As one of the absolute best tennis players on the planet, Novak Djokovic is always worth watching, but as Forbes notes, the year 2021 will be especially exciting for the Serbian ace. His success and the upcoming Tokyo Olympics give him a chance to become the first male tennis player to accomplish a so-called Golden Slam as a singles player — that is, four major tournament victories and an Olympic gold. 

It’s still very much up in the air whether Djokovic will be able to join Steffi Graf as the second-ever member of the Golden Slam club, but even “just” an Olympic victory would no doubt be a delicious treat for him. Per Tennishead, Djokovic’s three last Olympics have only yielded one Bronze medal from the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and he’s made it pretty clear that he intends to rectify the situation. “I always try to be there for Serbia and Serbian tennis,” the player has said. “The Olympic Games is next to the Grand Slams this year as my highest goals, and I’ve said that at the beginning of the season.”

With some of the biggest names in men’s tennis considering whether to compete in the Olympics, struggling with form, or skipping the event altogether, this might very well be Djokovic’s big year. 

When the Olympics’ official website specifically mentions an athlete’s name as the shining beacon of their particular sport, said competitor is probably worth keeping in mind. Such is the case with British welterweight boxer Pat McCormack, who’s the only name in his weight class the site mentions in its article about the Tokyo Olympics’ boxing scene. 

Per Team GB, McCormack competed as a light welterweight at the Rio Olympics in 2016, placing ninth. However, after he started boxing as a welterweight, he has risen to the very top of the division (per Boxrec), and per Eurosport, he heads to Tokyo as a freshly-crowned European gold medalist. What’s more, Boxing News Online notes that the win came over the man who beat him for the World Championship in 2019, Russia’s Andrey Zamkovoy. Getting this victory so close to the Olympics has quite naturally given the Brit a massive confidence boost. “I’m feeling great, European Champion going to go to the Olympics, probably with the number one seed,” McCormack said. “I’ve just beaten the World Champion, who beat me in the final of the Worlds and cut me in Russia as well, so it’s been on my mind a lot. I got the win, and put it on him at the end and made sure. I’m just over the moon.” 

With a mindset and accolades like that, McCormack has all the ingredients for a huge Olympic success story.  

Katie Ledecky won her first Olympic gold medal at the London Olympics in 2012, and has gone on to become a dominant force in distance swimming (per Associated Press). However, as Sports Illustrated notes, the reigning gold medalist of the 200-and-400-meter freestyle swimming might find it difficult to hold on to her throne, thanks to the meteoric rise of Ariarne Titmus. The 20-year-old Australian swimmer has been extremely close to breaking the American’s 400-meter world record from the Rio Olympics, and while Ledecky has dominated Stateside Olympic trials, she has been markedly slower than the young challenger. 

Titmus clearly knows that the Tokyo Olympics are her chance to take over the throne, and while she has nothing but good things to say about Ledecky, her comments to Sydney Morning Herald have made it clear that she’s ready for the challenge. “Well, she’s not going to have it all her own way,” she said of Ledecky. “I can’t control what she does, if I do the best I can and put myself in the position to win a gold medal, it’s going to be a tough race.” 

It’s worth noting that Titmus reportedly swam her excellent 400 meters with an injured shoulder, so there’s no telling what happens when she and Ledecky go head-to-head in the Tokyo Olympic pool. She might not be the only young Aussie swimmer to find Olympic success, either, seeing as Kaylee McKeown recently broke the world record in 100-meter backstroke.

If you’re looking for an Olympic success story that’s seemingly straight out of a Hollywood movie, look no further than Sky Brown. As the BBC tells us, the British athlete is notorious for not only competing in the newcomer sport of skateboarding, but also because she will have barely turned 13 when the Tokyo Olympics begin. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that she’s an absolutely amazing skateboarder, who debuted at the Vans US Open when she was just eight years old. Apart from her groundbreaking skateboard skills, Free Surf Magazine notes she’s also a talented surfer and dancer. In fact, you might remember her as the winner of 2018’s “Dancing with the Stars: Juniors” (via USA Today Life).  

