It’s the first full day of competition at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, and our TKFLASTANIs are in action! Jill went out to Zhangjiakou (properly bundled this time) to see Men’s Ski Jumping qualifications and TKFLASTANI Clare Egan compete in the Biathlon mixed relay.
Also on tap today:
- Cross-Country Skiing
- Curling
- Freestyle Skiing (with TKFLASTANI Brad Wilson)
- Ice Hockey
- Luge
- Snowboard
- Speed Skating – Long and Short Track
Red Envelope campaign!
This show does cost money to produce, and while our listeners have been extremely generous in supporting us through the Kickstarter campaign that got us to Beijing and also through Patreon patronage, we’re coming up on 2 ½ years until another Olympics, so to celebrate the Lunar New Year, we’re asking for donations of at least $8 to help us get through to Paris 2024. Go to flamealivepod.com/support to donate.
Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive!
TRANSCRIPT
Note: This transcript is machine-generated and likely contains errors. Please refer to the audio file as the record of note.
Beijing 2022: Olympics Day 2
[00:00:00] Jill: Ni Hao fans of TKFLASTAN and welcome to day two coverage of the Beijing 2022 Olympics on Keep the Flame Alive, the podcast for fans of the Olympics and Paralympics. I am your host. I am your host. Jill Jaracz joined as always by my lovely co-host Alison Brown Alison, ni hao how are you?
[00:00:30] Alison: The how it’s only day two and the two of us sound like we’ve been screaming at a concert for three years.
This from cold mine is from, I have no idea why
[00:00:42] Jill: that not sleeping already. So I’m going to try and rectify that. But yeah, I’m coming to you from the main media center again, and they’re vacuuming the carpet. So you might hear some noise in the background. That’s some people around me know I came to an empty table row, and then I went and had some dinner.
I had robot dumpling. Oh, my, so I have a little video, even though you’re not supposed to take a video anymore. Like don’t no filming of the robots, I guess they’re sensitive, but had my robot dumplings, they were nice. It was cute to watch the thing, but I mean, they’re mostly like boiled in water for several minutes and then they dump out and you scan a code, but
[00:01:28] Alison: By a robot. So they taste so much better.
[00:01:34] Jill: Well, it was hot. It was something hot. That was nice. I will say that cause it’s been another cold day and I guess it’s effecting things out on. It’s definitely affecting things that I saw. So it’s affecting a lot of other things too. I’m curious to see how that goes for the rest of the games and if it will continue to affect.
Things because oh, I read it. I have to look and see what I put on my schedule for viewing, because I’ve heard that February seven, 13 and 18 are supposed to be strong, cold winds coming down from like Mongolia. Yeah. And I just saw that when you see what you have planned and if you can be indoors in the ice, that would be nice.
[00:02:22] Alison: Well, because considering what I watched today and we’ll get to it when we go to each one of the sports was today not strong cold winds, cause it’s a little scary out there today.
[00:02:33] Jill: It was strong and cold, but I also have a feeling that might be normal for that area. Yeah. So anyway, before we get to that we have our segment.
What officiating or volunteer job would you like to do? Alison, what would you like to, to do?
[00:02:51] Alison: I am a Panda girl, our first medals awarded today. And I don’t know who started. I think Vancouver started this where they have kind of a a ceremony at the venue and then the official ceremony later. So. At the venue, they have a little ceremony where you get a Panda, the girls come out and they have those beautiful, stunning for trimmed coats that we talked about.
A couple of shows before the game started. And I wouldn’t want the pressure of being a medal. As that’s, you know, the big official ceremony, the Panda girl just seems like so much fun. And you get that amazing coat with the matching for hat. Yes.
[00:03:34] Jill: And yes, I saw them in person at the biathlon venue. I put pictures in Facebook because I was walking around at the end and I saw them and I saw the pandas and the trays and went, or actually, you know, I saw first blocks that I thought would be podium.
I’m like, are these podiums. Maybe, and then I turned to my left and there were the Panda girls and I thought Panda girls, oh my gosh. I have to take pictures
[00:04:02] Alison: where they
[00:04:03] Jill: as beautiful in person. They were cause it’s all the coats are embroidered. Oh yeah. So that’s all stitched in. And so it looks so nice.
