The Olympics: who to watch out for in Rio
The swimmer
Modern Olympians aren’t known for their erudition, says Jessica Halloran in The Daily Telegraph (Sydney). The singlemindedness demanded by their sports leaves little time for studying. But Cameron Mcevoy, a 22-year-old Australian swimmer, has “a voracious love for all things dealing with space”: he studies physics and applied mathematics at Griffith University, and dreams of working for Nasa. For now, however, he is intent on winning a gold medal, having set a Commonwealth record for the 100-metre freestyle earlier this year. One passion helps him with the other – at big meets, he relaxes by imagining what aliens might think if they were watching the swimmers from up in outer space.
The rugby player
Jillion Potter is a truly “ferocious” rugby player, says Lars Anderson on Bleacherreport.com. Watching her in action, as the “enforcer” of the US women’s team in the rugby sevens – a sport being introduced in this Olympics – you would never know that she has twice “stared down the spectre of never playing again”. In 2010, when two Canadian players fell on her, she broke her neck; four years later, an enormous tumour was discovered in her mouth, and she was diagnosed with stage three synovial sarcoma cancer. In her first round of chemotherapy, Potter was given a dose so strong that it could have killed someone less fit. Yet today, just one year after getting the all-clear, she is enjoying a second remarkable comeback.
The showjumper
Most riders fall in love with horses at an early age, says Rory Mulholland in The Sunday Telegraph. But when Abdelkebir Ouaddar was a boy, the animals terrified him. Now, at 54, he is about to reach “the pinnacle of an unlikely career”, as the first Moroccan showjumper to compete in the Olympics. At the age of eight, Ouaddar’s life was transformed when the king’s sister saw him playing in the street. In accordance with a Moroccan tradition that allows the royal family to adopt ordinary children, she agreed with Ouaddar’s parents that she would take him in. Another princess noticed his fear of horses and helped him get used to them, until he felt comfortable enough to try riding. Although he’s a late bloomer, Ouaddar isn’t the oldest athlete at the Games: Mary Hanna, a 61-year-old Australian dressage rider and grandmother, will be taking part in her fifth Olympics.
The marathon runners
Two hundred sets of twins have competed in the Olympic Games, “almost always in the same events”, says Jeré Longman in The New York Times. But this year, for the first time in the history of the competition, triplets are taking part. The “Trio to Rio”, as Estonian sisters Leila, Liina and Lily Luik call themselves, will compete in the women’s marathon next week, just six years after they began running seriously. Aged 30, the triplets are almost identical, but they “don’t have precisely the same speed or oxygencarrying capacity”. They are tempted to run together, experiencing “the highlight of their careers in unison” – but to succeed, “they know they may have to run apart”. The Luiks won’t be the only family outfit in Rio: Georgian shooter Nino Salukvadze, a three-time Olympic medallist, will be joined by her son, Tsotne Machavariani, making them the competition’s first mother-and-son team.
The middledistance runner
In 2005, during Sudan’s second civil war, Yiech Pur Biel fled his home “as fast as his ten-yearold legs would carry him”, says Inna Lazareva in the New Statesman. Eleven years later, now the resident of a Kenyan refugee camp, Biel is “training for a very different kind of run”. In Rio, the South Sudanese athlete will compete in the 800 metres as part of the first ever “Team Refugee”. Set up by the International Olympic Committee to draw attention to the refugee crisis, the team is made up of refugees from Africa and the Middle East; most haven’t seen their parents and siblings since they were children. At 18, the youngest member of the team is Syrian swimmer Yusra Mardini. Last year, she was trying to get to Greece from Turkey when her crowded dinghy capsized. Mardini jumped into the Aegean Sea and helped push the boat, swimming for three hours to reach land.