Remember when Atlanta won the right to host the 1996 Olympics? The Centennial Olympics, the ones that Athens desperately wanted to host and everyone thought Athens would win because the Olympics were born in Greece? And then Atlanta won, and everyone was surprised?
Well, we’ve got the story of how Atlanta shocked the world.
Writer and producer George Hirthler joins us to discuss his documentary “The Games in Black & White.” This Emmy award-winning film delves into the unlikely friendship of then-Atlanta mayor Andy Young and conservative lawyer Billy Payne, who joined forces to bring the Olympics to Atlanta and put the city on the world map.
The documentary covers the full spectrum of the Olympics, from bid to the Games themselves. However, along with incredible athletic spectacle and some operational issues, the Atlanta 1996 Olympics are also known for the bombing that took place in Centennial Olympic Park. George talks with us about that incident and the toll that it took on members of the organizing committee.
We also discuss the unlikely legacies from these Olympics and how they permanently changed the geography of the city.
You can watch “The Games in Black & White” on PBS and Amazon. Check out the trailer:
Also on this episode, Jill went to LA for the LA28 World Press Briefing. She’s got some impressions of the city and its accessibility. If you’re planning to go to the LA 2028 Olympics or Paralympics, we’ve got suggestions on what to think about when getting tickets and booking hotels.
Plus, we have some feedback on potential cauldron lighters and more news from the Olympic world on this episode.
If you liked this episode, you’ll also like these:
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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 Do not quote from the transcript; use the audio as the record of note.
442-George Hirthler on The Games in Black and White
Theme Music
Jill Jaracz: [00:00:30] 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. I’m your host, Jill Jaracz, joined as always by my lovely co-host, Alison Brown. Alison, hello. How are you?
Commonwealth Games 2026 highlights and the “Mop Man”
Alison Brown: I have been feeling very Scottish lately- Oh
even though I am not of Scottish descent, because I have been watching Commonwealth Game highlights
Jill Jaracz: Oh …
Alison Brown: from Glasgow, and it has been just a blast.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. I, I’ve heard that the swimming has been phenomenal. [00:01:00]
Alison Brown: Everything has been phenomenal. Gymnastics was a real treat, so if you haven’t gotten in on the YouTube channel for Commonwealth Games, you can see the highlights- Okay, good
which has been just a joy.
Jill Jaracz: Okay, and we get press releases in our inbox, and the press release we got today was the viral mop man. Did you see this?
Alison Brown: I have not seen this.
Jill Jaracz: Okay, so now what’s going viral is what we saw at Paris, is the, “I am [00:01:30] pretending to clean the floor, and I bust out into a dance.”
Alison Brown: The little halftime show or pre-game-
Jill Jaracz: Yes, yes.
Alison Brown: It got me- … hype show …
Jill Jaracz: every time, and now it’s viral again. I like that move to an extent ’cause it’s fun and surprising entertainment I do not like that they are, taking over floor cleaning, floor maintenance as you call it. Do you think
Alison Brown: they’re mocking the floor maintenance people? I don’t think so.
Jill Jaracz: You know, I don’t think they’re mocking it, but it’s, if [00:02:00] there is floor maintenance that has to be done at these then we are the– if, if nobody is the specialists on floor maintenance at a multi-sport event, it is us, really. I,
Alison Brown: I agree.
Jill Jaracz: And to have that break out into dance, fun, yes, but also, like, I thought that was actual floor, floor maintenance happening and got very excited to see some sweeping and some vacuuming and then to have it turn into a dance.
it always got me every time. But it is, it’s a moment of surprise. I wonder if they will do it for LA [00:02:30] ’28. Do you think they’re gonna do that for LA ’28?
Alison Brown: Absolutely. It’s easy. They do it at Disney World. Oh, do they really? This is a classic move of the men come to clean up, but then they break out into song and dance.
Jill Jaracz: Oh my. Oh my. Well, and Disney does it best, really.
Alison Brown: Yeah. So…
Why we’re getting so much Jeff Goldblum coverage at the Olympics
Jill Jaracz: oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. I have a follow-up file thing.
Alison Brown: I see that on our notes, and I’m a little concerned. Do
Jill Jaracz: you know, do you know why we’re getting so much Jeff Goldblum in Olympics coverage? He is [00:03:00] married to an Olympian.
Alison Brown: He is not.
Jill Jaracz: He is. He is married to Emilie Livingston, who competed for Canada in rhythmic gymnastics at Sydney 2000.
Alison Brown: Well, now his presence at all these events makes so much more sense.
Jill Jaracz: It makes sense. Yes, yes, definitely. And, uh, they’ve been married since November 2014.
Alison Brown: Nice. Oh, good on them.
Jill Jaracz: that satisfied my what’s up with Jeff Goldblum [00:03:30] everywhere.
Alison Brown: He’s Olympian by marriage.
Jill Jaracz: Yes, exactly. uh, we do have a great show today, including thoughts on LA ’28 because I did go to the World Press briefing last week.
George Hirthler on The Games in Black & White
Jill Jaracz: And, we’ll get to those, but first we’ve got a great interview for you. We are celebrating the 30th anniversary of Atlanta 1996, and we welcome back writer and Olympic campaign strategist George Hirthler to the show to talk about his latest project, a documentary called “The Games [00:04:00] in Black and White,” about the unlikely, friendship between Andy Young and Billy Payne as they partnered to bring the Olympics to Atlanta in 1996.
George wrote and co-directed the film and was one of its executive producers. The film not only tells the story of Atlanta’s bid for the games, it also goes into the planning and the execution of the games. And who is featured in an interview? Our friend and Team Keep the Flame Alive member, Terrence Burns.
the movie cleaned up at the [00:04:30] Southeast Emmy Awards this year, winning four awards with Georgia Public Broadcasting. George himself won for Historical Documentary as part of the producing team, and he also won for Best Long-Form Writing.
The film also took home awards for Long-Form Content Editing and Motion Graphics. take a listen to our conversation with George George Hirthler, thank you so much for joining us. It’s so good to see you again.
George Hirthler: it’s always great to be with you, Jill and Alison. I’m delighted to be [00:05:00] on Keep the Flame Alive, because we’re all struggling to do that day by day.
Jill Jaracz: Right. And it is hard to believe that it is 30 years since Atlanta 1996.
George Hirthler: Yeah.
Jill Jaracz: Last year we were celebrating the 25th anniversary.
Running in the Atlanta 1996 Olympic torch relay
George Hirthler: Yeah, it does seem it goes so fast. And I was exchanging emails with some friends and, talking about our memories and, recalling my moment in the torch relay the day before opening ceremonies when I had a chance to run at Emory University right by [00:05:30] my house, right in front of their law school and hospital, and I handed off to my partner, Brad Copeland, lit his flame.
My wife Carol and my daughter Jamie ran alongside of me. So yeah, those memories come flooding back and, you know, I was looking at a film that my brother-in-law shot, and my mother and father were both there, and I have pictures of the two of them holding the torch with me in my torch running outfit.
You know, it’s very moving to see those images because you realize how powerful that moment, not [00:06:00] just symbolic, but how literally powerful and emotional that moment, is. my father died two years later, my mother five years after that, so it The other day when I was reminiscing, it was delightful to see them both in that video.
taking pride in their son and, uh, you know, enjoying the moment in the, in the sunlight with, him while, uh, while the Olympic flame… My mother said, “Honey, if we could bottle this spirit up, the world would be a lot better place.”
Alison Brown: She had a good thought, yeah.
George Hirthler: Yeah. Yeah, A good thought on the, on the torch [00:06:30] relay.
Why George Hirthler made a documentary about the Atlanta 1996 Olympics
Jill Jaracz: Why make a, an Atlanta 1996 documentary?
George Hirthler: Well, I mean, in 1989, Billy Payne hired me to be the lead writer on the campaign. Brad Copeland and I were hired as a creative team. He was a designer, I was a writer. for the next two years we labored long. I started going in to, to write the bid books and get them done by deadline.
