It’s Day 6 of the Beijing 2022 Paralympics! Jill and Alison are both in Beijing today for Wheelchair Curling and Para Ice Hockey Playoffs (with Alison’s new Czech friend, who, we find out, does have a name!). Plus, Jill had a fun Shoey Rhon Rhon moment in the mountains that she forgot to mention.
Sports on today’s schedule:
- Para Cross-Country Skiing – Women’s and men’s sprints
- Para Ice Hockey – Qualifying finals
- Wheelchair Curling – Round robin action
We love it when listeners have questions about what they’re seeing when they watch the Games. Listener Dan wondered about curling ice and whether it changes from day to day. We looked into it, and it turns out that making ice sheets for curling is a really involved process. A lot of factors go into making the perfect sheet of ice that is also consistent from day-to-day — and ice technicians want each of the Ice Cube’s four ice sheets to be consistent with each other. There’s a lot of monitoring going on, and we’re sure that curling ice techs around the world are geeking out over how these sheets are built.
While looking into this question, Jill realized that the entry to the curling venue is unlike any of the other Olympic and Paralympic venues. If you’re in our Facebook Group, Jill posted a video of how the venue is set up to prevent the outside elements from affecting the quality of the ice.
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 — in China the number 8 is a lucky number symbolizing good fortune — to help us get through to Paris 2024. Go to flamealivepod.com/support to donate.
Thank you so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive!
Photo: OIS/Chloe Knott. Handout image supplied by OIS/IOC
TRANSCRIPT
Note: While we make efforts to ensure the accuracy of this transcript, it is machine-generated and may contain errors. Please use the audio recording as the record of note.
Beijing 2022: Paralympics – Day 6
[00:00:00] Jill: Ni Hao fans of TKFLASTAN, and welcome to day six coverage of the Beijing 2022 Paralympics on Keep the Flame Alive, the podcast for fans of the Olympics and Paralympics. I am your host, Jill Jaracz, and through the plexiglass, I see my lovely co-host Alison Brown. Alison ni hao. How are you today?
[00:00:24] Alison: Ni Hao, that was quite a game we just came home from
[00:00:27] Jill: And it really was. We’ve watched a lot of hockey today and it’s been super exciting. We we’ll get to that, but first. What officiating or volunteer job would you like to do today?
[00:00:39] Alison: I’m restocking snacks. So at every venue, there is a media workroom and in the media workroom, we have desks and power strips and televisions with feeds. And we also have a snack table. And it everyone is always happy when the person comes in and refreshes the snacks. And by everyone, I mean me.
[00:01:05] Jill: I think there are lots of people who were happy when the snacks are. And the snacks are, okay, so this is typical. There’s usually some fruit and it varies by venue. So in the media center, we usually have little oranges or tangerines and bananas. I saw today at hockey, you got apples.
[00:01:21] Alison: Yes.
[00:01:22] Jill: And at snowboard the other day, they had pears, which was first time I had seen a pear. We have a little, the, the only really sweet thing they have here is a Swiss roll. And that is a yellow cake rolled up with some kind of creamy filling. In the media room, it is strawberry. It is not your favorite. Biathlon, they got orange, which was nice. And there are a couple of venues who have banana and so that’s not bad either.
[00:01:49] Alison: And then there are a few venues who have Snickers.
[00:01:52] Jill: Yes. And oh, I still, I owe you a chocolate bar. That’s what somebody told me, they were the, how you say chocolate here in China.
It’s a little a rice crispy, like a Nestle’s Crunch, but they’re not thick. They’re very thin. But they’re, that’s pretty tasty. We also have many kinds of crackers. There are like rice crackers or stuff made with sesame. There’s a sea salt and cheese, and then there’s also the pocket bread. There’s little tiny loaves of soft, squishy, white bread and by little tiny, I mean, they’re, they’re like two or three inches long or a square.
[00:02:30] Alison: It is sort of like if you made Wonder Bread in the shape and size of a brownie.
[00:02:36] Jill: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That can be tasty. There’s, there’s brined eggs, lots and lots of brined eggs and there’s cup of noodles.
So that’s pretty much, that’s our snack area and there there’s different kinds of crackers here and there, but it’s, it’s always a nice surprise to see. Oh, and hockey has a sandwich cracker, so they’ve got some sandwich crackers with cheese in the middle and sandwich crackers with peanut butter in the middle. And I was like, why didn’t I go watch more hockey?
