Kaleidoscope 2021: The Great Passion And The Toughness Of A Number Of Achievements In The Midst Of New Normality
JAKARTA - In the first semester of 2021, sports competitions and tournaments in various parts of the world are still mostly closed to spectators who want to watch athletes compete and compete in stadiums. However, this time of year there has been great enthusiasm to open stadium doors to send a message that life is back to normal even though COVID-19 cases are rising and vaccines have not been widely injected.
Most of the tournaments and competitions that were supposed to be held in 2020 but were postponed due to the pandemic raging across the globe were finally held this year, including EURO 2020 and the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. The year 2021 was also marked by a series of achievements by Indonesian athletes.
Here we present a number of important events in the world of sports compiled by VOI from various sources.
NBA, Dakar Rally, F1 and MotoGPBig records were created in 2021, including the success of Giannis Antetokounmpo who led the Milwaukee Bucks to win the NBA after waiting for almost half a century.
Then, the Dakar Rally, which has been held in Saudi Arabia since 2020, opens a major global sporting event from January 2 to 15. Kevin Benavides and Stephane Peterhansel won the motorcycle and car categories respectively.
This can also be called the way Saudi Arabia presents its modern face which since being led by King Salman and de facto leader Crown Prince Muhamed bin Salman has tried to modernize itself in all fields, including holding tournaments and elite sports competitions in the country.
In the following months the series or series of major competitions from various sports opened its first curtain. Formula 1 and MotoGP begin their full calendar for 2021, respectively through the Bahrain Formula 1 Grand Prix won by Max Verstappen this season, and the Qatar MotoGP Grand Prix won this season by Fabio Quartararo.
After that followed other major events including the world's prestigious cycling event, the Tour de France, which was won by Tadej Pogacar from Slovenia.
From football, after Chelsea closed the curtain on the entire European season by winning the Champions League after beating Manchester City in the final, the world's most popular sport is hosting one of its two biggest tournaments, EURO 2020, which will be held almost simultaneously with the Copa America.
For the first time in 61 years, the EURO will not be held in one or two countries, but in many countries to commemorate the 60th anniversary of this competition. EURO is one of the competitions suspended due to the pandemic.
For the first time too, a major sporting competition was held in full stadiums, even Hungary and the climax of the party in London, the stadium stands were full of spectators.
The big players competed in 11 cities from Seville in Spain to Baku, Azerbaijan, on the Caspian Sea, from June 11 to July 11 this year.
Italy beat England on penalties to win EURO 2020, destroying England's hopes of winning their first major tournament title since the 1966 World Cup.
The penalty shoot-out was the dramatic conclusion to a tense day at London's Wembley Stadium. It was also a sweet redemption from Roberto Mancini's side after three embarrassing years of failing to participate in the 2018 World Cup.
Along with this tournament, in South America history was made when Lionel Messi finally won his major tournament title after Argentina beat Brazil in the 2021 Copa America final.
About two months after that Messi left Barcelona to join Paris Saint Germain (PSG) in France, and at the end of November he was awarded his seventh Ballon d'Or.
Tokyo OlympicsImmediately after EURO 2020 and Copa America 2021, the biggest sporting event in the world, the Summer Olympics, will be held in Tokyo, after being postponed for a year and at risk of not being held due to the rejection of the majority of the Japanese population due to the ongoing wave of COVID-19 infections.
Opening July 23 and then closing August 8, one of the world's most expensive Olympics and the only one to be held during the pandemic was held. Together with the Tokyo Paralympics, this event cost 1.45 trillion yen or IDR 173 trillion.
World records were set in 24 events with the most frequent occurrences in swimming and rowing which created six world records each. Three world records were broken in athletics and cycling, while four world records were broken from weightlifting where Indonesia got one silver and three bronze medals from Eko Yuli Irawan, Windy Cantika and Rahmat Erwin Abdullah, respectively.
Australian freestyle swimmer Emma McKeon is the athlete with the most Tokyo Olympics medals with a total of seven medals, while American Caeleb Dressel is the athlete with the most gold medals with five gold medals.
The Tokyo Olympics, which included six new sports, also made a note of its own by writing Momiji Nishiya from Japan as the youngest athlete in this Olympics to win a gold medal at the age of 13 years and 330 days or the second youngest after Marjorie Gestring to win gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
The story of the uniqueness of the Tokyo Olympics does not stop there because for the first time a sports event has the highest digital engagement. Apart from triggering 250 million video posts, the Olympics also generated 4.7 billion engagements on social media.
Apart from that, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics will be a doping-free Olympics with no athlete disqualified for doping.
The Success of Badminton and the Implementation of PONIn January, badminton opened the first page of its competition calendar that was postponed a year ago by hosting the BWF World Tour Finals which will be held in Thailand from 27 to 31 January.
Anders Antonsen became one of the winners of this tournament, while Indonesia did not get a single title. Throughout this year, in this BWF Tour, Indonesia won a total of six titles and only the women's singles did not succeed in presenting the title. But Indonesia won the Thomas Cup last October after defeating arch-rivals China in the final.
Indonesia also finished its 19-year thirst for titles by bringing home the Thomas Cup from Denmark, apart from being equally successful in the women's doubles, Greysia Polii and Apriyani Rahayu, who in addition to presenting Indonesia's only gold medal from the Tokyo Olympics, also completed the long wait for women's doubles to win Olympic gold. .
Not only that. Indonesia has also successfully held the National Sports Week (PON) and the National Paralympic Week (Peparnas) Papua in October and November. These two events were called successful, one of which was because they did not create a wave of infection as initially feared, even though the Delta variant at that time was still threatening Indonesia.
Heroic Action of Tennis, Golf and Boxing2021 will also be a year full of heroic stories and records set by individual athletes. From tennis, Daniil Medvedev tackled Novak Djokovic in the US Open final, preventing the Serbian from sweeping all Grand Slam titles in one season and failing to match Rod Laver's feat.
Still from tennis, a fairy tale is also created when the inexperienced Emma Raducanu and only ranked 336 in the world won the US Open at the age of 18.
From golf, Jon Rahm won the prestigious US Open tournament which he dedicated to Seve Ballesteros who was also from Spain who died in 2011.
In the boxing ring, Tyson Fury the Gypsy King defended his world heavyweight title after defeating challenger Deontay Wilder. This is the third fight between the two boxers. The Gypsy King will try to unify the heavyweight world title if he later meets and manages to beat Oleksandr Usyk of Ukraine.
In general, the efforts of the world, especially sport, to return to normal life as before the pandemic, have been carried out which almost smoothly occurred, when widespread vaccination was practiced in all branches, tournaments and competitions.