And so.
[00:04:15] Alison: Those are going to be on eBay at some point, of course, there’s no Chinese woman who is as big as high.
[00:04:25] Jill: What if we bought, what if we bought two.
[00:04:32] Alison: So what you, your travels today?
[00:04:35] Jill: Okay. Well, my officiating, a volunteer shot that I want to do is at ski jumping. And there is, there are a couple of things that I’d like to do. So they had music playing and anytime a jumper went down the hill, they banged a gong that law, it was not a, it was recorded, gone.
So. That’s because the wind changes so much and you know, and they can say, I’m going, I’m not going, I’m going, I’m not going. And they decided that when somebody is actually going, they will let you know to look. And that’s what the gong is for. And sometimes you get a wish at the end too. It’s kind of, eh, when they come off the the jump and that sounds cool too.
The other thing is ski jump that I really liked was this green line. Like a laser pointer line, but it was green that went across the track. And I had, I asked somebody about this and they said, oh, it’s shows who’s got the farthest distance. But she also said it moves around a lot and I didn’t notice it.
And I think it’s more to. To help guide somebody to where their jump is going to be like, where their best jump is. They’d be able to see that line on the snow and gauge.
[00:05:56] Alison: So give them a target.
[00:05:57] Jill: Exactly. A nice, so I thought that was quite nice. That could be automated because it showed up like right when they took off, but somebody does have to input the data.
Yeah, put data job, honest to Pete. I saw three guys to know and omega coats and they say on official time keeper on the back. And I almost went up to them to talk timekeeping. And then I realized they were just bros who worked for omega, probably in marketing or sales,
[00:06:28] Alison: Maybe you can meet them and they will introduce you.
[00:06:31] Jill: Oh my gosh. Wow. Maybe, I don’t know.
[00:06:36] Alison: I’ll show them some robot dumplings.
[00:06:38] Jill: They can get them on their own. That’s nothing special. It’s just a cat,
[00:06:42] Alison: but it’s a robot cat.
[00:06:46] Jill: Alright. Fantasy league standings. Wow. We have a whopping 52 players in our fantasy league, which is so exciting. We are tapped by Einarsson. Who’s got 27. Pergola has 26 points and DNL has got 25 and sitting in third right now. So I haven’t checked my league.
I had to lock in tomorrows.
[00:07:07] Alison: You’re not doing well, Jill. I’m beating you. Oh
[00:07:11] Jill: boy. Yeah. Well, yeah, we’ll see. I don’t know. I just choose a name sometimes it’s easier. I don’t think it’s easier, but it’s still fun. I will say that it’s still fun. Yeah, and
[00:07:25] Alison: people can still join us and make up some points. Cause it’s not going to be hard to beat me.
And apparently this time it’s not going to be hard
to be gel.
[00:07:32] Jill: W how much?
All right, well, let’s look at today’s action. Starting with biathlon. We had the mixed relay that says a four by six kilometers women to. Gold. Went to Norway. Silver went to France, bronze went to ROC, whoa, this was a nail biter at the end. This was just, the whole thing was just amazing because. At the, we in Norway strong, strongly favored to win this, of course, because you have the boob brothers, you have Marta old people Raceland who is killing it on the world cup this year.
And then you have two real Ackoff who has won the world cup last year. The weather played so much of a factor in this because the first something happened with Marta’s gun. And I don’t know what it was. Because it took her forever to get her first shots off. She had to mess up with something. And from where I was in the press Tribune, which was on the same line as the penalty loop.
So I could kind of see the range, but not too much of the range. I had to rely a lot on the screen for how everybody shot and then I could see some of the skiing and I will say that. The organizing committee did a good job of picking venues that would look good or good too good job of designing venues that would look good on TV and also a better audience experience in the stadium because you get to see a lot of the skiing.
Usually in biathlon, they go out into the woods and mountains and they come back in to shoot.
For the course here, they kind of go around. So there’s an element of, if you’re off on the side in the press stuff, you can see them go off, out onto the course, but then they make kind of a hairpin turn or you turn and they come back and they get. Over the shooting range. So if you’re sitting in the middle, you see them crossover in the shooting range, and then they come back around somewhere and finish in front of you.