[00:03:05] Alison: They have not had those because I’ve been in the hockey room. That’s a new addition today. I don’t know if that was today or yesterday.
[00:03:11] Jill: Today was cheese, yesterday with peanut butter or the other day with peanut butter.
[00:03:15] Alison: Yes. So I have not seen those before today.
[00:03:18] Jill: I’m loving them.
[00:03:19] Alison: So what is your volunteer job?
[00:03:20] Jill: Okay, so we have talked that the yes, there is ice in the benches areas for the players to slide in and wait their turn to go back out on the ice. There’s also a little mini Zamboni that has to clean that ice. And the Zamboni thing is like about the size of a snowblower. I would say a smaller snowblower.
[00:03:42] Alison: It reminds me very much of those machines that you can rent at the grocery store for cleaning your carpets. It’s, it’s sort of that size and shape.
[00:03:51] Jill: Yes. Yes. And it just comes in and they just clean out the bench area.
[00:03:55] Alison: But only between games.
[00:03:57] Jill: Yeah. Because it doesn’t get a whole, it doesn’t get messed up that badly, but they like everybody to have a nice clean surface to start with. That job looks fun. Although it got crowded in the little bench area with all the cleaning that was going on today.
[00:04:13] Alison: There was some repairs apparently needed.
[00:04:16] Jill: A little bit of the follow-up file. So I totally forgot this yesterday in my exhaustion from trip number three to the mountains in three days. I forgot to tell you that I got to hold one of the Shuey Rhon Rhons that they give to medalists.
Alison: How did that happen?
Jill: Okay, so I’m hanging on a biathlon and the medal girls are there. They’re waiting for the ceremony. They had one and all the volunteers are lining up to take pictures with it. And I kind of stood there and looked at it and stood there and I’m like, do I try to get in? And one of the volunteers was like, Hey, do you want your picture with the Shuey? And like, yes, I do. And he was great, because it was like picture, picture. Okay. I got to get that “together for a shared future” in there. Okay. More pictures. And then I, I gave it back, but it was cool.
It’s very light. I mean, Shuey is pretty light. I mean, we have our Shueys, but this, I don’t know. It was very, it’s very cute though.
[00:05:09] Alison: I’m very jealous.
[00:05:11] Jill: Maybe you will get one, get to see one.
[00:05:14] Alison: We’re not going to let me touch it because they know I wouldn’t give it back.
[00:05:20] Jill: Also follow up file from biathlon. One of the Ukrainian athletes, Ukrainians now we are starting to hear stories of how tough it is back home for them. One of the athletes could not compete because her father had been captured and she was pretty distraught over that.
And then Dmytro Suiarko said, he got a bronze medal yesterday in the middle distance, vision impaired. He said it was very hard. You know, biathlon takes a lot of concentration. He missed two shots because “yesterday my house where I live was bombed and destroyed.” And you just, I cannot fathom what that is like to be here and compete on the highest level and get medals.
Let’s not, put that aside, and get medals while you know, your country is being torn apart and your life personally when you go home is never going to be the same as it was when you left.
[00:06:14] Alison: And one of the things we’ve mentioned yesterday, and we continue to not have information about is, can they get home?
[00:06:22] Jill: Yeah. Don’t know. Because most of them came from training. They were training in Northern Italy and they were supposed to go to Lviv and get their gear and leave. And that’s just, that wasn’t happening. So they just, oh, it’s just, it’s heartbreaking.
[00:06:39] Alison: Yeah. There’s been several articles on our site we get in here. They’re not sleeping. They’re not eating. They’re on their phones twenty four seven. They put the phone down just to race, to see, you know, if their families are still alive. It is mind boggling what is happening in Ukraine. And, you know, for our purposes to this team, they are amazingly strong people. And it’s so painful to watch them go through this.
[00:07:13] Jill: Follow up for para Alpine skiing. Everything has been rescheduled because the weather is getting warmer and warmer. So things were supposed to start about 10, 10:30. Now they’re all starting at 8:30 in the morning so that they finish up by one or two, depending on the schedule. Because if it goes too late, snow won’t be usable.
[00:07:37] Alison: It will be slush or dirt.
