August 2021

Tokyo Olympics 2021: Mao pins worn by Chinese athletes may test Games rules

After winning the women’s sprint in track cycling on Monday, Bao Shanju and Zhong Tianshi wore pin badges of Mao. The communist leader who proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 remains an iconic figure in China 45 years after his death in 1976.
The Associated Press
Tokyo Olympics 2021: Mao pins worn by Chinese athletes may test Games rules

Tokyo: The image of Communist China’s founding leader, Mao Zedong, made an unscheduled appearance at the Tokyo Olympics, and the International Olympic Committee said on Tuesday that they were “looking into the matter.”

The gesture – Mao pin badges worn by two Chinese gold medalists at their medal ceremony – risks being judged a breach of Olympic Charter Rule 50, which prohibits political statements on the podium at the Tokyo Games – and at the upcoming 2022 Beijing Winter Games.

After winning the women’s sprint in track cycling on Monday, Bao Shanju and Zhong Tianshi wore pin badges of Mao. The communist leader who proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 remains an iconic figure in China 45 years after his death in 1976.

The incident came one day after American shot-put silver medalist Raven Saunders crossed the wrists of her raised arms on the podium. She was standing next to the gold medalist from China.

It was unclear if the Mao pins were a response to the shot-put medal ceremony.

“We have contacted the Chinese Olympic Committee, asked them for a report about the situation,” IOC spokesman Mark Adams said at the daily news conference at the Tokyo Games.

Badges showing Mao’s profile were worn by hundreds of millions of people in the 1960s to show their loyalty to the Communist Party chairman and the ultra-radical Cultural Revolution he launched in 1966. China’s current party chief, Xi Jinping, has invoked Mao’s image as he tries to promote his own status as a history-making Chinese leader.

At a 1 July event, Xi appeared on Tiananmen Square in central Beijing in a gray Mao jacket identical to one worn by the former leader in a nearby portrait overlooking the square. Other party leaders at the same event dressed in blue business suits.

The IOC have publicised their president Thomas Bach’s regular calls with Xi ahead of the Beijing Olympics opening in February, which human rights activists have tried to brand the “Genocide Games” because of the government’s treatment of Muslim minority Uyghur people in China’s northwest.

At Tokyo Olympics, where athlete activists were expected to draw attention, Saunders pushed at the limits of Rule 50 by crossing her wrists to make the shape of an X. ”It’s the intersection of where all people who are oppressed meet,” Saunders said when asked to explain it.

Saunders turned toward photographers at the Olympic Stadium to make the gesture seconds after she stood facing the Chinese flag during the national anthem playing for Gong Lijiao. The US Olympic body is taking no action against Saunders, who it said late Monday “was respectful of her competitors and did not violate our rules related to the demonstration.“

The IOC has asked US team officials for more details, Adams said on Tuesday, adding it noted public opinion in the case. There has been wide support for Saunders, who is black and gay.

Saunders said at the Olympic track her aim was “to show younger people that no matter how many boxes they try to fit you in, you can be you and you can accept it.”

The IOC has long claimed it is politically neutral and must maintain that stance to allow more than 200 national teams to arrive and compete at an Olympic Games as equals. Still, the rule prohibiting all athlete protests in Olympic venues was eased slightly in the weeks before the opening ceremony in Tokyo where athletes were expected to test its limits.

Gestures and statements are now allowed inside the field of play at the start line or before a game, though not during competition or at medal ceremonies. Several women’s football teams, for example, kneeled on the field before kickoff on the first day of Olympic action on 21 July.

The Mao pins, though, were an unexpected twist on the Rule 50 debate. The wearing of such badges declined after 1970 due to complaints producing them used up scarce supplies of metal required by Chinese industry. The original Cultural Revolution-era ones are sought after by collectors, both in China and in the West.

Mao images became popular again in the 1990s to express complaints that ordinary Chinese gained too little from wrenching economic changes that caused inflation and layoffs at state companies.

