Beijing 2022: Olympics – Day 17

Beijing 2022 Olympics – Day 17

Jill Jaracz: Ni how fans of, and welcome to day 17 coverage of the Beijing 2022 Olympics on Keep the Flame Alive, the podcast for fans of the Olympics and Paralympics. I’m your host, Jill Jarris. Joined as always by my lovely co-host, Alison Brown. Alison Ni, how, how are you ni how

Alison Brown: we are doing this at a different time.

Not the magical hour of vacuuming.

Jill Jaracz: No, it is. It is my. Monday morning, your Sunday night, you have just finished watching the closing ceremonies, and yes, I am here the day after when everything is a lot quieter, and hopefully I’ll be here at night sometime to get the magical hour vacuuming again, but it might have to wait till the Paralympics because they’re, they’re transitioning to the, to the game, to the Paralympic Games right now.

The media center was supposed to be closed this week. Head. Luckily, they must have gotten enough word that people are here in the closed loop and have nothing to do because we’re not getting out. So they have kindly opened the media center for the whole time, but they will be transitioning to the other games.

So, you may hear some interesting sounds. I don’t know. Are those the sounds of rings getting removed and Ajitos being installed? Yes. A lot, a lot of that. There is some, already there’s been A lot of decoration, I guess you could say, that is, got both emblems on it. So that’s not everything they have to do, but I understand that the Paralympic footprint is a lot smaller.

So I think there’s going to be some teardown of temporary office space kind of thing. I don’t know if they’ll make the main work room smaller in size at all, but there you have it. But I can, I can guarantee you the snack table will probably not be. Replenished all week.

Alison Brown: Look, I was looking forward to my cup of noodles.

Jill Jaracz: Well, you won’t be here. It’ll be, it’ll be back when, by the time you get here. But I’m sure that they’re not gonna put the crackers and stuff out. Cause, it’s nice, like three times a day they put snacks out. And it’s a lot of crackers. Sometimes there’s oatmeal stick. Which is a, it’s a granola bar. It’s a very dry granola bar.

And then they have, the one sweet thing that they have is a Swiss roll. But it’s got no chocolate on top of it. It’s, it’s white cake with white cream and it’s kind of strawberry flavored and there’s brined eggs. And at the, at the biathlon venue, the last time I went, somebody was taking handfuls of these packaged brined eggs.

I was like, Oh, you really like those things. And then there’s, uh. Little, like, mandarin oranges and bananas and a cup of noodles.

Alison Brown: I do love snacks. I

Jill Jaracz: look forward to seeing what they do for the Paralympic side. But yeah, this is, this is daytime taping and we’ve got the last day to cover. So, let’s get to it.

Allison, last time, what officiating or volunteer job would you like to do? I am a figure

Alison Brown: skating bing dwen dwen. I am donning the costume and lacing up my skates and heading out there. And falling over. And I am having Olympic medalists rescue me from center ice as I flail away and can’t stand up again.

Jill Jaracz: I will have to go back and watch that because to me that is the only reason to watch the gala is to see for bing dwen dwen. The gala was We’ll get to the gala. Okay. All right. My job, I, I’m going back to ice hockey and they have, we talked about the woman who cleans the plexiglass, but she comes out when all of the cadre of volunteers come out to shave or shovel off the ice shavings.

And there’s one who has the garbage can. And she has been also, she, they all come out with their shovels and they shovel off the ice. And she comes out with a garbage can so they can put all the ice shavings into the garbage can. But she also shovels out the goalie area. And then has to quickly, you know, they, they shovel it all in and quickly get back off.

And I, I thought that would be fun. To be Garbage Can Lady. How did we do in our Final Fantasy League update?

Alison Brown: Okay, so the gold medal goes to Rafq with 374. Silver goes to Monkey Cat at 371. Yay! Very close race there because bronze goes to FFChelseaIC at 370. I ended up on 25th. You ended up at 58, most disappointing of all.

Oh no. Mr. Beatmeat by two points.

Jill Jaracz: Oh, I’m so sorry. But, what a podium. Congratulations. That was fun. So, thank you all for participating in that. It was a really fun game this year. And, even though I didn’t play very often. But I do enjoy having the fantasy league with all of you. Okay. We had a little bit of action before the closing ceremonies.

So let’s start with Alpine skiing. It was the mixed team parallel competition that was rescheduled from day 16. Gold went to Austria, silver went to Germany, bronze went to Norway, USA finished fourth.

Alison Brown: And they were not. upset about it in the sense of they interviewed the athletes afterwards. They were very supportive of one another, very excited and very much saying, you know, Alpine skiing is dominated by the Europeans and here we are finishing fourth, you know, you should all be proud of us.

And Michaela Schifrin should. Hold her head up. She got through a very very tough Olympics. Yes. She came home without a medal, but man She is one tough lady.

Jill Jaracz: Yeah, so I’m looking forward to watching this race. I think there’s going to be some Disappointment from people about Michaela not getting a medal and because I think we just set expectations in the U.

