Olympic 2021
Naomi Osaka eliminated from Tokyo Olympics tennis tournament
The host country’s superstar is out of the Tokyo Olympics.
Naomi Osaka lost to former French Open finalist Marketa Vondrousova of the Czech Republic 6-1, 6-4 in the third round of the Olympic tennis tournament on Tuesday.
The second-ranked Osaka, who was born in Japan and grew up in the United States, struggled with her usually reliable groundstrokes while the left-handed Vondrousova produced a series of drop-shot winners and other crafty shots that drew her opponent out of her comfort zone.
Read: Pandemic Olympics endured heat, and now a typhoon’s en route
“It’s tough for her also playing in Japan and in the Olympics,” the 42nd-ranked Vondrousova said. “It’s so much pressure, I cannot imagine.”
Osaka, who lit the Olympic cauldron in Friday’s opening ceremony, won her opening two matches in straight sets following a two-month mental-health break. But conditions were different Tuesday with the roof closed because it was raining outside.
Shortly after the match was over, organizers said that Osaka had left the venue and would not be talking to the media.
Osaka spoke openly to reporters after her first two matches. That came after she announced in May going into the French Open that she wouldn’t speak to reporters at that tournament, saying those interactions create doubts for her.
Then, after her first-round victory in Paris, she skipped the mandatory news conference.
Osaka was fined $15,000 and — surprisingly — publicly reprimanded by those in charge of Grand Slam tournaments, who said she could be suspended if she kept avoiding the media.
The next day, Osaka withdrew from Roland Garros entirely to take a mental health break, revealing she has dealt with depression.
Read: Tokyo Olympics 2020: Meet the Bangladesh Athletes
She sat out Wimbledon, too. So the Tokyo Games marked her return to competition.
Playing Osaka for the first time, Vondrousova came out with her entire game clicking from the start and quickly ran out to a 4-0 lead in the first set as Osaka hardly had time to gather herself.
Osaka then broke Vondrousova’s serve in the opening game of the second set but almost immediately handed the break back when she double-faulted to make it 2-2.
After Osaka lost her serve again to end the match by hitting a cross-court backhand wide, she shook hands with Vondrousova at the net, walked to her chair, zipped her racket up in her bag and followed Vondrousova off the court.
While both players produced 22 winners, Osaka hit 32 unforced errors to Vondrousova’s 10. But it wasn’t simply an off day for Osaka; it was also an outstanding performance from Vondrousova.
“I also (beat) Simona (Halep) twice, but I think now she (Osaka) is the greatest,” Vondrousova said. “The greatest in the game, and she was also the face of the Olympics so it was tough for her, I think, to play like this.”
Osaka got a decent 64% of her first serves in play but won only 49% of the points off her first serve.
During one point midway through the second set, Vondrousova hit an underspin, scooped forehand approach shot that landed right on the line — prompting Osaka to stare at the line for a few seconds in apparent disbelief.
Read:Olympics Shooting: Baki eliminated from 10-meter Air Rifles
Osaka had break points to take a 4-3 lead in the second but Vondrousova hit consecutive drop-shot winners to get back in the game and then held.
About 10 minutes later, the match was over.
“I just really believed the second I stepped on the court,” Vondrousova said. “I think that that’s the main thing.”
Pandemic Olympics endured heat, and now a typhoon’s en route
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.”
Prof Yunus gets highest viewership in Tokyo Olympics opening ceremony, says Yunus Centre
The highest number of TV viewers during the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics 2020 was recorded when Nobel Laureate Prof. Muhammad Yunus delivered his “Three Zeros” speech, following his acceptance of the Olympic Laurel.
Yunus Centre in Dhaka shared the information on Monday quoting a Toshiba report published on Yahoo News Japan.
According to the report, Japanese TV viewers were listening to his speech on 47 per cent of all TV sets in Japan.
Also read: ‘Honoured and overwhelmed’: Dr Yunus after receiving Olympic Laurel
Toshiba's viewer monitoring was based on the sample size of 340,000 TV sets in Japan.
This programme calculates the audience rating every second.
According to it, the audience rating rose to 10 per cent of TV sets in the first 10 minutes of the opening ceremony broadcast.
The number of viewers continued to rise until it reached the peak during Prof. Yunus's speech.
At the time Japanese audience were watching the ceremony on 47 per cent of all TV sets in Japan.
The Yahoo News Japan report also says audience rating of the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics was three times that of the opening ceremony of the Rio Olympics.
Yuji Suzuki, a well-known Japanese journalist who specialises in analytics, reported on the size of audience during the opening ceremony in an article published on Yahoo News Japan on July 24.
