Tag: Tokyo Olympics 2020

  • Tokyo Olympics: Oborududu Wins Silver Medal In Women Wrestling

    Tokyo Olympics: Oborududu Wins Silver Medal In Women Wrestling

    Team Nigeria’s Blessing Oborududu on Tuesday won a silver medal in the women’s freestyle 68kg wrestling category.

    She had guaranteed Nigeria a medal on Monday after beating Mongolia’s Battsetseg Soronzonbold to reach the final.

    Although she lost the final to American world champion Stock Mensah Tamyra Marianna 4-1, the 32-year-old can be proud of her achievement after earning Nigeria’s second medal at the Tokyo games.

    Earlier in the day, Ese Brume had made the country proud by winning bronze in long jump.

  • Tokyo Olympics: Ese Brume Wins Nigeria’s First Medal

    Tokyo Olympics: Ese Brume Wins Nigeria’s First Medal

    Long jumper Ese Brume has won Nigeria’s first medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

    Brume, 25, claimed the bronze medal in the women’s long jump at the Olympic Stadium in Tokyo on Tuesday.

    She achieved the feat with a 6.97m jump, two days after she qualified for the finals with a jump of 6.76m.

    Germany’s Malaika Mihambo beat Brume to the gold medal with a 7.00m jump while Brittney Reese of the United States won the silver medal.

    Brume’s win adds to positive news for Nigeria at the Olympics after a run of negative news of defeats and the disqualification of some of the country’s athletes.

    On Monday, Blessing Oborududu beat Mongolia’s Battsetseg Soronzonbold to reach the final of the women’s freestyle 68kg wrestling. The win guaranteed Nigeria a medal at the Olympics.

    Brume’s win gives Nigerians more reasons to cheer.

  • JUST IN: Opening Ceremony For Tokyo Olympics Begins

    JUST IN: Opening Ceremony For Tokyo Olympics Begins

    The opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics began on Friday in a nearly empty stadium after a year-long pandemic postponement and a build-up marred by scandal and controversy.

    A video showing athletes training at home during the coronavirus pandemic started the show, with pink fireworks bursting into the air after a countdown.

    The ceremony in the 68,000-capacity stadium is taking place before just a few hundred officials and dignitaries, including Japan’s Emperor Naruhito, French President Emmanuel Macron and US First Lady Jill Biden.

    The emperor will officially declare the Games open.

    The Olympics have faced opposition in Japan over fears the global gathering of 11,000 athletes could trigger a super-spreader event.

    Organisers have put strict virus measures in place, banning overseas fans for the first time ever, and keeping domestic spectators out of all but a handful of venues.

    Athletes, support staff and media are subject to strict Covid-19 protocols, including regular testing and daily health checks.

    Polls have consistently found a majority of Japanese are against the Games, with opinion ranging from weary indifference to outright hostility.

    But there was plenty of enthusiasm outside the Olympic Stadium in the hours before the ceremony, as hundreds of people gathered hoping to soak up the atmosphere and watch the fireworks expected during the extravaganza.

    Mako Fukuhara arrived six hours before the ceremony to grab a spot.

    “Until now it didn’t feel like the Olympics, but now we are by the stadium, it feels like the Olympics,” she told AFP as people snapped selfies nearby.

    – ‘Determined’ –
    Traditionally a highlight of any Summer Games, featuring the parade of nations and the lighting of the Olympic cauldron, Tokyo’s opening ceremony has been drastically pared back.

    Fewer than 1,000 dignitaries and officials are present at the stadium, and in a sign of how divisive the Games remain, several top sponsors including Toyota and Panasonic are not attending.

    A few hundred protestors demonstrated against the Games outside the stadium as the ceremony began.

    Tokyo is battling a surge in virus cases, and is under emergency measures that means bars and restaurants must shut by 8:00 pm and cannot sell alcohol.

    – Dogged by controversy –
    But Olympic officials have put a brave face on the unusual circumstances, with IOC chief Thomas Bach insisting cancellation was never on the table.

    “Over the past 15 months we had to take many decisions on very uncertain grounds,” he said this week. “We had doubts every day. There were sleepless nights.

    “We can finally see at the end of the dark tunnel. Cancellation was never an option for us. The IOC never abandons the athletes… we did it for the athletes.”

    There are also hefty financial incentives in play. Insiders estimate the IOC would have been on the hook for around $1.5 billion in lost broadcasting revenues if the Games had been cancelled.

    The pandemic has not been the only hiccup in preparations though, with scandals ranging from corruption during the bidding process to plagiarism allegations over the design of the Tokyo 2020 logo.

    The controversies kept coming right up to the eve of the Games, with the opening ceremony’s director sacked on Thursday for making a joke referencing the Holocaust in a video from 1998.

    Back in the sporting arenas, a new generation of Olympic stars are looking to shine after a decade dominated by the likes of Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps.

    US swimmer Caeleb Dressel could target seven gold medals, and in track and field, 400 metre hurdlers Karsten Warholm of Norway and the USA’s Sydney McLaughlin are among those hoping to emerge as household names.

    Gymnastics meanwhile will see Simone Biles attempt to crown her dazzling career by equalling Larisa Latynina’s record of nine Olympic gold medals.

    New Olympic sports will also be on display in Tokyo, with surfing, skateboarding, sport climbing and karate all making their debut.

  • If we don’t have Tokyo Games, we’re unlikely to have Beijing 2022  — IOC member

    If we don’t have Tokyo Games, we’re unlikely to have Beijing 2022 — IOC member

    If the postponed Tokyo Olympics do not go ahead next year due to COVID-19, then the 2022 Beijing Winter Games will likely also fall victim to the pandemic.

    Long-time International Olympic Committee (IOC) member Dick Pound made the assertion on Wednesday in London.

    “If there is no vaccine and countries are unable to contain the pandemic that continues to rage in different regions of the world, killing more than 580,000 people, then the IOC could once again be forced to postpone or cancel the Tokyo Olympics.

    “This will most likely trigger a knock-on effect taking out the Beijing Games as well,’’ Pound said.

    The Beijing Winter Olympics are scheduled for Feb. 4 to Feb. 20, 2022, just six months after the Tokyo Summer Games.

    The Tokyo Games are now set to be held from July 23 to Aug. 8, 2021 after being pushed back a year by the novel coronavirus outbreak.

    “Taking the political side out of it for the moment say there is a COVID problem in July and August next year in Tokyo, it is hard to imagine there is not going to be a knock-on effect in the same area five months later,” Pound told Reuters.

    The Beijing Olympics could be further complicated by a number of political showdowns.

    This includs an increasingly unstable and volatile situation in Hong Kong and an American election that could see U.S./China relations as one of the main issues.

    U.S. President Donald Trump has labelled the pandemic the “China virus” and blamed the country for the outbreak that first emerged from the Chinese city of Wuhan.

    For months, Trump has maintained China must be “held accountable” for failing to contain the disease.

    Pound, a Canadian lawyer who has served as both an IOC vice-president and head of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), speculated that any number of scenarios could arise.

    These included one where the threat is not so much of a U.S. boycott of the Games, but one where China might consider barring the U.S. from taking part.

    This will be if the country cannot gain control over the virus.

    “At least one part of the U.S. is planning an election campaign which is all anti-China,” said Pound.

    “If you are a conspiracy theorist, you might say well, the WHO is strongly influenced by China and they could probably without smirking too much go to a WHO meeting,

    “These meetings are usually from which the U.S. will no longer be associated, and say this isn’t positive health.

    “There could be the largest number of cases in the world (in the U.S.) and it would be dangerous having Americans coming to China.

    “That is an extreme supposition. There are all kinds of crazy things that could happen.”

    Pound underscored that at the moment the Tokyo Summer Olympics have the IOC’s complete attention.

    But he added that by the end of the year Beijing would also be on their radar.

    “It (China) will certainly not be discussed at the next IOC session we have on Friday,” said Pound. “It is mostly reports and concerns about how we are dealing with Tokyo.

    “Beijing is really not on the table at the moment and I think it will be an unnecessarily complicated thing to bring that in because we simply do not know about it yet.”(Reuters/NAN)