September 5, 2021,
Winning is a word often surrounded by clichés.
Winning is not everything, it is the only thing.
Everyone loves a winner.
Yes, football should be fun, but how can you have any fun if you’re not winning.
Okay?
You’ve heard all of that before and maybe it sounds like a load of boo, boo; but if you don’t win, in our experience, all of those clichés are absolutely true.
For those of us who have played organized sports on any level, winning is the glue that holds the team together and your sanity as an athlete.
In Tokyo, it’s been a tough year.
Winning the rights to host the 2020 Olympics was supposed to be a major prize.
Due to Covid-19, it turned into a major headache. Sometimes people see stars when they get a headache. Other times they get dizzy, hold their heads and see dollars.
Flying out the window.
As reported by ESPN, “The CEO of the Tokyo Olympics and the IOC member in charge of Japan's games have dismissed a new study from the University of Oxford that finds Tokyo is the most expensive Summer Games since 1960.”
Maybe a study by Oxford University can help us understand a little better.
The team at premiersportsnetwork.com shared, “Back in 2013, when Tokyo won its bid to host the 2020 Olympics, it was predicted that it would cost around US$7.3 billion. So far, the costs have exceeded London 2012, which was the current most expensive Olympics, and exceeded predictions by 200 per cent. The study claims that the costs are already at US $15.84 billion.”
That’s a lot of yen. Please don’t ask us to translate that because the Associated Press already did that for us.
According to their August 6, 2021 article, the translation is painful.
The approximate cost for a 300-bed hospital in Japan in $55 million. That means you could build almost 300 of them.
Yes, that’s three hundred with an H (like headache).
So you could put up almost 300 of those. Including sheets and pillows. Skyscraper view optional.
Word has it the average elementary school in Japan costs about $13 million. We’ve been to Japan twice but our Japanese is a little rusty. Let’s get our translator out. In English, Chinese, Spanish, German, French, Tagalog and Italian, that comes to about 1,200 schools.
We could go on.
Do you want us to? Okay fine.
The article adds that a Boeing 747 is priced at about $400 million bucks. That might purchase 38 jumbo jets.
Vroom, vroom.
As you might guess, many in Japan are not happy about that.
The global news source npr.org educates, “For months, polls have shown most Japanese citizens don't want the Olympics in Japan. Isako Motoyama (ph), a university researcher, said her anger stemmed from an Olympic budget that ballooned, according to some reports, to at least $30 billion, much of it taxpayer money.”
It appears we left one language out.
University Researcher.
We sense (ph) means “phony hyperbole” in dormitory lingo.
So in her language, $15.84 billion has ballooned to $30 billion. No wonder university research labs get so much money.
There are some of us who are extremely happy the Olympics moved forward. Course, we didn’t have to pay for it but sometimes important things in life transcend money.
We really believe that. Especially when someone else is paying for it.
As a global community, we needed to be uplifted, excited, mesmerized and admittedly distracted by the Olympics. We need our traditions to go on. If gives us a feeling that life is getting back to normal. Maybe we didn’t appreciate normal as much as when we had it.
If the 2021 Olympics (often referred to as the 2020 Olympics) had not occurred, how many sensational talented athletes with unbelievable performances would the world have missed out upon?
Here is one of them.
Yui Susaki is a Japanese freestyle wrestler.
She won the gold medal in the women's 50 kg event at the 2020 Summer Olympics. The most dominant wrestler at the Olympics, she defeated all 4 of her opponents by technical superiority.
She was incredibly impressive.
As noted by lasvegassun.com they praised, “Japan’s Yui Susaki defeated China’s Yanan Sun by technical superiority, 10-0, to win the women’s freestyle wrestling 50-kilogram final. It was Japan’s fourth Olympic gold in women’s wrestling out of six weight classes.”
As we’ve so often stated, Japan has an incredible women’s wrestling community.
Yui has certainly represented Japan well.
An exceptionally technical wrestler, in 2017, she won a gold medal at Paris World Wrestling Championships at 48kg, and in 2018, she won gold at the Budapest World Wrestling Championships at 50kg.
She also competed at Golden Grand Prix Ivan Yarygin 2017 and won a gold medal.
In 2018, she won the gold medal in the women's 50 kg event at the Klippan Lady Open in Klippan, Sweden. She beat Maria Stadnik and in a rematch dominated the number one 2021 Olympic seed 10-1, winning by technical fall. Although widely regarded as the best wrestler in the 50 kg class Susaki entered the Tokyo games unseeded, where she amazingly and unexpectedly went on to win the gold.
On July 5, 2021, she was named flagbearer of the Japanese delegation to the Summer Olympics by the Japanese Olympic Committee, together with basketball player Rui Hachimura.
Ms. Susaki also studies in the Sport science faculty at Waseda University.
We have been to Waseda University and loved it. Eaten there too.
Despite the limitations the pandemic forced upon them, the Olympics from Tokyo was a much needed positive shot in the arm.
Every time that fully competitive women’s wrestling has a chance to shine in front of the world, influence hearts and change minds about the importance of the sport, we applaud when that opportunity opens open.
It’s a win for Japan.
fciwomenswrestling.com femcompetitor.com, fcielitecompetitor.com fciwomenswrestling2.com Skyscrapers_of_Shinjuku_2009_January-Yui-2021-Morio-Own-work-Wikipedia-photo-credit
It’s a larger win for the world.
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OPENING PHOTO fciwomenswrestling.com femcompetitor.com, fcielitecompetitor.com fciwomenswrestling2.com United-World-Wrestling-photo-credit-YouTube-upload-Editorial-use
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/143729-if-you-can-keep-your-head-when-all-about-you
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudyard_Kipling
https://www.npr.org/2021/07/23/1019892603/protests-have-persisted-outside-of-the-tokyo-olympics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yui_Susaki
https://lasvegassun.com/news/2021/aug/07/olympic-latest-japans-susaki-wins-freestyle-wrestl/
https://www.fcielitecompetitor.com/
https://fciwomenswrestling.com/
