We spent the past weekend in Atlanta at the annual Olympin Olympic collectors and pin traders show. We had a fun time catching up with other collectors, pin traders, TKFLASTANIs, and–best of all–meeting some listeners!
This was also Alison’s first trip to Atlanta, so we had to do a little Olympic sightseeing. Nicholas from Olympic Rings and Other Things was kind enough to show us around! In this episode we take you on our tour of Centennial Olympic Park, the Atlanta 1996 cauldron and more!
We also have a ton of news from upcoming Games. Milan-Cortina 2026 has released the pictograms and look of the Games, which they call the Vibes. Mascots Milo and Tina are also unveiling their (adorable) sport poses on social media every day this month.
Brisbane 2032 is in a bit of a bind, with several venue projects already over budget–or as the Aussies say, “blowout” (a term that has some slightly different connotations, but surprisingly have the same meaning here) The new Liberal National Party is reviewing the situation.
Also, the Association of National Olympic Committees cut a deal to help small NOCs outfit their athletes for Games through 2032.
In TKFLASTAN news, we have updates from:
- Track cyclist Mandy Marquardt
- Former high jumper Erin Shean–learn more about her new coaching program here
- Author Andrew Maraniss–he’ll be leading a panel at Books by the Banks in Cincinnati
Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive!
TRANSCRIPT
Note: This is an uncorrected machine-generated transcript and may contain errors. Please check its accuracy against the audio. Do not quote from the transcript; use the audio as the record of note.
367-Visiting Atlanta’s Olympic History
Theme Music
Jill Jaracz: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keep the Flame Alive, the podcast for fans of the Olympics and Paralympics.
If you love the games, we are the show for you. Each week we share stories from athletes and people behind the scenes to help you have more fun watching the games. I am your host, Jill Jaracz, joined as always by my lovely co host, Alison Brown. Alison, hello, how are you? I
Alison Brown: feel like we’ve had reverse exposure therapy this week.
Because we were together for two months in Paris and then we were apart and then we got like two days together to like get us through
Jill Jaracz: and now we’re
Alison Brown: back to high on the screen.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah, it’s, it’s weird. It’s always fun. Spending time together in person. And you know, we can be goofy to be quite honest in
Alison Brown: different cities.
Jill Jaracz: That is true. And we were goofy this past week in Atlanta. So we wanted to share a little bit about that,
Patron of the Week
Jill Jaracz: but first we would like to give a shout out to all of our patrons, particularly our patron of the week, Sam Bacon. This is the time of the year when we give a shout out to our gold and committee member level.
patrons, and Sam is in that group. Sam got to see hockey at the 1924 stadium in Paris, and it was nice to get the report from him that it looked very 1924 on his end.
Alison Brown: Yeah, when we were, well, we’ll get to this in Atlanta, we were talking with some people who had been there, and I realized how many venues I didn’t get to, and my goal had been to get to all the venues, and I failed miserably.
But, Sam did not. So I am quite jealous and quite grateful.
Jill Jaracz: Yes. It was very nice to get your reports and it’s very nice that you support the show in the way that you do it and you help keep our flame alive. So Sam, thank you so much. And if you’d like to get your name on this list, you can find out more about supporting us at flamealivepod.
com slash support.
Olympin Show and Visiting Atlanta
Jill Jaracz: So Olympian.
Alison Brown: We went to the Olympian show. We’ve been there a few times. So this time it was in Atlanta, very Olympic City, which I have not been to before. You have been. So we set up our table and we had friends and colleagues and listeners show up and it was, it was an adventure.
Jill Jaracz: It was.
So thank you so much to listener Jessica, who stopped by and chatted with us and picked up some sweet mascots. I will tell you, I love it when somebody else loves the snowlets from Nagano as much as I do, even though they are now very crudely drawn. Mascots, they were still one of my favorites and also listener Don and his lovely daughter came by and it was so nice to see them.
So,
Alison Brown: it was very funny because she is of that age where nothing her dad thinks is cool. is cool to her, but I appreciate her pretending I was cool. So, thank you, sweetheart. That was, that was good for the old lady’s heart.
Jill Jaracz: Yes, yes, and it was nice to see Don had some flair on, showing off those Boston 2024 pins.
Can you imagine what Boston 2024 would have been like? When you put it all into perspective of what actually went down and what happened and with the pandemic and then coming back and needing to host,
Alison Brown: I don’t know. You know, sometimes the IOC makes mistakes with its host cities. That was not one of them.
Jill Jaracz: No, no.