I would go into the office at 5:00 in the afternoon and work through to 8:00 in the morning. I did that for about two months to finish writing the bid books. And then when we [00:07:00] won, September 18th, 1990, when we won the right to host the Centennial Olympic Games in 1996, turned out to be a life-changing experience in so many ways.
we built a firm, uh, Copeland Hirthler, that became a leading design and communications firm in the Olympic world through the 1990s, and, got to travel the world. Got hired by Istanbul to write and design their bid for the 2000 Olympics, which of course they lost to Sydney, then hired by Stockholm to work on that bid for the [00:07:30] 2004 Olympics, and then Klagenfurt, Austria, and then Beijing, and it just kept going and going. And for the next 35 years, I became one of the leading, uh, writers in the, Olympic bid game. You know, every two years there was a new bid after Lillehammer and, you know, I just hit three million miles on Delta Airlines, so my Olympic career is still going on after all that time. So I wanted to pay homage. Why did I do it, Jill? I, I really wanted to pay homage to Billy Payne and Andy Young for what they did [00:08:00] Not only for our city and our country, not only for the Olympic movement despite some of the problems that Atlanta had, but, but for me personally and for my family and, and friends.
I just told you how my mother and father enjoyed the torch relay. I mean, it was that personal. My brother carried the flame two months before I did. He carried the flame from New Jersey into Pennsylvania and lit a torch that my sister was carrying. There’s a whole family within on this. And my mother and father was there to see that.
When you can get your family involved in this great [00:08:30] movement that we all love so much, it makes it even more meaningful.
What Atlanta was like in the run-up to the Olympic bid
Jill Jaracz: Let’s talk a little bit about what Atlanta was like while in the run-up to the bid, ’cause one of the things that struck me in the movie was the way Atlanta as a city was different than many other American cities at the time, and also the explanation to IOC members that Atlanta had been a war-torn city and really the only American city that’s [00:09:00] really suffered from war in a way that, like, a, a light bulb went on for so many IOC members because they were still close to the destruction of the world wars in their own countries.
George Hirthler: Yeah. Yeah, a lot of them were older and had memories of World War II, I’m sure. that’s a really interesting point, and Charlie Battle brings that story out well in, in the film. When we started bidding and started traveling to Europe and, uh, other international destinations, no one in the world knew [00:09:30] where Atlanta was.
If they knew anything about Atlanta, they knew the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King, a little bit of that. Some of them knew about CNN, which was around, uh, I think in 70 countries at the time. and a few of them knew about the Civil War, but it was really the Civil War and the civil rights movement were the bookends that you could use to kind of frame up the story of Atlanta in a concise narrative that helped them out.
When our team, when we won the domestic bid, [00:10:00] the very first opportunity that Billy Payne, Andy Young, Charlie Battle, and the team had to introduce themselves to the IOC was in Seoul, Korea at the Seoul 1988 Olympic Games. And they traveled there. And, uh, somehow Billy and, the team got their schedule mixed up, and they missed the actual appointment to introduce the team to the executive board And they got a call from Madam Swifer who said, “Where are you guys?
Get up here right now or you’re gonna miss your opportunity.” So they ran up to the [00:10:30] executive board meeting room and sat down. The LOC members on the executive board at that point were exasperated. They were, were gonna be late for lunch because Atlanta had missed its appointment, and they were sitting there trying to, you know, looking at their notes and ignoring what Atlanta was saying.
Then Andy Young said, “You know, Atlanta is the only American city that was burnt to the ground in the fires of war And Charlie says that suddenly all these people around the table looked up. and suddenly [00:11:00] Andy had captured their attention. And he then spun this narrative that led up to the civil rights movement, and we believed and we asserted that Atlanta had a special place in American history because it was the birthplace of the civil rights movement.
Uh, it’s where Martin Luther King Jr. was born, who had led the civil rights movement, and that Andy Young had been one of his right-hand men. And here these guys are looking, here these IOC blue members are looking at this team led by this white man and this [00:11:30] Black man, and this Black man happened to be Martin Luther King’s, right-hand man and chief lieutenant.
And Andy started talking about the values of the civil rights movement and the values of the Olympic movement, and we positioned the civil rights movement and the Olympic movement as an intersection point for a set of universal values and ethics that gave Atlanta a special sort of voice of moral authority, to articulate the idealism behind the movement.
And that helped to begin to win hearts and minds within [00:12:00] the movement. So they made an impression right there that first day. And when the meeting ended, and as, as we say in the film, when the meeting ended, people were coming up to Andy. One of the members of the executive board was Judge Mbye, who came up and said, “Andy, I want to thank you.
You may not remember this, but you helped me get appointed to the International Court of Justice in The Hague.” the Emir of Qatar came up and thanked Andy for some things he had done when he, was at the UN. As the American ambassador to the UN, he took a secret meeting with the Palestinians [00:12:30] that suddenly made headlines in The New York Times when it was discovered that he had held this meeting.
You’re not supposed to hold meetings with those guys, I guess, and he did. He wanted to hear what they had to say about the conflict with Israel, and as a result, he had to resign from the ambassadorship at the UN, an embarrassment to the Carter administration. But interestingly enough, that paid off when it came time to bid for the Olympics ’cause the Emir of Qatar threw his weight behind Atlanta’s campaign.
The partnership of Andrew Young and Billy Payne in Atlanta’s Olympics
Alison Brown: I thought it was interesting that you focused the movie [00:13:00] specifically on that idea of Black and white, of Billy Payne and, Andrew Young. Is it just that they were so central to the success of the games, or was there something specific about those two men?
George Hirthler: Both. I mean, I, I moved to Atlanta in 1973 from Philadelphia out of Temple University to be part of the new South, to be at the epicenter of social change and to help transform, the country and, and support the civil rights movement. I’d been an anti-war [00:13:30] protester And the day I was hired to write the Olympic bid and realized that I’d be working with Billy and, who’s a great football hero from the University of Georgia, and Andy Young, who I knew and admired at a distance, was a thrill for me, and a fulfillment of a personal dream of mine.
So I had a front row seat to history. I watched these two guys operate. I saw how the IOC members and how the Olympic community and even media responded to them when they went [00:14:00] out together. And, uh, as one of the journalists that we interviewed in the film says, I… he said, Jim McManus, he said, “I think it was a fantastic one-two punch to have this Black man and this white man out there representing Atlanta, and they each represented such diverse histories of the American South.”
I mean, Billy played football at the University of Georgia when the SEC was segregated He wasn’t playing against Black players. You know, might’ve been a different game if he was. but anyway, what [00:14:30] they did together, the friendship and the bond that they formed, which by the way, still exists. You get the two of those guys together, they are very close friends.
I think they realize that it’s kind of hard to understand when you’re making history, what role you’re really playing. and if you look at it, from a macro viewpoint, if you back away from the day-to-day grind and you look at what these two guys were doing from a historical perspective, you can see how they represented [00:15:00] different social forces that needed to come together and came together in a vibrant way.
and they saw in each other the potential and the possibility of doing something great for their city. They both loved Atlanta. They had a deep, abiding love for Atlanta, both of them, coming from completely different backgrounds. And so witnessing this and watching this over the two-year period of the bid and then, the six-year period of the games, uh, it was really quite an amazing thing.
How The Games in Black & White came about
Jill Jaracz: When did you start thinking about making a [00:15:30] documentary?
George Hirthler: In 2019.
When I got sent to Lausanne to the Olympic Library to study Olympic history and understand what bid books were and how they were constructed and written, and we invented a new model that made us popular and attractive to Istanbul and Stockholm and Beijing and the other cities we ended up working for.
The IOC adapted the model that w- that we developed for the bid books and put it in their instructions to future cities for how to, create their bid books structurally. when I got sent there and discovered that there was this [00:16:00] entire movement behind the Olympic Games, I didn’t know there was an Olympic movement.
I– When we were hired, we thought we were bidding on the world’s greatest sporting event. Didn’t understand that the, Olympic Games are only the most visible expression of this incredible, powerful social movement to create friendship and peace through sport that is active 365 days a year in 206 countries right now.
And when I got into the library and started looking through these old bid books and found this [00:16:30] picture of Pierre de Coubertin, who I’d never heard about, never heard his name, and found out that he had created and launched the modern Olympic Games as part of a movement to unite the world in friendship and peace through sport, I was, like, completely hooked.