1. And you know, we’re the U. S. A. Yes, you go out and you win your medals. So when something like this happens and the mountain keeps winning, we don’t necessarily understand that that can happen because we think athletes are superhuman. But she has been through a lot in these games and I think it’s a really good learning lesson and insight into what actually happens with athletes and how things can have ups and downs, especially in sports where people dominate.

And to not see that domination, it has been really interesting, I think. The U. S. finished fourth by just a little bit, or there was just a slim margin because I heard that there was a little controversy in Norway because what happens is it’s two women, two men, and they each take runs down the hill.

Norway had, did not finish in this final round and they still won the matchup. So people were, uh, upset slash confused about that. But here, here’s the deal. If there’s a tie at the end of the heat, so Norway had won two races. USA had won two races. It’s the team with the lowest combined time of the best individual woman’s run and the best individual man’s run that wins the heat.

So, if I did the math right, USA’s time was 48. 76 and Norway was 48. 34. So, slim margin.

Alison Brown: The United States also had a DNF. Both women went out in one of the So, it was very confusing. Mike Tirico made a funny comment about how the tiebreaker rules must have come from the NFL, since there was a lot of controversy in the, in the American football playoffs with overtime and tiebreakers, so Tiebreakers have become a big deal in this Olympics.

We’ve seen it in curling. We’ve seen it in hockey. Now we’ve seen it in skiing. It’s all over the place.

Jill Jaracz: I think you’re skating

Alison Brown: too.

Jill Jaracz: I still think overall in the Alpine, the mountain won the gold, hands down.

Alison Brown: Absolutely won the gold. Nobody wants to come back to this mountain. I’ll tell you that right now.

Jill Jaracz: Moving over to Bobsled, we had the last two heats for the men’s four man competition. Gold went to Germany, Francesco Friedrich, and I did not put their pushers names on here, but, uh, we’ll just do drivers for this. So, uh, Francesco Friedrich, who got double golds in the bobsled

Alison Brown: competition. So he not only got double gold, he got a double double, meaning he won the single, the two man and the four man, this time and in Pyeongchang.

Jill Jaracz: Wow. That’s amazing. Silver went to Johannes Lochner from Germany and bronze went to Justin Kripps from Canada. Germany was also in fourth. I saw an article and I have to go and find it now that I have time to do some reading that Germany used a bobsled simulator. For training, and that probably helps propel them to more victories, but I will look more into that because I’ll post it either probably both on the Facebook group and in Twitter and.

I mean, it gave him more training and I know other sports do simulation stuff like that too, but it’ll be curious to see if other countries start adopting that measure as well. Our Hunter Church and our Shakhlistani Josh Williamson finished 10th. They moved up from 13th place and run three, which is excellent.

So congratulations to them on a top 10 finish and a very competitive sport. Yay, Josh, you made it through your first Olympics.

Alison Brown: We didn’t, we weren’t sure he was going to make it, but his white blood cells did their job.

Jill Jaracz: And a fun fact about the bobsled competition that I did not know until we got a message about Australians coming home.

There was an alternate bobsledder from Australia named Sarah Blizzard. That’s the best name ever for a winter sport athlete.

Alison Brown: Do they have Dairy Queen in Australia? Because that’s a, that’s a sponsorship just begging to happen. Oh, that would be fantastic. We create a personalized Sarah Blizzard, endorsed by Sarah Blizzard.

Jill Jaracz: Okay. In cross country, we had the women’s 30 kilometer mass start free. The gold went to Teresa Johag from Norway. Silver went to Jesse Diggins from USA and bronze went to Kjartu Niskanen from Finland. This was kind of no contest. It was basically survive the race. Jesse Diggins was a minute and 43 seconds behind Teresa Johag and.

Bronze was 50 seconds behind Jesse Diggins, so basically all these skiers were skiing alone for many kilometers. The contest for the bronze was pretty interesting because Niskanen beat Jona Sundling from Sweden by two seconds, so that was kind of close. There, found out that Jesse Diggins had had food poisoning not that long before this race.

Alison Brown: She collapsed at the end of this race and did not get up and the, I don’t know if it was a coach or trainer came over and this was really frightening because that race for bronze was coming straight at her. Whoa. The trainer tries to pick her up and and Jesse Diggins simply could not move. And they just kind of.

came in and split around her and, and the trainer laid on top of her as the other skiers were coming through. Holy cow! Because yeah, it was really frightening for a moment there that someone was gonna crash into her because she just could not get up. So eventually a second American trainer and the two of them basically carried her off the course.

Wow.

Jill Jaracz: That’s incredible. Cause along with the food poisoning, I heard she had been cramping for most of the, like most her legs were cramping for most of the race and just sounded

Alison Brown: miserable. But thankfully she recovered well enough to get her medal at the closing ceremonies. That is correct.

Jill Jaracz: I want to point out that there’s an article in the Guardian about Finland’s Remy Lindholm in the men’s version of this race, which was Slated as a 50 kilometer, but it ended up being a 30 kilometer because it was so cold.