[00:07:38] Jill: Yeah. Yeah. So that’s not easy to deal with. So we had a question from Listener Dan, who wanted to know about curling ice and wondered if it changed from day to day, depending on the conditions. And so we did a little diving. If you go on our Facebook group, you’ll see a video I made walking into the venue because I realized as I was thinking about this question, the getting into the venue is different than getting into any other indoor venue at Beijing including the Olympic venues as well.
So to get in, you have to walk through, you go through an automatic sliding door, but then there is a fabric barrier and plastic barrier. Going right into the, where the curling sheets are. There’s more plastic barriers. So I put a little video up of what that looks like, but that’s to help keep the consistency of the ice and curling ice is very involved.
And they’ve got one of the best ice technicians in the world here. His name’s Mark Callan. He’s from Great Britain. His deputy chief is Stefan Roethlisberger from Switzerland, also quite talented. Found a couple articles in Shrine, which is a Chinese publication and in the National Post. And the goal is to keep the ice consistent so that this is a game of skill, not a game of chance.
You want to make sure that the ice is fair for everybody and keep the ice sheets as consistent as possible with each other. The other three sheets are the same from day to day so that they can kind of bank on what’s happening. Now that doesn’t mean that the ice doesn’t change as you go along, because of course you’re going to have all these elements, like throwing the stones down there. It changes how the ice functions throughout the game, and also adding people to the mix. When you add in spectators, that changes the game too. So what the team has to do is they monitor the air temperature, the humidity, the dew point, the air pressure, the outside weather conditions, because if people arrive and it’s wet outside and they’re wet, that affects the ice conditions.
You can’t use tap water for the ice. It has to be purified or deionized because this, that water freezes faster and harder than tap water. So the big deal with curling ice is that it gets pebbled and that’s creates little bumps on the ice that the stone glides over. This increases the slipperiness of the way, of the lane. If you use purified water, it helps those pebbles last for the entire game.
An ice sheet is about four inches thick. When they build it, they do it two or three millimeters at a time. Once the upper layers freeze, they add the paint and the logos. Then they use deionized water to remove the impurities and they level it with an ice scraper. Then they pebble it. After every session, they resurface the ice again, repebble it.
In Beijing, they have to deal with exceptionally dry air. And we can talk about how we know the dry air is dry. My hands cracked again overnight or over the last couple of days. Because it’s so dry or had, you know, our skin is like paper almost. It’s really uncomfortable. But the air here is very dry. So they have added humidifiers to the Ice Cube. We looked for them today in there. You saw a big one in the corner?
[00:11:06] Alison: Yes.
[00:11:07] Jill: And I saw little ones. All along the sides, you can’t see them on TV because they’re along the sidewalls and right behind them. And they’re about the height of a folding table or a card table.
And then they’ve got a little hoses kind of coming off of them so that they can spray wet air. So that helps maintain the moisture levels, but the door keeps, there’s a door that keeps letting in cold air. So they also use a hot tub that’s not far from the ice and you figured out,
[00:11:41] Alison: I think it may be the hot tub that the divers would have used because behind where the ice sheets are, is where the diving tank would have been and still is.
And then usually there’s a hot tub where they, they warm up between dives. So I’m wondering if they’re just using that. Behind that, because we can’t see that part of the tank, there’s a temporary wall that’s been put up behind the sheets. So whatever is back there we can’t see.
[00:12:12] Jill: Yeah, exactly. So we can’t see a hot tub, but we would, wouldn’t be surprised if it’s running all the time.
The, one of the other problems is that they, the monitoring systems, they have know what to do with crowds, but because we had the COVID-19 protocols, they don’t necessarily function in the same way. They have to know the exact number of spectators that will be there. So they know what values to work with because the number of people affects a lot of stuff in the air as well.
It’s, it’s so interesting that we’ve got to get a nice tech on at some point. Listener Lisa did note on the Facebook group that the ice does change constantly during a game. It can be fast or slow. It can be frosty and have uneven spots. Although with, at this level, I would imagine they’re pretty good at not getting those frosty uneven spots.
And part of being a skip is knowing how to read the ice and how to call the throw. And you’ll see players with stopwatches. You, you see this a lot because they’ll have stopwatches hanging off their belts so that they can time how fast the rock is going at any time during the game. And the times will change as the pebbles break down on the ice. Thank you so much, Dan. That was a fun question to play with today. It’s always fun to like, there’s something in this venue. We have to find it.