So it’s really kind of cool that you get to see a lot more of the skiing than you normally would. So much wind that it really, you could tell shots were going everywhere. And the people who either just waited for the wind to go, or I don’t know how some of them just shot so well, but it, it really played a lot of havoc.
Million Jacqueline said he’s from France. And he said in the press conference afterwards that he had a lot of problems on one of his shooting of bouts because his fingers lost dexterity and like the bullet for.
[00:10:15] Alison: You could see the wind on TB. You can see yours, that wind was, and it was interesting watching the shooting because like you said Yohanas tankers bow, which we’ll talk about. Cause we are obsessed with the boat brothers was shooting so fast. He would just get in there, shoot and be gone and everybody else was taking much more.
And I figured it was because of the wind, but how might your fingers freeze? What
do you
do
[00:10:42] Jill: you try to get the dexterity back somehow? It’s really hard. I don’t know. I, and so, I went to part of the press conference and I didn’t see all of the race lines. Because it was cold. So I’d go inside and warm up pro a little bit.
And of course you missed up with the travel back to the media center in the venue. But JT was not at the press conference because apparently he’s in close contact isolation. He can still compete, but like he wasn’t there at the press conference. They had to answer for him. So someone. One of the amazing things about these athletes is that they can field questions and other languages and respond in multiple languages as well.
So they were answering they, of course there were plenty of Norwegian questions and they would just answer a Norwegian. Then they had a question in Chinese, so they had to dig out the headphone translators and then they answered that in English. It was really interesting,
but I will say the Chinese reporter asked what they thought of the course, basically. Yeah. And
we’re the Norwegians quite neutral.
They were very Kara, I think carefully chose their words. Cause I don’t think they were very happy with, I don’t. I’d go out on a limb right now and say probably nobody’s thrilled with this course just because the sheer cold and the wind and it’s.
Yeah, and we all knew it was going to be like this in a way, because you know, you’re going to a land. That’s got no snow here and it’s really windy and it’s very cold.
But, he did say, oh, it looks good. I’ve heard it looks good on TV. Yeah, I know. And it just, he was very careful of how he talked about it, but I’ll be curious to see the competition as it goes along and see what actually happens. And if the wind keeps being a factor, cause it really just whips in from one side.
And same with like the ski jumping. It was windy for that too. And it’s got a little wall thing that kind of protects the venue from it. I don’t know, man. What happened to Italy because Doro did really well considering other people around her were falling apart.
[00:12:57] Alison: Both of the Italian women when they finished, because the two women go first and then.
So I, I saw the two women and they were in the top three and then all of a sudden the Italian men get on the course and just couldn’t shoot.
[00:13:11] Jill: Uh, Oh, that’s a shame. And the U S was in third after Claire, because Claire was second. She shot well
[00:13:22] Alison: util shooting. So for her. Which is first prone was first.
So she did prone first missed one shot, took one of her extra charges and hit it. Her second round. She was clean and fast.
[00:13:36] Jill: That bodes well, like she’s peaking right at the right.
[00:13:40] Alison: And what was really funny was the feed announcer. I was, I was listening to the OBS feed and he got very excited because both Susan Dunkley and Claire Egan are veterans and he mentioned their ages and how they’re veterans and how well they had done and how the us was in, in third place.
So I think this announcer is a fan of. Dunkley and Egan look at the American women. Ooh. That like, he really got excited when she shot clean that second time. So it’s always nice to hear our TKFLASTANISget a shout out, but I’m thrilled for Claire. Oh yeah,
[00:14:20] Jill: of course. Yeah, that was great. And it just the first man, Sean Doherty shot well, but then I guess Paul Schummer whom I didn’t see.
Compete until the end and saw them finish and saw him overtake a Swiss skier to get into seventh place. So that was exciting. I also did see Marta, Royce land is so intense. She was behind and she was skiing against Lisa Potosi and from Italy and Victoza was ahead and Marta just started skiing her little heart out past Potosi, like Victoza was walking and it was just amazing to see how fast this woman skied and how intense I also did see a team get pulled off the court.
Because if you get lapped you’re done. So the first man’s leg lapped, one of the teams at the end, I don’t know which team it was. Cause didn’t get a chance to see that. But yeah, they got lapped that’s that was, that’s going to be a sad, have you race end like that, but good day, we have a has a diploma.