Alison Brown: And I say that with love because Boston, you know, we both lived in Boston. I adore Boston. It’s honestly one of my favorite cities in the world and I loved living there. But that kind of event. And I’m not sure if too many of the European tourists would appreciate the Boston attitude.
Jill Jaracz: No, but we did get the French way.
So that’s true. Fair enough. I mean, there were a lot of nice French people, there’d be a lot of nice Bostonians, but you’d still have a little touch of every, and I bet every city in the world has those people.
Alison Brown: True. Fair enough. So just getting around Boston. Oh gosh. Well, you know what could have been, we can imagine that for, for hours for every city.
Jill Jaracz: Maybe they would have actually invested in there. public transportation
Alison Brown: Don’t be silly
Jill Jaracz: Oh, but one of the things that I picked up at the olympian show that was that I That is interesting because one of the things that you like is the BidCity stuff because of the what could have been element to it.
And one of the things that I found was a pin, it’s actually, it’s a button that was from the failed Chicago 2016 bid. That was the first logo. that had to get replaced because they broke the rules and used a torch in it. And it was, they got rule 40 like we did. I know exactly, but it was a beautiful logo that was a torch.
And then the top of the flames was the city skyline. And it was just absolutely stunning and then the hammer came down and said, Hey, by the way, don’t you remember that? You can’t use the torch in your candidate city logo. And so they had to change it to a star that was more emblematic of the stars in the city of Chicago flag, but it was very fun
Alison Brown: to be able to pick that up.
Yes. And my big. fine for the, uh, the show was the Vancouver 2010, uh, Mittens from Team Canada with the maple leaves. I made a very good trade on that one. I am. So my daughter took one look at those and she’s like, Oh, are those for me? I said, absolutely not.
Get it? Those are mine. As if.
Jill Jaracz: Come on.
Alison Brown: So now I have a Canada, a USA, and a Team Korea mitten that I can wear interchangeably. One of each if needed. Very nice. So that we don’t seem biased. But yes, I seem to be collecting unintentionally. Team Mittens, which I am here for.
Jill Jaracz: And one of the things that was very nice was that listener Nicholas took us on a tour. He is a listener Nicholas of the Olympic rings and other things blog. He lives in the Atlanta area. So he moved there a few months before the games, I think, and he had, he worked in the Olympic village. So he took us.
downtown uh, we went past the Shepherd Center, which was the hospital that was a major influencer in getting the Paralympics to Atlanta, because those were the days where cities did not have to have both games. And the Shepherd Center people thought it would be a good idea to have Paralympics as well.
That was cool. It’s a huge complex. We did see a lot of trees as is 1 of the things I stick on a lot of trees that were built or not built a lot of trees that were planted for the games who that are growing and I will say the, the peach tree street that we went down that went through from Buckhead where we were to downtown, you can see how that street is going to be very shady and very cool fit temperature wise in the years to come as those trees get older and older.
So that. It was really nice to be quite honest,
Alison Brown: right? You have that legacy. That’s not obvious. You know, it’s not a stadium. It’s a tree and it’s a tree line street that didn’t exist before that. You would never think of as a legacy, but it’s so important to these cities,
Jill Jaracz: right?
And the other thing that we talked about with Randall Rourke and Michael Dobbins, who were in the city planning department during Atlanta, 1996, and they wrote a book that we discussed a few years ago now, they talked about sidewalks as well.
That were. Installed for the games and Nicholas said that Atlanta used to not really have much in the way of sidewalks at all. It was not a very walkable city and that with the addition of the sidewalks that helped people be able to get around on foot,
Alison Brown: right? Because when you, you know, I live in a neighborhood, very suburban, no sidewalks and.
You forget how important a sidewalk is until you don’t have it, right? And you’re just trying to walk your dog without getting run over by a car. You know something so simple as You know walking to the corner store walking. You don’t want to have to drive everywhere You want to be able to or if you don’t drive just being able to walk around a city safely is basic to city life in Atlanta did not have a lot of sidewalks in a lot of neighborhoods, which I that’s
Jill Jaracz: also an interesting legacy element of these games.
We went to Centennial Park,
Alison Brown: we went to Centennial Park. So, as I said, it was my first visit to Atlanta. So my first visit to Centennial Park. I did. Get a little giddy, I will admit. And what a beautiful park, and how it’s still so integrated into the city. I mean, it truly is Atlanta’s Central Park, and the neighborhood around it is lovely, and they have the rings.