[00:13:36] Alison: I have seen them pebbling the ice. I did get there early enough one session and he came with the hose behind him and he was,
[00:13:45] Jill: And he trots backwards, I might have a video somewhere, but yeah, he trots backwards at a little clip. Sprays his hose back and forth, and he has a big water tank on his back. And it’s just, it is, it’s very intense. They know exactly what they’re doing and it’s, oh my gosh. I cannot imagine a room full ice techs geeking out over water and stuff like that. I just, I’m just saying, I know it exists. I would be interested in having dinner with them.
[00:14:17] Alison: I would not want to have drinks with them.
[00:14:23] Jill: Although you do wonder, like, I wonder what they think of like the water here, because we can’t, we can’t drink it. We can’t drink the water. So, I wonder what they think and if they are trying different ones. Well they only get the Coca-Cola water. But I got a different brand in my other hotel, but I wonder if there they look around and be like, okay, the water from the bathroom sink versus the water in the Coke bottle. Hmm. I’m sure they’re geeking out.
Okay. Let’s get into today’s action. We had some para cross country skiing today. Again, the weather is having an effect. The athletes kept noting that the conditions changed from the morning. They started at 10 in the morning, went to three in the afternoon, and the conditions changed from the morning to the evening.
And the course got harder, like harder, physically harder than it was in the morning. So, that is one thing to look out for when you’re watching this. We had sprints today. So in the men’s sprint free 1.5 kilometers standing gold, went to Benjamin Daviet from France. Silver went to Marco Maier from Germany and bronze went to Grygorii Vovchynskyi from Ukraine.
In the sprint free 1.1 kilometer sitting, gold went to Zhang Peng from China. Silver went to Mao Zhongwu from China and bronze went to Collin Cameron from Canada.
[00:15:48] Alison: And his amazing biceps in his shirtsleeves.
[00:15:52] Jill: He was happy to medal, but not thrilled about bronze, let me tell you. And in the men’s sprint free 1.5 kilometer vision impaired class, gold went to Brian McKeever from Canada with this guide Russell Kennedy.
[00:16:08] Alison: How have we not mentioned Brian’s mutton chops before? Apparently he grows them in specifically at Paralympic time.
[00:16:16] Jill: Oh, that’s funny. That’s really funny. Silver went to Jake Adicoff from USA with his guide, Sam Wood and bronze went to Zebastian Modin from Sweden with guide Emil Joensson Haag.
The women’s sprint free, 1.5 kilometer free standing, gold went to Natalie Wilkie from Canada. Silver went to Vilde Nilsen from Norway and bronze went to Sydney Peterson from USA. The 1.1 kilometer sitting class gold went to Yang Honhhjong from China. Silver went to Oksana Masters from USA and bronze went to Li Panpan from China.
[00:16:56] Alison: This is an exact replica of the podium for the long distance race that we saw.
[00:17:02] Jill: Oh, okay, because I’m like these names all found familiar, not surprised.
And in the 1.5 kilometers sprint vision impaired gold went to Carina Edlinger from Austria with guide Lorenz Josef Lampl. Silver went to Oksana Shyshkova with guide Andriy Marchenko. They are from Ukraine and bronze went to Linn Kazmaier from Germany with guide Florian Baumann.
Let’s take a quick break to talk about our Red Envelope campaign. This show does cost money to produce. And while our listeners have been extremely generous in supporting us through this Kickstarter campaign that got us here and also through Patreon patronage for throughout the year, we’re coming up on a new Olympic cycle. So it’s two and a half years until we get another boost in our listenership. So to celebrate the Lunar New Year, we are asking for donations of at least $8 to help get us through to Paris 2024. 8 is a number symbolizing, good fortune here in China so we are hoping you will share a good fortune with us. So if you appreciate what we’ve been putting out over the Olympics and Paralympics, we would appreciate if you could support us financially. And if you can’t, tell a friend, you know, you’ve got friends who like to geek out about the Olympics. Let them know about us. So go to flamealivepod.com/ support to donate.
Hockey time. You’ve got follow-up on hockey.
