BEIJING, July 31,
2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The second episode of the fourth
season of Youth Power, "The Fresh Olympic Spirit of Global
Gen Z" was broadcast on July 30.
Gen Zers from China, Finland,
France, Germany, Greece and the
United States gathered in a sports arena and built
cross-national friendships through sport. In this encounter, the
openness and inclusivity of the sporting spirit was to the fore, as
were the innovations, organizational brilliance and technological
applications that are all part of staging modern sporting
events.
In the Olympics in Paris now
on, breakdancing has been added as a Games sport, and
skateboarding, surfing and competitive climbing have been retained
following their inclusion in the previous Olympics in Tokyo. Stefanie
Perner, a Gen Zer from Germany, voiced high expectations for the
skateboarding contests. "People used to regard skateboarding as a
rebellious sport, or maybe not even sport, just things that kids
will do on the street," she said. "But to me it's a culture, a
community, a way for you to communicate with your cities through
your board."
Emerging technologies such as cloud broadcasting and AI-assisted
training are also adding to the spectacle of the Games.
Elijah Van Knowles from the United States, who has long practiced
wushu at Shanghai
University of Sport, said, "From the very university here at
Shanghai University of Sports
we've started going into the deep development of using AI to judge
athletes, and it as a way to substitute for human judges."
The Gen Z guests agreed that technologies should be used in
sports in a very discrete way so that the spontaneity and
entertainment that are so important to them are not dissipated.
Thomas Mattei, a Frenchman studying
at Fudan University in Shanghai,
said, "Sport is also about spontaneity, and advances are a good
part of the Olympics. If you stop (an event) just because the
machine says you should, then technology is de-naturing the
sport."
Indeed, the magic of sports lies in their very unpredictability.
Anais Fernandez-Laaksonen, a student
at Tsinghua University in Beijing
who comes from a Finnish family of athletes, said: "People really
have a love-hate relationship with sports. There are unpleasant
parts, very painful, all the failures and all the injuries. You
need to have the perseverance and the bravery to commit to every
single decision you make."
For the Gen Zers in the program, the sporting spirit highlights
inclusivity, fair play, solidarity and kindness, encouraging
people, in particular the young, to embrace the opportunities of
life. Susan St Denis, an American
studying at Tsinghua University, said that when she was teaching
swimming, children were keen to emulate the US Olympian Michael
Phelps, popularly known as the Flying Fish. She then joined a
rowing team and was impressed by the women's rowing in the Olympics
in Brazil in 2016.
The host of the episode, Wang Licheng, who studies at Peking
University, said, "In the Paris Olympics, for the first time we
have the same number of women and men athletes." St Denis
responded, "It wasn't until 1976 that women were able to compete in
rowing at the Olympics. However, even now women athletes do not get
the attention they deserve. We don't get (the same attention) as
male athletes do. We don't get the same amount of coverage."
The wushu exponent Elijah
Van Knowles said wushu holds beauty as an art
"not just for fighting people, but also for preserving peace". He
hopes that wushu, with its profound historical and cultural
significance, can be included in the Olympics.
Jim Mathiopoulos from
Greece, who is studying at
Shanghai University of Sport, said
he has practiced wushu at his father's kungfu school
since he was young. He dreams of promoting wushu to a
wider audience in the birthplace of the Olympics, he said.
"Going into those competitions is not wanting that first place,
but for this burning passion and showing what you've tried."
Mathiopoulos is studying Chinese philosophy and history, and
says he hopes to bring wushu to the public through online
seminars and master classes.
Youth Power, organized by China
Daily and first broadcast in June
2021, aims to build a global platform of communication and
exchange, focusing on the interests and ideas of Generation Z. The
program comes in the form of interviews, forums and speeches, with
topics related to anything of current interest in the world.
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SOURCE China Daily