Now, There’s been that huge controversy of whether the rings are going to stay on the Eiffel Tower. Right. Or they’re going to be put back. The way they have it in Centennial Park, I feel like it’s appropriate. So they have rings at the entrance. They’re definitely smaller than the rings that were on the Eiffel Tower.
So that feels like an appropriate use of keeping the rings in the city because that Centennial Park was such a central element. , and so many events, not, sporting events, but they had the concerts there. And of course the bombing was there, but it feels integrated and legacy like, not we’re changing the face of our city.
Jill Jaracz: Right. I would agree with you on that. and it’s an element where if the IOC is letting. The rings be used for former host cities. That’s a great way to do it. And boy, did people take their pictures with the rings.
Alison Brown: There was a lot of kids climbing on it. We took pictures. So we’ll post some more pictures of, of us in the rings, but the kids really love it.
And clearly children who were not alive in 96, they’re, you know, I’m like, were your parents alive? I mean, these were very, very young children, but they, it’s still like we were saying so integrated to the city. We did see all the bricks. It was in the evening, so we couldn’t find anyone’s particular brick, but I can see that being just a fun thing to do.
Find your brick, you know, where it was engraved with your name or whatever you had it engraved with. The fountain, unfortunately, is being refurbished, so we had to look through the fence, like criminals, to see it. And, but we did see the Billy Payne statue. He was the, the guiding force behind this. And a Pierre de Couperin statue.
Which is very interesting because, you know, most of the Pierre de Couperin, memorials and statues and images are very static. Whereas this, he was walking up steps and in motion. And I, and I liked that different, imagery. It also felt very Atlanta in a way, that kind of motion, because I think of 96 as being an Olympics with a lot of movement to it.
And I don’t know why that image, maybe just because it was not an elite level city, you know, it was kind of a smaller city. It was kind of trying to make a comeback. It was a different kind of games. And that movement really spoke to, you know, What they were doing in that with those games.
Jill Jaracz: And with that statue, uh, one of the people behind making sure it got built was Shukla Stani, George Hurtler, who we did see at the show.
He showed up and, uh, made the rounds and talked to everybody. And he is working on a movie that we will, talk about at some point in the future, it’s getting close to done. So that was fun to catch up with him and also see the statue because I remember talking about it with him. It’s a nice statue.
Alison Brown: And speaking of statues, we saw one of the statues that has damage from the bombing. that they left with the damage. It’s not significant. It’s kind of just like small little holes or, or scrapes. And of course they left it, which I’m glad they did. I’m glad they didn’t repair it. So that piece of the Atlanta story is there, and there’s also a memorial, a stone, in the park.
But that little piece was so vivid to say, wow, it’s, , and you could see how far away it was from where the bombing happened. And it’s like, wow, that. Sent shards so far away and how frightening that must have been and and how packed that space must have been
Jill Jaracz: right, Near the area is also a memorial to Richard Jewell, who was instrumental in getting many people away from where the bomb was and causing fewer fatalities and less harm. He was pretty vilified during the whole incident of trying to figure out who was the bomber and, life was pretty ruined. And as he was raked through the coals in a very early episode of what.
24 hour news cycles can do because that was still a relatively new thing at the time. And this was one of the first big cases of. Hey, we, we have something that we can cover and, uh, the constant press outside your door element of that and what the investigations did to his life and family and, subsequently was found to be exonerated from it, as we found in our book that we read for book club, uh, the suspect.
So that was, it’s a beautiful. Memorial and it’s got a fountain water element to it as well. The park is kind of organized as Nicholas said in quilts.
because quilting was one of the big themes of the South and the games. And I do remember some elements of quilting going on as well, but you’ve got the list of the quilts that are in the park.
Alison Brown: It’s quilt of dreams, remembrance, origins, Olympic spirit.
And nations
Jill Jaracz: and the nation’s quilt. We went under there’s a like a pergola thing and they’ve got all of the flags of the nations that were at these games there and flags that don’t exist anymore. We had a lot of fun trying to guess what the I’m still
Alison Brown: trying to figure out what that torch flag was. Oh, I’m still doing an image search.
So there was a Nicholas listener. Nicholas tried to test you. on flag knowledge. And I told him not to do that. And he found out what happens when you try to test Jill on a flag and tell her she’s wrong. She’s not wrong. Jill is never wrong when it’s a flag.
Jill Jaracz: Except for we’re still working on Africa. I’m still working on some of the African flags.
