athlete

Though there are many criticism on the issues that Brazil is facing as a country, the Olympics at Rio de Janeiro has started, and many great things have occurred. I remembered that it was the Olympics at Atlanta in 1996 that I first watched and grew very attached in watching many of these sports today.

Here are some of the great sport achievements of this week:

• Penny Oleksiak a 16 year old Canadian swimmer conquering the heart of many fans with an Olympic record on 100m freestyle swim, and the first Canadian to win 4 medals in one games. What a great future!
• Americans dominating the swimming medal count, especially with Katie Ledecky winning very convincingly the 200m, 400, 800m freestyle (beating her own World Record) and Michael Phelps adding more medals to his illustrious career.
• Synchronized Diving, a sport where China is considered the best, Wu Minxia achieved a historic 5th goal medal since her participation in 2014 Olympics in 3m springboard. An achievement that was later repeated by her compatriot Chen Ruolin in the 10m springboard.  
• Almaz Ayana from Ethiopia broke the 10,000m race World Record by 14 seconds, which is insane.
• Kohei Uchimura in an intense competition in the all-round men gymnastics competition, grabbed the gold medal by performing a spectacular on his last apparatus (high bar) and beat the second place by 0.1 point. He is also a gold medalist in London 2012 and silver medalisy in Beijing 2008.

There still more events coming up, and I am very excited to see them.

One special athlete I want to focus on is the Italian Tania Cagnotto from 3m springboard diving. She got a silver medal on synchronized diving, and though her achievement might seem small compared to the ones listed above, I really admire her because of her perseverance. I remembered her in the 2012 Olympics, where she was 0.1 point from getting a bronze medal and was ranked 4th. I actually remembered blogging about it 4 years ago. She cried in her coach's shoulder because she has been so close to a medal (she got 4th on both synchronized and individual on 2012, and ranked 5th on individual on 2008). No one was sure if she would come back for another Olympics as she might retire due to her age, and it is difficult to overcome such disappointment. But she kept training and competing, and her perseverance paid off, and now she can boast of a silver Olympic medal, and she might have another chance at the individual competition next week.

I admire athletes because of their discipline and motivation to train and improve. It is not a surprise that the bible has verses that talks about the imagery of someone of races, one who race with perseverance (Hebrew 12:1), one who exercise self-control (1 Cor. 9:24-27), and one who finishes the race (2 Tim. 4:7).

Perseverance is very important because there are many obstacles and disappointments in life but we have to keep striving forward for what Christ has called us. The lesson of  discipline is a hard one. Sometimes it is so difficult to just find time to read the bible on our busy lives. I know in my head that reading the Word is important, I have tasted that the bible is very refreshing, but despite of that I sometimes choose to fill my time with other activities. Discipline means that we need to stick to do what we have to do, even when we do not feel like it. These are two very important lessons that I need to work on more, and through God's grace I hope to improve, all for His glory.