Every four years, the Summer Olympics brings together thousands of athletes from around the world to compete in a global arena of sportsmanship and athletic excellence, where they test and exceed their limits, where they break records and set new ones.
With more than 11,000 athletes and a total of 206 countries and states participating in the 2020 Summer Olympics, the international multi-sport event will surely have the world holding its breath, watching who will be declared as champions and who will bring gold, silver, or bronze back home.
Cannot get enough of watching live games everyday? Let these 10 Olympics facts keep your excitement high:
THE ROBOTS
Tokyo 2020, in collaboration with the Japanese car manufacturer Toyota, will rank as nearest there's ever been to a robotic Olympics. Humanoid robots will be deployed to assist and interact with spectators with small car-like robots fetching sporting equipment such as hammers and javelin, flung during the athletic field events at the new Olympic stadium, speeding up the events by reducing the time taken to retrieve the items.
@sportspromedia, Tokyo 2020 unveils robots to support fans and athletes during Olympic Games
THE MEDALS
Japan is a world leader in the recycling of consumer appliances and electronics, largely as a way to reduce the nation's dependence on mineral imports. The Games organisers have found another way to deal with cast-off small electronic devices, such as mobile phones, with the Tokyo 2020 gold, silver and bronze medals made from waste materials that would otherwise likely have ended up in landfill.
©Tokyo 2020
While Japan is not the first to make Olympic medals from recycled materials, it is the first time that citizens of a host country proactively donated their electronic devices as materials for the medals.
THE TORCH
The Olympic torch and its flame will for the first time powered at certain stages of the relay and the opening ceremony cauldron lighting on July 24 by hydrogen, as means of offsetting carbon emissions. The Japanese leg of the Tokyo 2020 torch relay begins on March 26 at Fukushima, site of the nuclear plant accident in 2011, with about 30 per cent of the torch's material made from recycled aluminium drawn from the earthquake that triggered the disaster.
The sakura-shaped Olympic torch is made using the same technology Japan uses to fabricate its shinkansen, or bullet trains.
THE MASCOTS
Not just typically cute and cuddly characters, there are also robot versions of Miraitowa and Someity, the mascots for the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo, Japan. The anime-inspired Miraitowa and Someity represent both Japanese culture and the Games themselves with Miraitowa's name combining the Japanese words for future and eternity. "Someity" is derived from the name of a type of cherry blossom and also refers to the English language phrase "so mighty".
THE ATHLETES' VILLAGE
There was worldwide surprise when it was revealed that the beds at the Tokyo 2020 athletes village by Tokyo Bay will be made of cardboard. That's super-strong cardboard, mind you, but cardboard nonetheless, designed to be recyclable after the athletes depart. The beds can tolerate up to 200 kilograms in weight, according to Games organisers, and claimed to be stronger than conventional wooden versions.
©Tokyo 2020
THE SOUVENIRS
Japan is the world capital of vending machines with nearly 6 million spread ubiquitously across the country. It's therefore not so surprising that conventional outlets will not be the only source of official Tokyo 2020 souvenirs. Vending machines, usually reserved for hot and cold coffee, snacks and even cans and bottles of beer, will also offer Olympic souvenirs such as special medallions for sale.
THE FANS
For a rather reticent race, the Japanese may be the world's best sporting fans, an impression reinforced ecstatically during last year's Rugby World Cup in Japan. Not only do Japanese spectators dress to impress, they're passionate, vocal, impeccably well-behaved and are known to arrange post-match litter clean-ups. Get set, then, for wildly enthusiastic Japanese spectators at the Tokyo 2020 Games.
THE OLYMPIC STADIUM
The new 60,000-seat National Stadium for these Games will be the venue for the opening and closing ceremonies, along with track and field events and the football final. It is characterised by the abundant use of timber in its construction, with the material employed to soften the building's steel structure and to draw a link to nature. Kengo Kuma, the stadium's "starchitect" designer, sourced the mainly cedar and large timbers for the buildings from all of Japan's 47 prefectures.
©Tokyo 2020
The exterior of the New National Stadium is made of wood sourced from each of Japan’s 47 prefectures.
THE VENUES
If ever there was proof that not every Olympic venue needs to be brand new, the cost-minded and perhaps nostalgia-loving organisers of Tokyo 2020 have provided it by resurrecting facilities from the 1964 Games held in the Japanese capital. The Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium and the Yoyogi National Stadium, both key venues and architecturally-admired buildings, have been refurbished and will variously host table tennis, handball, badminton and wheelchair rugby.
THE SIGNAGE
Tokyo, and for that matter Japan, have made enormous strides since it last hosted the Olympics in 1964 though one weak point remains: the nation's relatively poor command of English. The 1964 Games organisers pioneered the use of pictograms to help overcome language difficulties, though for the 2020 Olympics visitors will notice much better English signage. But syntax can still be a challenge with signs in and around the new Olympic Stadium for its opening late last year endearingly reading "Hello, our stadium".
©Tokyo 2020
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10 Fun Facts about Tokyo Olympics 2020
Reference:
- https://education.tokyo2020.org/en/games/tokyo2020/tokyo2020mascots/
- https://www.sportspromedia.com/news/tokyo-2020-robots-to-support-fans-and-athletes-olympic-games
- https://www.traveller.com.au/traveller-10-firsts-and-quirks-for-the-2020-tokyo-olympics-h1lovi
- https://www.jetex.com/tokyo-2020-summer-olympics/
- https://www.timeout.com/tokyo/things-to-do/facts-and-trivia-about-japan-at-the-olympics
- http://www.gonative.jp/blog/does-japan-have-2020-vision
