471 days 8 hours 29 minutes 59 seconds
Athletes who spent years preparing to hit their very peak for the now-postponed Tokyo Olympics are left wondering how to cope for the next 15 months
Why read this story?
Editor's note: Four hundred and seventy-one days. That’s the number on the countdown clock for the Tokyo Summer Olympics as this story goes up. About seven times as long as Cristopher Columbus’s voyage to America. Or the length of almost 9,700 field hockey games. That’s how long Olympics-bound athletes must get through without getting injured. Or losing focus. For those who haven’t qualified yet, that’s how long they must stay motivated as well. What they do in the next 471 days will determine not only their destiny at the Games but also their future. The next 15 or so months will decide how they are remembered in the annals of history. Getting through is easier said than done. Athletes are conditioned to compete, mentally and physically. Against every opponent. Against all the odds. Jesse Owens, the American track and field athlete who won four gold medals at Berlin 1936 in Nazi Germany and destroyed Adolf Hitler’s myth of Aryan supremacy, fought racism most of his life. Indian Olympic gymnast Dipa Karmakar learnt to vault off a discarded scooter seat and became one …
More in Chaos
You may also like
How Bewakoof, once a trendsetter, fell out of favour with young people
Indian youngsters are experimenting with newer D2C brands like never before. Bewakoof’s early success and its 2022 acquisition by retail giant Aditya Birla Fashion should have given it the edge, but the company has been left behind.
Why Nifty 50’s profit is the lowest since COVID-19 pandemic
The earnings of India’s oil refiners and other Nifty 50 companies have taken a hit. But IPO premiums suggest that investors seem unfazed.
The question of gender binary exposes the politics of sport at Paris Olympics
Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting both passed the tests, played by the rules and won. And yet they were crucified by the society that reduced to black and white a question far more complicated and nuanced than standard binaries.
