- Saturday, November 23, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
AT a mega sporting show like the Olympics, there is no dearth of incidents ever, sometimes funny or embarrassing too. The ongoing Tokyo Games have been no exception.
Here are some incidents related to the 2021 Olympics that made the headlines for various reasons.
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Leading South Korean broadcaster MBC drew ire over its plan to cover each nation participating at the Olympics during the opening ceremony held in Tokyo on July 23. It picked captions and illustrations as symbols of the participating countries but some of them went haywire and it soon caused an outrage, forcing the network to issue an apology.
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How did MBC mess it up?
While it picked items like pizza as Italy’s symbol or salmon for Norway, it showed images of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster when the delegation from Ukraine came out. As for Haiti, the Korean broadcaster showed a picture of a riot while El Salvador was shown by a promotional bitcoin poster.
While describing the Marshall Islands, MBC wrote in the captions “a former nuclear test site for the United States”. About Haiti, it wrote it as a country “with an unstable political situation due to the assassination of its president”.
The social media platform was soon abuzz with the MBC’s coverage of the opening ceremony and one user accused it of using “whatever popped up first on Google”.
“This is a serious diplomatic discourtesy,” another said.
China’s gold-winning weightlifter Li Fabin has a signature style and he showed it off again at the Tokyo Olympics. The 28-year-old is known for standing on one leg while holding a massive weight above his head and he manages the balance in style. His bizarre action has earned him the name ‘flamingo lift’ after the bird that stands one-legged.
Li Fabin and the flamingo lift! https://t.co/dcFe0hIItw pic.twitter.com/qwPrCW5koc
— Ashish Magotra (@clutchplay) July 25, 2021
Li though doesn’t suggest others to ape his style. “It’s a lift I wouldn’t suggest anyone else should learn,” he told AFP.
The weightlifter, who won a gold in 61-kilogram category, stunned the world by performing the ‘flamingo lift’ in the 2017 Asian Championships in Turkmenistan but said he hasn’t been able to do it much since then because of injury.
“Standing on one leg is not a regular balance move. I can only do it because I have great core and abdomen muscle strength,” he said.
The world believes you Li, especially when you pull off an Olympic gold.
Covid protocols are the highest priority at the Olympic Games since they are held at the time of a devastating pandemic. Yet, to give an opportunity to the medallists, the organisers said the winners on the podium would be given 30 seconds to pose for mask-free photos.
The athletes on the podium are shown a sign telling them to remove their masks briefly for the media flashlights. But that 30-seconds time frame is far too significant, the organisers have stressed.
Australian coach Dean Boxall, however, cared little for the mask protocol after Ariarne Titmus caused an upset in swimming by narrowly defeating hot favourite Katie Ledecky, a five-time gold medallist who has never lost an Olympic final. Boxhall, who was nowhere near the podium, was so ecstatic that he kicked the air, hammered his fists and even ripped off his mask, despite a volunteer trying to dissuade him.
Australian slalom canoeist Jessica Fox won a gold and bronze at the Tokyo Olympics and guess what helped her to bag those prized metals? A condom. Yes, you read it right. Earlier this week, before Fox won her medals, she was seen in a video fixing her kayak with a condom. The video which was shared by an athlete on TikTok showed her carefully sliding the rubber over the front of her carrier.
“Bet you never knew condoms could be used for kayak repairs,” Fox wrote in the caption in her now-viral TikTok video.
In the video, a person is seen applying a carbon mixture to the front of the vessel and then the condom is used to secure the mixture. According to Fox, the rubber gave the carbon a smooth finish. Fox then went on to win the gold – her first-ever at the quadrennial event.
Organisers of the Tokyo Games handed over around 160,000 condoms in the village. However, they said that distribution of condoms is not for use at the athletes’ village but for the athletes to take them back to their home countries to raise awareness about HIV and AIDS, Reuters reported.