There’s a lot of green, yellow, and red in Africa. But it was fun to see. What the flags were, especially for former Soviet countries that were at their first, , summer games, basically. Yeah, no, no, yeah, because they were unified in, uh, 92, 92, and then they were separate countries in 96. And so we had different flags that will would eventually morph into what their flags became that we know now.
So that that’s really fun. To see and to see all of the, I mean, it was a huge explosion in the number of nations that year, just because of all of the turmoil politically that had happened in the world and all of these new countries that came to being all the stones. That’s right. All the stones made their stand.
So, yeah, it’s a really beautiful park. It’s big. It’s pretty big space for downtown still used a lot. There’s a lot of beautiful flower gardens and elements. It’s, it’s just kind of a, please wander through me park and discover something new. And there were a bunch of kids
Alison Brown: playing football in the corner.
There were a lot of families walking through. So again, what a beautiful legacy for the city to have this very loved, very well used park that didn’t exist. And from what Nicholas was telling us, it really transformed that whole area of downtown. So, The legacy is not just the White Elephant stadiums, right?
There can be a lot of other pieces that can change a city for the better.
Jill Jaracz: Right. And, uh, Nicholas was also telling us about some of the village stuff because the village was pretty close to that at Georgia Tech. apparently when those buildings were built, Georgia Tech did not want them. When they were done.
So Georgia State took them over and that was kind of a longer hike for those students because Georgia State was about a mile away or so and Eventually, Georgia State build some more buildings and Georgia Tech needed those buildings back. So oopsies.
Alison Brown: We would like those back, please So yes of the probably the only time that Tech and State Had a gentleman’s agreement that went smoothly.
Jill Jaracz: And then we went over to where the cauldron is now. The cauldron is next to a
Alison Brown: highway in a parking lot. Yeah. Putting it nicely. It’s supposed to be so that you can see it when you’re driving on the, the major highway around Atlanta. Great. But to see it up close, you really can’t because if you pull into this parking lot, the way it’s situated, you really can’t get a view of it.
So the only way to see it is to Is from the highway.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah, it’s it is kind of weird because it’s built with all of these, uh, stairwells around it. So supposedly you could have gone to the top and then there is a, What is steel structure that goes across the highway that has the Olympic rings and Nicholas had said, no, that that a walkway stairway never opened.
So, you could never, ever go to the top. It was a safety reasons, probably good idea. Since it’s America, but it really now obscures the cauldron, but the funny thing about the cauldron is that. During 1996, it was pretty vilified as looking like a French fry container. I didn’t think it looked that bad in person.
Alison Brown: In person, you could see more of the texture of the metal, I think, or it was terracotta. I’m not sure, but it wasn’t paper, obviously, or cardboard. but in a photograph, it looks like cardboard. So it’s definitely. People need to think more about how it looks in photographs, because most people see these things in photographs and on video, not in person.
Jill Jaracz: Right, according to an article in the Toronto Star, the cauldron is red painted stainless steel. So, yes, it, it just looked different in person. And I think that. When you see some of the pictures of the opening ceremony, especially that area through the cauldron. And you have that McDonald’s right behind it.
Do you remember those pictures? So that
Alison Brown: tricks your brain into making that connection.
Jill Jaracz: Yes, yes. And then the flames
Alison Brown: sort of have that color of french fries. So, so, Once again, somebody needs to get a 12 year old boy to check these designs, because they will see it.
Jill Jaracz: So the Cauldron is in the parking lot that was pretty much the baseball stadium.
It was the baseball stadium. And the baseball stadium did get torn down after a while because the Braves wanted to move to the suburbs. And the stadium, Olympic Stadium, is now the Home of Georgia State University, so they had a football game that day, so it’s still getting used on the regular and, and that was really cool.
, listener Nicholas also said that if you were going down the street, that’s right by the cauldron, which I believe is Capitol Avenue Southeast, that was known as Olympic way during the games and they had some signage. There’s. A couple of those signs left, a lot of them disappeared after the games.
, and there are also different cauldrons along the street here and there that still exist and were just kind of design elements that Paved the way and made it feel more Olympic.
So yeah. And we saw most of this stuff at night too, which made it hard to like stop and get out and walk around. And, but we still did.
Alison Brown: the only place I would be concerned about these stopping and walking around is where the cauldron is. Cause you really are just pulling into a Georgia state parking lot that says, you know, sticker B only.
And it has a gate. So while we were there, I kept. Keeping an eye on that gate thinking some security guard is just going to lock us in there and we’ll be sleeping in the car
Jill Jaracz: after my time at the University of Utah, I am also very paranoid about parking in any sort of college lot anymore, but, uh, you know, we got away with it.