Very exciting.
[00:15:36] Alison: Very exciting. And more importantly, she clearly had a good race. Yes. They know for Claire was what she was really. I mean, to have that kind of shooting day on these conditions. So good
[00:15:50] Jill: exactly. Moving over to cross country skiing. We had the women’s scaffold on today. So that’s a 7.5 kilometers in classic style and 7.5 skating.
And that was won by Theresa Yohan from Norway and Italia. from ROC took silver and Theresa Stoptober from Austria. Took the bronze. I did see the venue. And oh, okay. So I was asked like how long, what’s travel. Like for me, I budget a long time for travel because I know like today made a mistake, went out of my way.
Then I get on some of these buses that are loops and I don’t know where I’m at in the. And what that means from beginning to my destination. So tonight it was like, I could have stayed at the biathlon press conference or I could have spent an hour and a half making sure I got to the train on time. And I spent the hour and a half getting to the train on time because we looped around and I, I, the one issue the buses are getting better.
I will say that they’re better. They have a queue, at least here at the media center, they’ll have QR codes, so you can get the schedule right away. What they don’t have a good handle on yet is putting names of the bus stops in Zhangjiakou. So you have to, so what happens is you come into the train, so. Are you coming to the railway and you can take a bus out to the skiing section that is biathlon cross-country and ski jumping, or you could go to the cluster.
That’s the snow park with all of the slopestyle and snowboard cross, and all the freestyle skiing. Well, within those clusters are several stops. So they drop you off at a security. Security let’s hold security points for another day. Cause that’s a whole other story. So they dropped me off at a security point.
Then you get on another little bus. It just does a loop of that cluster, except for also within that cluster is like a hotel stop or technical officials building or broadcast center. And you don’t know what is, what, because it all looks the same temporary building stuff and there’s no, like welcome to the cross-country venue or
[00:18:16] Alison: now under normal circumstances, would these clusters be walkable?
[00:18:21] Jill: I actually was allowed to walk today. Yes. I got out of the security point checkpoint and I said, ski jump. Because I see it right there and they said, yeah, you could walk to them. Like you will let me walk and all this 10 minutes. And I walked and then I couldn’t figure out how to get in
[00:18:46] Alison: find the unmarked bus stop and pretend you took the bus.
[00:18:50] Jill: Yeah, that was basically it. So I kind of walked around and I saw somebody walking in like, one of the Scandinavian countries. Uniforms or so I don’t know if they were an athlete or not like, how do I get into the venues? She was like, you got to go like this way and I can’t get out. It was one of those kinds of things, but yes, some of it would be walkable.
It would be a long walk from biathlon to cross country, but you could get to biathlon and ski jumping or walkable. So that’s kind of a bummer bit because it would’ve been nice to walk. I can’t imagine what this place would be like with a ton of people though,
[00:19:30] Alison: Not a lot of space?
[00:19:32] Jill: Yeah, no, in a sense, now that I think where I’m like, oh, it’s kind of like lake Placid almost.
[00:19:39] Alison: That’s tight.
[00:19:40] Jill: Yeah. It’s tight. So yeah, I do spend a lot of time planning, logistics, and also using the transportation because it takes a while to get around to places.
[00:19:53] Alison: Are the buses warm?
[00:19:55] Jill: That defense. Sometimes you get a warmish bus or sometimes you get a bus where the heat is on. That does not mean it’s warm, but the heat is on. Sometimes you get a bus that doesn’t have the heat on. Sometimes you get the bus that has the window propped open for COVID reasons.
[00:20:12] Alison: at least you’re out of the wind.
[00:20:15] Jill: Yeah. And in Zhangjiakouwhere I was today, they built little shelters for the bus stops, which is super helpful.
[00:20:24] Alison: Have you seen the great wall?
[00:20:27] Jill: Yes. And it’s lovely. Oh, I’m surprised you haven’t seen it on the feed or on TV yet, because it really is picturesque. It’s behind the cross-country venue and you can kind of see it behind the biathlon venue in one little part. It’s this yellow line and the cross-country venue is actually the better one because it has little towers along the side or along.
