Welcome back, Olympics!
After a wait of 1797 days, the Olympics are back!
I was five years old when I first heard about the Olympics. It was the 2016 Olympics. PV Sindhu was playing in the badminton final and my whole family was super excited. But she lost. I cried so badly that day even though I didn’t know anything about badminton or sports!
And now the Olympics are here and I hope I will not cry this time! It is starting from July 23, 2021 and will go on till August 8, 2021.
The Olympic Games are an international sports festival, held every four years. It was started so that countries can come together and participate and be friendly to each other.
The Olympics are inspired by the ancient Olympic games which were held in Greece in the 8th century BCE.
Baron Pierre de Coubertin founded the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1894, leading to the first modern games in Athens in 1896.
The Olympics was supposed to be held last year but was postponed to this year due to Covid. Tokyo, Japan is the host. More than 11,000 sportspersons from 206 countries will take part in 39 sports like tennis, football, badminton, athletics etc.
Indian athletes have won 28 medals at the Olympics in all.
Many years ago, India’s hockey team was very good in Olympics, winning eleven medals in twelve Olympics between 1920 and 1980. In the last Olympics, other than Sindhu who got a silver medal, Sakshi Malik got a bronze medal in wrestling.
Many players are looking like winning medals this year especially, PV Sindhu, Mirabai Chanu (Weightlifting), Mary Kom (boxing) and Saurabh Chaudhary (Shooting).
Sports events have started everywhere and lots of precautions have to be taken by the organizers to make sure the players are safe from Covid.
I hope the Olympics goes on smoothly and India can win many gold medals! Go India!
By, Arnav Prasanna, CMRNPS