So it was good. It was a fun little tour to see what is still there. Over 25, 35 years later. So that’s really cool. Thank you so much, Nicholas, for that. and sharing some of the legacy that still exists, even though the games get further and further in the past.
Alison Brown: Yeah, all those children and their parents don’t remember it.
Jill Jaracz: So we’ll post some stuff in the show notes about learning more about Atlanta’s Olympic legacy, the Atlanta History Center, which we talked about a couple of years ago, has a really nice exhibit on the games. And they’ve got a lot of stuff on their website that has like a tour of the area. If you want to learn more.
Holidays are coming!
Alison Brown: Holidays are coming up. And you know what makes a perfect gift? Books. You know, I don’t know why books make a perfect gift. Okay. Cause books are so easy to wrap. Yes. They’re square and they’re solid and they’re easy to wrap. And they don’t have to be Olympic books. They can be any book at all and you can get them all and help the show and support independent bookstores through our link for bookchop.org. Yes. So
Jill Jaracz: that’s bookshop. org slash shop slash flame alive pod. Anything you buy through that link. We have a number of curated lists, but you don’t have to buy any of those. You can buy any kind of book there and support the show financially that goes to keeping our flame alive, which we are really getting into the doldrums, the post Paris boom, people are, are either still catching up on shows or they’ve, Declared bankruptcy and they’ll, they’ve said, we’ll see you in Milan we need to keep our flame alive financially and, uh, be able to support the operating costs of this podcast through the next, , couple of years, at least.
So yeah, a lot of books. We will be having book club in a couple of weeks. Maybe you want to get today. We die a little by Richard Asquith, which is an Well, I’m not gonna. It’s a good book. It really is. Forward promote. Spoiler alert. It’s good. I know, I know, I know. We had some good books this year for book club, so you might want to check that out.
That is bookshop. org slash shop slash flamealivepod.
Paris 2024 News
Alison Brown: C’est mauvais. Oui.
Jill Jaracz: remember that incident with the coaches on the Canadian soccer team who filmed Team New Zealand’s practices with drones? I do remember, and I remember that was not a good choice that they made. Not a good choice. So Canada Soccer has now released a report, names redacted in there.
But, uh, it had commissioned a report about this whole big incidents and they found that this was not a one off. This has been going on for a couple of years. There’s some indication that coaches may have objected to the practice, but yet they didn’t. allowed it to continue. So, in light of that fact, head coach Bev Priestman, assistant coach Jasmine Mander, and Joseph Lombardi, who was the drone filmer, they’ve all been fired.
Canada soccer also looked into the men’s team practices and found potentially unethical behavior involving drones, but noted that, they took pictures or they used a drone to take some shots, supposedly just things to use for social media. They didn’t find any footage of practices for other teams on those drones.
So that was one of the things that they noted there. But, uh, the head, the team’s head coach also did not approve of using drones to film anything as well. So, hopefully this will be a closed book on this situation.
Alison Brown: You know,
Jill Jaracz: what were you
Alison Brown: thinking? Canada.
Jill Jaracz: Very not cool. thank you to Rich Perlman at the Sports Examiner for the follow up on that.
we had an email from listener Patrick, not Patrick from Chicagoland, another Patrick whom we had to figure out how to identify. So Patrick, if you have some ideas. Other Patrick. Yeah, other Patrick. We don’t want to call you other Patrick. he wrote in response to our discussion of, Opening ceremonies a couple of weeks ago and how we said we the the send was a little bit too big and they should scale it back and he said
Alison Brown: no no he objected to my ceremony arms race Comparison and said big better and even bigger is better
Jill Jaracz: Yes.
Yes, and it’s nice He said as a child of the 90s or not the ceremonies arms race some of my early memories of Some of my earliest memories of the Olympics were of the bigger and bigger spectacle of each games. I will grant that some of the forerunner before my time ceremonies like LA 84 and Seoul 1988 had iconic moments.
but to me, Sydney through London is the golden age of Olympic ceremonies. And as someone who’s not inclined to watch sports ball on a random Tuesday, they were my gateway drug into the wider world of the games. To be frank, I don’t think I’ve ever watched the Olympics, let alone grown out to be a super fan who spends his life savings on Olympic trips.
If I hadn’t been dazzled by the ceremonies first. And then he goes, every, every ceremony from Sochi onward has been a series of diminishing returns and increasingly underwhelming, culminating in Beijing 2022’s triumphant disappointment with the cupholder snowflake cauldron lighting,
Alison Brown: which is really the worst.
