The first Olympic Games that I have watched was Athens 2004 when I was only 13 years old. From then, I am impressed by the sheer beauty of its opening and closing ceremonies, huge variety of sports contested, large number of participating athletes from all across the world, and the loud cheers from enthusiastic audiences.
Beijing 2008 stunned us all with unforgettable and magnificent opening and closing ceremonies, topped with stunning architecture in its Olympic venues (particularly the famous ‘Bird Nest’ stadium). London 2012 also fascinated us all with its fantastic green initiatives in the games and I even did a research report about it in my Master study. The latest edition of the games was Rio 2016. That’s the games that didn’t leave any impression due to its pretty average ceremonies and venues (the venues had now fallen into state of disrepair) and its multiple controversies.
Now, I’m looking forward to the next games which is now just a year away; Tokyo 2020. I have high expectation to this games as I believe Japan can deliver and put us all in awe with its advanced innovation and ideas. It will be the 5th Olympic Games (or to be exact, the 5th Summer Olympic Games) that I will be paying my attention to (I never bother to watch the Winter Olympic Games).
With the clock now ticking, Tokyo has already made immense progress on its preparation to this games. It will be their second time hosting the games (also the first Asian country to host it twice). The exterior of the main National Stadium looks completed as seen from the recently released photographs. Designed by Kengo Kuma, the latticed timber stadium will have a maximum seating capacity of 80 000 people and is set to be completed end of this year.
Recently, the Tokyo 2020 medal design has also been unveiled to the public’s excitement. Why? It is because that all the medals are manufactured from recycled smartphones and small electronic devices that were donated by the public between April 2017 and March 2019. Talking about green inititative here again…Altogether, these yielded 32kg of gold, 3500kg of silver and 2200kg of bronze. Ohh! I didn’t know that our common electronic devices have gold in them?!
I am also looking forward to our Malaysian athletes’ performance in this games. Our best bet, Lee Chong Wei will be no longer playing but I do still hope that we can finally win our country’s very first Olympic gold either from other badminton players (but our national badminton team isn’t doing well now unfortunately) or even from other sports.
(Images in this post are from various online sources)