Well, some of his sensitive body areas froze and I want to say, you know, women have not had equality in a lot of sports because There’s been the fear that their uteruses will fall out. We never talk about the opposite happening, and I think it’s about time we should, because should men be doing some of these extreme sports if it’s going to affect their body parts?

Alison Brown: What’s really funny in the article was he talked about what happened when he started to defrost. I did want to do a follow up. I forgot to mention this. Is it Johannes? Claybo? I think so. He also had food poisoning, which is why he ended up, we talked about him dropping out of the race at 20 kilometers. He was also sick and that is why he did not finish that race the day before.

Jill Jaracz: Oh, that is tough. That is really tough. Let’s move over to curling. We had the women’s gold medal game. Gold went to Great Britain, silver went to Japan, and bronze went to Sweden. I got there in the sixth end of this game. I had a really crummy transportation day yesterday. It was just grumpy all day because part of it is, if you’ve seen the video on our Facebook group, I show you that I want to go from curling to the gold medal men’s hockey game there across the street, and yet that took me 27 minutes to get to.

Because I had to take a bus around the loop in order to get to where I needed to go. So that made me kind of grumpy too. And I was moving slow and got the, got a wrong bus in the morning. So got to this quite late. Uh, it was four to two when I got there. And then Great Britain was ahead, but then Great Britain scored four points in the seventh end, and that was just massive, and that sealed the deal.

So Japan added one in the eighth, Great Britain put on two in the ninth, and so they did not play the tenth end, and the final was ten to three.

Alison Brown: So the British skip, Eve Moorhead, 4th Olympics, she was a skip in Vancouver at age 19. Wow. So she was, as they called her, the child prodigy of curling. But what made this such a big deal was to the day it was the 20th anniversary of the last time the British women won the curling gold medal.

Jill Jaracz: Oh, that’s so nice. And I stuck around for the medal ceremony for this because Japan, of course, was sad when they lost the game, but their coach was right there, you know, hugs all around. And they were, I think, overall happy to win, win the silver, that is. Again, we talked about this in Pyeongchang, but again, the Nagano legacy is now playing out where Japan, which didn’t have a curling tradition until they had to build one for Nagano, is really starting to come through.

We’re seeing a lot more success for Japan, and that’s really nice to see. They were all smiles on the podium, and then Great Britain, of course, thrilled, but they got their flowers from, I think, the president of the World Curling Federation, who is British, and that was really nice.

Alison Brown: This is a repeat of the bronze medal match from Pyeongchang that had the opposite result.

These same two teams, it’s not even the same countries, it’s the same two skips. So this, this was a many layered match, which makes it exciting. And it was just great curling, which is always wonderful.

Jill Jaracz: Let’s take a break to talk about our red envelope campaign. It’s the last day for the Olympics. And so we want to say, uh, Thank you so much for listening, but if this show meant something to you during the games, we would appreciate it if you could contribute financially to it because we are an independent podcast and This is expensive to produce so those of you who have already donated.

Thank you very much. The generosity has been overwhelming and we really appreciate that but If you, but we’re coming up on another two and a half years till another Olympics. So we’re having a little red envelope campaign that celebrates the Lunar New Year to raise money to get us there through Paris.

So we’re asking for donations of at least eight dollars to help us get there. Eight is very symbolic here in China because it is a lucky number symbolizing good fortune. So if you would like to contribute to us, please go to flamealivepod. com slash support to donate.

Alison Brown: And I want to mention that if you are catching up, and this is a couple of weeks after the Olympics, as you’re listening to this, that donate page will still be up and running.

So, thanks so much, and we really appreciate it.

Jill Jaracz: Moving over to figure skating, which, before we get into the gala, the pairs competition is on replay here, and I will say, so I, when I go back to my hotel room at night, I turn on the TV to see what I can see, and they went from ice dancing, To pears, I have not seen a repeat of the women’s competition yet, and I am wondering if I will see a woman’s because part of it is this is because China did so well on pears, but I mean, they were there and I stancing very low down, but it’s very telling to me that this woman’s competition is not getting replay.

Yeah,

Alison Brown: not quite the joy in that one.

Jill Jaracz: So, gala. You watched, I did not, I do not like the gala.

Alison Brown: Do not like the gala. It is show skating, which I find very boring because a lot of the show numbers probably seemed like really great ideas. When the kids thought of it back in the rink. Wouldn’t it be great if we did this?

And you know what? It’s not great. When Maurici Kvitashvili from Georgia came out with a blue face because he is the genie from Aladdin. Oh no. Rubbed on a lamp by Alexandra Trusova. With her waist length cornrowed hair, it became slightly questionable.

Jill Jaracz: Oh boy.

Alison Brown: One really nice spot was Vincent Dajow was able to skate.

He missed the men’s competition because of COVID, so they did have him perform in the gala.