It really was the worst. It really was. So, I don’t think we’ll ever be that disappointed. I hope we are never that disappointed again.
Jill Jaracz: I know, I know. And I will say, Sochi, the The thing that will forever stick out in my mind of Sochi is when the rings did not open. When the rings didn’t
Alison Brown: light up and then they switched it for the rebroadcast.
Jill Jaracz: You don’t want to have a ceremony that you remember only for the big mistake, to be quite honest.
Alison Brown: Though I don’t feel bad that Russia’s ceremony is remembered for the big mistake, considering what has happened since.
Jill Jaracz: Very true. So Patrick continues by saying the Seine River ceremony, by contrast, was exactly the reinjection of energy that the ceremonies have needed for over a decade now.
It was also the first ceremony I got to see in person with my own eyeballs, so I’m definitely biased. But there’s not a day gone by since that event that I haven’t thought about that incredible, rainy, miserable, wonderful night. It’s very cool. I do have to say that’s, you know, when a ceremony sticks with you like that, it is kind of magical.
Alison Brown: I can’t, I can’t argue with that.
Theme Music: Right. And
Alison Brown: in, in response, I will say, yes, Paris, if they had had a better editor would have been perfect.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah, yeah, and that outside the box thinking. So Patrick does want to see more outside the box ceremonies going forward. You got a little Roman Coliseum going on for, Milan Cortina.
What are they going to do with that? You’ve got, , 2 stadiums for L. A. 2028. What are you going to do? So nice little thing, he said, opening ceremonies at their best are there to inspire the world, spread a message of peace through sport and inspire the next generation of Olympic fans. And above all else, each opener sets the tone for its games, a host country showcase of its culture and a love letter to the world.
The more glamorous the opening night, the more energized the public is for the event to come. Okay, rant over.
Alison Brown: Well, I loved your rant, Patrick. Thank you so much for writing in. And if you would like to write in to us to tell us how wrong we are, you can find us at flamealivepod at gmail dot com. And I don’t disagree with him.
No, I don’t. The best opening ceremonies, whether, whatever best means to you. is what sticks. Like, I still remember Lillehammer and the elves coming out of the ground and the royal family showing up in the sled. When an opening ceremony is good, it is magical, is the absolute word. London probably, Best we’ve seen.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you’re right. You get the public energized. They’re excited for the games. You’re excited for the next couple of weeks. and I don’t think I’ll ever forget the way the crowd across the river reacted when Celine Dion came out and just the, Enthralled sound that came from them. It was pretty magical.
It made sitting in the rain less miserable than it was. And the fact that we were watching on TV by that point. So that was a lot less miserable just with some of the really cool things that Paris did. So yeah, I’m with you though. A little editing would have helped. But they did okay with that out of the box.
Alison Brown: Milan has got to do a better cauldron. They can’t, I mean, the Italians cannot fail at a cauldron. Come on. Come on.
Sono bellissimi.
Jill Jaracz: Ooh. Ooh. Speaking of, Italy. We have something that have they failed on this? Who knows the look of the games and the pictograms are out So the look is called the vibes and the vibes are creativity energy Imagination passion and style I would also say the vibes are the illest I think that’s a drop from another podcast I listen to And so in this look, the common thread between the vibes is the human gesture and that look, you’ll see throughout what the stadiums will look like this energy and creativity through the lines in.
the swooshes, I guess, that you will see around the I
Alison Brown: kept calling it swooshy, but it’s so funny that you’re reading about the common thread because like the common thread is thread. Like there are those very soft flowing lines through the pictograms and , the look of banners and the things that they’ve displayed.
I said, how do you make wind on a banner? And they did it.
Jill Jaracz: Yes. So they have curved shapes that evoke movement, straight lines that intersect to give dynamic momentum, and a blur effect in shades of white to recall snow and winter. And we talk about the human gesture, both of us, even though we don’t have video, we’re both gesturing very frantically as we try to talk about it.
Alison Brown: We’re making swooshy hand motions because it’s so swooshy.
Jill Jaracz: Right. the pictograms are inspired by athletes trajectories. And we talked a bit about this at the Olympian show, listener Jessica was by and she had a really good quote. She said, the pictograms aren’t just art, it’s functional and it’s a very important how functional they are.
And so the, these are kind of line drawings Sports and the athlete that is doing the sport. So we are back to human elements in the pictograms. Paris decided not to have humans in them and used the sporting elements. But now we’re back to humans and they’re kind of line drawings that almost look like ice skating figures.
