STAY WITH ME! I am not writing about 2021 Olympic high-lights. I'm sure you have more than enough of those. Instead, I'm sharing bits and pieces of trivia that occurred to me while watching the games. These are my Olympic side-lights.

For instance, did you know that the Tokyo 2020 Olympic medals are made from recycled phone parts? As a green eco-initiative the Olympic organizers collected old electronics, separated the precious metals and melted them down to create the 5,000 medals need for the games.

Screen capture from Glamour.dom link

Not only that, they also recycled household plastics and plastics from the ocean, to make the many podiums at the event.

Even some of the clothing was made with recycled material, including Naomi Osaka's outfit during the opening ceremonies.

It reminds me that the Olympic are about more than sports. They have the potential to promote new trends and directions.

I experienced my first whitewater rafting adventure in the '80s. I talk about it here but did you know that the sport was popularized by another Olympic event? The 1972 Munich Olympics introduced canoe and kayak slalom racing. That led to the popularity of whitewater sports, which in turn led me to my first of several rafting and kayaking adventures.

Then there was '90s and the beginnings of the internet as we know it. It was the age of Web 1.0 aka as the read-only web. It was a place where businesses broadcasted information and only allowed users to search for content and read it. In those days, the world-wide-web was nascent technology and everyone was puzzling on "How do I make money on the internet?"

Back then, the company I worked for created the first online website selling tickets for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Afterwards, we took the ticket selling app, scaled it up and made it into a platform for large and successful e-commerce sites. That work and those sites kept me busy for most of the following decade.

This year's Olympics introduced five new sport categories: baseball, karate, climbing, skateboarding and surfing. None of which I intend to try out, in any form, in any time soon. Of course, I have been and always will be ready to take pictures of anyone else doing it!

Ten years from now, I wonder what trends we'll trace back to the 2020-21 Olympics? Care to make a guess? I'd love to hear!