[00:18:30] Alison: Yes. So we talked a little bit yesterday about what the players do during the intermissions and how they get on and off the ice. So we mentioned yesterday that we couldn’t see behind the bench because that side of the arena is not part of the closed loop. But I was able to climb up to the highest point of the press rafters, which I think scared Jill a little bit, because I’ve been tripping a lot and I was able to kind of do bird’s eye view.
So what’s behind? So we’ve got the bench with the ice and then you’ve got the behind the bench area, which is totally behind the barrier. And that is that plastic material that you’ll see on artificial ice rinks. I know, I skated on one of those on a cruise ship and at a hotel once. And you can slide all the way down a ramp to the door of the dressing room, or we did see some players today get out of their sleds in that area and walk it. So I think it really just depends on preference and disability and mobility issues and how they prefer to get around. So they do come out of the sled during the intermission. So I said yesterday that I didn’t think they did, but now getting this additional information, I think that they do. And it seems like the strapping into the sled is not as complicated as it first appeared because we saw a broken strap end up on the ice during the second game. So it seems that it all depends on what you want to do. Slide or walk.
[00:20:06] Jill: There you go. All right. We had two qualifying finals today. These are the teams from group B, figuring out who is going to get into the semi-finals. First qualifying final was Korea versus Italy. Korea won four to zero, which the score was a huge differential, but they were pretty equal on shots on goal.
[00:20:26] Alison: Yes, it was just, you know, one of those, which goaltender was a little bit quicker, who had a few lucky bounces. It seemed like an evenly matched game if you weren’t looking at the score. And one of those goals, if I remember correctly was an empty net.
[00:20:43] Jill: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. So there was a pretty big crowd there. And we were like, oh, they, they brought in a crowd for Korea and Italy, which is okay. That’s very nice. And they, they clapped politely. You noticed that.
[00:20:58] Alison: I think there was a giveaway because everyone had a bright green bag. See, so bobblehead night works in China as well apparently.
[00:21:05] Jill: We both found the job we would not want to have, and that would be the OBS cameraman and photographer who were positioned in a box between the benches and had to wear helmets.
[00:21:20] Alison: This was a new camera angle. So when you, if you see the games Korea versus Italy or China versus Czech Republic for today, you may get some new shots that you haven’t seen on the feed and know that those men, it was both, it was men for both games were risking their lives for you.
[00:21:40] Jill: There was another OBS camera job that I thought about taking, but I don’t know how I feel about it. It was, there was a camera man up in the corner by us. So this is me. On a roller derby rink, it would be turn four. So if we were, we were in the turn four side of the rink and there was a camera man up against the plexiglass. And there was a woman kind of sitting behind him. And every once in a while, she’d go up and gently move the wire out of the way so he would not stand on it.
[00:22:16] Alison: I need her because I’ve been tripping a lot.
[00:22:21] Jill: The second game, now we mentioned the crowd for the first one, because the second game was China versus Czech Republic again. And we were so excited because we were like, this is going to be off the hook.
Alison: Because all the China games, the place has been packed.
Jill: Yes. Somebody messed up.
Alison: There was nobody there.
Jill: The cheerleaders were in the stands. Usually they’re in like the doorways in the corridor parts of the stands. And this time they were in a row of seats and we’re like, it’s like 20 minutes to game time. And there’s nobody coming in. Is the bus late? What happened? And I think somebody messed up the game order and sent the bus to the Korea-Italy game when the bus meant to go to the China- Czech Republic game, and then the word went out, everybody in the building get to the stadium.
[00:23:12] Alison: So all of a sudden, maybe five, 10 minutes into the first period, all of these volunteers were around the edge on the upper rafters, just making so much noise. And then there was this man who kept switching ends, who never stopped waving the Chinese flag.
[00:23:31] Jill: And it was a big flag on a silver flagpole. He is behind the opposite goalie so that China could see him waving the flag as they headed towards the goal. And honestly, he kept that up the entire game. It was impressive. And like building crew everyone, because of building security type people and all that, they’re wearing all black, they are in there and we just kept looking. There kept being more people.
[00:23:57] Alison: But not sitting in the spectator section.
[00:24:00] Jill: No, they’re all behind us. And I got to tell you Chinese people know how to yell. Because they sounded, I mean, they were so loud it sounded like it was full.
[00:24:13] Alison: And loud in a good way. I mean, not in an obnoxious or unpleasant way. In an appropriate, we are cheering for our team. We have chants, we have songs. It really made this game a lot of fun and it was hands down the best game we’ve seen so far.
