been still stressing on the individual display, but there are no accurate shooters. On the other hand, Spain dedicated to the passing football and sudden shoot into the opponents’ post.
An US swimmer won five gold medals in the swimming discipline (male), while an Australian female swimmer captured seven medals to her credit. Italy’s Marcel Jackboy became the fastest man in the world, taking 9.80 seconds.
Bermuda, Philippines and Qatar won the gold medals in the Olympic games for the first time, while Burkina Faso, San Marino and Turkmenistan captured medals of any kind for the first time. Twenty-six world records were broken. Total gold medals were 339 in 50 disciplines.
