We’re on a boat! Not really, but we’re talking sailing this week. Americans Stephanie Roble and Maggie Shea join us to talk about sailing and their event in the skiff category: 49er FX. Stephanie and Maggie explain how the Olympic 49er FX class works, what the water in Tokyo is like and what it’s like to try to consume five to six liters of water a day in order to stay hydrated enough to be competitive.
Speaking of sailing, we look back at the sailing competition in our Atlanta 1996 moment. This year marks the 25th anniversary of these Olympics, and all year long, we’re looking at stories from these Games. If you want to talk about a city going all out to make the sport of sailing an experience to remember, talk about Savannah.
What are our TKFLASTANIs up to this week?
- Laura Wilkinson had a nice write up in the Miami Herald.
- Josh Williamson
- Clare Egan
- Erin Jackson, who was featured on Forbes.com.
- Andrew Maraniss (affiliate link)
- Kelly Claes
We also have Games Updates from Tokyo 2020, Beijing 2022 and Milano Cortina 2026. Check out Milan-Cortina’s logo competition and join its fan team at its website.
And it’s time for another International Olympic Committee Session meeting, so we have a report on the first day of proceedings (and Zoom rooms).
Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive!
Photo courtesy of Roble/Shea Sailing.
TRANSCRIPT
Note: This is an uncorrected machine-generated transcript and may contain errors. Please check its accuracy against the audio. Do not quote from the transcript; use the audio as the record of note.
179-Stephanie Roble on Maggie Shea on 49er FX Sailing
Maggie Shea: [00:00:00] You just don’t accept. Good. You know, you always okay. It can always be better. It can always be better
Theme Music
Jill Jaracz: Hello. Fans of TKFLASTAN and welcome to another episode of Keep the Flame Alive, the podcast for fans of the Olympics in Paralympics. I am your host. Jill. Jaracz joined as always by my lovely co-host Alison Brown, Alison.
Hello, how are you today?
Alison Brown: Hello. I feel like I should say something nice about TBach.
Jill Jaracz: Oh, because he got reelect. I am very glad he got reelected because we get to say TBO for four more years,
Alison Brown: it’s just, everybody had such nice things to say about him before they [00:01:00] gave any report or anything. So I feel like before we start the episode, we need to say something nice about Tebo and, and make him a little embarrassed and you know, a little humbled by it.
All.
Jill Jaracz: Exactly. So this week is the IOC Session, which is one of the big meetings of all of the members and they, but they give reports on what’s going on with the different committees in the IOC. And they, they take important votes like this important vote. This time was who was going to be the IOC president.
It was bound to be TBach because he was running unopposed. So he will have a four year term that will end in 2025.
Alison Brown: And then everybody proceeds to tell him why he’s so wonderful. And they’re so happy he was reelected.
Jill Jaracz: Exactly. And the agenda. And then they moved on to passing, uh, the final report of agenda 2020.
And then there was another round of how wonderful this was.
Alison Brown: Yeah. So not much substance today, but the next couple days.
Jill Jaracz: Right.
Alison Brown: You should see a little bit, a little [00:02:00] bit more substance from the IOC meeting. We can we’ll we’ll chit chat about that next week.
Jill Jaracz: Okay. I’m looking forward to it.
Alison Brown: and we get to see everybody’s room on zoom.
Jill Jaracz: That’s probably the best part
Alison Brown: probably certainly for today. It was
Jill Jaracz: exactly. Okay. Hey, I’m loving your audio quality.
Alison Brown: Don’t I sound awesome.
Jill Jaracz: You do sound awesome. You know why listeners. Our patrons helped us get some new audio equipment, which is just in time because Alison was taping her microphone together the last few weeks.
and it was, it was pretty desperate.
Alison Brown: It was, and we don’t mean taping like, oh, she’s recording. No, I actually had like blue sticky tape. Wrapped around it like a nerds glasses.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah, it was, it was pretty rough, but thankfully your patrons helped fund some new equipment for us. So we are good to go for a long time.
We really appreciate that and you can become a patron and make this show special patrons, keep the show [00:03:00] going and they get special benefits for doing so, including exclusive episodes. So you can join today at patreon.com/flame live pod.
Interview with Sailors Stephanie Roble and Maggie Shea
Alison Brown: Today, we’ve got a long show for you if you haven’t noticed, because we had a
Jill Jaracz: fantastic interview with a couple of sailors.
