Category: Olympics

Simone for #nocompetition in beauty

Olympic athletes join SK-II to declare #NOCOMPETITION in beauty

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

As the world’s sporting talents are gearing up for Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, a band of top athletes have joined forces to declare a battle against beauty standards that they’ve never signed up for, led by cult-favourite beauty brand SK-II.

… Biles, along with an impressive roster of fellow Olympic athletes, including world-record holder swimmer Liu Xiang and the Japan volleyball team, have joined forces with SK-II for #nocompetition, a new global campaign created to inspire women to live by their own definitions of beauty.

Biles admits that in an image-obsessed era, ignoring the pressure to measure up isn’t always easy, not even for her. “I’ve been dealing with scrutiny my whole life. I had to go through puberty in the public eye. It’s hard and social media doesn’t make it any better, but I think the campaign will help us as women to speak up about toxic beauty standards,” …

Simone Biles Has a Message of Self-Acceptance

Kenzo Shirai’s comeback

Japanese media reporting at the 2019 Toyota International on whether or not Kenzo will qualify to their Olympic team.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Speed Climbing in the Tokyo Olympics

Sport climbing will be included in the 2020 Summer Olympics for the first time.

The proposed format will consist of three disciplines: lead climbing, speed climbing and bouldering. The winner will be determined based on who performs best in all three disciplines. It was previously tested at the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics. …

The decision to combine three disciplines—Lead climbing, Bouldering and Speed climbing—with one set of medals per gender—caused widespread criticism in the climbing world.

Climber Lynn Hill said the decision to include speed climbing was like “asking a middle distance runner to compete in the sprint.” …

Personally I think Speed Climbing will be the most popular of the three with a worldwide audience.

The Usain Bolt of Men’s Speed Climbing (so far) has been Reza Alipour from Iran.

Click PLAY or watch his World Record on YouTube.

Click PLAY or watch women’s World Record Holder Aries Susanti Rahayu on YouTube.

Neither will be in Tokyo as they are specialists.

Iran’s female gymnast at the 1964 Olympics

You might have seen this headline – Kimia Alizadeh won a bronze medal for taekwondo at the 2016 summer Olympics:

Iran’s Only Female Olympic Medalist Says She Has Defected

I support Kimia’s desire to train in an environment that better supports women in sport.

The Medal Count posted a history of Women’s Gymnastics in Iran:

The Middle East has some of the worst participation rates for women in sports. …

For a sport where its athletes wear leotards, women’s artistic gymnastics (WAG) is one of the last sports these nations would ever consider due to modesty standards …

At the 1964 Olympics Iran sent women to the Olympics for the first time in its history. …

Djamileh Sorouri was only 14 years old …

She had even been sent to the Olympics without her coach. …

In response Vera Caslavska and the Czechoslovakian team stepped in. They took Djamileh Sorouri under their wing and had the young Iranian train alongside them in the buildup to the Olympics. …

The 1964 Olympics would be both the beginning and the end of Iranian Olympic gymnastics. The country hasn’t sent a gymnast from either genders to the Olympics since. …

When Iran had Women’s Gymnastics

IOC on keeping politics out of sport

Simone — for example — is welcome to express her views on any topic during an Olympic Press conference, but not on the podium.

Olympic leaders have long sought to keep political displays out of the international competition.

Rule 50 of the Olympic Charter, which serves as the foundational rulebook for the Games, prohibits athletes from any kind of “demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda.”

But the three-page document published Thursday by the IOC sought to provide more detail and nuance to that long-standing rule. It specified the locations where protests will not be allowed, including the field of play, the Olympic Village and during medal ceremonies and opening and closing ceremonies.

It also outlined times that athletes will be allowed to express political views: In press conferences, at team meetings or on digital media platforms.

“It should be noted that expressing views is different from protests and demonstrations,” the guidelines say. …

USA Today

Transgender women in the Olympics

Obviously everyone has the right to compete in sport.

IOC must decide on rules. Enforce those rules.

There’s no perfect dividing line. It will take many years of fine tuning to get those rules as fair as possible.

Click PLAY or watch it on Facebook.

whither Gymnastics in Brazil

Renata Cappeliano translated an article by Demetrio Vecchioli looking at the BIG picture.

At the start of the quad, Brazil looked like they could potentially challenge for a team medal. They competed in the team final at the Rio Olympics. They lost Aleksandr Aleksandrov but gained Valeri Liukin. …

… despite offering first world infrastructure to its best generation ever, it’s not hard to guess what it lacks nowadays: high performance coaches. With only a few working in the country, Brazil suffers to produce enough athletes to feed its national team. …

Only two coaches, out of the six that shaped Brazil’s elite girls, are still in the country: Ukrainian Irina Ilyashenko, who’s been living in Curitiba for 20 years, and Francisco Porath …

“Everyone knew Brazil only had six gymnasts. If two of them got hurt, we’d have nowhere to run. And that’s exactly what happened …”

WHAT LED TO BRAZILIAN WAG NOT QUALIFYING TO TOKYO

Flavia Saraiva, Jan 16th, 2015

Flávia finished 10th AA at Worlds 2019 and has already qualified to Tokyo as an individual.

Ragan Smith’s first NCAA routine

Ragan gave up on a chance to try to qualify for the Olympics.

She’s going to have a ton of fun with Oklahoma instead.

Click PLAY or watch it on Twitter.