A Thank You Letter to Tokyo Olympics
Dear Tokyo Olympics,
It is great to see you finally come back in 2021. We all know it is not easy for hosting the Olympics during a global pandemic. We heard you lost a huge amount of money and got more and more Covid new cases. Hope you can handle it well.
Anyway, thank you for bringing so much excitement to those depressed people still in lockdown, especially for Australians, where more than 15 million Aussies are in lockdown at the moment. Although there is no audience in the stadium, you have millions of more audiences on TV as they have nothing to do at home. Thanks so much for getting us occupied in Australia’s winter.
Olympics, I know you are over 100 years old, but you are consistently involving and trying to embrace the diversity of sports. You tried to catch up with the younger generations’ taste by adding popular sports like surfing, skateboarding, 3x3 basketball and rock climbing in the game. Would you add video games next time? Or Nintendo Ring Fit Adventure? As I feel you are like a grandmother trying to learn new games so that you can play with young grandkids, maybe you can try something digital and virtual sports as well.
Olympics, I was impressed to see Thomas Daley, the star diver who won the gold medal in Men’s synchronized 10m platform, and he said proudly “I am a gay man and also an Olympic champion”. It was such a strong message to the LGBT community. But I don’t remember have you ever set the rule that gay players couldn’t be the champion? Why all the straight players do not need to and never say: “I am straight, but also an Olympic champion?” Olympics, I assume you love the rainbow colors right? As your five rings are also in the rainbow’s color. I hope you are not homophobic although you are over 100 years old.
Olympics, thank you for letting us know that failure is part of life. But do you know you are very brutal sometimes? In the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, China women’s soccer team won the runner-up. However, only 8 years later in the 2004 Athens Olympics, they lost 0:8 to Germany in the first game. What is even worse, this time in Tokyo, they lost 0:5 to Brazil and 2:8 to Netherland. Compared to western countries, where soccer is a major community sport, China doesn’t have enough community participation and the talent pool for soccer is so small. Every time when they are smashed in the major tournaments, fewer young kids will play this beautiful sport. Please please, don’t let them lose 0:10 in the next Olympics, it would be great to give some luck to them. Otherwise, there will be nobody play soccer in China.
Olympics, I would like to thank you for surprising us as well. When Chinese players lost in the table tennis mix doubles final, do you know what kind of cyberbullying they got? The nationalists even say they betray their country on social media. As table tennis has always been dominated by China, we couldn’t “afford” for losing a gold medal.
But I still appreciate you generously give the talented players from other countries a perfect opportunity to win this medal. This gold medal will inspire more players to work hard as they now believe Chinese table tennis players can be beaten. I know you are trying to save this sport by avoiding it being 100% dominant by Chinese players.
Olympics, thank you for telling us a lot of stories. Apart from the successfully commercialized sports such as basketball, soccer, many sports in the world are actually barely getting much attention from the public, for example, diving, gymnastic, etc. It is you who give these players exposure every four years and let us appreciate the beauty of the power, the speed, the body, the rhythm, and the spirit of sportsmanship.
Without you, we wouldn’t know Aussie swimmers’ touching family stories. We wouldn’t know the Chinese teenager diver, Quan Hongchan, who won the gold medal in her first Olympics, was born in a poor village, and built her way up to the Olympics. We wouldn’t know a Japanese swimmer made her Tokyo Olympics debut after overcoming Leukemia. We wouldn’t know a 58-year-old Chinese migrant is still representing Luxembourg to play table tennis in Olympics… It is you, telling these wonderful stories, although, it is one year late.
All in all, thanks so much to Tokyo for hosting this Olympics during Covid 19 pandemic. We hope you have great insurance to cover all your financial and mental losses. We are so grateful that you didn’t cancel this event, otherwise, we wouldn’t see the romantic video and music for Paris Olympics 2024 in the closing ceremony.
In such a difficult time, you insist to organize this event as you believe the athletes deserve this chance to realize their dreams. And you definitely made their dreams come true, or give them a nightmare. No matter it is a gold medal or a failure, it’s part of life. Congratulations to the Olympics for making it to Tokyo in the summer of 2021, I am looking forward to seeing you again in Paris, hopefully, we don’t need to wear masks at that time.