Prof. Yunus, in his Olympic Laurel acceptance speech, urged all athletes to build a world of Three Zeros.
Also read: Prof Yunus renews call for ensuring vaccine equality breaking profit wall
He defined the Three Zeros as: Zero net carbon emissions, zero wealth concentration to end poverty once and for all, and zero unemployment by unleashing the power of entrepreneurs in everyone.
If the whole world had the same percentage of tuning in to their television sets as in Japan (47%), that would mean 3.2 billion people all over the world were listening to his speech at the time.
When the march past of country delegations of athletes began after his speech the audience rating, however, began to decline sharply, according to Yunus Centre.
Athletes from more than 200 countries participated in the parade.
Tokyo Olympics 2020: Meet the Bangladesh Athletes
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
Olympics Shooting: Baki eliminated from 10-meter Air Rifles
Bangladesh 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 on Sunday.
He finished 41st among the 47 competitors of the event making a worse total score of 619.8.
Read:‘The greatest honor’: Osaka lights Olympic cauldron
Top eight shooters of the event qualified for the final round.
Later, In the event's final round, William Shaner of USA clinched gold medal with Olympics record scoring 251.6, Sheng Lihao of China earned the silver medal scoring 250.9 while Yang Haoran of China, who finished top in qualification round scoring 632.7, took the event's bronze scoring 229.4.
In the six-round 60-shoot qualifying series, Baki scored 102.8 in the first series, 103.4 in the 2nd series, 102.9 in the 3rd series, 103.8 in the 4th series, again 103.8 in the 5th series and 103.1 in the 6th and last series.
Read:Olympics, pandemic and politics: There’s no separating them
Commonwealth Games silver medalist Baki finished 25th among 50 participants in the Men's 10- meter Air Rifles scoring 621.2 in the Rio de Janeiro Olympics' 2016 in Brazil.
Meanwhile, a three-member Bangladesh athletics team due to fly for Japan Sunday afternoon to compete in the ongoing Tokyo Olympics.
Read:Zero risk? Virus cases test Olympic organizers' assurances
The athletics events of the Tokyo Olympics will begin on August 1.
Bangladesh Athletics team comprises team leader Advocate Abdur Rakib Montu, coach Abdullah Hel Kafi and athlete Mohammad Jahir Raihan.
This year’s four new Olympic sports, broken down
The Tokyo Olympics are introducing four new sports — skateboarding, surfing, karate and sport climbing. Each traveled its own unique path to the Games. Here, at a glance, from Associated Press journalists covering each sport, are the tales of how these sports reached Tokyo and what to watch for in each.
THE SPORT: Karate
WHEN IT DEBUTS: Aug. 5-7
WHY IT’S IN THE OLYMPICS NOW: Because it’s coming home for its Olympic debut. The martial art that spread across Japan in the early 20th century and soon became ubiquitous worldwide has been a candidate for Olympic inclusion since the 1970s, but organizers never found its case compelling until the Tokyo Games presented an opportunity to showcase its blend of striking combat and rigorous discipline from its homeland.
Read: ‘The greatest honor’: Osaka lights Olympic cauldron
WHAT TO LOOK FOR: The three days of competition at the famed Nippon Budokan will feature dozens of talented kumite (sparring) competitors in three weight divisions, along with the fascinating precision of kata (forms demonstration, often compared to a floor exercise in gymnastics). With karate currently on another upswing due to its resurgent popularity in movies and television, viewers are hoping to see excitement in a sport that isn’t always as violent as casual sports fans probably believe.
Read: Tokyo Olympics begin with muted ceremony and empty stadium
STARS TO WATCH: Japan’s greatest fighters will be under pressure to deliver. Naoto Sago’s competition against France’s Steven Da Costa and the best of the 67 kg field could be an opening day highlight. Miho Miyahara could kick off the women’s competition on the same day with another gold for Japan. Ken Nishimura is a favorite at 75 kg. The women’s kata competition is almost certain to be close between Spain’s Sandra Sánchez and Japan’s Kiyou Shimizu.
Olympics Archery: Bangladesh eliminated from mixed team event
Bangladesh got eliminated from the first round of recurve mixed team event (mixed doubles) on the 2nd day of the Tokyo Olympics Archery losing to stronger South Korea by straight 0-6 set points on Saturday.
Bangladesh’s celebrated Archer Ruman Shana pairing with talented woman archer Diya Siddique lost to Korean pair An San and Kim Je Deok in the round of 16 at the Yumenoshima Park Archery field in the Japanese capital.
