2021

1) The Olympics have both already started and start again on Friday. This is the second time Tokyo has hosted the event, the first being in 1964. Here’s the official film of those Games; here’s an explanation of its global and cultural impact; here are its top 10 moments; here’s Lynn “The Leap” Davies winning […]

The decision to ban spectators from attending all but a handful of Tokyo 2020 events amid a surge of Covid-19 cases in the host city has stripped Japanese athletes of the psychological advantage of performing in front of home crowds. It is no surprise, then, that Japan’s Olympic committee – like those in other countries

At the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki, Emil Zatopek was almost the dictionary definition of peaking when it counted. He struck gold in the 5,000 and 10,000 metres, breaking the Olympic records en route to victory in both. Mission accomplished, you would think, for the Czech Locomotive. Nope. At the last minute he decided to

The International Olympic Committee and Tokyo 2020 organisers have performed a U-turn over their stance to stop their social media teams from posting pictures of athletes taking the knee at these Olympic Games. The decision comes after the Guardian revealed they had issued a diktat against showing such images just hours before Team GB’s women’s

Lucy Bronze said that Team GB “don’t look like a team that’s been freshly made for a tournament”, after the side’s comfortable 2-0 defeat of Chile at the Olympics. The Fifa Best player of the year was pivotal in the opening game, providing the dinked cross that Lauren Hemp tipped to the feet of Ellen

It’s that time again. Time to embrace our inner Olympic judge. Time to contemplate the mating habits of the Great American Athlete. The game began in earnest a few days ago as the first pictures from inside the athletes’ village dorms whipped around the web – and this time there was no getting past the

Eleven years ago, when I was just a little girl with a big dream, I had to call myself Colin and pretend to be a boy so that I could step inside a boxing ring. I was nine and girls were not allowed to box at the famous Repton Boys Club in east London. All

About the results The cycling road race, which is traditionally one of the first events, is also unusual in being a one-off medal event. Most of the other medals are awarded after a number of heats or other preliminary events. In particular, the team games, such as football, rugby and basketball are organised as cup

As Andy Murray prepares to compete in the fourth Olympic games of his life, he says that winning a medal at the Tokyo Olympics would rank as one of the best achievements of his career given his torrid struggles with injuries. He believes that he is still capable of doing so. Although the men’s draw

When Pedri stumbled through a challenge and swept inside to tee up Dani Ceballos, who crashed a long-range effort off the crossbar, we were given the first taste of the 18-year-old’s talent in Tokyo against Egypt. Only 16 days after Spain’s exit from Euro 2020, at which he was named young player of the tournament,