Explained: How gymnastics evolved from ‘exercising naked’ to a highly calibrated event

Gymnastics, now among the Olympics’ most beloved occasions, was produced millennia ago, as youthful men trained for war inside the buff.

The Connected Press

Described: How gymnastics began out ‘exercising naked’ with a highly calibrated event

 

n arenas today, gymnasts compete on numerous exactly what are referred to as apparatuses: men and women execute a tumbling routine, referred to as ground exercise, and launch themselves off a vault. AP

Tokyo, japan, japan: The word gymnastics originates from the ancient greek language language “gymnazein,” meaning “to exercise naked.”

The sport, now among the Olympics’ most beloved occasions, was produced millennia ago, as youthful men trained for war inside the buff.

Throughout history, in many corners in the globe, people have flipped and spun and twisted to research the limits from the body. Egyptian hieroglyphs illustrate backbends, according to Britannica, and stone engravings from ancient China illustrate acrobats.

In arenas today, gymnasts compete on numerous exactly what are referred to as apparatuses: men and women execute a tumbling routine, referred to as ground exercise, and launch themselves off a vault. However other occasions will be different. Men compete in as much as six: the floor, the vault, the pommel horse, still rings, parallel bars and horizontal bar. Women compete in just four, while using balance beam and uneven bars put in the floor and vault.

It wasn’t always by doing this. Early gymnastics incorporated pursuits like rope climbing.

Precisely how did gymnastics vary from youthful Greeks training naked to particular, highly calibrated occasions getting an elaborate scoring system?

Pommel Horse

Within the Games, men swing around a leather-covered block with handles referred to as a pommel horse, that noisy . iterations roughly mimicked the size and shape from the particular animal. Alexander the fantastic, king of Macedonia from 336 to 323 B.C., had his Macedonian soldiers train around the similar device to train mounting their horses for fight, in line with the European Gymnastics Service.

The present version was invented at the begining of 1800s by German Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, known as “father of gymnastics” for founding numerous gymnastics centers made to cultivate health insurance patriotism. These gyms were meant, partially, to acquire youthful French people ready to defend the country against Napoleon’s French military.

Jahn also invented the very first versions in the bar exercises available today: parallel bars and horizontal bars for guys, as well as the women’s uneven bars began the parallel bars to showcase agility and elegance.

The vault

For a lot of of recent gymnastics history, the vault made an appearance as though the pommel horse without handles. Men and women sprint toward it, switch and launch themselves into numerous spins and twists.

Nevertheless it was redesigned 20 years ago after terrible injuries inside the 1980s and 1990s as gymnasts started trying more harmful maneuvers: American Julissa Gomez was paralysed in the vaulting accident in 1988 and died three years later. 10 years later, Chinese gymnast Sang Lan fell, broke her neck also it was paralysed.

Then, inside the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, the vault was set 2 ” missing. In this particular sport of precision and timing, the problem caused a disastrous number of mistakes including one athletes nearly missing the vault entirely.

The completely new apparatus was referred to as a “vaulting table,” and contains a wider, more cushioned surface for athletes to spring from. Slate magazine reported in 2004 if the made its first Olympics debut that athletes needed to calling it “the tongue.”

Still Rings

When men suspend by themselves two rings, hanging from straps, they are performing the gymnastics event that requires most likely probably the most physical strength from the apparatuses.

They are referred to as still rings because the gymnasts attempt to make sure that they are as stationary as you can simply because they swing into different positions. They were initially referred to as “Roman rings,” his or her origin just like a strength-training product is considered to go back 1000 of years in Italia. Noisy . iterations in the modern Olympics, they were sometimes referred to as “flying rings.”

Balance beam

The quantity beam started off centuries ago just like a log suspended in mid-air. It has been refined over time with a padded beam, 16 foot extended, four foot high and 4 inches wide. It’s the women’s event that requires the higher focus and precision. A minuscule misstep can send a gymnast tumbling lower.