Faster, higher, stronger -- together...
Seven years ago this month, Sydney Siame became the first Zambian to win a gold medal at the 100m sprint during the Youth Olympic Games in China. With a time of just 10.56 seconds, at 16 years old, he finished just one hundredth of a second ahead of the second place winner – proving just how tight this race was! (For racing enthusiasts – the current 100m world record is held by Usain Bolt from Jamaica, with a time of 9.58 seconds). Back in 2014, he was the first medal winner to have trained at the International Olympic Committee’s Sport of Hope Centre in Lusaka – inaugurated in 2010 – with an aim to promote and facilitate access to sports for young athletes. He was also the first Zambian to qualify for the Tokyo games, and tonight (or tomorrow, depending on where in the world you are!) he will compete for the Men’s 200m race. Over these years, Siame has been a testament that youth across the nation, given the opportunity, can compete on the global stage. Tonight, we are wishing him the greatest of wishes in his quest!
Barbra Banda started her athletic career as a boxer, and never lost a fight until she switched to football. As part of Zambia’s national football team, nicknamed the “She-polopolo”, she is part of the first team from Zambia to qualify for the Olympics in history! She scored within the first 20 minutes of Zambia’s first game, completing two back-to-back hat tricks in the first games that Zambia played. She is the first player to ever score multiple hat tricks in the Olympics, and while Zambia’s team did not advance further, she has made her mark on the global stage. Along with countless other Zambian girls, we will be watching her in the years to come.
And last, a story that Katie can attest made me tear up a little bit – I’ve been in awe of the three teenagers that claimed gold (Momiji Nishiya, age 13), silver (Rayssa Leal, age 13) and bronze (Funa Nakayama, age 16) in the first-ever women’s street skateboarding event at the Olympics. No doubt helped by the one-year delay (Nishiya and Leal would have been below the age cutoff in 2020), these three girls were incredible! I happened to watch the skateboarding last week and felt so proud to see these young women celebrated for their entry into a sport that has long-been considered a male dominated one (Leal made viral history at the age of 8 with these amazing videos of her skateboarding in a fairy costume - https://twitter.com/tonyhawk/status/641374976927399938 and https://twitter.com/i/status/1419515035194249221). Perhaps even more impressive was the cheering and true camaraderie all of the athletes showed towards one another. They cheered and consoled each other with a sincerity that sometimes is hard to see in these competitive games.
Of course, there are so many athletes that have stolen our hearts this week – including Simone Biles, Oksana Chusovitina, Hidilyn Diaz, Carissa Moore, Sunisa Lee, Ahmed Hafnaoui, Hifumi & Uta Abe, and countless more. To them, we celebrate their achievements and share in their disappointments in the strangest of Olympics in our lifetime. And we look to the next generation of athletes, looking up to them all over the globe, wondering of their own potential if given the chance to practice and excel.
-Reshma