From the gymnast Simone Biles to the tennis player Roger Federer, through the swimmer Caeleb Dressel or the athletes Armand Duplantis and Yulimar Rojas, when are some of the great stars one month after the opening of the Tokyo Olympic Games (23 July-8 August)?
– Simone Biles
The personal history and the statements of the gymnast after the ‘Nassar case’ (the former doctor of the American team, sentenced to important prison terms for sexually abusing hundreds of athletes, including Simone Biles herself) have made her transcendence surpass the limits of your sport.
In 2019 he became the person with the most medals in the gymnastics World Cups, with 25 metals (19 of them gold), and in Tokyo he will look for another record, the one with the highest number of titles in gymnastics (9), set by the Soviet Larissa Latynina in the years 1950-1960.
He has four titles, achieved in Rio-2016, and in Tokyo he aspires to up to six more.
Will Simone Biles (24 years old) retire after the Japanese appointment?
“Cecile and Laurent (their coaches since 2017) are French, so they do a kind of emotional blackmail to get me back” at the Paris-2024 Olympics, said the Texan.
– Armand Duplantis
At 21, the world record holder for the pole vault (6.18 meters) will be the huge favorite against the French veteran Renaud Lavillenie (34 years) and the American colony (Sam Kendricks, KC Lightfoot, Chris Nilsen).
The Swedish prodigy started the year 2021 at a great level.
He flew over the season on the indoor track with four meetings exceeding six meters and signing the best result of the year (6.10 meters). It also surpassed the bar of that height in June in Hengelo (Holland), outdoors.
In March he took the opportunity to increase his record with a title of European champion on the indoor track, a good omen for the Japanese event, his great goal of the year.
– Yulimar Rojas
Yulimar Rojas will start the Olympic Games as a flag-bearer of Venezuela, along with the karate fighter Antonio Díaz, and hopes to finish them with her first Olympic gold around her neck, after her silver in the triple jump in Rio-2016.
At 25 years old, she has been the great dominator of her test since 2017 and seems to have the gold reserved, except for great surprise.
She even aspires to break the world record, held since 1995 by the Ukrainian Inessa Kravets (15.50 meters).
At the moment, the 2017 and 2019 world champion achieved in May the second best outdoor time of all time with 15.43 meters in Andújar (Spain), increasingly stroking her goal of reaching Kravets.
On February 21, 2020, he had already managed to reach 15.43 indoors, in Madrid, setting an indoor world record.
Will Tokyo be the stage where you write another golden page in your career?
– Roger Federer
On August 8, the closing day of the Tokyo Games, Roger Federer will turn 40.
The best gift for him will be to be able to get the individual Olympic gold, a reward that is missing in his impressive record, after having been Olympic champion in doubles, along with Stan Wawrinka, in Beijing-2008.
To qualify for this in Tokyo, Federer has had to recover from a double operation on his right knee, which he underwent in 2020.
The Swiss star returned to competition in March 2021, in Doha, after a thirteen-month absence. Balance in that Qatari tournament: two games, with one victory and one defeat.
At Roland Garros, he was declared out in the third round to preserve himself physically thinking about Wimbledon, his favorite Grand Slam tournament.
The preparation for the London meeting did not go well and he fell in the second round of the tournament in Halle (Germany) against the young Canadian Felix Auger-Aliassime.
His performance on the London grass, in a ‘big’ that kicks off on June 28), will be especially scrutinized in the face of fierce competition, both from number one Novak Djokovic and from the more ambitious youngsters (Stefanos Tsitsipas, Alexander Zverev, Daniil Medvedev …).
In the fight for Olympic gold, Federer could be helped by the already confirmed loss for Tokyo of Rafa Nadal or Dominic Thiem.
– single Villasenor
Swimmer Caeleb Dressel follows in the wake of Michael Phelps.
At 24, the American sprinter ‘only’ achieved the Olympic title in 2016 in relays (4x100m freestyle and 4x100m styles). It is therefore still a long way from the 23 Olympic gold medals, Phelps’ record.
At the rate of his harvests in the 2017 World Cups (seven golds) and 2019 (six golds in a total of eight medals), the Florida swimmer can be the star of the pool in Tokyo.
The morning finals, which will be one of the peculiarities in these Games, “are not so different or so rare mentally and physically” as he had imagined, he explained.
– Katie Ledecky
His challenge: to win five gold medals, from 200m to 1,500m, going through the 4x200m relay.
Two finals, the 200 and 1,500 meters, will take place on the same day, something that does not scare the American swimmer Katie Ledecky.
“It is a challenge, but a challenge for which I am training,” he confides.
With the pandemic, he explained that he did not see his family for more than a year, since Ledecky (24 years old) is originally from the East Coast and resides in Stanford (California).
The five-time Olympic champion transmits good feelings. Last week he dropped, for example, from 4 minutes in the 400 meters.
–Kohei Uchimura
The Japanese Kohei Uchimura, world champion of the general contest six times in a row between 2009 and 2015 and reigning double Olympic champion, dominated gymnastics during those years.
But at 32 years old and at the end of a last Olympic cycle marked by injuries, his sore shoulders force him to concentrate his efforts on the high bar event.
He qualified for it this month and his presence in Tokyo was thus guaranteed.
“I did not think I would be able to participate in four Olympic Games,” Uchimura said. “It is something that he did not assimilate, it is incredible when you think objectively,” he said.
– Eliud Kipchoge
The duel in the marathon between the Ethiopian Kenenisa Bekele and the Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge (defending champion and world record holder), the two best in history, will not take place, after the Ethiopian’s resignation on June 6.
Kipchoge is presented in this way as a great favorite although in the last London marathon he suffered a slump that made him have to settle for an eighth place, in his second defeat in thirteen marathons.
Sapporo’s heat and humidity will be crucial elements in the Olympic equation.
– Fraser-Pryce y Allyson Felix
After her exhibition in April (10 seconds and 72 hundredths in the 100 meters), the young American Sha’Carri Richardson was confirmed as one of the best sprinters in the world. However, in women’s athletics there are two names capable of attracting attention, those of the Jamaican Sheryl-Ann Fraser-Pryce (34 years old) and the American Allyson Felix (35 years old).
Fraser-Pryce became the second best in history in the straight line in June (10.63), while the second ran in April her fastest 400 meters since 2017 (50 seconds and 88 hundredths)
A medal in Tokyo would be Felix’s 10th at the Olympics, reaching Carl Lewis.
For his part, Fraser-Pryce will aspire to a third Olympic title in the 100 meters.
Both stars in their 30s have another important fact in common: they have returned to top-level competition after being mothers.
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