[00:20:50] Alison: Yeah, the shot we constantly are getting on TV is the overhead. it was taken by either a helicopter or a drone, the helicopters that were stalking you because you, weren’t doing hard to tell what that actual distance is or what the ground level view would be.
[00:21:08] Jill: Right. Right. And if something like I need to, now that I know where it is, I need to see if I can see it during the day.
Because I don’t think I can. And the only reason I’m seeing it is because it’s lit up at night. So it’s kinda interesting, like, oh, that’s where it is. Okay. Far away. Not getting any closer.
[00:21:26] Alison: They won’t let you that’s for sure.
[00:21:27] Jill: No. Great. Well, it’s not in the great close loop.
[00:21:30] Alison: Really do know how to do a closed loop. I mean, they’ve been doing it a great wall, so I mean, you’re in good hands for that.
[00:21:39] Jill: All right. Curling. We had three more sessions of mixed doubles today. The current standings are Italy. Italy’s undefeated six and oh, holy cow.
[00:21:49] Alison: I watched them yesterday against Australia who unfortunately also, oh, and seven. He must. The Italian man, first of all, he’s a giant, he’s gotta be six feet plus, and man, can he throw that stone hard?
Wow.
He will just take out entire teams with one stone. Amazing. So much fun to watch a really different style than I’ve seen before.
[00:22:17] Jill: Okay. I will try to find.
[00:22:20] Alison: He’ll be easy to spot cause he’s gotta be like a head taller than everybody else. And he has this very handsome beard. Just look for the tallest, most handsome looking man at the curling venue and that’s going to be Amos Moser.
[00:22:32] Jill: Okay. Duly noted Sweden is five and to Canada is foreign to as is great Britain. China is two and four. Norway is three and three along with the us and. Check Republican, Switzerland are two and four. And as you mentioned, Australia is, oh, and seven. We’ve got curling on right now and they put CCTV on. So it’s a Chinese game.
It’s China versus Canada. I’m guessing China does not win in the end.
[00:23:08] Alison: well, that may still be going on.
[00:23:14] Jill: Oh far out
[00:23:18] Alison: because not everybody has played seven games yet.
No. Okay.
It’s just, it’s still going on.
[00:23:24] Jill: Before we get to a freestyle skiing, we wanted to let you know about our red envelope campaign that we’re having during the games.
This showed does cost money to produce. And while our listeners have been extremely generous in supporting us through our Kickstarter campaign that got us to Beijing and also through Patreon patronage, we’re coming. And also through Patreon patronage, we’re coming up on two and a half years until another Olympics.
So to celebrate the Lunar New Year, we’re asking for donations of at least $8 to help us get through to Paris 2024, go to flavor life, pod.com/support donate, and thank you to everyone who’s donated so far. It’s been really helpful and it really fuels our flame or the cauldron thatiswithin my heart for these games.
[00:24:10] Alison: ‘ Cauldronette..
[00:24:11] Jill: They actually have another flame in Zhangjiakou. They have another snowflake with the flame inside and it’s the torch. It looks horrible. I’ll post pictures. It just looks awful. And I know it’s because one of the reasons they didn’t do a big cauldron is they saw how much gas it caught.
It, it takes. Produce the big flame. They’re like, oh, we don’t want to use so much energy. Nevermind. The two bottles of water, minimum that I’d grab a day to use, to brush my teeth because we can’t use the same water,
but it’s an environmentally friendly. And I guess the IOC was not yet ready to move to like fake flame. But honestly, if you wanted to go smaller, make a tiny cauldron that fits in there, don’t shut the torch. And I think that’s what makes me more angry as they just, oh, we’re just going to show the torch in.
[00:25:05] Alison: Walter Walberg from Sweden took gold. Michael Kingsbury from Canada, took silver and Acuma horror. Shima from Japan, took the bronze in ice hockey.
Our standings in group a are Canada is to a know as the U S which they just finished up their game against ROC ROC is one-on-one and Finland and sorts and lender both. Oh, and to all five teams in this group, we’re going to move on to the quarter finals in group B Japan and Czech Republic are two and O Sweden in Denmark are O and two, and China is one and one.
The top three teams and group B we’ll move on to the quarter finals. Wow.