Jill Jaracz: That was very nice, but I do not like the gala because no other sport has a gala like this. There’s nothing like this in, uh, summer sports. You could easily have a I wouldn’t call it a gala, but you can easily do this for freestyle skiing now because of all the jumps and just have people have a big air celebration or a slope style celebration kind of thing.

No, this is a money maker. This is flat out. We want to make some money and I don’t like it. I don’t like that. They’re using this event to make money off of the athletes.

Alison Brown: They did have them come out of the tunnel that was the zero of giant laid up 2022. So that was kind of cool, I guess. And there’s a Bing Dwin Dwin.

And at the end, Bing Dwin Dwin went on the ice for the group number, which I don’t know when they had time to choreograph and learn this group number. But they did. It was just a lot of questionable moments where clearly, you know, a 19 year old playing around at the rink came up with this idea and they thought it was a great idea.

So I

Jill Jaracz: tried to find out. When they implemented the first had the gala at the Olympics, and I asked historian Bill Mellon, who has been here on site, he did not know and thought that Philip Hirsch might, who is also big in skating. He did not know either. Bill did know that he saw. He remembers one from 1976 because Dorothy Hamill was there.

So, it’s pre 1976 or that would be the first one. Something to put on the list. I understand that one of the big figure skating historians passed away last year, so we’ll have to do some digging on that. Okay, moving over to ice hockey, we had the men’s gold medal match, which I came in with five minutes to go in the first period and the score was ROC 1, Finland nothing at the time.

Whoa, what a game! Cake for everybody. So, Finland did beat ROC 2 to 1. And even the shots on goal differential was just amazing. Finland had 31 shots on goal. ROC only had 17. This was such a surprise. They just did not seem to be present. Also, not dynamic was the crowd. Really? You know, Finland really tried to cheer.

But I was expecting just roars, in a way. The Press Tribune was pretty full, and a lot of people were there for that, but they’re not really They’re clapping sometimes, but they’re not super cheering. And just You could really feel the lack of energy in this game, I felt. Not, not so much on the rink. The rink was pretty lively.

Just one of those gold medal games at the Olympics. Finland does a major upset, wins its first gold medal in hockey ever. And you would have expected just mayhem. And it was a little flat.

Alison Brown: You want to know where there was mayhem? Where? Finland.

Jill Jaracz: Oh, I’m sure they were going

Alison Brown: crazy. Cool. Listen, Manu sent us some Finnish websites, and of course, none of us could speak the language or read what it says.

You didn’t need to read any of it because you saw the pictures of the half naked men with beer climbing on the statue, which is apparently a favorite spot for Finns to celebrate sports victories. A lot of cars driving around with flags, a lot of people celebrating in sports bars, so, and, but nobody eating celebration cake.

So maybe that was for when you have to recover the next day.

Jill Jaracz: Maybe. Recovery cake. Maybe, and maybe they just, you know, we’re not going to bake it just in case, we can’t get too hopeful. Because, you know, it’s not happened before. It was great at the end when all the players threw their sticks and helmets up in the air.

The coaches and the bench staff had this massive amount of like papers and they threw those up in the air too. So it was, it was so fantastic to see them celebrate like that.

Alison Brown: I was shocked though that the Finns have never Won the gold in hockey before they have such a hockey tradition and I know they’ve won many medals at Different points in history, but never the gold.

So this is it. They’ve had quite a nice little games here I think

Jill Jaracz: so. We have really heard a lot from Finland and that makes me happy So, that wraps up the competition, then we had closing ceremonies. So, did you watch the natural version, natural voice version, and you watched the primetime version?

Alison Brown: Yes, I did.

So, we had Tara Lipinski and Terry Gannon and Johnny Weir doing the call on NBC here in the United States. They did the call for Tokyo and actually, again, did a really nice job.

Jill Jaracz: That’s good to hear. That’s really good to hear. These ceremonies were very short. They were scheduled to go like an hour and 20 minutes.

So if you had a full, full time, prime time show, they really had filler.

Alison Brown: There was some very nice interviews. They had a lovely interview with Sean White. They did a whole piece with Tara and Johnny early to just kind of set the stage for what had happened in the figure skating competition because that was huge.

Then at the end we had the whole final thoughts from Mike Tirico, which as they always are, were very moving and very thoughtful. He really put his heart and soul into that. And then of course the beautiful ending montage. that you always get that really, you know.

Jill Jaracz: Yeah, I get you right

Alison Brown: there. It’s right in the feels.

Jill Jaracz: Yeah, they were scheduled to go an hour and 20 minutes. They did go long because the athletes would not leave the field. That was, in a sense, kind of funny. And T Bach did talk for about, there was 8 minutes of time allotted for him and the But to be fair, he actually

Alison Brown: said some things it was not all sunshine and rainbows.

He, he had a few pointed comments about that vaccines need to be distributed more fairly. He made comments about peace and how sport can bring peace and we need to understand one another more. And he made some gray political comments where you could take it either way, but he made his point. Which I thought was very different than what he did in Tokyo.