So in 2016, after doing 10 Olympic bids as a lead writer, I took some time off to write a book about him called “The Idealist.” 2019, the film rights to that novel, uh, fictionalized biography, 540 pages, uh, f- sold to an Oscar-nominated film [00:17:00] producer, and I thought, “Oh, I better brush up on my filmmaking.” So I called my old buddy Bob Jetson, a great filmmaker here in Atlanta, and I said, “Bob, let’s have a drink.
I wanna talk to you about, filmmaking. Just, just need to brush up on something.” And I went to go have a drink with Bob, gave him a copy of “The Idealist,” and, uh, he said, “George, I want in on this project.” I said, “Well, I can’t get you in, Bob. The, uh, the rights are already sold to another producer, so, you know, this is already moving down the tracks.”
And he said, “Well, what can we do?” And I [00:17:30] said, “Well, nobody’s done a documentary about the Atlanta Olympic Games. Why don’t we do one about the Atlanta Olympic Games?” He said, “Okay, write a treatment.” And so the next day I started writing and realized immediately I wanted to tell the story of Billy and Andy.
And, uh, Bob, I sent it to him. He said, “I’m all in.” He said, “Let’s figure this out.” we started, doing interviews. I got– called Billy, told him what we were gonna do. He agreed to help. I called Andy. He agreed. we set up, uh, an interview on January 7th, [00:18:00] 2020. This is pre-COVID. We started interviewing Billy and Andy, and the two of them were magical immediately on screen. And then, we started shooting interviews, and we finished 17 interviews. I got Martin Luther King III to come.
I got Shirley Franklin to do an interview. uh, Shirley Franklin, who had been the senior vice president of community relations at the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games and later became mayor of Atlanta and had been a-Andy’s chief of staff during his, [00:18:30] administration, uh, when he decided to bid for the games.
And we just started getting these great stories, and I interviewed a lot of people who were involved in the bid and the games organizational effort, and then people from the outside. You saw Terrence Burns in there. You saw other people that you would recognize. Went all the way to Janet Evans, who helped us bid out in, in LA running their, uh, you know, senior vice president or executive vice president out there for athlete relations.
And, and, Casey Wasserman had them [00:19:00] recall what Atlanta meant to them. And COVID hit. We had to stop doing the interviews. We stopped at 17, and two years later, we got a corporate sponsor of the former sponsor of the Olympic Games to back us. It was Delta Airlines, and they provided the funds, and we were able to restart in 2022 and then, uh, then finish all the interviews and the edit and everything.
We had a premiere in 2025, April 26th, at the historic Rialto Theater in downtown [00:19:30] Atlanta, and it, it, came off really well. And of course then we just won four Emmys, so the film is pretty powerful. It seems to be getting good reaction by people who see it.
How the documentary changed our perceptions of the Atlanta 1996 Olympics
George Hirthler: What, what did you think? Since you’re, outside of Atlanta and you had impressions of the games, how did, how did that film, uh, affect you and change your perceptions, if it did?
Alison Brown: I think it was surprising to get the inside view. You know, to hear how the people who were working inside the system and trying to get that bid put together. And it’s hard [00:20:00] to remember how unknown Atlanta was at the time. You know, we think of Atlanta now as one of the major American cities, and it wasn’t back in the day.
It was just this little Southern town kind of thinking. You know, especially for someone like myself who lives up in the North, we just did not think of Atlanta as an international city the way that we did after the games. It’s hard to remember that
George Hirthler: Yeah. You know, when we, uh, the only way we could describe to people where Atlanta was [00:20:30] geo-geographically when we went to Europe the first couple of times was to draw a map showing where Florida was and where Disney World was.
and once they knew where Disney World was, then they understood, where Atlanta was. And, they thought Atlanta was Atlantic City, the gambling capital. And they said, “Oh, yeah, you’ve got gambling there.” I– it was, it was funny. and then if you look at the history of Atlanta, when I got here in 1973, October of 1973, just when Maynard Jackson was elected mayor for the first time.
He was elected that November. Uh, and he [00:21:00] ended up doing two terms followed by Andy’s two terms, and he came back for a third term. and so he was part of our building.
I But back to your point, Alison, uh, you know, Atlanta was just unknown. When I got here, 1.2 million residents of the city of Atlanta. Today, we’re over 7 million. and you can attribute that growth, to the fact that the Sun Belt was rising and, industry was moving from the North to the South, et cetera.
There were a lot of economic trends underway. But also the fact that the South had been denied the commercial development that the [00:21:30] rest of the country had enjoyed post-Civil War. You know, it was still kind of like a backwater area of the United States, and most people around the world wouldn’t visit the South if they were coming, unless they went to Miami, but they wouldn’t go tour the American South.
It wasn’t high on anybody’s tourism list. Now it is. And if you look at what the impact that the games had on the development of Atlanta and its suburbs, it’s just remarkable. It’s like a booster rocket,
The impact of the Olympics on the city of Atlanta
Alison Brown: In making the documentary, did you discover new [00:22:00] things about the Olympics that you didn’t realize?
George Hirthler: Well, I discovered overall the incredible impact, uh, and the legacy that the games had left. I mean, they really did transform downtown Atlanta. Billy’s idea to build Centennial Olympic Park was a stroke of genius that literally connected our convention center business. We were a pretty vibrant convention center as we built the Georgia World Congress Center in the mid-’70s, so we were already attracting plenty of [00:22:30] conventions, you know.
but those things typically don’t make the news, and people don’t Think of the city as a result of that. But we had that vibrant business going on, and then, we had this hotel district downtown, and there was a walk across this dilapidated industrial patch of old buildings and broken down warehouses and parking garages and, other things that, you had to cross to get there.
Well, Centennial Olympic Park filled that space in with a vibrant new green space right in the heart of the city. [00:23:00] And I didn’t realize that… I knew, of course, that four or five years after the games, a hotel was built on the edge of Centennial Olympic Park with some condos. And then the Georgia Aquarium, the largest aquarium in the world, was built by Bernie Marcus, who’d founded Home Depot, on the edge of the park, and then the World of Coke had already moved there, and then there was a children’s museum, and eventually the College Football Hall of C- Hall of Fame relocated right on the edge of the park.
Suddenly there was this SkyView Ferris wheel, a new [00:23:30] hotel across the street from the aquarium. And all of a sudden, a city that had no– hardly any residents during the games, it was kinda just a business center, started filling up with condos and, people moving downtown, and that’s still going on.
I participated in a, in a little panel discussion in something called South Downtown now. This guy came in and he bought, like, 16 blocks of old buildings that, that he’s rehabilitating, and people are moving in, and offices are filling up. And so [00:24:00] the legacy of the games continued. And I didn’t realize, that the three point five billion dollars that was spent in the 20 years, I think 25 years after the games around Centennial Olympic Park literally changed the character of downtown Atlanta and gave it a vibrant new beating heart, as we say in the film.
and I don’t think Arthur Blank, who owns the Falcons and the, uh, Atlanta United, the soccer team, would’ve rebuilt that stadium, the Georgia Dome, uh, and created the beautiful, [00:24:30] massive, Mercedes-Benz Stadium that he did if it wasn’t for, Centennial Olympic Park being there, if you talk to the people at the Chamber of Commerce or the Atlanta Sports Council, they now call that area the Championship Campus because you can, if you bring an event like the World Cup is there now, right? Centennial Olympic Park is completely filled up with World Cup, Cup hospitality centers.
And, we got eight games of the World Cup, so we were in the top tier of cities, and that’s a tribute to what Centennial Park has [00:25:00] done i- in terms of, uh, creating a, this championship campus downtown. you can host 20 events at different venues all within walking distance of Centennial Olympic Park over a week-long period.
Fan zones, that kind of… You have that great fan zone. You know, Centennial Olympic Park was probably had, I don’t know, 20,000 people in it every day during the World Cup to watch those games.
Alison Brown: That’s beautiful. We were there a couple years ago, and it really is a beautiful spot.
George Hirthler: Oh, yeah. I saw you when we were in Atlanta.
That’s right.
Jill Jaracz: it is [00:25:30] amazing how we forget how cities transform. And one time when I was in Atlanta within the last few years, I was talking with my Lyft driver about, the fact that so many trees had been planted for Atlanta and things like that, and he’s like, “Oh yeah, I’ve been here this long, and these trees are now giant where they weren’t giant before.”
