Olympic Athletes are waiting for support
August 2012
Turkish athletes have gone to London Olympics with a large team, but they have not had any success in their first week. Turkish athletes are having matches with little support and still have not collected any medals.
London Olympics 2012 had a great opening ceremony on 27th July and now the first week has been completed. Until 12 August, 10,490 athletes will compete for 302 medals.
China is leading the Olympics with 17 gold, 9 silver and 4 bronze medals, followed by USA with 13 gold and South Korea with 3 gold medals. The host of Olympics 2012, England, has won 2 gold and 4 silver and 4 bronze medals. Azerbaijan, Tunisia, Egypt, Romania and Mongolia and 39 more countries have won medals.
Works for London Olympics started in 2005, However, the first few days of the games were surprisingly quiet and with little interest. Although the British media criticised the Olympics committee for poor attendance, the executives said that many tickets have been sold out and the empty seats in the games were due to collective tickets bought by sponsor companies.
Women Basketball Players Are Pushing Towards Finals
Turkey has sent 114 Olympic and 87 Paralympic athletes in 16 branches to London, but the first week was unsuccessful. Out of the 35 athletes 4 have reached the next round and 3 athletes have come to mid-table in 10-stage race. Riza Kayalp won a bronze medal in wrestling and only other 6 athletes are continuing the games. Ferhat Pehlivan, Adem Kilic and Yakup Sener in boxing are preparing for the second round.
Turkey’s Women’s Basketball team made a good start in the London Olympics; they beat Angola and Czech Republic teams. However, they were defeated in their third game by the USA, the favourites of the tournament. There was more hope in Women’s Volleyball team, but they were beaten in the first two games by Brazil and China but defeated Serbia in their last match. Centre for Turkey Studies met the basketball players Tugba Palazoglu, Saziye Ivegin and Birsel Vardarli in London and wished them luck for the Olympics. Basketball players had a meal in Troia Restaurant in Central London and chatted with restaurant operator Hasan Caliskan.