Jill Jaracz: Right, and he thanked the, thanked the city and thanked the organizers and said it was a nice game, but you, I didn’t get the sense that this was a great game.

Alison Brown: He also repeatedly said, He was thanking the Chinese people. He always used that phrase. He didn’t say China. He didn’t say He always said the Chinese people which I thought was a very pointed statement

Jill Jaracz: Interesting.

So these ceremonies were directed by Zhang Yimou who did the opening ceremonies and he also did both of them for 2008 So this was first much like Beijing being the first dual Summer and winter host city, the participants. And the dancers were all ordinary people. That was a big point in this thing.

They had no superstars come out and do anything. Until you got to the Milan Cortina section, which was, Milan Cortina put that together. So, that’s why you had a famous singer, and you had a couple of big performers out there doing their national anthem. The theme was the One World, One Family. We continued the snowflake story from the opening ceremonies.

You had some virtual reality elements of it. I’ve posted on the Facebook group and I’ve posted on Twitter. What you saw versus what I saw. Because you saw a lovely red knot appear around the snowflake. I did not see that.

Alison Brown: Oh, yes. And there was another time where there were red ribbons shooting across all of Beijing.

I, obviously, that did not happen.

Jill Jaracz: Yes. So those, those formed this knot that was around the snowflake. And it was very, it looked cool. But like some people have said, and what I think, now we’re getting ceremonies that are designed for television. Versus ceremonies that are designed to enjoy in person and you kind of get that a little bit with the projection mapping floor Which is cool, but only cool if you’re up a certain level because if you’re not up You’re not you’re it’s really hard to see what’s going on on that map and even both times this time I was up just a smidge higher and Could see the projection a little bit more but it’s really hard to see it when it’s in 3d because it looks very 3D on television and it’s very hard to see in the stadium when you’re lower.

I bet in the nosebleeds it’s okay though.

Alison Brown: Well, we’ve been talking about, I mean, we definitely talked about it in Pyeongchang and probably going back further. It is really, a television event in many, I mean many, many, many more people see it on television versus experience it in person. And how do you balance it being a television event versus an in person event?

And I wonder how much they left elements in versus their original plan when they found out about COVID and they realized it was really going to be a television event. you were only going to have a minimal number of people in the stands or that’s where it was headed so that they kind of headed the program in that direction.

Jill Jaracz: Good point. And you wonder what happens for Paris, what they’re planning? I mean, besides the fact that they’ll have the parade of nations on the Seine, how are they going to manage the ceremonies? Are we going to go back to something like London that looked very much like an in person event versus what we’ve had recently that’s gone more technology?

Also cute were the kids with the snowflake lanterns.

Alison Brown: I felt like the and the kid choir was back too. I think it was the same choir from the opening ceremonies. It was the same

Jill Jaracz: choir but there’s a thing with Lunar New Year that you get new clothes so they had new costumes on to celebrate the new clothes and that they were still kind of tied to the original costume but the new clothes was a big deal.

Alison Brown: They also had a little more choreography this time. I guess they’ve been practicing for the past two weeks. They had a little extra rehearsal, so there was some more dance moves, but yes, the children with the snowflakes, the sleds. Those were

Jill Jaracz: Chinese zodiac

Alison Brown: symbols. Beautiful. That was all really lovely.

And somehow the snowflake image this time felt more complete, maybe because I was expecting it. Or it, but it, it, it was just happier. Maybe I’m so relieved. I don’t know. Maybe there was still so much fear when we were dealing with the opening ceremonies.

Jill Jaracz: It was still funny because I remember closing ceremonies, being athletes mingling a whole lot more.

And here you still had delegations to get, they all came in kind of together, but you still had delegations separated. And they kind of interacted with each other more so than with other countries. So I thought that was interesting in, in that effect still happening. And I think that’s been kind of a, a theme to the games, like this morning, yesterday a little bit, but this morning on the bus was really one of the first times the bus was chatty people that didn’t work together.

You’ll have groups of people that are teams and they’ll talk amongst themselves, but rarely did you have a lot of talking amongst different people in buses. It would happen, definitely, but buses were more subdued. I think part of it is because we have cell phones and people would put their face in their phones, but part of it is like, I didn’t talk to a ton of people on buses.

I did here and there, but it was just like, well, I have a mask on, it’s COVID and. You know, if I’m, so nobody’s supposed to sit next to me. So what do you do? You just don’t talk very much.

Alison Brown: And I wonder if there is that fear of if I talk to that person, are they going to get me COVID and sent to the isolation hotel?

Jill Jaracz: Right. And vice versa. You know, it’s, it’s just been, I think today felt like, okay, we made it. We got through. We can kind of let our guard down a little bit and chit chat more. So, I mean, that’s been a sad part of these games, I think. But they happened, and they happened kind of according to plan. I mean, take out the closed loop because that was a new plan put in.

But you had games. That was something. So, but, back to, back to the snowflame, and the snowflake, and the, the torch, that was still there. Looked a little rough.