We talked with Americans, Stephanie, Rob, and Maggie SHA. They compete for the USA in the 40 Niner FX team boat, and they punched their ticket to Tokyo by winning bronze at the 20 20 40 Niner FX world championships. We talked with them about how their sport works and just a note of clarification, cuz it it’s not super clear right away.
But Maggie is the first sailor that talks with us. Take a listen.
Alison Brown: Maggie and, uh, Stephanie, thank you so much for being on the show.
Jill Jaracz: We have a lot of questions about sailing because it’s kind of a black hole in our knowledge of Olympic sports. So tell us what kind of boat is the 40 Niner FX and how it differs from a 40 Niner.[00:04:00]
Maggie Shea: Well, first of all, thanks for having us. We’re really excited to share more about sailing and we appreciate your interest in the boats. Um, we sail the 40 Niner FX, which stands for 4.9 meters. So it’s about 15 feet long, maybe 16 feet long. The FX means that it’s got a fractional mask. So we have the same boat.
Hu as the boys, like the platform we actually sail on is the same, but the tall stick that goes up in the air that holds our sales up, which we call them mast, uh, is shorter. And it’s a smaller sale area percentage based on, you know, females generally having smaller body weights. So the ideal weight is a smaller combined body weight for the two women.
Whereas the boys is a little bit higher,
Alison Brown: is that regulated the weight of the boat and the weight of the sailors.
Maggie Shea: The weight of the boat is closely regulated. The weight of the sailors is not, and it’s been a funny trend in our class, usually. Boats. After several years of sailing, the boat will, the class will sort of figure out, okay, this is the ideal weight [00:05:00] to sail the boat and our class.
We started sailing thinking it would get lighter and it’s actually gotten heavier and heavier. So S Steph and I have been on a bulking program, which we can’t complain about, but we’ve, um, gained about 12 pounds, each 10 to 12 pounds each, um, over the last year and a half, because the class just keeps getting heavier and heavier and we found it’s actually more competitive.
So that’s been a fun game. Stuff gets a lot of hand me downs from me and I get to go shopping and yeah,
Jill Jaracz: well, Alison, I think we found our sport.
Alison Brown: So, cause I, I do have gained 12 pounds in last year.
Maggie Shea: Nice. I think a lot of people have, it’s a trend.
Jill Jaracz: What is it about a heavier body that makes it easier, better to sail the boat?
Stephanie Roble: So our boat is built for, for speed and for planning. And we start, the boat starts planning and conditions like eight to 10 knots of wind speed. Once you’re in that wind speed, you want to be able to carry as much power as you can on the [00:06:00] boat. And so we, if you’re heavier body weight, you can carry more power to just get through the waves or whatever.
So powerful setup is usually faster. Um, but also it’s just, yeah, it allows us to have more riding moment with our weight as well. So yeah, more power is faster, basically. Um,
Alison Brown: what’s planning.
Stephanie Roble: Um, so planning is when the boat wants to like lift up kind of out of the water. Um, Maggie, maybe you have a better definition for this than me.
Maggie Shea: Um, you see motorboats do it a lot where motorboats will start accelerating and the front will kind of stick up out of the water and then they go faster and faster and faster, and then it kind of levels out. That means most of the boat is actually up on top of the water because it’s reached a certain speed based on the design of the boat.
Alison Brown: And that’s good.
Maggie Shea: Yes, that’s good. Okay. You know what know in your car, like you drive over a puddle and, and your tires and you’re going too fast and your tires are like hydroplaning,
Alison Brown: hydroplaning. Oh, okay. Yeah. That makes sense.
Maggie Shea: That’s kinda you on boat. Yeah. We try to get to a point where the boat is like, mostly on top of the waves instead of [00:07:00] pushing through it.
If you’re, if you’re pushing water, you’re in, what’s called displacement mode and you’re displacing the water. And then as soon as you’re planting, you’re really on top of the water. And then the next evolution of that is foiling, which a lot of boats do nowadays that you’ve seen those boats that are going in the water, but they’re totally above the water.
That’s
Jill Jaracz: yeah. It’s like some star wars stuff.
Maggie Shea: right. Yeah. They look really, that’s all foiling. And that, those, um, the blades, which are the big, uh, boards, basically they’re fiberglass boards that go or carbon on our boat fiberglass, uh, they go into the water and they basically counteract the writing moment.
Step is talking much is your body weight and our, on our boat, you can plane. So the boat gets up and goes just above the water. And then hydrofoiling would be as if it. Was to pick you up outta the water, completely our boat doesn’t hydrofoil. Uh, but we do plane like Seth was talking about.
Jill Jaracz: And when you get to that cleaning stage, is that kind of, one of those magical moments where you just kind of woosh and take off, been watching a lot of FX over the last couple of days and it’s just now it’s [00:08:00] kind of like, oh man, lean one.
I think that would be hard, but two, it, it looks like when you’re all lean back and going just on top of the water, it looks like it’s so much fun.
Stephanie Roble: Yeah, it definitely is. It’s a, it’s a really fun boat to sail and especially in some certain conditions when it’s just like flat water and 12 to 15 knots of wind, like the boat just sails so beautifully and so fast.
And it’s really fun all around the course. Steph is the speed demon and I’m the risk
Maggie Shea: averse one . So it’s kind of a fun dynamic on board. Like, I mean, even when we’re driving on the highway, I’ll go 55 miles an hour and Steph goes 80 miles an hour, you know, and, and we’re always kind of pushing back on each other in that way.
And it’s a good team dynamic when we’re sailing step is the fearless one. Who’s just sends it and wants to get the boat to go 20 miles an hour. Uh, and I’ll be like, oh, oh, do you see that wave? Do you see that wave? You know, and, and it’s a pretty important dynamic that one person’s kind of holding back and the other one’s pushing really hard, but we’ve been having fun lately [00:09:00] trying to go, okay, we’re going 19 miles an hour.
Let’s try to go 20. Let’s try to go 21, you know, and, uh, push our comfort zones and, and get out outside of our comfort zones and, um, find that extra bit of speed. Stuff’s really good at it.
Jill Jaracz: Do you have like gauges on the boat that you can see how fast you’re going?
Stephanie Roble: While we’re racing. We don’t have, we don’t have that.
We we’re only allowed to use a compass and a watch for electronics on the boat and the watch can’t have any GPS functions and they actually check for that because, you know, garments and GPS watches are so popular now, but we’re not allowed to use them. Um, however, during training we do Inc incorporate GPS technology or something to help us with speed.
Um, and we have, we’ve really been working a lot on our, on our technology program. Recently, we’ve been learning a ton from incorporating new technology. It’s, it’s been a huge game changer within the sport, not only in our class, but multiple different classes. And, um, it’s just amazing what the feedback that we can get on board when we have [00:10:00] these, these instruments on board with us.
Jill Jaracz: So what is the boat made out of
Stephanie Roble: fiberglas.
Jill Jaracz: Okay. And it, how many sales? Cause sometimes there’s a couple, sometimes there’s more.
Maggie Shea: Yeah. there are three sales. The big one is called the main sale. The small one is called the jib. I have no idea why on big boats you would call it the head sale, cuz it’s like on the front of the boat.
Uh, and then the, the big sale that we only put up when, when we’re sailing in the same direction as the wind is blowing. So we call that downwind when we’re sail downwind, we put the Spinnaker up.
Jill Jaracz: Okay.
Maggie Shea: So it’s two or three. If you’re going into the direction of the wind, you only have two sales up. If you’re going with the wind, you’ve got three sales up.
Jill Jaracz: And what is the sale made out of? Are they all made out of the same thing?
Maggie Shea: Nope. The C through sales are made out of Mylar. Um, and it’s basically like a really thin plastic and step I’m spacing. Is it Dacron? The spinach material Dacron is it’s yeah. Super thin Dacron.
Alison Brown: So it’s stretchy. It’s it’s [00:11:00] it’s in the same category as Lyra Dacron is it’s that sort of stretchy manmade material.
Maggie Shea: Yeah. Yeah. It’s, uh, it’s not exactly stretchy and actually the sales stretch out with age. And so if they’re stretching out too much, then they’re not really holding their shape and they get slow. It’s they’re not as fast. So you’ve gotta watch how many hours you put on a sale, because they can either stretch out and not hold their shape, or they can shrink and get too small.
So the sun is not a friend to sales, you know, in terms of aging, but the big, the big colorful ones, you see, those are called spinnakers and they’re made of a light material. And, and that basically that sales design, just to catch the wind and push you down, wind with the wind, whereas the Mylar sales, the sea through plasticy looking ones help you go upwind.
And so they’re designed a little bit more efficiently.
Alison Brown: So one of the choices you’re making is how much, you know, whether you’re putting that sale up, not putting that sale up the positioning, all those elements with the sale itself.
Maggie Shea: Yeah, on a, on a big boat, you know, like a 40 or 50 or 60 foot boat, [00:12:00] you would have several like an inventory sales and you’d choose which one you put up and the size and the, or the shape and the weight of the material would be based on the wind strength on our boat.
All those decisions are made for us, which is kind of nice. It’s a one design boat. So we actually can only sail an entire GATA with one main sale, one jib and one Spinnaker. And they all have to be made by the same sale maker in Sri Lanka. And you have to buy it, you know, with a certified sticker and badge and everything on it.
Sometimes they’ll measure it in check all the numbers, sale numbers to make sure that you don’t have any special cut sale. Um, and it takes out, you know, the whole design element of the sales. So we’re kind of lucky to sail this one design. It’s basically like a box rule for like racing, you know, but the idea is that you get equipment supplied from the very specific distributors our boats are made in New Zealand is one distributor or, uh, boat, boat, builder, and.
In the UK is the other boat builder. And then our sales and our masks are made in Sri Lanka. [00:13:00] And then you’ve got dealers all over the world, but those are the only places you can buy the boats and the sales and the spars from.
Stephanie Roble: Yeah. And one, one cool thing about the one design racing is that in theory, all the equipment is the same.
Um, like Maggie said, it’s this box rule that so that it really puts performance on the sailors. You know, it’s not necessarily an arms race to who can get better equipment and more equipment. It’s like, it’s really on us as the athletes and sailors to sail this equipment that the person next to you and the person next to them has the same equipment.
And it’s about who can read the win better, who can make a better game plan, who can execute better boat handling, um, all around the race course.
Jill Jaracz: So on the boat, you have two different roles.
Stephanie Roble: Yes.
Jill Jaracz: Correct. One of you as a crew and one is a skipper. Correct. So tell us what the differences between those are and, and who does.
Stephanie Roble: So Maggie’s the crew and I’m the skipper, which basically means Maggie does all the hard work and [00:14:00] I don’t do anything. um, I just drive the boat. Um, yeah, Maggie has the big guns and does all the hard work, but in all seriousness, it is two very different roles. I, I drive the boat around the race course and I’m kind of making decisions based on like what I’m seeing around the course, how, you know, tactical decisions that we wanna make based on, um, what we know about the wind and what boats are doing and where we are in the course and what position we’re in, in the fleet.
Whereas Maggie is make, she’s really focused on the speed of the boat. I mean, she’s reading the wind. That’s immediately in front of us. She trims the main sail upwind and I drive and then downwind, I have the main sail to where she has the Spinnaker. So she hoist the sails and takes the, takes the Spinnaker down.
And then yeah, trims the Spinnaker downwind as well. So she’s really focused on, on those. Sales around the race course and making sure that we’re going really fast. Um, and then she also gives input on our compass bearing and, and any sort of [00:15:00] tactical situations that she’s seeing, um, ahead of her as well.
Do you have anything to add into that Maggie yeah.
Maggie Shea: That you summed it ups the driver and people will call me the crew or the trimmer. So I’m trimming the sales and both of our jobs are just totally based on reading what the wind is doing and guessing what it’s gonna do next. So step has to look up the course, the race course and decide where is the most amount of wind and basically get us to that as part of the race course.
And, and that’s her job. It’s pretty tactical and strategic. Like she has to be eyes outta the boat and looking around finding the next little bits of wind. Um, the other thing that is important for both of us is that the wind might blow from one direction generally, but it varies slightly or a lot, you know, some days it’s like.
Blowing from a range of 30 degrees, you know, and, and you can feel those days when it’s just like the wind is confused and it’s coming from all different directions and it’s gusty and blustery and, um, it’s inconsistent. And some days it’s very consistent. And [00:16:00] as sailors, we need to figure out what’s that pattern, you know, is it, is it changing in one pattern in one direction or is it changing randomly and how to take advantage of it?
Because we can’t sail directly into where the wind is coming from. We have to tack back and forth is what we call it. Like basically turn back and forth. And so you, you gain an advantage by being on the tack. That’s slightly closer to where the wind’s coming from. So Steph has to figure out how to put us on that favored, tack, you know, pointing closer to the wind for a longer period of time.
And then I have to figure out how to adjust the sales on the boat. Um, I’m constantly adjusting the sales shapes and positions like the angles that they are to the wind with trimming, um, to make the boat go as fast as possible. Does that all make sense? Is it?
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. Yeah, it does. So how is the course set up and what do you have to do?
Cause I, I look at some of these races and I see boats just go all over the place in align in lines, but they’re all over the place.
Stephanie Roble: Yeah. I’d say that. That’s one thing with, with our classes that, because we’re sailing at [00:17:00] such high speeds and we sail very wide angles to the wind upwind, we do tend to like get really far away from each other.
So it seems like we’re very scattered, which makes managing the angles between boats very hard and like how you’re going to like come back together with the other boats at the top of the course. But our course is pretty simple. Um, it’s just a starting line. Which is between like a race committee, boat and a buoy at the other end or another race committee boat.
And then we have the Windward mark, which is the up wind mark. And then we have the lured marks, which is, um, usually set just above the starting line. And we basically sail two lap race course. So we start, we go up to the Windward mark. We go down to the lurid marks, which we also call the gate because there’s two of them and you choose which one you want to round.
And then we go back upwind to the Winward mark and then sail downwind through the finish line. So it’s just, just a two lap course,
Jill Jaracz: but you could choose which direction you go, your lap in,
Stephanie Roble: um,
Jill Jaracz: or no. Do you all have to go around? Like if, if I have to [00:18:00] put it on land for a second, do y’all go counterclockwise or do you go clockwise or do you get to choose counterclockwise or clockwise?
Stephanie Roble: So we go at the Windward mark. We make a left turn around it. And then at the Bo the lured mark or the gate, if there’s one mark, then we make a left turn around that. If there’s two marks, we have the gate, you can go either left turn or right turn. But the win mark is always a left turn. And that’s because of the way that the rules are the right of way rules are set up between boats.
It makes the roundings the safest.
Alison Brown: So how physically big are these course? You know, how far apart are those marks?
Maggie Shea: About a mile?
Stephanie Roble: Yeah, the, the
Maggie Shea: race lasts 30 minutes. Usually that’s a target time for our boat because it’s a very physical boat and you basically wanna do like short bursts of tons of energy, like interval training, you know, for this, like this format racing.
And so it’s about two, 10 minute legs and two, five minute legs. [00:19:00] So it takes about 10 minutes to get to the winter mark stuff. We’re talking about five minutes to get downwind, 10 minutes to get back up five more minutes, get downwind.
Alison Brown: So in the sailing world, this is more sprint than marathon.
Maggie Shea: Exactly. Yes, totally.
The marathon racers are. Um, much bigger course, their races can last like over an hour and they train for more endurance. You know, their heart rate will be one 20 to one 30 the whole time. Their muscles have to be more yeah. Built for endurance. Whereas we are like short explosions of power.
Alison Brown: Do people ever get just totally blown off the course just like lost,
Maggie Shea: not necessarily lost.
I mean like maybe a handful of times in our, in the 15 years that step and I have like sailed together with, or against each other, like weird situations. One time we were saying Boston fog rolled in and you couldn’t see any other boats, you know, like just, it’s kind of a mistake. Honestly, if that happens, it’s kind of the race committee’s fault.
If they have you out racing and conditions that are, it’s not their fault, but you know, if they’re holding a race and that’s in the forecast, then it’s a mistake. You know, not on our race courses, we’re all pretty close together. Our [00:20:00] boats do wipe out. You know, we, we capsize a lot, which is when you see a boat flip upside down.
And that’s just mainly because the boats really high performance boat, it’s really difficult to sail in a lot of Condit. So step and I laugh sometimes that we train, like our training is we basically will spend in entire days working on like the building blocks, you know, like the, the basic maneuvers, because it’s important to master the basic maneuvers obviously, but also because in certain conditions they can be really challenging to execute.
Uh, so sometimes it’ll be really windy day and we’ll go out and practice jiving, which is just turning and, uh, turning down wind and we’ll laugh like, okay, we nailed three out of five jives today, you know? Woohoo. And, and it’s, we kinda laugh, like we’re going to the Olympics, you know, like, that’s, that’s the fleet, like, it’s that challenging boat that like some days you can’t jive, you know, and if it’s really windy and extreme conditions, or, yeah, it’s just a very like humbling boat, because it can be so challenging to sail.