The Olympics will be a bit of a comeback story for Brown. Per the BBC, she fractured her skull and broke her hand and wrist in a nasty training accident in June 2020 but has reportedly managed to recover fully. Despite her grievous injury, she was already discussing the incident a few days later. “People might think I’m super girl or something, but I want to show sometimes you’re going to fall,” she said at the time. “I want to spread the message that it’s OK to fall sometimes, you are going to fall, Beyoncé’s going to fall, all your heroes are going to fall. I wanted to show you’ve got to get back up and keep on going. Falling is part of life and that can’t stop what you’re doing.”

The Bahamas’ Shaunae Miller-Uibo made waves at the 2016 Rio Olympics, when she defeated Allyson Felix at the 400-meter sprint with an unconventional dive at the finish line (per The Guardian). Much was made about the dramatic finish, and as Reuters tells us, Miller-Uibo is once again looking to impress in Tokyo. The sprinter’s goal is not only to defend her Olympic gold at the 400 meters, but also to score a second gold medal in 200 meters — a feat that hasn’t been achieved in 25 years.

Unfortunately, Miller-Uibo’s quest is facing an extra hurdle, courtesy of a scheduling conflict that would require her to run twice on two different days, thus posing a risk for her potential double Olympic glory. “As much as I wanted a new title in the 200 meters, I also wanted to defend my Olympic one,” she said, pointing out that male runners have a far more favorable schedule for such endeavors. “With the guys, they had a two-day break between the 400-meter semis and final. Had they opened that up for the girls, then it would have been fine.”

Though the issue seems to have effectively ended Miller-Uibo’s aspirations for double gold, her Olympic path is still well worth watching. The fact that she has chosen to focus on the 200-meter sprint means that the event will be one for the ages, courtesy of the challenge from athletes like Jamaica’s Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Britain’s Dina Asher-Smith (via The Guardian). 

The art of karate is finally an Olympic sport, which can only mean one thing: As the Olympics website notes, someone’s about to make history by becoming the first-ever Olympic gold medalist in karate. The athletes can compete in two types of events — the solo demonstration called kata, or one-on-one kumite matches. Seeing as the first athlete to receive their karate gold medal will be the winner of women’s kata, the Olympics site names Spain’s Sandra Sánchez as a potential history-maker. Sánchez clearly has the makings of a deserving victor. As the Olympics site points out, some considered her way too old for the sport at 33. She’s now 39, and the top-ranked female kata practitioner in the world. Per Iberdrola, the International Karate Federation has named her the best karateka in history. 

Nevertheless, it hasn’t been an easy path, as Sánchez has been rebuked countless times, and didn’t even make it to Spain’s national team until she was 32. Her life as a karateka has been full of adversity — yet, in Tokyo, she steps on the tatami as a certified great of the sport. Will she be able to add the first karate Olympic gold to her string of victories?

What does an aspiring Olympian do when she suffers a career-ending medical situation? If she’s Nevin Harrison, she finds another sport, and becomes so good at it that she makes it to the Olympics anyway (per Northwest Public Broadcasting). The 19-year-old started her athletic career as a sprinter, but an early hip dysplasia diagnosis effectively destroyed her dreams of Olympic track and field. However, Harrison was far from done with sports. Instead of focusing on running, she pivoted to canoe racing in her teens, and proved to be a natural, to the point that her sheer speed at 100 meters made her coach, Aaron Huston, doubt his own eyes. “I thought there must have been some kind of error in the timing,” Huston said.  

It turned out that Harrison was simply very, very good — a fact that she has since demonstrated many times. At 17, she took home the gold medal at the 2019 ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships. Now, she’s heading to Tokyo, and the Olympics website drops her name as a potential success story at the newly established women’s solo 200-meter canoe sprint.