July 24, would have marked the start of the
Tokyo
Olympics 2020, with a glittering opening ceremony planned at the National Olympic Stadium in Japan’s Shinjuku City.
It was to be attended by around 68,000 spectators and watched by nearly four billion people on TV screens globally. More than 12,000 athletes from 185 national Olympic committees were supposed to have kept sports lovers the world over enthralled for the next 16 days.
No one could have predicted that a pandemic would strike the planet and deeply disrupt human lives. The coronavirus brought global sport to a standstill, resulting in the postponement of the Olympics from July 23 to August 8, 2021. Many Indian athletes, too, have been affected by the Olympics postponement.
TOI spoke to some premier athletes who have already qualified for the Olympics to find out how they have been coping…
MC Mary Kom (Boxing; London Olympic bronze medallist)
Winning the Olympic gold is my priority and a dream. My focus remains the same. It wasn’t easy to accept the fact that the Olympics were postponed. The pandemic was something we couldn’t have anticipated. I have been doing my