July 23- Aug 8 During the Summer Olympics I tuned in on the television and left it on morning to night while I was home. I would glance as I passed through and if it caught my eye I would watch a bit. The exciting events were more exciting with all the track and field, swimming, and gymnastics. The whole family would get in on watching certain events. Of course I always like the gymnastics. This year they had a shocker when Simone Biles drew out of the Olympics for mental health reasons and Suni Lee, a gal who had not been in the spotlight took the gold. The Jamaican runners were awesome to watch too. So many on the women's team kicked butt. They took 4x100. They gave glory to God in their win. Swimmer, Caeleb Dressel was also super amazing to watch surprising himself with win after win taking gold after gold. He was nice to look at too and had a great personality and strong faith. I think I became an instant fan! I watched events I had never heard of like wall climbing. I enjoyed sand volleyball. There was a men's duo of two USA dad's in their 40's. There were just story after story of athletes.
From the internet- "Defying the odds and also good judgment, the 2020/2021 Olympics are under way in Tokyo. For months, health experts and the public have begged the International Olympic Committee to call off the Games for fear that gathering so many people from all different countries during a global pandemic may well snowball into a superspreader event. (Those fears appear founded given that the Games have spawned at least 127 COVID-19 cases so far.) But ultimately, organizers had a lot of money tied up in this deal, so now we are barreling through 7,000 hours of Olympic programming. Ambivalence about the circumstances aside, it hasn’t been all bad — far from it. The opening ceremony alone gave us two well-oiled hunks and the creative chaos that is human pictograms, setting a high entertainment bar. Here, the best things we’ve seen since."
On Tuesday, most-decorated-gymnast-of-all-time Simone Biles withdrew from the team finals, citing her desire to protect her mental health and not to “risk the team a medal because they worked way too hard for my screwups.” Biles faces incredible pressure to perform and said she “felt like it would be better to take a back seat.” Minutes after exiting the mats, she returned to the sidelines in her sweats, cheering on her teammates and chalking their hands. Please clap, dammit! I mean it.
Eighteen-year-old gymnast Sunisa Lee is leaving her first
Olympics with all three medals: gold for her performance in the all-around,
silver for the team competition, and bronze for the uneven bars. “I’m really
proud of myself,” she reflected. “Not many people can say that they come to the
Olympics their first time and bring home three medals.” True! Also, the
governor of Minnesota declared July 29 Sunisa Lee Day throughout the state,
honoring her as the first Hmong American athlete to compete at the Olympics,
another feat for the growing list. And! Lee has reportedly decided to delete Twitter
— huge congrats to her on all of these achievements.
If you thought that Olympic swimming would be any less entertaining just because Michael Phelps retired, you couldn't have been more wrong, because the world's biggest swimming stars all showed up in a huge way. At the front of that list was Team USA's Caeleb Dressel. One of several Florida Gators who thrived in Tokyo, Dressel won three individual gold medals in the 50-meter freestyle, 100-meter freestyle and 100-meter butterfly, as well as a pair of gold medals in the 4x100-meter freestyle and 4x100-meter medley relays. In the process, he set new world records in both 100m fly and medley relay, as well as Olympic records in both the 50m free and 100m free. Simply put, the man dominated.So did several women, the most noteworthy of which was Katie Ledecky.The goddess of long-distance swimming did her usual thing, winning gold in both the 800-meter freestyle and the 1500-meter freestyle, the latter of which was making its Olympic debut. Ledecky also took silver in both the 400-meter freestyle and the 4x200-meter freestyle relay, bringing her total career Olympic medal count to 10 (seven gold, three silver). Dressel won five gold medals at the Tokyo Olympics and broke his world record by .05 seconds in the 100-meter butterfly. Dressel used his success to champion his central motivation: his faith in God. The 24-year-old sports an eagle tattoo on his left shoulder, which represents one of his favorite Bible verses, Isaiah 40:31: “But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”“It’s the reason I’m in the sport—not just to go fast times, but to inspire people and show them where I find my happiness with what God’s given me,” Dressel told the Baptist Standard in 2015, adding in 2016: “Trust what God is doing, whether it be a rough point in your life or a top pinnacle in your life. You’ve just got to take pauses and really trust what He’s doing.”
When Allyson Felix decided to start a family in 2018, Nike offered a contract that was 70% less & had no guarantees if her performance declined due to pregnancy. So she left Nike, signed a deal with Athleta, has a 2-year-old daughter & just won her 10th Olympic medal. Ten of them! Track star Allyson Felix now has ten Olympic medals after coming in third in Friday’s 400-meter race. The bronze ties her for most decorated woman ever in Olympic track, though Felix could break her own record, as she has another relay to run on Saturday. The achievement comes almost three years after an emergency C-section that threatened both her and her daughter’s lives and a difficult pregnancy for which her then-sponsor Nike docked her pay. Huge congrats to Felix! And none for you, Nike.
Not only did U.S. Olympian Sydney McLaughlin win the gold medal for Team USA in the 400-meter hurdles, but the 21-year-old also set a world record with a time of 51.46.After McLaughlin’s win, she said that it was made possible by “just trusting the process and giving the glory to God.”The outspoken Christian posts about her faith often on her Instagram. “Let me start off by saying, what and honor it is to be able to represent not only my country, but also the kingdom of God. What I have in Christ is far greater than what I have or don’t have in life,” she wrote on Instagram after her Olympic run. “I pray my journey may be a clear depiction of submission and obedience to God. Even when it doesn’t make sense, even when it doesn’t seem possible. He will make a way out of no way. Not for my own gratification, but for His glory. I have never seen God fail in my life. In anyone’s life for that matter. Just because I may not win every race, or receive every one of my heart’s desires, does not mean God had failed. His will is PERFECT. And He has prepared me for a moment such as this. That I may use the gifts He has given me to point all the attention back to Him. 2x Olympian, Olympic Champion, World Record Holder, Thank. You. God.
Comments