And it’s just really fascinating to see how legacy takes a long time to really fully realize and how transformation can be slow, [00:26:00] but you need those seeds and, and there are so many seeds planted with the Atlanta ’96.
George Hirthler: it really is amazing that, the growth that occurred.
and I think also the, trends, of population movement. downtown Atlanta was completely, African American. It was completely Black as a community, before the games, and now it’s mixed in the suburbs, too. There have been immense movements of, populations, multiracial populations around the city.
[00:26:30] So it’s become, it really has in many ways the engine of the games helped to catalyze Atlanta and helped fulfill part of the civil rights dream, you know? of making it a more diverse but integrated city all the way around. And of course, we still have our pockets of poverty as every city does.
What the Olympics can’t do for a city
George Hirthler: The games can’t solve every problem. that’s also one of the things that you realize when you go back and you look at it. anytime a city wins the right to host the games, the ideas for how these games can be [00:27:00] harnessed to accelerate change in all areas start to come from activists across the community, and everybody wants to use the Olympic Games for their own agenda and their own ends.
and the games, the men and women who are organizing the games have one mission, and that’s to put on a great sporting event. You know, they can’t solve the world’s homeless problems and, the inequities in the housing problems and, all of that, through the games.
And yet a lot of people expect the Olympics to be, uh, you [00:27:30] know, panacea for everything,
Jill Jaracz: Why is that? Because you’ve been around a long time and you’ve seen it over and over and over again.
George Hirthler: I’ve seen it in many societies. I’ve seen it, you know, I worked on 10 Olympic bids, so I’ve, any civic leader who gets engaged in thinking about bringing the Olympic Games to his or her hometown, starts to think about what these games can do.
Beyond the sporting event, it’s just a natural human inclination to dream big when you’re thinking about the [00:28:00] Olympics. and mayors especially and, chamber of commerce leads and then, social activists or human rights activists, anybody else, they see the potential because the games, the games bring an enormous global media focus onto the host city.
Uh, I think we calculated, our chamber of commerce calculated that the bid alone, produced over 100 million, I think it was $100 million of global media exposure before [00:28:30] we had the games or by the time we won the games. Yeah, the the bid campaign themselves.
And so it’s, it’s just natural to think, “Okay, we have the Olympic Games. That’s gonna bring billions of dollars into our city. We can do this. We can do that. We can fix everything.” And the games, get pulled left and right, and one of the hardest things you have to do as a, as an organizer is shut out.
You really have to shut down all the ideas that could distract you from your central mission of putting [00:29:00] on a, a great games. it’s a trigger mechanism for dreams, big dreams. And, you see how people get caught up in it. And it is also, so idealistic because it’s, it’s focused on these, this idea that we’re, we’re really serving a greater good.
We’re serving perhaps the greatest good, which is bringing the world together in friendship and peace. And in, in our divided times, the message of the Olympic movement, has become even more [00:29:30] powerful than it has been. anybody who gets engaged in the Olympics begins to understand that this movement, which is politically neutral, has to remain politically neutral so that it can gather the world even when there’s, even in the face of conflicts.
You know, there are 70 wars uh, I, I remember the Carter Center published something during the period of our bid or maybe the period of our games that said there were 70 active wars going on around, around the world. and I [00:30:00] guarantee you there’s a number probably higher than that right now.
You don’t see them. You know, the only ones that make the news are the Russian invasion of Ukraine and, uh, and the American bombing of Iran. And, you start to see in the Olympics the possibilities of expressing the harmony of humanity and the noble aspirations it draws together and, those things are all counterpoints to the violence and the, the bloodshed that wars deliver.
And so there’s such hope in [00:30:30] the Olympic Games that you, you start thinking about the possibilities of doing more than just hosting a sporting event.
Programs that tried to help
Jill Jaracz: Two of the things that, the documentary talks about especially in trying to do more, were the Equal Employment Opportunity Program and the Atlanta Olympic Aid Program.
Talk about these a little bit and how they impacted the work of the, the bid committee and the organizing committee were doing.
George Hirthler: Both of those things are proof points to the [00:31:00] idea that the Olympic Games inspire big, big dreams, right?
As soon as Maynard Jackson was elected mayor in 1973 and took office in January of 1974, he introduced a, uh, equal economic opportunity program in the city in which prior to his administration, Black construction firms, for instance, had less than 1% of the city’s contracts. And he set a number of, 25%, I [00:31:30] think, uh, or 20% to begin with, for those contracts.
And he created an economic, uh, as Shirley Franklin says in the film, jobs are also part of the civil rights movement, you know? Jobs, economic opportunity is a big part of it. and Maynard and Billy and Andy all agreed that the Games, which would spend, uh, you know, a billion dollars on, on development in the city, I think the budget was 1.7 million, billion, the economic impact became over [00:32:00] five billion, that the Games would become a platform, for that kind of, uh, equal economic opportunity, especially for minority and female-owned businesses.
And so every contract that ACOG approved had to go through a process to identify either its leadership or its minority partners So Brad and I, Brad Copeland and I, had formed a design company. We had formed Copeland Hoefler, and as I said, we became one of the leading [00:32:30] Olympic design companies in the world during the 1990s.
And we, um, took on a minority partner in order to continue to do business with ACOG, James Morrell. And James Morrell had a booming business. He designed all the torch relay uniforms and, and other stuff. Great talent designer. And, and we partnered with, uh, with a number of firms that were led by women.
Cynthia Jones Park today, who still runs Jones Royle, became, through the Olympics, one of the leading transportation design and [00:33:00] signage system companies in the United States, especially for mass transit systems like MARTA here in Atlanta, and she’s thriving to this day out of that program.
There are dozens and dozens of stories like that. And so that’s the kind of thing that the Olympic Games can inspire. that didn’t distract, ACOG from its mission of putting on the games at all. It was an integrated program, right? .
The staff was multiracial all the way through, multiethnic, and I think 50% of the staff were women in Atlanta. [00:33:30] 2,000, I don’t know, 2 to 3,000, 4,000 people by the time of the games. And then you had this incredible story out of Lillehammer. Johann Olav Koss, right? Speed skater won three gold medals in, 1,500 meters, 5,000 meters, and 10,000 meters.
Each a world record. Each at a greater, like Secretariat, each one at a greater margin of victory. He was just an incredible speed skater. He comes to, and, and he helped [00:34:00] to launch this thing out of, Lillehammer called Olympic Aid because Sarajevo, which had hosted the Winter Games 10 years before, was in the midst of a war.
And you, you may recall that President Samaranch in the opening ceremonies of Lillehammer made an appeal to those fighting, “Lay down, please lay down your guns. Lay down your guns and, and accept peace.” And he flew down to Sarajevo to, uh, encourage, the Olympic community down there to keep its heads up and, [00:34:30] and, you know, they’d survived the war and I think he promised to help them rebuild the stadium where they had hosted opening ceremonies down there.
And, the IOC did that. Anyway, Koss helped to form this organization called Olympic Aid and he donated the 30,000. He got $10,000 for each of the gold medals he won. He donated all that to Olympic Aid and he went to Africa as a sports ambassador for the United Nations and as Olympic Aid ambassador and he helped young kids down there in war-torn [00:35:00] and conflict zones understand the power of sport to rebuild positive psychology and recover from the traumas they’d experienced.
He made his way to Atlanta. I met him, took him around and introduced him to as many sponsors as I could and he teamed up with Andy Young and they formed, after the United States Olympic Committee approved it, Olympic Aid Atlanta in 1996 and started raising money in the European Community’s humanitarian [00:35:30] branch gave them $5 million.
the country singer Garth Brooks gave them a million dollars. They ended up raising $15 million and took on a program with UNICEF to immunize children in war zones and conflict zones around the world in the run-up to the Atlanta Olympic Games, and they ended up immunizing about 14 million children in, I think, 14 or 15 conflict zones.
Uh, the statistics aren’t sticking in my head. But it was an amazing humanitarian [00:36:00] outreach. And the IOC, in their blindness, uh, over commercial jealousy, I think, shut down that program after Atlanta, because sponsors, some sponsors from the Olympic community were beginning to, to respond to it in ways that distracted them from their Olympic mission, I think.