Alison Brown: That torch had got soot covered, and the emblem was kind of burnt off, and It had a rough night at the club, man. They did not think this through, because that was not a good look.

Close up of that burnt out, worn out torch.

Jill Jaracz: I, I want to know what goes on in the background, going, this is never going to happen again. Whatever you do, you must have a cauldron. Even if it’s small, even if you’re, I get the statement that they were trying to make, that it was a more sustainable version. It, although it was very emblematic of these games, not a big fire, not a, you know, a very subdued games, not a quiet games because there was a lot of controversy going on, but a games that was barely here, I think, and that’s it.

I almost thought that we’d get somebody remember, I don’t remember who the, which closing ceremony it was. Maybe it was Sochi where they had the little girl who blew out the torch. Or blew out the cauldron. Do you remember that? It was, they put her on a screen and the screen was Next to the cauldron and she blew and then the cauldron went out.

I’ll put this on the list of fine. Cause I really thought, well maybe they’ll have someone just blow it out. Because you could.

Alison Brown: Somebody starts singing happy birthday and happy birthday, bing, dwin, dwin. We all just blow and it goes out.

Jill Jaracz: But yeah. What could have been very lovely, cause I loved that snowflake with all, that was created from all the countries.

That was really beautiful. But just the, the flame in there looked so sad. And when you saw it up close, it looked, well, saw it up close, but up close, I mean, probably 20 feet away at the best. It looked so sad. You just could not see that fire. And you had to hope that that fire was still going. And you had to rely on the fire within you to make the Olympic flame happen.

Alison Brown: Yeah, because that torch, it couldn’t have lasted more than a couple more days. I wonder if they’re going to do something different now because it’s gotten so much criticism. If there’s like some wild, crazy insanity going on. For Para

Jill Jaracz: that I would be curious to see that

Alison Brown: well, we’ll know if you know That’s gonna be the plan is they were gonna use another torch,

Jill Jaracz: right?

And another snowflake, but it would be you would think it’d be the same because it was quite similar in Tokyo with their cauldrons But you have to wonder I would imagine there are fewer countries participating here, so maybe they were gonna make the snowflakes have it all filled in a little bit more and then put the country snowflakes in there.

But yeah. I wonder, I wonder if there’s a call, but you, they may go. This is what we got. This is what we have. Paralympics, you, you deal with that. You know, speaking of Paralympics, Teebok not staying. He is gone and there’s another IOC member who is going to represent the, the IOC at the Paralympics.

Alison Brown: And I don’t know, I have not heard any updates on Andrew Parsons situation because the last I had heard, he could not come to the Olympics because he was, uh, COVID positive.

So I don’t know if his status has changed to be able to come to his own party.

Jill Jaracz: I don’t know that either. I’m hopeful. The Italian presentation was interesting, very artsy. He’s poor. It was so cold. Again, the other day in, in Beijing, The day before Saturday was balmy. Like, I never put on a hat and gloves.

Although I wasn’t outside very much, granted, I never had to put on my hat and gloves. It felt great. Last night was freezing cold. It was so cold, again. And, even though they give you a little seat warmer, er, not seat warmer, they give you a seat cushion, they give you a lap blanket, and I had my other blanket with me, still cold.

And hand warmers. I had my hand warmers inside my gloves. Still cold. And this Italian pas de deux was with two poor Italian dancers barefoot, dancing on the projection mapping screen, their movements made the shapes of the sports on the program, and they were dressed as one is was Milan and what’s one was Cortina, and that’s, they did.

Did a lot of bringing the world together kind of things and, and sustainably. No, no, here’s, here’s what it was. A lot of mankind needs to have a dialogue with nature about sustainability and it was, it was very I’m curious to read this in the, the guide for the media.

Alison Brown: Apparently shoes are, are, are not sustainable.

Jill Jaracz: Maybe

Alison Brown: not. Maybe not. Which, which is so funny because you go to Milan, you get leather goods. One of the things they’re known for and they couldn’t give their poor dancers some shoes.

Jill Jaracz: Yeah, I don’t, I don’t know. It was very heavy handed on the Oh, we got climate change going on. Let’s, we gotta be sustainable. We gotta, you know, work with nature. That was a nice little presentation. I think everybody is excited to go to Milan Cordina.

Alison Brown: So maybe the climate change is why the hockey team was on a boat because the rink melted.

I was so confused by some of the things in the video.

Jill Jaracz: Yeah, because first they showed the mountains and the snow and I’m like, oh, Milan Cortina, we have snow. They just want to hammer that home.

Alison Brown: And then they brought us into the To the old city for the party.

Jill Jaracz: Yeah, which was no snow. It looked like it was springtime.

Because, yeah, okay, how long ago did they film this? Because it wasn’t winter. It was just kind of It was a little bizarre to see how they, how they did this film, but okay. And then you put this down, how the mayors were talking like bad foreign language tapes. Because I, I, I honestly, I looked at that and I looked at the I was watching the video and I’m looking at their lips move and I’m watching The subtitles and nothing is connecting

Alison Brown: and their faces didn’t move with their mouths.