[00:24:31] Jill: Super close, China beat Czech Republic, four to three.
One, of like, a couple minutes left. They didn’t have much time left on the clock. Czech did not have much time left on the clock to make up that time. Your friend Michal was down the bench from us.
[00:24:48] Alison: We have his name now. My Czech friend’s name is Michal. I asked him today. I said, I’m so embarrassed. I keep referring to you as my Czech friend.
[00:24:57] Jill: He was, oh, animated. If I could get my camera out fast enough, just the animation. So excited. And then just heartbroken. I feel like this would have been, if he could rip up some paper and throw it in the air in disgust, he would.
[00:25:13] Alison: But as we both told him, the Czech Republic just played a great, great game. So evenly matched, so back and forth, really exciting, just so much fun to watch this game between the Chinese crowd and the Czechs who were there were small, but they were vocal and animated. And this is what you want from a Paralympic game. There was so much energy in the room and you really did not know until a minute left in the game who was going to win.
[00:25:45] Jill: Yeah. And I really thought we were going to overtime where we were going to have a shootout on top of that, because it was just super exciting. Bruisers, all of them were just bruising and it was like the, because you saw the first Czec-China game.
[00:26:01] Alison: Very different game. It was, I don’t think the Czech Republic had been prepared for the kind of team that China was going to be. This time they were much more prepared. So it wasn’t the first game. It felt like China was kind of beating up on them. This was much more evenly matched in terms of physicality. So there wasn’t, even though there were a lot of crashes, it didn’t feel so bruiser-y.
[00:26:29] Jill: Right, right, right.
[00:26:31] Alison: I make my own word.
[00:26:31] Jill: Some, some T-bone penalties, we’ll say that there were some penalties for teeing.
It was, it was, they got rough. Both of them were really chippy, but in a, oh my gosh a big fights going to break out kind of way. They were just playing. It was a good game.
So now seventh place in the tournament goes to Slovakia. The next games are on Friday. We will have the semi-final game. Then the fifth, sixth place game. Then the other semi-final game. Fifth-sixth place game is going to be Czech Republic versus Italy. Then in the semis Canada versus Korea and China versus the USA. Oh my gosh. This is going to be a game. It’s 8:05 PM local time on Friday. So that is like 7:05 AM eastern time. Watch it, you know, sneak watch it, set your DVRs, get your streams ready. This is going to be a game to watch.
[00:27:27] Alison: I’m nervous and excited and hope I make it back from the mountain.
[00:27:32] Jill: Yes you are going to the mountain that day because snowboard got rescheduled.
[00:27:36] Alison: Right? Again, the weather is playing havoc. We have almost nothing tomorrow.
[00:27:41] Jill: It’s going to be a weird day.
[00:27:42] Alison: And then I have five events on Friday. And I am not exaggerating. We were sort of sitting there between the two of us with the schedule, figuring out we cannot be everywhere we want to be, right. So we will be covering as much as possible. But I think one place I will get myself to is that China-USA games.
I will find that the Parisians again and see if they’ll get me another taxi.
[00:28:14] Jill: And finally we had some wheelchair curling tonight, more round robin play in the morning session. It was Sweden defeating Norway, eight to six. They came from behind in the last end. Korea beat Estonia five to two, and China beat Slovakia seven to five in seven ends.
In the midday session, Slovakia beat Sweden six to five, at last a winner, which is something because Sweden’s just been having a great tournament. USA beat Switzerland, eight to five. USA had a good day today. So they started strong with this Switzerland, tied it up at five, but USA got three in the eighth to win it.
And then China beat Norway seven to four. This was another game. The crowd went crazy. China scored early. They were up two to nothing. Norway got two in the fourth to tie it up. China gets one in the fifth and Norway gets one in each of the next two ends. And so they’re up four to three. And then eighth end China scored four points.
[00:29:18] Alison: The crowd must have been insane.
[00:29:20] Jill: Yeah, it was wild. And then Canada defeated Great Britain, six to three. This was something.