I’m not really sure what the conflicts were there. But, but that’s one of the great stories that was completely lost in the annals of storytelling around Atlanta that I wanted to bring out. That was [00:36:30] sort of my idea in, writing the script for The Games in Black and White, was to tell the untold stories, to make sure people understood what these two men, one Black and one white man, did, and then, and, and how the games were, in fact, not only a catalyst for economic opportunity and justice at home, but also provided an incredible humanitarian outreach that benefited young children in w- conflict zones all, throughout the Middle [00:37:00] East and, and, and Africa
What ended up on the cutting room floor
Jill Jaracz: A lot of interviews in this. How did you wrangle all of these people and what ended up on the cutting room floor? You
George Hirthler: know-
Jill Jaracz: Like this is an impressive amount of people you got to it … I think we had 42
George Hirthler: interviews, and, uh, that’s the job of the producer. right now I’m producing a documentary. I, I, I got the IOC to commission another documentary on Anita de France.
Anita de France has one of the greatest stories in the, history of the modern Olympic movement. And in this film, [00:37:30] Thomas Bach is interviewed, and he calls her the most influential woman in the history of the modern Olympic movement, and that’s rightly true. Nobody knows her story. It’s one of those background stories that just like these that are in “The Games In Black And White” need to be told.
But the job of the producer, one of the key jobs of the producer in a documentary is to, to wrangle the talent, to bring the people to the table to sit down and do the interviews. I got Bob Holder. Bob Holder was a giant figure in the Atlanta Olympic Games, one of the first guys to [00:38:00] embrace Billy’s vision for chasing after the games and helped to lead the fundraising effort.
We did a great interview with Bob, and Bob, it, it ended up on the cutting room floor, unfortunately. you know, we had this thing at about two and a half hours, and we had to get it down to one and a half hours, and you’ve gotta drop some stories, and sure they, they went. You know, I wrote the script originally hoping to get Samuel Jackson, who’s a Morehouse graduate, to come and do, the on-camera hosting and the [00:38:30] on-camera narration and the narration off-camera.
We ended up getting Greg Alan Williams, who’s a fantastic actor in Atlanta. I didn’t know him. I, I knew hi- his role in, uh, “Remember the Titans”, the Denzel Washington movie, and he was brilliant. He was absolutely brilliant on camera. he’s got a empathy in his voice and in his, gestures and in his style that really draws you in. You feel like you’re in the hands of a master storyteller when, when he’s delivering his lines. [00:39:00] But, you know, as a producer, you have to go out there and get the people, and I was pretty tireless in making sure that, I had everybody I wanted to interview.
I missed, missed a few people, but, In the end, we had 40 interviews to choose from, and I wanted to get all of the Atlanta Nine in there, as many of the Atlanta Nine members as I could who were still, still alive.
And, uh, you just gotta, you know, it’s hard work lining up interviews and then making sure that you’ve got the crew, you know, you’ve got the makeup people, you’ve got everybody that you need there. [00:39:30] You guys do this day by day. You know how hard it is. Half the time, you know, people will call you and say, “Ah, you know what?
I, that interview I agreed to tomorrow afternoon, 1:00, I can’t make it.” And you’re like, “What? I just spent, uh, you know, $10,000 lining up a camera crew and, and we’ve got three other interviews around you, and we need you in there,” or, “You’re the only interview tomorrow, and we absolutely have to have you.”
How the documentary covers the Atlanta 1996 bombing
George Hirthler: I got A.D. Frazier to come down to Atlanta and sit for an interview, and [00:40:00] A.D. passed away, before the film was finished, unfortunately. But there’s a man who deserves enormous credit for what he did for the Olympic Games, and he’s the guy who got all the blame for all the problems that went wrong. And he said that his psychologist told him, in case you don’t think it’s stressful to put on the Olympic Games, A.D.
Frazier was the COO that Billy brought in to run the games, who actually had, I think, 12 direct reports and handled all the operations of the games. [00:40:30] Uh, his psychologist told him, “You’re suffering from PTSD.” He said, “The signs are all there.” So you, you’ve experienced PTSD through the effort of organizing the Olympic Games and all the things that went wrong.
And the bombing, you know, he was particularly good in talking about the bombing and, he said six years of unbelievably hard work and struggle blown up in one second by a bomb. And he, he [00:41:00] said that’s all the Atlanta Olympics will be remembered for. First thing they’ll be remembered for is the bomb.
and while my documentary, therefore, “The Games in Black and White,” seeks to make a great counterpoint and establish the fact there’s a lot more to remember about Atlanta than that, including, of course, all the athletic highlights, he isn’t wrong that when you talk to people about the Olympic Games, one of the fir- in Atlanta, one of the Centennial Olympic Games, the 100th anniversary of the Olympic Games, one of the first things they bring up is the bomb
Alison Brown: Yeah, I thought the movie [00:41:30] handled talking about the bombing really, really effectively. You know, you don’t ignore it, but it’s not the center of the movie I think Doug
George Hirthler: Arnott, who is now working on the LA games, um, the interview we got with Doug was one of the best that we got because Doug was right there and he was managing all the venues in Atlanta, and he tells that story brilliantly.
It’s the story of a city that refuses to be, thrown off track by violence. It’s a city that, that the people of the city rally. [00:42:00] The people of the city realize we’ve just been gut punched in the middle of the greatest event we’ve ever put on, we’ve just been gut punched, and we have to respond.
And when Doug Arnott tells that story about the volunteers coming out and showing up en masse, like instead of 100% turnout the next morning after the bomb, they had 200% turnout of volunteers because a lot of people didn’t think other people would show up And the city, you know, the city, the symbol of Atlanta is the phoenix, the [00:42:30] city that rose from the ashes.
Because when Sherman came in in 1865, there were 4,000 buildings in Atlanta. When Sherman set fire to the city and left, there were only 40 buildings standing. He didn’t burn the churches and the schools. So that’s what was left behind when Sherman was done burning down Atlanta. And so Atlanta became, it was symbolized by the phoenix, which rose from its own ashes.
And that’s what Atlanta did. And Doug Warnock makes the point that Atlanta rose from its ashes [00:43:00] after the bombing. And he said, I think it was a great moment, a proud moment for that city. Now, it’s sad that you have to establish a proud moment in the face of such violence, but it was a tribute to the city.
And when Andy spoke, when Andy and Billy organized the reopening of Centennial Olympic Park three days later, I mean, the games went on. Nobody missed an event. Everything happened and the people kept coming. All the ticket holders were out the next day. But when [00:43:30] they opened that park three days later, that park was jammed with 10,000 people.
And Andy gave a great speech, which we put a piece of it into the documentary. And it’s pretty inspiring.
George Hirthler’s favorite moment in the documentary
Alison Brown: Do you have a favorite moment in the documentary?
George Hirthler: I think my favorite moment is the opening. and I don’t mean the quick video cuts and the music, uh, that drive, that drive your interest right at the outset. I mean when Greg Allen Williams first appears on screen the [00:44:00] narration begins by saying, “In the summer of 1990– For 17 days in the summer of 1996, this was the center of the universe.
More than 3.5 billion people watched what was happening right here. They saw this, they saw that, they saw this, but what they didn’t see, the story they didn’t hear, is the story I wanna tell you.” That’s my favorite part of the documentary. Because it sets up, you know, then he says it’s the story of two men, one Black, one white, who had a love of their city so [00:44:30] strong it united them in a quest to bring the world together right here in friendship and peace through sport.
So that opening for me is the essence of the story. And it’s the most meaningful part of it to me
Jill Jaracz: Well, that is a, good place to wrap it up ‘ Thank you, George. uh, Games in Black and White, so it’s been on PBS. is it coming back anywhere?
Where you can watch The Games in Black & White
George Hirthler: It’s, uh, yeah, it’s gonna run, I think it’s running nationally on PBS now.
you can get it on PBS nationally. Uh, for some reason [00:45:00] GPB, Georgia Public Broadcasting, which is part of PBS, put it up on their website. They ran it, of course. , The Olympic Channel is going to be running it, uh, on the 30th anniversary. I’m not sure about uh, NBC. You can, you can get it on Amazon, on Amazon Prime. You can, you can pay for it.
You can rent it right now. so it’s going to be appearing. here and there. And hopefully my Anouk Defraigne documentary, which is being directed by the wonderful Kandra [00:45:30] McGee, will be coming out in the fall. Hopefully we’ll have a premiere. Hopefully we’ll be able to get the funds and have a premiere for that in, uh, in Los Angeles.
