Thursday July 22, 2021
Which world stars are there?
The Olympics in 2021 will not sparkle as much as it used to
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The hype surrounding the US basketball players at the 1992 Olympics will probably forever remain unmatched. But the encounters with the big stars of the sports world are what make the games so special. For Tokyo, these have been canceled in a row. However, there are exceptions.
For Moritz Fürste it was like an enlightenment. In Beijing in 2008, he and his hockey boys “played basketball alongside Ronaldinho. For me it was as if I had seen God in person,” said the 37-year-old on “Spox” and “Goal”. Fürste is a two-time Olympic champion himself, but such a football star from Brazil? “Ronaldinho was the really big number back then, and I daddled around next to him, that was crazy,” said Fürste – still very enthusiastic.
Like the world hockey player, it was the same for many athletes at the past Olympic Games. Meetings or shared souvenir photos with world stars like Usain Bolt, Michael “Air” Jordan, Michael Johnson, Roger Federer, Michael Phelps, Lionel Messi or Steffi Graf were the highlights for many. And unforgettable!
Bolt was “seen from a distance in the cafeteria. He was well protected by other athletes because everyone wanted to catch a photo. But that’s also about just seeing a few stars,” said football professional Nils Petersen who was there in Rio in 2016.
And now? The really big names are rare in Tokyo. Sure, a Naomi Osaka, a Simone Biles, a Megan Rapinoe, a Kevin Durant or a Novak Djokovic start to attract attention. Armand Duplantis, Allyson Felix, Bryson DeChambeau, Collin Morikawa, Marta and Tadej Pogacar are also stars in the scene. But the great glamor factor of a Florence Griffith-Joyner with her extravagant fingernails and her flowing mane or a Usain Bolt with his contagious looseness is completely missing, with Serena Williams the best tennis player of her time has also canceled. Hardly anyone has this aura of aloofness this time.
With the icon in the fast food restaurant
Also in Team D there is no Dirk Nowitzki, who was the exception in 2008, no Steffi Graf and no Boris Becker. But even the two tennis legends were clearly overshadowed at the 1992 Olympics. For the first time in history, the best basketball players in the world appeared together in Barcelona – THE dream team. Jordan, Larry Bird, Patrick Ewing, Magic Johnson, Scottie Pippen and Charles Barkley were celebrated like aliens.
At his own Olympic appearance, Nowitzki remembered with shining eyes this “huge experience” that he had watched on TV as a 14-year-old: “How the players who were sitting on the bench with the opposing teams took pictures with their cameras while her colleagues tried to cover for Michael Jordan – unbelievable! ” The then German coach Svetislav Pesic therefore expressly forbade his team to take fan photos with the US stars.
When Jordan and Co. went for a walk on La Rambla in Barcelona, the fans fell into ecstasy. There was a state of emergency. A helicopter circled over the crew bus, the hotel was guarded by snipers. “I’ve never traveled with a rock band,” said longtime NBA Vice President Brian McIntyre, “but that’s how it must have been with the Beatles.”
Fürste did not see the dream team, but for him it was “something very special to sit next to Roger Federer at McDonald’s in Rio in 2016 and talk about god and the world. These meetings are of course what make the games.” Something like this, said Nowitzki, “you don’t experience anywhere else”. Also in Tokyo?
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