I did not understand what was happening and I’m not even entirely sure what language they were speaking

because that was not Italian. Were they speaking Chinese? And that was the point? I mean, I realized my Italian, I am only on level two in Duolingo.

Jill Jaracz: But

Alison Brown: those sounds did not sound

Jill Jaracz: Italian. It was very, very strange, but Here we go. Flag got handed over. Interesting note is that because these are two cities that are quite far apart from each other, normally the flag is displayed in the town hall or the city hall.

What will they do now because they need two flags? Well, maybe it’ll just go back and forth. Like the child of divorce. It could. It could also, they could also make a second one and introduce that as a, cause Remember how we talked about the, like, there’s the Oslo flag and this flag, because the flag stays until it’s too beat up to travel anymore, and then they create a new flag.

So maybe we have the introduction of a Milano flag or a Cortina flag that goes along with it, and it just stays in storage. If you have one city hosting,

Alison Brown: I would love to hear the arguments those two mayors have had about just doing this ceremony where like who was going to hold the flag in the particular way there was some hand wrestling going on as they were waving the flag.

Definitely one of those moments. I wished my Italian lip reading was up to snuff.

Jill Jaracz: We also had a big thank you video to the volunteers made me cry. saying goodbye video. Makes me cry right now, and it’s the next day.

Alison Brown: It was like the breakup montage in the rom com. It was so, there was this one shot of this beautiful Chinese girl pulling away in the bus and the rain is coming down.

I was like, I’ll marry you. It’s, I can’t stand your broken heart. It was just terrible. So yes, it was very well produced to pull on the heartstrings.

Jill Jaracz: Right. And just a production note. Anytime they showed a video, it was because they were bringing something into the stadium to set it up. So you had a video to bring in the podium so that they could have the final medal ceremonies.

You had another video so they could take out the podium. So basically because I looked at the list of the rundown of what was going on like, Oh more videos because it’s it’s also really weird to watch the videos in the stadium as well. But then it was like, oh, They got to break stuff down and put it up.

I get it now.

Alison Brown: He has done four of these. He knows what he’s doing.

Jill Jaracz: So, anything else on the closing ceremonies?

Alison Brown: Alana Myers Taylor got to bring in the flag.

Jill Jaracz: Oh, that was so nice. That was really nice. And you could tell, like, she held it up really high, and she was waving it, and was just so proud. You could see from the other side of the stadium, you could see how happy she was to, to carry the flag.

The Chinese pair that was carrying in the flag was Gao Tingyu, who’s a speed skater, and Xu Mingtao, who’s a freestyle skier. And she was on his shoulders, carrying the flag in for them. And it was really fun to watch.

Alison Brown: Freestyle skiers, they do that sort of thing.

Jill Jaracz: But, otherwise, it was a lovely ceremony. I was really glad that they kept it short because of the weather.

But the other thing that they had that you probably heard in the background, we all got clapper hands that everybody was really excited to use. So instead of cheering, uh, as we were not encouraged to do, we used our little clapper hands that are red and they had the red, the yellow stars of the Chinese flag on them.

So everybody’s going nuts with their clapper hands. Before the show started, some people started a wave. in the bottom part of the stadium, and the wave would come around, and hit the press tribune, and it would stop, or people would try to do the wave in the press tribune, and then it kind of trickled over to the other side of the stadium, and it’d pick up again.

Alison Brown: The clapping hands sounded so strange on television. It took me a few times of them being used. It sounded like a wind machine.

Jill Jaracz: It did sound very different than cheering. But then I

Alison Brown: remembered clappy hands.

Jill Jaracz: And we had a lovely fireworks display. Short one. They did not do a whole lot of with the fireworks that I was expecting like massive fireworks displays and got.

We got beautiful ones. Very beautiful ones. Very short. It looked

Alison Brown: like a lot on television.

Jill Jaracz: It, you know, it was a lot, but they were scheduled to be like a minute long. Oh. Let me see if I can pull that up.

Alison Brown: Cause it felt longer on the television.

Jill Jaracz: Maybe

Alison Brown: they, maybe they looped them.

Jill Jaracz: Yeah, oh no, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

The extinguishing of the Olympic flame. was supposed to be five minutes and 30 seconds and the finale was probably another couple of minutes. They don’t have the duration on that. Let me go back to the bottom. No, it was a 90 second show of fireworks and that was it. Wow. So yeah, I had been expecting like for America, we know there’s like 4th of July level stuff.

And I mean, granted the fireworks that they showed were spectacular, but they were all quite short. So I thought that was very interesting. Some of it was an effort in sustainability because these were all pyrotechnic equipment used in the ceremony was non toxic, low smoke created for an environmentally friendly special effects spectacle.

Alison Brown: And I think they blew their firework budget on the opening ceremonies, if you remember.