I’m producing that one with Mark Parkman, who, uh, you may remember was the CEO of the Olympic Channel for 10 years.
Jill Jaracz: Excellent. Well George, thank you so much. We really appreciate your time.
George Hirthler: Yeah. Thank you.
Jill Jaracz: Thank you so much, George. You can watch the movie on PBS’s website, and we’ll have a link to that in the show [00:46:00] notes. It’s a good watch.
Alison Brown: You know, it’s like- It’s a lot of fun … powerful. It’s a lot of fun going back to that.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah, yeah. And he did a good job. There’s a lot I didn’t know about putting Atlanta into context and the time, and the relationship that, Andy Young and Billy Payne had was really unusual for that time in, US history.
Our Summer of Nostalgia
Jill Jaracz: So it, it was really a good movie. A lot of fun. also having a lot of fun are our patrons at, patreon.com/flamealivepod. [00:46:30] They are celebrating the Summer of Nostalgia, and you can get in on that too. all s- summer long, we are going back into our vault and pulling out never before seen photos and videos from Beijing 2022, Paris 2024, and Milano Cortina 2026, where you can relive with us some great moments and some escapades from those days.
Alison Brown: You know, because you’ve been pulling all the photos and videos, it’s a surprise to me what- … [00:47:00] what comes up. So I have been having so much fun looking back at these old photos. And some– And a lot of them I’ve never seen ’cause they were your photos.
Jill Jaracz: Right.
Alison Brown: So I didn’t get to see all of those in our, in our shared files.
This is like, “Oh, I remember that. Oh, I remember when we talked about this,” or, “I remember when we saw that.” Because a lot of it is related to even stories that we told on the show in the dailies. Yes. And now these are the photos related to some of those stories, so that’s been great fun.
Jill Jaracz: Yes, exactly. So [00:47:30] relive, uh, those memories you can become a patron.
You can find out more. You could also just purchase the collection as a one-off without becoming an ongoing patron. Patrons do keep Our Flame Alive as a podcast, and w-we’ll get into, uh, LA’s coming. LA’s gonna be expensive. But, we greatly appreciate all that the patrons do for us, and this is something special that we wanted to do back for them since they, uh, give us so much joy and so much help in keeping the show going.
So check that out at [00:48:00] patreon.com/flamealivepod.
Milano Cortina 2026 News: The budget
Alison Brown: No arrivederci. I thought we were done with Milano Cortina, and yet here we are Oh.
Jill Jaracz: No, we’re not done with Milano Cortina. We’re not gonna be done for a while, I think. hat tip to Rich Perlman over at the Sports Examiner, who I got to hang out with last week at the press briefing, so that was fun. Even
Alison Brown: better.
Jill Jaracz: he, had a little story, about, uh, Il Fatto Quotidiano reporting that the [00:48:30] Veneto Regional Prosecutor’s Office of the Court of Auditors has obtained financials that have not yet been published, saying that during 2025, the Milano Cortina 2026 Foundation’s debts increased by 39 million euros to a total of 176.5 million euros, and its outstanding debt reached a billion.
That’s ’25, so they didn’t have ’26 numbers yet, and we don’t know how much money came in during 2026, which is obviously a [00:49:00] bulk of stuff that happened on site. that said, Lombardy they’ve set aside 199 million euros, and Veneto set aside 99.4 million euros in case they need to cover outstanding debt, which is a big deal when it comes to, like, people not remembering that the party had to get paid for, and they’re like, “Hey, what happened to the services that you want to provide?”
Alison Brown: Yeah, that’s a big chunk of change servicing debt
LA 2028 News: Jill’s visit to LA and what to look for
Jill Jaracz: All right. LA [00:49:30] 2028 news, ’cause, you know, LA ’28 may not have debt. I don’t know. They’re using existing venues or, or temporary venues, so that’s gonna be a good thing. , I did go to the world press briefing last week. we’re not allowed to report on specifics from it, but to be quite honest, it’s not exciting for fans to know things about, like, how to get offices at the Olympics if you’re part of the press.
You know, it’s, it’s that kind of thing. And, and, we did [00:50:00] go to a place called Cosm for the opening night party, thanks to the USOPC, helping to put that on. Cosm is a venue that’s over in Inglewood, and it’s You could see, both the Intuit Dome and you could see SoFi Stadium or the LA ’28 Stadium from that.
it is a sports bar maxed out because they have a dome inside, and it’s– They’ve got, like, planetarium, technology-
Alison Brown: Ooh …
Jill Jaracz: for this. And they [00:50:30] showed in there how, like, one level of technology screen, you still see lines across the, the big screens. This could take away those lines. And it was very immersive.
It was very cool. Like, they showed sports clips throughout the thing to show you how the technology worked, and I almost got up and cheered with the fans that were on the screen. It was that immersive. And then they showed what they can do for, settings. So they put you in the [00:51:00] Sistine Chapel, and it was like a, almost a 360 view.
You could look to the side, and there was stuff on the side, and you could look to the ceiling Then they, also did movie experiences. So they showed what they would do with “Harry Potter” and with “The Matrix.” And so they’d have in their dome a, a giant screen that just looks like a screen that would be on your home, and then on the planetarium screen behind that were all of these, like, immersive world [00:51:30] things you could do.
So there would be maybe brooms flying around or owls flying there, or the Matrix would be coming down in the background. Or if Neo was gonna fight in the dojo, the dojo would suddenly appear in the background, and it would be just way more immersive. It was unbelievably cool.
Alison Brown: So are we going to use this to watch events?
Jill Jaracz: We might. I don’t know. Because they did have World Cup games there. You could buy tickets to see World Cup games. But I will say that [00:52:00] there’s also going to be one, I know in Detroit, maybe Atlanta, but one is opening up in Cleveland next year.
Alison Brown: Oh, nice.
Jill Jaracz: And- Good
Alison Brown: on you …
Jill Jaracz: yes. Yeah, I know, we’re very lucky. But, it’s a really cool place to watch sports, and that’s gonna change how you watch sports in the future if you go hang out at these places.
Obviously, it’s gonna be a little bit more expensive than a sports bar to get a ticket at these things, but it was just unbelievably cool. we did do venue tours. the IOC did [00:52:30] post that we went to venue tours. Inglewood, uh, we went to, uh, the LA28 Stadium, and we just poked in all these places and saw the field of play, and they talked to us about where the the venue media center and the media things might be, so that’s really the focus of this.
uh, we went to the Intuit Dome, which is basketball-focused and was built for basketball athletes, and that’s a cool new stadium. The inside, the experience is gonna be really cool as a fan. Englewood, [00:53:00] getting out of there was a long trip. Inglewood’s pretty isolated compared to LA, so I would keep that in mind.
And also, I’m starting to catch up on how LA did with the World Cup and seeing a little bit of transportation issues trying to get to the arena and getting into the venue. But, hopefully they will have things worked out for LA and better transportation options. Don’t know, because Inglewood’s its own [00:53:30] city, it’s got its own mayor and its own, priorities.
So we will see what happens with that. We went to Exposition Park, where the LA Coliseum is, and it also has the venue, it’s probably called the Exposition Park Stadium or something basic like that, because it’s currently known as BMO Stadium. Right. That’s where, flag football and lacrosse will be. And then, nearby there is the Galen Center, and I know fencing will [00:54:00] be there. And, we also saw the Media Village. Also in Exposition Park is the California Science Center, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and the new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art.
They also have a rose garden there. So there is a ton to do, and that is going to be a big place, I think, to do stuff. I don’t know how much of around the Coliseum and around the other stadium will be blocked off [00:54:30] for, venue access and how, how big that venue perimeter is gonna be. But, like, if you’re gonna go there, that’s gonna be a place to do stuff
Alison Brown: and when you have an event like the Olympics happening and you go into a museum, it is empty.
Jill Jaracz: Right.
Alison Brown: That is the be- This is probably gonna be the best two weeks to go to Disneyland.
Jill Jaracz: Maybe. You might get people going, “Ah, I couldn’t get tickets. I’ll just go to Disney.” Or like, “We’re gonna get tickets to the Lucas Museum because it’s [00:55:00] new and exciting and it’s right there.”