Over in luge
[00:25:51] Jill: All right. Moving on to freestyle skiing. What happened? What happened in men’s mobiles?
[00:25:58] Alison: So, well, first of all, I don’t know how they made it down the mountain because that wind was insane. I don’t know how these guys were literally not getting blown off the course.
[00:26:09] Jill: Really?
[00:26:11] Alison: It was fierce and Bradley Wilson.
TKFLASTANI made a down on his second run. It was clean. He just didn’t make the top 20. Okay.
[00:26:22] Jill: Okay. That’s that is good. Cause it didn’t look like a good day for him, which is sad, but we do have medalists we had men’s singles runs one and two. Do you know anything that happened?
[00:26:36] Alison: I didn’t get to watch lose yet. I know Chris master the U S is in 9th. I don’t know anybody else’s standing. It just popped up on my of course I’m in a I’m in the United States. So no, my Internetonly tells me what the Americans are doing.
[00:26:50] Jill: Okay. Okay. That’s fine. Ski jumping. We had the men’s normal hill qualification round, and then the women’s normal hill did their entire competition. Okay. So I went to the qualification. You know what? This was 53 skaters, 50 qualified or no, I’m sorry. 53 skiers, 50 qualified.
[00:27:11] Alison: Is this like an Eddie? The Eagle rule?
[00:27:14] Jill: I don’t know, but I guess to get to the next round they wanted 50 skiers and maybe they had more that they were going to have in this first round and people didn’t come. I don’t know what it was just. Was so weird. It’s just like, well, this is not for actually, it was kind of boring to watch live.
I hate to say that it really was. Part of, it was because they had the no cheering. They did have fans, or the stands looked really full, but there were people just waving their little, been being two in one flags, as much as they could. And then when the one from our Chinese ski jumper came down, they cheer.
But he didn’t do very well because China doesn’t have a very good ski jumping program yet.
The announcer was very American because he knew that all three Americans came from Chicago and it was just like, dude, why are you telling us all these American facts?
I did see Simone almond jump he’s been raining medalist. That was kind of cool.
And he was funny at the end because he was really happy with his jumping and smiling and very chatty. This was also speaking chatty. This was also a venue where I kind of wandered around and I wandered into the mix zone. Not realizing that you had to have An extra pass to get into the mix zone and wandering, where I’m not supposed to be.
So I got the hang out there for a little bit and actually taken the view. But yeah, it was just, it was really hard to watch this and care because a, it was so many jumpers were getting through and beaches, the crowd wasn’t didn’t know what to do. We’ll see. That’s a venue. It’s really cool.
Looking. The skiers, take a funicular of the side to get to the how it’s really, that’s really kind of cool, but this one’s on a list of possible white elephant venues.
[00:29:08] Alison: Oh yeah.
[00:29:09] Jill: If they don’t really work on creating a winter sports tradition, nobody’s going to use this venue.
[00:29:17] Alison: All right, because it’s not like it’s, they have a huge Asian tour for ski jumping world cup. And it sounds like the conditions you’re are rough. So it’s not like all these jumpers are going to be clamoring to come back and blown off by the winds of Mongolia. It’s just, especially for ski jumping.
[00:29:38] Jill: And it’s hard, but you could say that you’ve got a hill in Sapporo. You’ve got a hill in NA know you’ve got a hill in Pyeongchang. Maybe. I don’t remember if that was temporary or not, But you could have a little Asians circuit and, you know, then that’d be something. And it also would mean that these people wouldn’t have to travel as much, but yeah, this venue. Oh boy. Nice. But we’ll see.
[00:30:03] Alison: And it was a very good day for Slovenia of all places.
[00:30:08] Jill: Nice.
And they got a gold and bronze.
Or some Bogota got the gold and then Nika, Chrisner got the bronze and then Katarina Alto or in Germany got silver.
[00:30:22] Alison: I don’t know how they got through the ski jumping competition today. Honestly, when you were saying about the stopping and starting, because, you know, if it gets too windy, they just whole competition.
We don’t want the girls well,
[00:30:36] Jill: and they called competition or they called canceled training for the men’s downhill part way through training. So like three, three of the men got to go down and the rest did not. So they were all kind of grumbly like, oh, these three stars got to go and we didn’t get to go.
