Tokyo Olympics
by Connor Bezner
The Tokyo Olympics will be one to go down in the history books and set a tone for future events. Not only were there many firsts that occurred during this momentous occasion: this was the first time that skateboarding was an event as well as bringing back baseball for the first time since the 2008 Olympics. It was also one that leaned heavily into popular culture, it was held in Japan the birthplace of anime which has permeated into seemingly every facet of society. It also was close to being only the fifth time that the US didn’t lead in gold medals. Of the previous 28 Olympics, starting in 1896, the leading medal nation was the United States 24 times. They seemed to be stuck at 24 leads until at the very last moment when they outpaced China’s 38 and won a total of 39 gold medals, bringing their total number of leads up to 25. This came mainly on the back of the US swimming events in which the US won a total of 30 medals, including a whopping 11 golds. The most impressive part was likely the fact that all 3 of the finalists for the women’s street event were under 17. Third place Funa Nakayama was 16, second place Rayssa Leal was 13, and in first place Momiji Nishiya was 14. Then in the women’s park event, the silver and bronze were 12 and 13 years old respectively. In the end, there went home some who won big, some who won small, some who didn’t win at all. However, the greatest winners were the ones who got to witness this incredible event. |