Bangladesh suffered 30-38 defeat in the first set, conceded 33-35 defeat in the 2nd set and eliminated from the event conceding a narrow 38-39 defeat in the 3rd and final set to Korean pair.
South Korean partner finally clinched the event's gold medal beating their Netherlands rivals by 5-3 set points in the event's final on Saturday noon.
The Bangladeshi pair Ruman and Diya earlier played in the mixed team event final of the Archery World Cup Stage 2 held in Lausanne, Switzerland last May.
Earlier on Friday, the two Bangladeshi archers made a total score of 1297 to finish 16th and qualified for the round of 16 of the mixed event as the last team.
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.
In the recurve singles on July 27, Ruman will face Tom Hall of Great Britain while Diya will play a Belarus rival.
Archer Ruman directly qualified to compete in the Tokyo Olympics after winning the bronze medal in the recurve men 's singles of the Archery World Championship held in June, 2019.
Diya earned opportunity to complete in the Olympics after getting the wild card.
‘The greatest honor’: Osaka lights Olympic cauldron
What a moment for Naomi Osaka. For the new Japan. For racial injustice. For female athletes. For tennis.
The four-time Grand Slam winner lit the cauldron at the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics on Friday.
Read: Tokyo Olympics begin with muted ceremony and empty stadium
It was a choice that could be appreciated worldwide: In Japan, of course, the country where Osaka was born and the nation that she plays for; in embattled Haiti because that’s where her father is from; and surely in the United States, because that’s where the globe’s highest-earning female athlete lives and where she has been outspoken about racial injustice.
Plus, everywhere in between, because Osaka is a superstar.
But she has often received an uncomfortable welcome in Japan because of her race, with her family having moved to the U.S. when she was 3. Her emergence as a top tennis player has challenged public attitudes about identity in a homogeneous culture that is being pushed to change.
It’s always a mystery until the last moment who gets the honor of lighting the cauldron.
Sadaharu Oh, Shigeo Nagashima and Hideki Matsui were among the baseball greats who took part in bringing the flame into the stadium. And in a country where baseball is the No. 1 sport, Osaka was not necessarily expected to be given the ultimate honor.
But there she was at the center of the stage when a staircase emerged, the cauldron opened atop a peak inspired by Mount Fuji and Osaka ascended with the Olympic and Japanese flags blowing in the breeze off to her left. She dipped the flame in, the cauldron ignited and fireworks filled the sky.
“Undoubtedly the greatest athletic achievement and honor I will ever have in my life,” Osaka wrote on Instagram next to a picture of her smiling while holding the flame. “I have no words to describe the feelings I have right now, but I do know I am currently filled with gratefulness and thankfulness.”
Read: Olympics ceremony uses music from Japanese video games
It capped quite a series of events over the past two months for the 23-year-old Osaka.
Going into the French Open in late May, Osaka — who is ranked No. 2 — announced she wouldn’t speak to reporters at the tournament, saying those interactions create doubts for her.
Then, after her first-round victory, she skipped the mandatory news conference.
Osaka was fined $15,000 and — surprisingly — publicly reprimanded by those in charge of Grand Slam tournaments, who said she could be suspended if she kept avoiding the media.
The next day, Osaka withdrew from Roland Garros entirely to take a mental health break, revealing she has dealt with depression.
She sat out Wimbledon, too. So the Tokyo Games mark her return to competition.
“The Olympics are a special time, when the world comes together to celebrate sports. I am looking forward most to being with the athletes that had waited and trained for over 10 years, for celebrating a very hard year (2020) and having that happen in Japan makes it that much more special,” Osaka wrote in an email interview when she was selected as the 2020 AP Female Athlete of the Year. “It’s a special and beautiful country filled with culture, history and beauty. I cannot be more excited.”
There was a big hint that Osaka might have an important role in the ceremony when her opening match in the Olympic tennis tournament was pushed back from Saturday to Sunday without an explanation earlier in the day.
She was originally scheduled to play 52nd-ranked Zheng Saisai of China in the very first match of the Games on center court Saturday morning. But clearly by lighting the flame as midnight approached, she wouldn’t have had enough rest for an early morning match.
Osaka became the first tennis player to light the Olympic cauldron. She’s also one of the few active athletes to be given the honor. Australian sprinter Cathy Freeman lit the cauldron for the 2000 Sydney Games and went on to win gold in the 400 meters.
Osaka — along with top-ranked Ash Barty — is a favorite to win the women’s singles title in a tennis tournament that also features Novak Djokovic aiming to become the first man to win a Golden Slam by holding all four Grand Slam trophies and Olympic gold in the same year.
Whatever the final results on the court, Osaka has already become part of Olympic history.