And they said, well, you know, safety, but I guess just cold there too.
[00:30:56] Alison: You know, you’re talking about down. Do you know who is doing some announcing for NBC
about
[00:31:04] Jill: Ted Ligety
[00:31:06] Alison: diggity he’s in Connecticut. I’m going to go stalk him.
[00:31:10] Jill: No, you’re not. You are not going to do that. Can’t stock won’t stock
[00:31:18] Alison: and I drive by and wave at him. At least
[00:31:20] Jill: you can do.
Over in snowboard, we had the women’s snowboard slope style qualification runs.
[00:31:27] Alison: her mouth just would not move the way her brain was telling
her to move. Wow. Were they wearing like, were they wearing faces?
No. A lot of them had Gators covering their face. Some of them did some of them didn’t and I guess it’s just what they’re comfortable with and vision-wise, but yeah, a lot of them
[00:31:46] Jill: What happened here?
[00:31:48] Alison: So Julie Marino, who is from my neck of the woods of Westport, Connecticut, she had a great run. She qualified doing really well. They were trying to do a little interview with her at the bottom of the hill.
The poor girl couldn’t talk because I think her face was frozen.
[00:32:03] Jill: Oh my goodness.
[00:32:05] Alison: Cause you know, you have that when your face gets really cold and you can’t quite move your mouth properly. Cause you can’t really feel your face muscles. I think she was having one of those moments, but she was really happy.
She did great. It looked good. But the important thing was trying to answer and be enthusiastic, but were covered, but still
brutal.
[00:32:24] Jill: Yeah. Yeah. Cause when the biathletes pull out the face tape, you know, it’s Colt, cause they were all taped up.
Over in speed skating, we had the women’s 3000 meters Netherland starting off with a victory. I Irene shoutin got the gold. Silver went to Francesca, Lola Brigida from Italy and bronze went to Isabel. Wiedemann from Canada.
[00:32:48] Alison: I love this little fact I came across. So if you are old or if you watched movies with your grandmother, you will have heard of Gina Lollobrigida, who is Francesca. Lola. Bridget is great. Aunt
[00:33:01] Jill: Amazing.
[00:33:02] Alison: There’s a song, but I can’t find it on YouTube about Gina Lollobrigida that my grandmother used to sing.
So now I have to find. He knows what I’m talking about. Please send it to us@flamealivepodatgmail.com because I hear my grandmother just singing a few words of it and I can’t get it.
[00:33:22] Jill: We also had some short track speed skating today. We had heat for the women’s 500 and men’s 1000, but then the mixed team relay had their competition and Goldwind to China.
Silver went to Italy and bronze went to hungry. I saw a little bit of this in the train station. I saw some of the quarterfinals. So did you watch it?
[00:33:43] Alison: I watched it. So it reminded me very much of the Madison races that we saw for the first time in Tokyo, in track cycling, where I didn’t really know who was actually racing because all the skaters stay on the ice and the not racing skater is in the center, kind of moving around.
And then the racing skater is on the track. It’s a very small track, really compact. And there’s all these people on the ice and people are crashing into each other. And there’s all kinds of penalties, which reminded me also of our complaint about rhythmic gymnastics and how every score was protested. Race was protested.
[00:34:23] Jill: Oh gee. Wow.
[00:34:26] Alison: It was a lot of. Who impeded who, and I don’t know how they can tell because there are limbs everywhere. There are blades everywhere. So there was one semi-final where both ROC in the USA were disqualified. I don’t know how they could see it because you know how many people are wearing blue suits and who can tell a blue from another blue arm.
But I do still love watching the demolition Derby that is short
track. Yeah. I was watching it and it had somewhat the similar. Experience, but nobody had been crashing. It was just all these bodies. And I kept trying to count laps to figure out when they passed off to another skater. I just could not figure that out.
I had no clue, but we did see uh, someone we used to, we talked a lot about in Pyeongchang, which was Ariana Fontana. She is back again. she was racing. So that was fun. I said, oh wait, I know that name. I remember that name. So, and Irene shout and just, she’s a Dutch skater, man. Now they’re taken over short track to
[00:35:34] Jill: Shukla stone watch. What are we looking for tomorrow? Well, are we looking for anything tomorrow?