So I anticipate that that area, they didn’t really talk about what the park is going to be like, and I don’t know how much control LA28 would have over activations in the park itself. But that has potential to be a really great hangout space. So that is something to look forward to. then finally we went to downtown LA to that zone, which was, the Peacock Theater and the LA Convention Center [00:55:30] and, I don’t know what they’re gonna call it.
It’s crypto.com Arena right now. And they announced while we were there that para powerlifting will be in the Peacock Theater Just get weightlifting tickets. You will not be disappointed. And if you’re going to the Paralympics, get parapowerlifting tickets. That venue is gonna be packed, and it’s gonna be exciting.
Same with boxing. Prelims are at, Peacock. Those will be exciting. It’s gonna be a theater setting. goalball will be there ’cause the [00:56:00] sound will be really good for the, the athletes. it’s just gonna be a really, really cool venue. crypto.com is where the– Or if you want, prefer Staples Center, that is where the LA Lakers and the LA Sparks play, and, that’s gonna be where gymnastics is, and boxing finals will be there too, I believe.
Very cool arena, very iconic arena. It’s gonna be big for gymnastics. I think it’s be- bigger than Bercy, [00:56:30] and it’ll be better. Oh,
Alison Brown: I
Jill Jaracz: think
Alison Brown: it
Jill Jaracz: has to
Alison Brown: be.
Jill Jaracz: And it’s gonna be better than Bercy Arena. so those are gonna be venues. We didn’t get into the con- convention center at all, but it’s right there too.
So the Downtown LA zone, there are restaurants in this Downtown LA section. There are a couple hotels. But even if, like, I did not stay in the host hotel, which was in kind of this cluster. I stayed maybe a 10-minute walk away in Downtown LA, and, getting around there, it’s, it’s walkable. There’s [00:57:00] also buses and, the 7th Street Metro Station is a big hub, so that’s a place to look.
I will say I stayed in a hotel that if you’re staying for a long period of time, it’s not conducive to that. I’ll just name it, the Wayfarer Downtown Hilton property. Uh, lovely hotel, fabulous staff ’cause it’s Hilton and s- and the Hilton staff are always very good. Good food, but my room was made for somebody who’s there for a convention or a conference.
And [00:57:30] it’s smaller. It’s, uh, very comfortable. The bed is very comfortable. Pillows are comfortable. Everything was very nice. Great blackout curtains, but there’s no place to store your luggage. There’s no closet. There was no refrigerator. And I was in the tiny room, and they have bigger rooms with more bed options available.
But, if you’re looking for hotel stuff now, make a list of what’s important to you and make sure that it’s in your hotel. I was kinda surprised to not have a fridge. Didn’t need it, but I was surpris- Well, I could’ve used, I could’ve used Coke storage, I [00:58:00] will say that.
Alison Brown: Yeah, ’cause then you end up having to fill the bucket with ice and putting one in the ice bucket.
Jill Jaracz: No ice bucket. Just–
Alison Brown: Oh, no ice bucket?
Jill Jaracz: Yeah, there was no- Oh … ice bucket that I noticed. I mean, it took me a couple days to find out that there was a steamer in the room, even though it’s a tiny room. But everything’s kinda bagged up And hanging on your two hooks and you have four hangers kind of thing.
They had underbed storage, which was nice. But again, like if I was staying with another person, there was nowhere to put the, the suitcases-
Alison Brown: Yeah …
Jill Jaracz: kind of thing. So, [00:58:30] like that’s really important when you’re thinking about hotels and how long you’re gonna stay. Even though you’re not gonna be in the room very much-
Alison Brown: It’s still gotta be practical
Jill Jaracz: start thinking about that cause hotels’ll be open before you know it, really. True. It’s gonna be a year, but it- they’ll be open pretty quickly. on my last day, I decided to go down to Long Beach to see how that trip from the downtown zone would be.
Easy-peasy on Metro. Easy.
Alison Brown: Oh, [00:59:00] good.
Jill Jaracz: cause the Metro stop was like a block and a half from my hotel, and one shot, one train got me there. Took an hour 10- Okay … on the train. It’s a long train ride. Trains were accessible, I will say that. I know listener Meredith was looking at accessibility measures. Venues will probably be pretty good on accessibility.
Trains were good on accessibility, ’cause I did see two people in wheelchairs get on the train. I also saw somebody… So we’re, we’re [00:59:30] in the first, the, my departure station, and a guy in a wheelchair is moving towards the door to get on the train, and somebody else ducks in front of him and kind of jars, not jars the wheelchair, but like makes the guy have to stop so he doesn’t hit him.
And the guy in the wheelchair, once they got on board, was giving the first guy grief for cutting in front of him, and the guy goes, “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there.” [01:00:00] And he said, “You didn’t see 600 pounds of wheelchair?”
And then I, I kinda moved to a different car ’cause they were yelling for a little while. trip was fine. I mean, it was comfortable, but y- you know, you’re on public transportation in a big city. You might get people trying to sell you things, which they’re not supposed to do. You might get people who are talking out loud, very loudly to nobody.
To people that they can only see. You will [01:00:30] drive by a lot of garbage.
Alison Brown: Yeah.
Jill Jaracz: You will drive by homeless encampments, and I don’t think that stuff’s getting picked up for the games. it’s gonna be, it’s impossible. And, and LA has a lot of housing problems, and it’s a big city, so big cities have a lot of problems.
And there are a lot of issues that they’re, they can’t be fixed by the Olympics or the Paralympics, and they’re not gonna get cleaned up in two years.
Alison Brown: Right.
Jill Jaracz: And I don’t think they should be cleaned up, to be quite honest. [01:01:00] I think we should- Well- … keep it, uh, I mean, like, you want people to be housed.
Alison Brown: Right.
You- And I want that- You, you need to solve the problem, not just clean it up for the Olympics.
Jill Jaracz: Yes, exactly.
Alison Brown: Yeah.
Jill Jaracz: So, s- putting more light on the, the issues and trying to find real solutions would be a, a good use of time and money. But I don’t trust that that’s gonna happen. when I got to Long Beach, again, easy off the train.
I was a 10-minute easy walk [01:01:30] to the front door of the convention center, which is where shooting will be, target shooting. Next to that is the arena, I believe for handball.
Theme Music: Okay.
Jill Jaracz: And then next to that is the parking lot where climbing and the pool will be for artistic swimming and water polo, and I believe para swimming
A- and further down, but walkable, is the beach volleyball venue. [01:02:00] Not walkable is rowing and, like, coastal rowing. and canoe, I think. Canoe sprints. That’s a little further down, and I think you’re gonna need to get on a bus, and hopefully they’ll have shuttles for that. Long Beach has the potential to be a phenomenal place to be for the games.
There’s a promenade that they have that’s got some restaurants, and it’s just basically a pedestrian zone with restaurants and maybe stores. It was quiet during the day, but [01:02:30] I bet it, can be really lit up and fun at night. And near the convention center, there’s restaurants, there’s a mall.
There’s another little, area that was a lot of restaurants. So there’s gonna be stuff. The perimeter for the venues will be pretty blocked off, I think. The, the Warped Tour happened to be there at the time, so I got to see how you could have three or four stages in this parking lot and go, “Oh, that’s how they’re gonna [01:03:00] do two venues.”
but honestly, it was really close. I would still budget, like, minimum two hours if you’re coming from downtown LA to go to Long Beach and do a venue. I would put more on that time really, two, two and a half minimum. Right. Because you don’t know how long it’s gonna take to get into venue security, and once you’re in, at least, like, when I looked at the Warped Tour, it was like a whole mini city in there.
Right. It wasn’t just like multiple stages So just [01:03:30] walking around. Yes, walking around your venue is gonna be a lot. but all of it’s gonna be really cool, and there’s so many sports that are just right together that that’s real- I think it’s really good planning, so.
Alison Brown: Good. That’s nice to
Jill Jaracz: hear. That’s, that’s hopeful.
That’s very hopeful. So if you go to Long Beach and you’re staying in Long Beach, you’re gonna have a good time. know that stuff can be far away from things. This is a much bigger footprint than the Paris footprint, so if you thought, “Oh, in Paris I [01:04:00] saw, like, three sports a day or could definitely get to two,”
Alison Brown: hmm.
Maybe. I mean, if you’re in the same zone- Yeah … you could probably get to more than one. Mm-hmm. But plan that out. Take a look and say, you know, are these things in the same zone? But getting from zone to zone- Right … that’s another story altogether.
Jill Jaracz: Right, ’cause if– I, I was looking at the, like, the distance from the Coliseum to the Honda Center where volleyball will be, that’s in Anaheim.
That’s 34 miles away Cricket [01:04:30] is almost 35 miles away from the Coliseum. So if you’re wanna be centrally located and still get out to some of these farther out venues, do the math and don’t get… You know, uh, we had a ticket drop going on right now, so .
People sometimes get really excited about the possibility of tickets and they’re like, “Well, we can just make it happen and make it work,” and then all, all of a sudden you realize that you, you can’t get from a morning session way north of the [01:05:00] city down to Long Beach for your evening session. Like, don’t, don’t jam it in.
There’s gonna be plenty to do
oh, Casey Wasserman spoke at the Cosm party
Alison Brown: Oh
Jill Jaracz: For all of a couple minutes He’s gotta be good one-on-one. He was not good on the microphone in front of people.
Alison Brown: Oh, no.
Jill Jaracz: And maybe it’s because we were press- Hmm … but he was nervous. He wasn’t very dynamic. He did say that there were over 220,000 [01:05:30] applications for volunteers already.
So y- I think you’re winning a little bit.
Alison Brown: Well, I still got a long way to go.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah, but I th- I think you’re winning. I think you were much smarter about this. speaking of volunteers though, if you, don’t get into a games volunteer thing, or you want another venue for volunteer opportunities… if you live in SoCal and you wanna be a volunteer for the games, please be a [01:06:00] volunteer for the monthly projects that they do on, like, beautification and restoration, because LA needs it.
But the Finnish Olympic Committee is looking for volunteer assistants to support Team Finland at LA 2028. you would have to w- you have to have good Finnish language skills, big thing, and other languages are a plus. It would be four weeks long, five days a week, eight-hour days. You need a driver’s license, and you might be able to work [01:06:30] before, during, or after the, the games.
For additional information, uh, you can– They’ve got an email address. but basically you’d be helping, Team Finland, helping with what they need. We’ll put a link to the website where this is at, and, uh, let you know more information if you are interested. And if you get to do a volunteer gig, let us know.
I mean, there might be other consulates who are working for, or looking for help too.
Alison Brown: I would expect there will be. I expect this is not [01:07:00] unique.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But that came across the transom, and wanted to pass it on to you. So yeah, LA is getting closer.
Alison Brown: Unreal.
Brisbane 2032 News: Six years to go
Jill Jaracz: Also unreal
Brisbane is only six years away
Alison Brown: We gotta get through LA first.
Jill Jaracz: I, yeah, I know, but it’s, it is so weird. They, they, uh, unveiled their Omega countdown clock
Alison Brown: [01:07:30] that- Wow, their countdown clock is long I,
Jill Jaracz: I know. For it to be… And it looks like it’s digital, so at some point they will be able to take away the years and you won’t see.
Alison Brown: This many years, this many months.
Jill Jaracz: Right? Exactly. So the countdown clock is in Brisbane’s c- city center, Queen Street Mall. So if you are in the area, go check that out. they’ll be here before we know it, that’s for sure.
Alison Brown: It’s [01:08:00] true. It’s, it’s so funny. I was actually having a conversation this weekend about where the Olympics are going forward.
Jill Jaracz: Mm-hmm.
Alison Brown: And, you know, I said, “Oh, French Alps after LA, and then Brisbane.” And then people I were talking to immediately said to me, “Can we come with you to Brisbane?”
And I said, “Well, it’s a little far away for now. I’ll let you know.” But yeah, there’s something about that being in Australia. Just I think LA [01:08:30] has the same thing, where they’re just getting that just being there is gonna be such an event. Yeah. I think LA has that mystique. I think Australia has that mystique, certainly for Americans, that there’s just something about these next couple Summer Games at least that have that real cachet with the host cities.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. I wonder what that is beyond, like, the can-do American and Australian spirits.
Alison Brown: I think that’s a lot of it. I think that’s [01:09:00] actually very, perceptive that there’s some- there is something s- about the two country… You know, they’re both immigrant countries-
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. Yeah, yeah …
Alison Brown: in, in many ways, and I think that definitely comes through when you do these big events there.
Jill Jaracz: Right, because we consider immigrants differently, whereas France, if you’re– I mean, they have immigrants, and they know that, but, like, they don’t look at nationalities of people the same way we look at nationalities of people.
Alison Brown: Right.
Jill Jaracz: So, like, we always think of nationalities [01:09:30] as just being part of our, our fabric.
Right. And they’re, they’re French. They’re all French.
Alison Brown: Right.
Accessibility in LA
Jill Jaracz: I forgot to mention this. Meredith, special to Meredith, who was looking for accessibility stuff. the trains were fine. The buses will be fine. I, I went to a different event on Friday evening and met some people who work in transportation.
Where you’re gonna have trouble, sidewalks.
Alison Brown: Oh.
Jill Jaracz: Sidewalks- The lips … are not great. Yeah. [01:10:00] So I think some money is going into sidewalks, but, do know that, that that could be an issue. But the, the actual transportation itself I think will be okay.
No word on Brisbane accessibility.
Alison Brown: We’ll let you know
Jill Jaracz: When we find out
TKFLASTAN News: Listeners have opinions!
Alison Brown: Welcome to Shookflestan.
Jill Jaracz: Okay, this is the time of the show where we check in with our team Keep the Flame Alive. These are guests and, uh, [01:10:30] listeners of the show that make up the team, uh, make up our very own team Keep the Flame Alive. They’re citizens of our country, Shookflestan, which is acronymed from Team Keep the Flame Alive.
Now, we haven’t done an update in a while-
Alison Brown: Yes …
Jill Jaracz: because it has gotten to be too much.
Alison Brown: We have too big of a team.
Jill Jaracz: We do have too big of a team, and it’s, it takes a lot of resources that we, we don’t really have to keep up with what’s going on with Team Keep the Flame Alive. But thanks to, [01:11:00] uh, a suggestion by listener Manu, we will be showcasing who’s going to the games, any upcoming games, who’s on Team Keep the Flame Alive, so we can keep track of them closer to the games and know who to cheer for.
That said, whenever you hear the Team Keep the Flame Alive sounder
Uh, that means we have heard from you. And this week, listener Ethan wrote in, “Hi Jill and Alison. Long time listener, love the podcast. I was [01:11:30] listening to your ‘Two Years to LA’ podcast with super fan Sarah, and when you were all talking about who should light the torch, you had some great suggestions, but feel like you missed out on an obvious choice, the Williams sisters.”
Alison Brown: Oh, good point, Ethan.
Jill Jaracz: How did we forget this? As he said, born and raised in LA, combined eight gold medals and one silver medal between them, a combined 30 major championships between them. He thinks Michael Phelps is the greatest a- Olympic athlete in history, but he hopes Venus and Serena are [01:12:00] included in some way.
Oh my gosh, I would totally go back on what I said about a single cauldron lighter if
Alison Brown: it was Venus and Serena. If it was the Williams sisters. That would be… Well, I think at the very least they will be in that final run. They have to be. They
Jill Jaracz: have to be.
Alison Brown: They have to be. They’re so LA, and so accomplished in their, uh, uh, Olympic achievements.
Right. And just such amazing people.
Jill Jaracz: Yes. So excellent point, Ethan. Thank you very much. If you have an opinion and want it heard on the show, you can email us at [01:12:30] flamealivepod@gmail.com, or you can call our voicemail line at 208-FLAME-IT. Do you remember what those numbers are?
Alison Brown: You know, I said it for so long-
’cause we used to give the number out every day, but I don’t remember what the numbers are.
Jill Jaracz: Okay. Well, it’s 208-FLAME-IT. That’s, 208-352-6348.
You can voicemail us or leave, or send us a voice memo, and we will actually play those on the show, ’cause they’re always fun to get. So [01:13:00] yes, thank you, Ethan, for writing in and, uh, being a good citizen of Shookaliston. And that is gonna do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening.
Alison Brown: And until next time, keep the flame alive