I would say, because they’re swooshy. Yeah, because they are swooshy. What’s Italian for swooshy? We will find out. Il swoosho.
I’m like Emile Zadopek, I’m teaching myself Italian languages, but me, I’m making it up, not looking at the dictionary. Another forward promo. What do you think of these?
Alison Brown: I want to see them big and small, because one of the big problems that we had in Paris or with the Paris pictograms that Tokyo, we did.
Not have this issue was when they were very small. It was very hard to see what they were.
Theme Music: Mm hmm.
Alison Brown: They looked pretty big They looked beautiful on a t shirt But in that functional thing like Jessica was talking about on a computer screen, which they use the pictograms to Navigate on their computer program made it very difficult
Jill Jaracz: Yeah, I am interested to see what they look like as well.
I like them because they are different from previous pictograms.
Alison Brown: I think they look Italian.
Jill Jaracz: They do look Italian. and because of the fact that they’re a line drawing, in a way they, Remind me a little bit of Lillehammer and maybe because I saw a lot of Lillehammer stuff and those were very, very different looking pictograms in that they were going for that.
Lore and mythology of Norway, and you had I don’t want to say rustic, but maybe runic like pictograms. These have a different like Italian style, but they’re swooshy. And they, they are evoking something different that we haven’t seen in the games before, I think.
Alison Brown: Let’s see. I think they’re going to look gorgeous big because of that movement , and the clean lines. Let’s see how they do small. That’s my concern. That’s always my concern with the pictograms that Tokyo succeeded so well at with those geometric figures. Those blew up well and they shrunk well. Yes.
Jill Jaracz: Well, Tokyo created the pictograms, so. You have that as well. The vibes also have ambassadors on social media. Of course they do. Yes. So according to design boom, for creativity. You have pianist, author, and producer Dardust, also known as Dario Feini. Energy is wheelchair fencer Bebe Vio.
Imagination is comedian and author Federico Basso. Passion is chef David Oldani. And style is Etoile of La Scala Theater. So, we’ll see how the ambassadors embody their vibe over the next year and a half.
Alison Brown: I wonder what connection there is between the vibe and the flow. That sort of sub mascot that they have.
Oh, yes.
Jill Jaracz: That’s a good thing to look for.
Alison Brown: Does the flow have the vibe? I
Jill Jaracz: don’t know. But the mascots, Milo and Tina, will be unveiling their official sport poses on social media every day until November 25th.
Alison Brown: Alpine skiing came out today.
Jill Jaracz: It’s adorable. Come on,
Alison Brown: these are cute ones.
Jill Jaracz: These are really really cute
Alison Brown: mascots.
These are cute, kid friendly. I think they will fit through doorways better than some of the more recent ones. They might just have to duck. Yeah, they’ll have to duck, but they won’t have to get squished. poor Bing Dwen Dwen and Chewy Ron Ron from just getting their heads crushed to fit through a doorway.
Jill Jaracz: But yeah, I’m looking forward to seeing more of Milo and Tina and I’m looking forward to seeing what they look like in person.
Brisbane 2032 News
Jill Jaracz: man, are we having situations in Brisbane. I will say that.
Alison Brown: Can all be. flow and vibes in the Olympic world.
Jill Jaracz: No. And again, maybe you awarded the games a little too early. Maybe There were some elections in Australia. The Liberal National Party is now in charge of the Queensland government, uh, taking over from labor.
I believe they are not thrilled with the amount of spending that’s been going on in the games. And they talk, uh, the, the Australian turn has been blowout. And that to me, I cannot read it. It’s been hard to, put blow out with over budget. In my brain.
Alison Brown: So, okay. So those of us who have ever had a baby blowout has a completely different meaning.
However, considering what happens to Olympic and Paralympic budgets. I think it is fitting. I think so too.
Jill Jaracz: So Sky News is reporting that Brisbane 2032 is having budget problems for many. Of its Olympic projects, there is a new review committee that is going to look at spending and they will do that over the next 100 days.
Already 3 of their projects, the Sunshine Coast Indoor Sports Center, the Chandler Indoor Sports Center and the Sunshine Coast Stadium have been blown out by 180 million Australian dollars. Brisbane Arena, which was a 2. 5 billion. Australian dollars project is now 500 million over budget and you know, that’s covered by the federal government, a 500 million, no small chunk of change.