[00:35:40] Alison: Not looking for anything tomorrow because everybody’s hurt. So Brianna Deckeris officially out of the tournament.
USA hockey did really that statement. They have not officially said what the injury is other than its left leg injury. So her knee, not our ankle, not her foot. We’re not really sure. But she is not going to be competing though. They will though the USA hockey team will be there. And we’ll see if she uh, is on the sidelines with.
Other injury report is Alex Debold crashed in training in Italy and he will be not going to Beijing. Yeah. He suffered a concussion. He’s out of the hospital. He has some nasty bruising. He’s doing well. Uh, He posted some pictures, drinking some coffee at the Italian cafe, so he’s healing up nicely, but I know he is extremely disappointed to not be making the trip.
[00:36:33] Jill: That is really sad. You know, what’s interesting about the Brianna Decker thing is that on the, we have a little system here that when you’re credentialed, you can log into to get results and other news and things like that.
They had a picture of her on stretch. And said, this is not for release. This is for illustration only. So I think they’re trying to be mindful of athletes privacy in terms of the injury thing. So that’s that, that I thought was really interesting. Nice little tidbit, but hopefully she’s doing well and we’ll be making a quick recovery.
[00:37:15] Alison: One of her teammates on Instagram posted a picture of them in the elevator. Several of the teammates and Brianna was in her wheelchair booted up, but laughing with all of them. So she’s, I hope she’ll be able to stay in Beijing to cheer on the team because I know this is, this means a lot to her.
[00:37:33] Jill: Yes.
Yes. All right. Onto happier news. We have to talk about our mascot. I know this is so exciting. It’s so much fun to have. I mean, fingered one-on-one in person is very fun because it’s big and awkward, but we have mascots who are cute and cuddly.
[00:37:50] Alison: Well, unfortunately our mascot today is Luna, who is not the cuddliest of cats.
[00:37:55] Jill: Oh no.
[00:37:57] Alison: Apparently she will only sit with her favorite human who his dad, Andy. And I think this is because it is year of the tiger and you cannot cuddle a tiger.
[00:38:07] Jill: Very good point. Very good point. But Luna is a lovely mascot to have. So we are very appreciative of her and we would also like to thank our researchers for today.
Francesca Rubik, old Johnson and Alice. So that will do it for this episode tune in beginning, tomorrow for day two of competition,
[00:38:27] Alison: and we hope you’ll keep celebrating with us.
Please be sure to join our, Keep the Flame Alive Facebook group. It is the place to hang out with us. And all of our listeners, Jill is on Twitter. I am on Insta and both those handles are flame alive and both those handles are at flame alive pod. You can also email us at flame alive pod at Gmail com or call or text us at two zero.
3 5, 2 6, 3, 4, 8. That’s 2 0 8, flame. It,
you know,
[00:38:57] Jill: when you,
[00:38:58] Alison: when you mentioned the email listener, Beth sent a whole bunch of hot takes on the uniforms, which I really appreciated. Cause I didn’t see all of them. We didn’t talk about the New Zealand flag bearers wearing the fur capes, which I really loved the traditional dress.
She mentioned Mexico’s Day of the Dead inspired uniform. I had a a moment with the Mexican chef. Did miss Yon today they are cooler in person. The hood is lined with the skull fabric. Yes. On the inside.
It looks like it’s very silvery and sparkly.
[00:39:35] Jill: It’s very nice.
But I meant to mention that today. I saw it up close in it personally. Wow. That is just a cool uniform, except for their bit I don’t know what they had on there, but they had to cover it up. Yeah. Don’t know. Speaking of covering up another fun little tidbit, you can get taxis here.
They’re all black cards. But if they are not a Toyota, they have to have either a make and model taped up to
[00:40:04] Alison: Mystery vehicle. Exactly. Don’t take the mystery vehicle gel.
[00:40:09] Jill: tried today cause I went some, I went to the wrong place, but even though there were mystery vehicles sitting right in front of me. I would’ve had to wait an hour for the mystery vehicle. You have to order it. I’m not winning today with transportation, but at least I allowed myself enough time to make a lot of mistakes and I was having okay transportation day because of that. So speaking of I’ve got to plan out tomorrow, so we will catch you back here then. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time, keep the flame alive.