Jill Jaracz: That could be, that could be, but these were very lovely and It can’t get better than China for a fire and it was like you could feel them in your seat kind of fireworks and that that I always like that and it’s that I think it’s hard to do because they’re kind of that ring kind of makes a weird.

effect on the inside where they’re probably louder outside than they are in. But just seeing them shoot around the stadium was really cool.

Alison Brown: How hard was it leaving the closing ceremonies and getting back to the hotel?

Jill Jaracz: Okay, they made so many improvements here. Oh, good. Yes, they, I would say that the, you know, as we talked about systems have improved.

It’ll be interesting to see how many, how much. They are different for the Paralympics or just they’re going to continue to improve. We’ve talked a little bit on the Facebook group about, Huh, how are we going to get a lot of wheelchairs around? And that will be interesting to see. But the leaving, they had the, they had like dance numbers to get you out of the, to kind of play you out as you left.

And I left during those because I thought, oh, this is going to be a mob scene. But walked to the bus area. which was a little further out than it had been for the opening ceremonies. So that was probably smart. And they had a stanchion rope at the ready. So they’d let so many people, they had buses at the ready too, which was the other problem.

They had tons of buses and they’d let so many people through the stanchion and then you pile on a bus and they, they’d rope you off again so that you didn’t all try to smash onto a bus. And so they were a little bit more, it was a little bit more controlled. Which was great. There was some pin trading going on in the, in the mix, so it was hard to like, okay, I gotta, I gotta get my place in line or place in the mob because it just wasn’t aligned.

We were not lining up for anything and it keep moving forward and not get it. You know, off balancing fall kind of thing. So, they did a much better job with this. It was a lot smoother for my And because I When I saw where I was in the mob of people going back, I was a little further back than I was in the opening ceremony.

So I’m like, oh boy, how long is this going to take? But everything was a lot more orderly and a lot more organized. So, much better job. They’ll have it all ready for you.

Alison Brown: They better because I’m going to sing on this bus.

Jill Jaracz: No singing, with my catty hands

Alison Brown: to accompany me.

Jill Jaracz: Okay, well that’s going to do it for Beijing 2022 Olympics. How did Shukflistan do?

Alison Brown: Well, we are proud of all our Shukflistanis. There was a lot of personal bests, a lot of goals achieved. On the medal stands, we finished with two gold medals and a silver. Which means we were tied with New Zealand on the country table.

Excellent. And ahead of some big names like Hungary and Czech Republic.

Jill Jaracz: Oh, wow. That’s interesting.

Alison Brown: Head of Great Britain.

Jill Jaracz: Really? Great Britain did not do very well in these games. Two medals. Wow. Wow. Well, I am proud of all of our Shuklastanis, and it’s been great to be able to see you compete live when I could, or be there with you in spirit.

And we’ve been really proud of you, and really appreciate the fact that you’ve been on the show, and shared, uh, your stories with us, and we’re looking forward to adding to our roster for the next games. We would like to thank our Kickstarter collectors today, Laura Price and Donna Serdula. Thank you so much for your support.

Alison Brown: And we would like to say goodbye to our mascot for this week, Millie, and she has been so much fun to have this week. So a special thank you to Listener Christy for sharing Millie with us and supporting our Kickstarter campaign. We have two new mascots coming up to share with you during the Power Olympics.

Jill Jaracz: Woo! And that will do it for this edition of the games. This week, we are going to try to do a call in show. Allison’s been trained on the technology aspect of this, but we’re going to see if this can work and we will post on the Facebook group and on Twitter And I think you can do this on insta. I can and and facebook page posted everywhere when the phone lines were open We are looking at tuesday evening in the u.

s about 10 p. m Eastern time. So hopefully that will be a way that some of you can call in and, uh, we’ll chat about what you thought of the games. Cause it’s been so much fun interacting with you on the Facebook group and on Twitter and Insta, but you know, talking live is, is always best. So we will hopefully make that work for this week.

And then Allison, you’re getting on a plane. We hope. Don’t jinx it. I know, I know. You will make it. You will get your green code. You will get on the plane. You will test negative. And then you will be welcomed into the warm embrace of the Closed Loop Special Administrative Region. And it will be great.

Alison Brown: And Bing Duan Duan and Shui Ron Ron will bring me into their cuddly There’s Cuddly Snuggle, and I’ll be safe.

Jill Jaracz: You know what else is going to be great? Is that you will get to see the magical hour of vacuuming in person. And I will say, it’s been a little off to not have them around. I miss them already. Hopefully, hopefully they will be vacuuming when we tape the show for the Paralympics.

Alison Brown: Give those ladies a pin. Well, until then, until I get to Beijing, you can get in touch with us. Join us on our Keep the Flame Alive. Facebook group, Jill’s on Twitter, I am on Insta, both are at flamealivepod. You can email us at flamealivepod at gmail. com. You can call or text us at 208 352 6348, that’s 208 FLAMEIT, and that will be the number to use for the call in show.

Jill Jaracz: Yes, and we will catch you back here later on this week. Thank you so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive!