| The Olympics |
August 27, 2021
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| The Olympic Games were held in this country. It was in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, so there were a lot of objective opinions about holding the Olympics. For him, as the Olympics had been postponed last year, the organizer couldn't postpone the games again for cost reasons. Plus, it would force athletes who had been training very hard for four plus one years to have to train further until the next Olympics in Paris, which seems too painful for the athletes to train for 8 years, considering the sacrifices they make in their lives. Anyways, the Olympics began and lasted for about two weeks and finished. Before it had started, the biggest concern was that athletes, staff, and media crew might bring the coronavirus from abroad. They did. The organizer gave everyone frequent PCR tests. There were a certain number of positive patients, but as there were a lot of patients already in this country, it wasn't a big problem. Some lax athletes and staff members violated the coronavirus quarantine procedures, and lost their certificates to go out. The media complained that the restrictions were too tight, but, on the whole, they followed them. Because of the quarantine restrictions, there were rare chances of interaction between citizens and athletes as well as journalists customary. It was funny that some journalists complimented convenience stores how they had a lot of items, including tasty rice balls. They were only allowed to go to convenience stores around their accommodations. There was another funny thing. One of the good reputations among the athletes in the Players Village was the buffet cafeteria, because of its wide selection and delicious  food. The TV introduced that the most popular food for them was "gyoza", Chinese dumplings. The camera took a picture of a ready-made, frozen package of gyoza, it was his favorite type. He ate it every week because it was easy to cook, just heat them in a pan with a lid for five minutes, and it only cost $2~3 for 12 pieces. He had to admit this country's ready-made food's quality. He enjoyed watching the various games and events. They were breathtaking. Athletes were so skillful and could concentrate beyond normal human beings. It was a heart-warming scene to watch in the female skate boarding event that the players cheered for each other and consoled others if some failed. A commentator said that he had never seen this type of thing, and it could add to new ideas to the Olympics. Another heart-warming scene was that two high jump finalists decided to share the gold medal after the long and harsh event. As a host country citizen, he had expected a certain number of medals, but not that many. His country took 58 medals, it was fourth place. He was more surprised that a famous bookmaker predicted about the ranking and medal count: 59! But, to come to think of it, this country's GDP is number 3. A lot of parents make their children go swimming. They can afford to let their children play soccer, tennis, and even golf. Each school has gyms and sometimes good coaches for basketball, volleyball, badminton, table tennis, etc. He got an idea and started to research. A couple of years ago, he checked on the internet how much each nation's GDP had developed in the last thirty years. The world GDP became 5 times in 30 years. Some extreme examples were China (26 times) and Vietnam (35 times). Others were UAE and Singapore (10 times), India, Ireland, and Chile (9 times), Indonesia, Poland, Malaysia, Bangladesh (8 times), and a lot of other countries follow. So this time he checked the total number of medals for each country and the number of medals in the past 20 years since the Sydney Olympics in 2000. As he had forecasted, there were a lot of countries that got medals recently. ・The number of countries that got medals for the first time since 2000 ･･･27 countries ・The number of countries that got more than 60% of their medals since 2000 ･･･61 countries ・The number of countries that got medal(s) for the first time in 2021 ･･･3 countries (Burkina Faso, San Marino, and Turkmenistan) In the countries mentioned above, there are some countries that finished their warring a couple of decades ago. If a country is safe, some companies go there to pursue cheap labor. If a nation doesn't demand unreasonable things, the companies would invest more. As the countries' economies get better, people will start to enjoy their pastimes : sports. As the number of people who play sports go up, they will be more competitive, then Olympics caliber players might appear. The Olympics could be a good barometer to check each country's fairness, and give motivations to people to make their countries more safe and prosperous, which would be meaningful. |
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No.443
*objective : 反対の
*sacrifice : 犠牲
*customary : 通例の
*compliment : 誉める
*console : なぐさめる
*bookmaker : 賭け屋
*caliber : 能力
*prosperous : 繁栄している