[00:29:28] Alison: This was a little scary. So, one end of the ice, rather than a part of the match, a British player, David Melrose fell from his chair as he tried to pick up one of his sticks. It’s just a freak accident. And he ended up, they’re listing it as an injured shoulder. We had heard it was a dislocated shoulder, but thankfully it wasn’t a head injury or anything more serious because we were both there. And I saw some movement out of the corner of my eye, looked over and there was a player down and the chair had fallen over. He was down. And then all of a sudden, I think every member of the medical staff from every team just descended on that sheet. And I think the problem was they didn’t want to move him at all because they didn’t know what had broken, but he was still kind of tangled up in his chair. So it was a very complicated situation. Thankfully, by the time we saw him leave, we saw him moving his hands and talking.
So we knew it wasn’t a stroke or a head injury or something like that. So, so far all is good from that. The shoulder injury is serious, but it looked way worse in the building.
[00:30:42] Jill: Exactly. So we hope David heals up quickly. It’s not as serious as it seemed. And back on the ice sooner rather than later. I doubt that it would happen at this tournament, but stranger things have happened.
In the evening session we had Korea beating Great Britain, eight to six. Canada beat Estonia nine to three and USA beat Latvia eight to seven.
[00:31:07] Alison: Nice. Though I want to make a note. The curling teams, there are five people on the teams. Yes. So that if one player goes down that the team is not out of the tournament, he was replaced. So that’s why you hear, you heard another British score. They continued to play.
[00:31:24] Jill: Yes. And sometimes they get replaced mid game. Because I’ve kind of seen like, wait, that looks like a different person. And I’ve seen on the result reports. Yes so-and-so is replacement game. So it may be that somebody is not having a great day or they’re not shooting right. That they just take them out and replace them and try to regroup and come back.
So our standings right now: China and Sweden are tied for first with the six wins and two losses. Canada is six and three. Slovakia is five and three. Korea Latvia, and the US are all four and four. Norway is four and five. Great Britain is three and five. Estonia is two and six and Switzerland is one and seven.
We’re again taping at night. It’s a little heartbreaking that it’s no longer the hour of magical vacuuming when we tape.
[00:32:14] Alison: They seem to be the vacuuming earlier because there’s less action then during the Olympics. We are alone in the media room right now late at night.
[00:32:22] Jill: Exactly. I had to, they have lockers that you can rent and store stuff in, or rent. Check out a locker and store stuff in there. And I returned my key because I’ve had a locker for a few days and I woke up the poor volunteer who needed to do the paperwork. And then he’s scrambling around poor guy. But he had something to do. You know, I bet this shift is really tough.
All right. TKFLASTAN, what’s going on with our Team Keep the Flame Alive?
[00:32:52] Alison: So Steve Emt and Team USA will be back again tomorrow for the last two matches of round robin play, one against Sweden, second against Korea. They are in the first two sessions.
[00:33:05] Jill: Okay. This is a do or die day for Team USA.
[00:33:09] Alison: They are still within shooting distance of the top of the standings, but they have to, they have to win both and some other people need to lose some so,
[00:33:22] Jill: Well, you know, they might be able to pull it out. And Mr. Positivity Steve Emt, he could help that mindset. Hope you do well tomorrow, Steve.
We would like to thank our Kickstarter collectors, Wendy O’Donnell and David D. Thank you so much for supporting us and getting us here to the closed loop.
[00:33:45] Alison: And we have a new mascot today. Our new mascot is Theodore Patton, also known as Theo. I follow him on Instagram and he is fantastic. He is a very sassy shit tzu and he lives with Super Fan Sarah. And you’ll be hearing more about Theo for the rest of the Paralympics and special thanks to Super Fan Sarah for supporting our Kickstarter campaign.
[00:34:10] Jill: Yes. Thank you. And that will do it for this episode. Tune in again tomorrow for another day of competition. Well, some competition.
[00:34:19] Alison: Not much, because everything moved earlier in the week because the snow is melting. Can’t have a Winter Paralympics with no snow.
[00:34:27] Jill: That’s all right, but that gives us more time to dig into your questions. So if you have anything burning, let us know.
[00:34:32] Alison: You can email us at flamealivepod@gmail.com or call or text us at (208) 352-6348. That’s (208) FLAME-IT. You can also join us on our Facebook group, which is Keep the Flame Alive Podcast. You can hang out with us and our other listeners. Jill is on Twitter and I am on Instagram and both are @flamealivepod.
[00:34:57] Jill: And we will catch you back here tomorrow. Thank you so much for listening and until then, keep the flame alive.