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BY VICTOR HENSLEY, Information + Document Workers
It’s taken 5 years, a worldwide pandemic and numerous trials and tribulations to get right here, however this week, the Summer time Video games are formally again.
That is the season of staying up late to look at stay broadcasts, re-runs and highlights of occasions you may not in any other case exit of your strategy to see. (My private favourite is handball, the thrilling sport that resembles a drier model of water polo. After which there’s precise water polo, which is simply as superior — like handball, solely wetter.)
Plus, it’s the one time in the US when non-traditional sports activities (gymnastics, swimming, observe & area) appear to garner extra consideration than conventional ones (basketball, soccer, now baseball). When you concentrate on latest Olympic greats, your thoughts probably drifts to Simone Biles, Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt or Katie Ledecky, not Kevin Durant or LeBron James, regardless of every of the latter two having received two gold medals for the U.S.
The world’s best worldwide athletic spectacle is coming your manner on Friday, July 23 — lasting till Aug. 8 — and as anticipated, Tokyo 2020 goes to be packed filled with stars, storylines and controversies.
Listed below are among the most essential/intriguing storylines you need to know earlier than you sit down to look at the opening ceremony on Friday night.
1. COVID-19 strikes once more
Final 12 months, the Tokyo Olympics had been pushed again to 2021 after COVID-19 ravaged the globe and shut down worldwide journey and sports activities of all variety in loads of nations for many of 2020 (and a part of 2021).
Now, as vaccination numbers rise the world over, COVID remains to be discovering methods to sneak into even essentially the most unique occasions.
To date, greater than 70 individuals linked to the Video games — a mixture of occasion/staff staffers, officers and athletes — have examined constructive for the virus simply days earlier than the torch is ready to be lit on Friday.
The record consists of notable U.S. athletes like rising tennis star Coco Gauff, Washington Wizards’ guard Bradley Beal and the Seattle Storm ahead Katie Lou Samuelson, who was scheduled to play within the inaugural ladies’s 3×3 basketball occasion in Tokyo.
On Tuesday, the chief of the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee, Toshiro Muto, didn’t rule out the thought of canceling the Video games if COVID-19 instances proceed to spike.
In latest weeks, protests have popped up in Tokyo calling for the federal government to cancel the Olympics primarily becaue of public well being issues. In a June ballot taken by The Asahi Shimbun, one in all Japan’s most notable newspapers, 62% of respondents had been in favor of a cancellation.
All of this comes alongside the latest information {that a} state of emergency had been put into place for Tokyo till Aug. 22 as a consequence of a surge in constructive coronavirus instances within the metropolis. The IOC and Japanese authorities determined to ban all spectators from the Video games following the announcement.
As of now, there was no change to the Olympic schedule, but when COVID-19 instances proceed to go up, the Video games may very well be in jeopardy.
2. Extra sports activities maintain coming
If you happen to had been getting bored with watching the identical 28 Olympic sports activities annually, then you definitely’re in luck.
In 2016, the IOC permitted the addition of 5 sports activities to the Olympic roster for the 2020 Video games, together with baseball/softball, karate, skateboarding, sports activities climbing and browsing, including an extra 18 occasions and 474 athletes to the slate.
Group USA has representatives in all 5 sports activities, together with a makeshift baseball staff filled with former MLB stars and rising prospects that intention to make noise within the six-team area.
3. The place the U.S. might be a shoe-in for gold …
When it comes to Olympic gold medals, there isn’t a rustic that holds a candle to Group USA.
Over the length of the Video games’ historical past, the U.S. has amassed 1,127 gold medals, somewhat over 400 greater than Russia (726), the second-place nation, and practically 550 greater than Germany (578) in third place.
This 12 months, the U.S. has loads of alternatives so as to add to that complete, beginning with gymnast Simone Biles, who’s arguably the gymnastics G.O.A.T. and already has two strikes nicknamed “the Biles” as a result of … effectively … she’s the one one that can do them.
There’s a shot that Biles, the defending all-around Olympic champion, may win as many as 5 golds in Tokyo, which might internet her a tie with Soviet Larisa Latynina for essentially the most Olympic gold medals by a feminine gymnast in historical past.
Along with Biles, you’ll be able to’t speak about worldwide competitors with out mentioning the U.S. ladies’s soccer staff, the reigning World Cup champion led by Carli Lloyd and Megan Rapinoe. It’d be a shock if Group USA didn’t win the gold on the pitch.
And there are a lot extra, akin to observe & area (together with Noah Lyles, the reigning world champion within the males’s 200-meter sprint and Dalilah Muhammad/Sydney McLaughlin, who every have a shot to win gold within the ladies’s 400-meter hurdles in an intense race, amongst others), swimming (Katie Ledecky has received 5 golds up to now and will probably search a three-peat within the ladies’s 800-meter freestyle, whereas Simone Manuel received a whopping 4 golds within the Rio 2016 Video games), to call a couple of.
4. … and the place it may not
OK, the jig is up.
That is only a place for me to write down about how badly Group USA males’s basketball staff has carried out in its exhibition video games up so far.
The staff, spearheaded by superstars Kevin Durant, Damian Lillard and Jayson Tatum, appeared less-than-stellar in its pre-Olympic competitors, which included two uncharacteristic exhibition losses — one to Nigeria, 90-87, and one other to Australia, 91-83 — and two wins towards Argentina and Spain.
We’re used to seeing Group USA dominate its competitors — just like the 83-point, 156-73 win over Nigeria within the 2012 London Olympics — so anytime our stars falter, even by taking part in shut video games, it looks as if the basketball world is crashing down.
In actuality, issues are so much much less dramatic.
Group USA is headed to Japan with a shorthanded roster, down a couple of gamers who’re nonetheless competing within the NBA Finals (the Milwaukee Bucks’ Jrue Vacation and Khris Middleton, the Phoenix Suns’ Devin Booker) and one participant, the Chicago Bulls’ Zach LaVine, who’s in well being and security protocols as a consequence of a possible COVID-19 publicity.
However as soon as the complete roster’s collectively, there’s likelihood Durant turns again into his function as one of many best scorers of all-time, Lillard begins taking part in like he has ice in his veins and the U.S. retains its basketball dominance.
They’re the favorites for a cause.
Reporter Victor Hensley might be reached at vhensley@chathamnr.com or on Twitter at @Frezeal33.
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