Naomi Osaka 大坂 なおみ Lights the Olympic Flame
Watching her gave me ALL the feels!
Watching her gave me ALL the feels!
The Tokyo 2020 (2021) Olympic Games started today with my absolute favorite event: The Opening Ceremonies with the Parade of Nations.
I have always loved the Olympics and I watched the Summer and the Winter Games for as long as I can remember. I love the pageantry, I love the athletes, I love all of the different sports (OK, I still don’t get “curling”), and most of all, I love the way the Olympics and their athletic excellence and sportsmanship show how people in the world are supposed to get along. I am sure that is why “Imagine” by John Lennon is the unofficial Olympic anthem and has been performed in some form at all of the recent Games.
I sit transfixed during the Parade of Nations. I love seeing the athletes from all of the countries, but especially from the smallest and/or most challenged. Maybe athletes are not supposed to be elevated to such celebrity status as they are, but especially in the countries with the most problems and that have the least economically, sports stars may be all they have. I understand that.
Of course, the lighting of the Olympic flame, which has traveled all over the world for two years before the actual games, is the highlight of the Opening Ceremonies. During this time of COVID, getting the Torch around the world has been especially challenging; at one point, the flame was actually put into a small lantern to make it easier to carry by plane. The point is that the Torch should never be extinguished before it is used to light the Flame.
Many countries have staged very extravagant and technically exorbitant ways to light the Flame, but my absolute favorite was the lowest-tech in recent memory: when the Paralympic archer, Antonio Rebollo, shot a flaming arrow at the Barcelona Games in 1992. Talk about “hitting your target!” Not many people know that the arrow was in fact intentionally over-shot and did not itself light the flame as the organizers were fearful that if missed, it may have caused a fire in the grandstand.
Besides the archer, who was not well-known outside of Spain, the person who usually gets the Torch last and actually lights the Flame is some kind of celebrity who is often also known around the world. So of course one of my other favorite person who lit the Flame was Muhammad Ali, the surprise celebrity who lit the Flame at the 1996 Atlanta Games. His hand was shaking from his Parkinson’s, but he was still The Greatest!
The Olympics say that they are trying very hard to emphasize diversity and inclusion, even beyond the Paralympians and the Paralympic Games. So when it was revealed that Naomi Osaka would light the Olympic Flame, my heart swelled with happiness. She is the first person to light the Flame who will also be participating in the Games at the same time.
Naomi’s Haitian father and Japanese mother met and married in Japan, where Naomi was born. She took the last name of her mother, Osaka, which is also the area where she was born — another Japanese tradition. Although Naomi has lived the majority of her life in the United States, she and her parents decided years ago that she would represent Japan on the professional tennis circuit.
Additionally, unlike many other countries, Japan does not allow “dual citizenship,” so although Naomi was a citizen of Haiti through her father, at age 21, she chose to become an official citizen of Japan. She will represent Japan in the Olympics.
Naomi looked so beautiful, yet so like herself standing at the Olympic cauldron with her hair braided in very long locs laced with red. Just like when she decided that she needed to take a “mental health” break away from the media because she is so naturally shy; just like she honored the “Black Lives Matter” movement and wore masks with the names of Black people who were murdered by police to many matches as part of a silent protest; just as she has decided that only she will be the one to decide when and where she presents herself in public; it was such a symbolic statement to the entire world for her to be the one to light the Olympic Flame at the Tokyo Games in front of billions of viewers.
Seeing the athletes from all over the world start the Opening Ceremonies, and then to see Naomi Osaka light the Flame at the end of the Opening Ceremonies fills my heart with joy and reminds me that all of us are much more alike than we are different and that all of us can work very hard to achieve excellence in some area as the athletes have worked so hard to achieve excellence in their sport.
I LOVE watching the Olympics.