My Opinion on the First Ever “Space Olympics” by Trisha Reddy

 

      The First Ever “Space Olympics”  

As the Tokyo Olympics were coming to a close, the International Space Station decided to hold their own Olympics. There were two teams taking part in this competition, Team Dragon and Team Soyuz. Team Dragon had four astronauts and Team Soyuz had three.

The Space Olympics consisted of four events, the first one being the “lack-of-floor” routine where each astronaut executed various flips. I thought it was cool to see the astronauts do a spin on the floor routine from gymnastics and challenged themselves to not touch the floor. The second event was a no-handball match in which the teams competed to blow a ping-pong ball past the other team’s hatch. This sport was really fun to watch and looked similar to real handball because the astronauts passed the ball to one another and tried to score a goal while a goalie guarded it. Synchronized floating was next, an event based on synchronized swimming, where the teams performed choreographed routines.

For their last event, weightless sharpshooting, the astronauts shot rubber bands at a target with a cross. For the future, I think it would be better to have a target similar to one used for archery so that the competitors could be awarded points even if they didn’t hit the center of the target.

Finally, the competition ended with a closing ceremony where Hoshide from Japan passed on the Olympic flag to Pesquet from France since the 2024 Olympics will take place in Paris.

Overall, I thought that the Space Olympics was a fun competition. The events chosen were creative because they were based on real sports in the Olympics, but cleverly adapted to the zero-gravity environment. The games were done in such a small space with minimal equipment, but were still very entertaining. It was also interesting to see the astronauts change the rules and point systems during the games because it was their first time playing it. If the Space Olympics does become a tradition, the astronauts might be able to add some more sports such as sprinting or long jump for next time.

 

 

https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/8/22615422/astronauts-esa-jaxa-space-olympics-iss-tokyo-paris