And this is a stadium project that’s going over a train yard. So it’s, it’s going to be complicated already. And now it’s getting more complicated by being over budget. The government doesn’t want to provide any. Extra Olympic funds and yes, this committee that they want to put into place is going to review costs and bring them under control and looks like there’s going to be no more new stadiums, including a refurbishment of the GABA, which was a big deal.
So, not a good situation going on. In Australia.
Alison Brown: So to our Australian friends, give us some scuttlebutt that we don’t hear back in the States because, you know, like the too early is definitely a possibility, though LA seems to be doing well with spreading out its costs, using that extra time to kind of spread some things out.
And maybe,
Jill Jaracz: well, LA also went in with, we are not building anything. We don’t have to build anything. And I think we had some ideas in Brisbane, which may not have the most infrastructure for games, even though they had, the Commonwealth games not that long ago. I don’t know if they just don’t have enough infrastructure for an Olympics, which is a lot bigger than the Commonwealth Games, or is this another, oh, we see an opportunity to build stadiums and say that they’re needed.
I don’t know. When we were talking with Ben Waterworth from off the podium. He has said that the Gabba really needed to be refurbished. I don’t know. Hopefully they don’t have just a white elephant sitting there because even the cricket league, I think, pulled out of the, using the stadium. So I know. Yeah.
Let us know what’s going on.
ANOC News
Jill Jaracz: So not quite IOC news, but we’ve got some interesting news from the Association of National Olympic Committees, also called ANOC. They just had, uh, General Assembly, and signed a sponsorship deal with Chinese sportswear brand Peak Sport to provide free NLC uniforms to NLCs who had six athletes or less at Paris 2024.
So if you’re a tiny NLC, over the next eight years, You will be getting free uniforms for your contingent from Peak Sports, courtesy of ANOC, and, that’s going to run until, uh, the end of 2032. NLCs will also get a discount on uniforms for continental and regional games, should they, uh, need those for that.
It’s a 7. 1 million deal. ensure that up to 72 of the smallest national Olympic committees have access to decent uniforms and could put more of their budget towards sport.
Alison Brown: I mean, that’s a significant number of NOCs. That is, that’s no joke. and this will help a lot of those. Two athlete teams compete.
Jill Jaracz: Right, because you can’t necessarily negotiate any kind of deal. You’re going to pay retail, and it’s, it’s
Alison Brown: If we’re talking about the smaller, poorer nations to begin with, which is usually the case in this situation, that’s, that’s a lot of money
Jill Jaracz: coming out of their
Alison Brown: budget.
Jill Jaracz: Right, and how much do you, how much kit do you need to provide somebody?
To, represent yourself well as a, as an NOC at a games and you know, it’s gotta be helpful when you’ve got all these athletes who are doing like unboxing videos of all the stuff that they got and you’re the poor NOC is like, I’m sorry, we can’t give you that. It’s tough. So hopefully this will be helpful.
And we thought it was just interesting to share that this is stuff going on kind of in the background to, to help smaller countries. have a more level playing field on the stage.
TKFLASTAN News
Jill Jaracz: Welcome to Shook Falistan. It is the time of the show where we check in with our team, keep the flame alive. These are past guests and listeners of the show who make up our citizenship of
Alison Brown: our very own country, Shook Falistan. Track cyclist Mandy Marquardt was one of the recipients of the Penn State Lehigh Valley 2024 Alumni Achievement Award.
Jill Jaracz: Erin Shane is launching a new career group coaching program called Land, and you can find out more about it on her LinkedIn page. We’ll have a link to that in the show notes,
Alison Brown: and Andrew Marus will be at Books by the Banks in Cincinnati this Saturday to moderate a session called Lives Lived. Stories to Tell, which Features Three Nonfiction Author, three nonfiction authors.
This will be at 10:30 AM November 16th at the main library.
Theme Music: We
Alison Brown: will have a link to more information in the show notes as well.
Wrap-Up–Get in Touch!
Jill Jaracz: And that is going to do it for this episode. If you’ve been to Atlanta recently or live there, let us know what you think about the city and its Olympic legacy.
Alison Brown: And we do love hearing from you.
You can chat with us and other listeners on our Facebook group, Keep the Flame Alive Podcast. Email us at flamealivepod at gmail. com. The voicemail and text line is always open. That’s 208 352 8111. 6 3 4 8, 2 0 8. Flame it. If you need more Olympics and Paralympics in your life and who doesn’t, you can sign up for our newsletter@flamelivepod.com and we’ll also have a link to that in the show notes.
Jill Jaracz: Next week we will be back with more stories and news from the Olympics and at Paralympics. Thank you so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive.