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Nova Scotians in the spotlight

After a year-long wait, 10 atheles are ready to take the Olympic stage

GEORGE MYRER gmyrer@herald.ca @Gmyrer

The long wait is over for Nova Scotia’s Olympic athletes.

An extra year of training in isolation, the uncertainty of the viability of the Tokyo Olympics amid Japan’s growing concerns over the resurgence of COVID-19 are now in the rearview for the athletes.

But signs of vigilance were on display at Friday night’s Opening Ceremony as smaller delegations of mask-wearing, socially-distanced athletes walked into Tokyo’s Olympic Stadium to signal the official start to the Tokyo Games.

Olympic veteran Mark de Jonge, one of 10 athletes born or having permanent residency in Nova Scotia, is taking all the precautions in stride.

“While things are starting to ease up in Canada, we will need to get used to being very strict again with mask-wearing at all times even in our apartments and following COVID protocols,” said the 37-year-old kayaker. “The Olympics is normally a very social event, but this won’t be a normal Olympics. While meal-time at the Olympic dining hall is normally a social event where you might meet some athletes from different countries and spot some superstars, in Tokyo meals will mostly be grab-and-go and eaten in our rooms. Staying isolated in our bubbles will be key so there won’t be much socializing.”

His third and final Olympic Games will be nothing like his previous trips to 2012 London and 2016 Rio where the pomp and ceremony and fans were on full display. The Tokyo Olympics will be staged without spectators due to the strict COVID protocols.

“No matter how you slice it, the Olympics is always a big deal and Tokyo will be an amazing experience despite the restrictions that are in place,” said the 2012 London bronzemedallist in the K-1 200 metres. “I’m excited to represent my country and do what I love and, with this being my last Games, I’m going to soak it all in.”

Joining de Jonge in Tokyo are fellow paddlers Michelle Russell (Fall River) and Connor Fitzpatrick (Dartmouth), sailors Jacob Saunders (Chester) and Oliver Bone (Halifax), gymnast Ellie Black (Halifax), shot putter Sarah Mitton (Brooklyn), basketball’s Shay Colley (East Preston), boxer Wyatt Sanford (Kennetcook) and equestrian Brittany Fraser-beaulieu (New Glasgow).

GYMNASTS GOOD TO GO

Black, Canada’s most decorated female gymnast, is appearing in her third Olympics.

The 25-year-old Halifax native leads a strong Canadian team into the gymnastics competition. In Rio, Black placed fifth overall in the All Around while the team placed ninth overall.

The Canadian women had a chance to work off the competition rust with a Podium training on Thursday at the gymnastics venue in Tokyo. Black and her teammates begin competition in Subdivision 4 on Sunday (5:05 a.m. Atlantic time).

“It was great to be back in an actual arena competing in person,” said Black. “It wasn’t competition but practising, going through those motions for the competition. Podium was really good.

“We got to feel all the equipment, show some really good routines. And just to know where we need to keep working for the competition. We felt really excited to be out there.

“The main thing for us is we are so grateful for the opportunity being here and having the Olympics go ahead.”

DRESSAGE DREAMS

Fraser-beaulieu, a member of the Canadian Dressage team, did her walkthrough with All In, her horse, on Friday morning. The New Glasgow native and first-time Olympian has been Canada’s highest-ranking dressage team member since 2017.

“All the Canadian riders and horses were turned out amazingly in the Canadian team clothes for the jog,” said the 32-year-old Fraser-beaulieu. “As of now, we will be focusing on the Grand Prix as a team to all try to get personal bests for Canada.”

WATCHING FROM HOME

One element missing for the athletes is family. With travel restrictions and spectator bans in place, those close to the Olympians will have to watch the Games from home.

Kennetcook boxer Wyatt Sanford will be the first Nova Scotian in competition in Tokyo. The 22-year-old will make his Olympic debut against Mervin Clair of Mauritius on Saturday morning (1:54 a.m.).

Sanford’s mother Angela, who has travelled the world with her son, said she is hosting an event in her Kennetcook

backyard.

“We have a big screen set to go,” said Angela Sanford. “We have a few family and friends coming over. I just wish COVID wasn’t interfering with the numbers.”

LARGE CANADIAN TEAM

In all Canada will have 370 athletes competing at the Games, including an all-time high of 225 women. Many of these athletes have passed through Nova Scotia in the Olympic cycle.

Ken Bagnell, the president of Canadian Sport Centre Atlantic (CSCA), is well acquainted with many of the Nova Scotia Olympians. Bagnell and his CSCA staff, several of whom are at the Games in support roles, have helped the athletes through the trying times of the pandemic.

TOKYO — Japan's global superstar Naomi Osaka on Friday lit the Olympic cauldron to mark the start of Tokyo 2020, in an opening ceremony shorn of glitz and overshadowed by a pandemic but defined by hope, tradition and gestures of diversity.

Postponed by a year due to the coronavirus, the Games are being held without spectators in a city under a Covidinduced state of emergency, as many other parts of the globe also still struggle with a resurgence of cases.

Athletes, the vast majority wearing masks, paraded through an eerily silent National Stadium where flagbearers for the first time were both men and women and the Canadian delegation marched with rainbow badges on their uniforms in support of the LGBTQ+ community.

In its journey through the stadium, the torch was passed from Olympic champions to baseball legends — one born in Taiwan — a doctor and a nurse, a Paralympian, and children from parts of Japan hit badly by the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011.

It was finally handed to Osaka, the 23-year-old fourtime tennis grand slam champion whose background as the daughter of a Haitian man and Japanese woman reflects the changes and slowly growing diversity coming to a once ethnically homogeneous country.

"Undoubtedly the greatest athletic achievement and honor I will ever have in my life," Osaka wrote in a tweet. "I have no words to describe the feelings I have right now but I do know I am currently filled with gratefulness and thankfulness."

Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee, said in his opening speech addressing the athletes: "The lesson we learned is we need more solidarity — more solidarity among societies, and solidarity within societies."

But the shift towards greater inclusiveness has not come without stumbles. Tokyo 2020 has been hit by a string of scandals, including the exit of senior officials over derogatory comments about women, Holocaust jokes and bullying.

Normally a star-studded display teeming with celebrities, the ceremony was lowkey, with fewer than 1,000 people in attendance, strict social distancing rules and signs calling on spectators to "be quiet around the venue."

Opening with videos showing empty streets around the world and an athlete training alone in darkness, it also included drones hovering over Tokyo's National Stadium in the shape of the Olympic logo morphing into planet earth and a global performance via videolink of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's "Imagine".

"With the world in a tough situation because of the coronavirus pandemic, I would like to pay my respect and express my gratitude to medical workers and all those who are working hard every day to overcome the difficulties," said local organizing committee President Seiko Hashimoto.

The ceremony climaxed with a fusion of traditional kabuki theatre — with its elaborate makeup and costumes — and a jazz piano improvisation, on a stage topped with the cauldron for the Olympic flame.

At the parade, most countries were represented by both male and female flagbearers in an Olympic first, but not everybody stuck to pandemic protocols. In an awkward contrast to most other athletes, teams from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and Pakistan's flagbearers paraded https:// www.reuters.com/lifestyle/ sports/maskless-kyrgyzstanrain-olympic-openingparade-other-teams-coverfaces-2021-07-23 maskless.

ECHOES OF ‘64

The opening also featured fireworks in indigo and white, the colours of the Tokyo 2020 emblem, and gave a nod to

Japanese tradition represented by giant wooden Olympic rings linked to the 1964 Games, which the city also hosted.

Some delegations enlivened the mood. Uganda, wearing bright traditional costumes, did a few measures of a dance, while Argentine athletes jumped up and down on entering.

A moment of silence was held "for all those family and friends we have lost," especially to COVID-19. The Israeli athletes slain at the 1972 Munich Games were also remembered.

Japanese Emperor Naruhito and Bach, both masked, cheered on the athletes after bowing to each other before sitting down.

"Today is a moment of hope. Yes, it is very different from what all of us imagined. But finally we are all here together," said Bach.

Unlike his grandfather who opened the 1964 Games with a Japanese word that means "congratulations," Naruhito opted for a more neutral word in Japanese that is closer to "commemorate."

The ceremony was marked by major absences, including former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who wooed the Games to Tokyo. Top sponsors also stayed away, highlighting strong opposition to the event within Covid-fatigued Japan.

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