Alison Brown: So if you capsize, how much danger are you really in
Stephanie Roble: it’s yeah, we. Luckily, [00:21:00] knock on wood, have not been in a dangerous situation. And you know, when it’s coming too, like you kind of brace for impact. And, you know, we have like on our team, we, um, we kind of have our protocol for like, when it does happen and based on how it happens, we have certain jobs or certain things we need to do to get the boat back up.
Right. But you know, that being said, like, we have a coach boat out there with us all the time and then there’s safety boats, and there’s tons of coaches around. So if anything were to happen, we’re able to like wave someone down pretty easily. But yeah, it’s, it’s, like I said, we have our protocols for what hap for what we need to do if, or when it happens.
But we also like in racing, if we know it’s extreme, those extreme conditions like Maggie was talking about, we do have like kind of quote unquote, like safety maneuver. So if we’re. Winning the race. And we only have to make one more job into the finish line. We’re like, okay, deep breath, safety maneuver. We just have to cross the finish line here.
Cuz obviously we try to avoid capsizing at all costs.
Jill Jaracz: [00:22:00] right. Because how long does it take you to get the boat back up and back, back to racing?
Stephanie Roble: Um, based on like the conditions and then also like the way that we capsize, like if we do it downwind and which is the most common way to capsize, you have to get the Spinnaker in and like the wind will like blow the boat over.
So it’s actually totally capsized like the masses underneath the water, um, which we call turtle the boat. So he turtle that. It takes a long time. I have to like hang onto Maggie and we have to create a bunch of weight to like bring the mass back up underneath the water and it can, it can take like, I don’t know between five and 10 minutes maybe.
Okay.
Maggie Shea: There are like really extreme days where capsizing is part of it, you know? And if you don’t capsize, you’ll be in the top. If you do capsize, you could still be in top 10. Uh, and that’s like the really most extreme conditions that we race in when the waves are really big. And there’s a lot of wind in this fleet.
Capsizing is just part of it. So you do learn these protocols. I would [00:23:00] say we’re not like at grave danger, you know, or risk of like in generally speaking, it’s pretty safe. Uh, we do get minor injuries a lot though, you know, like that’s, you do get pretty thrown around the boat, but that’s part of it. And we wear thick wetsuits and helmets and we have one,
Jill Jaracz: no, I I’m a big fan of by Athlon.
And the thing about by Athlon is you never know who’s gonna win. And that seems to be what sailing is like on a, you never know who’s going to win on a given day. And so since you all have the same type of boat or the, you know, the same manufactured boat, it really is skill and anybody could be on top of the podium.
Stephanie Roble: Yeah, for sure. It’s, it’s a sport that’s different day to day. You know, we can show up for racing one day and have massive waves and 20 to 25 knots of breeze. And then that front passes and the next day we. Five knots of breeze and it’s flat water. It’s a totally different sailing condition. So one thing that we really try to focus on is being well rounded in all those conditions, because maybe one team is really, really [00:24:00] good in, in windy conditions, but they’re not as faster.
Good. And in light air conditions. So, you know, at, at the Olympics, we can expect to see anything with the conditions. And so we’re really focusing on trying to be well rounded with our skills in all of those conditions.
Jill Jaracz: Talking about, uh, Tokyo. Uh, one thing I read was you were training in Miami for a while.
Partially the humidity of Miami was a way to help you with the humidity in Tokyo. What does humidity do to you, especially if you’re wearing a big wetsuit,
Maggie Shea: the humidity makes your day terrible. No but we’re, we’re quite lucky because we can just jump in the water between races. Um, Miami was really great training for Japan because both are.
Such extreme conditions like, so, so hot, a hundred, 510 degree, um, heat index with like 90% humidity, really strong UV index. So that’s terrible. We, you know, it, it really affects you on land. When we’re in the boat park, generally our boat parks are like [00:25:00] parking lots or concrete, you know, then you gotta do a bunch of boat work bent over this boat and it’s super hot or in your container, that is just like an Inferno.
And so, yeah, it was great to do some training. We have, we wear like ice vests on shore. Um, when we finish races because it’s so hot and we’re sweating so much, like you almost can’t consume enough water throughout the day to keep up with like how much you’re sweating. And I think that’s pretty exaggerated and humidity.
When we have been there in the past, you know, we’ve done some like hydration testing and we figured out some days you need like six to eight liters of water. Which just takes so long to actually physically drink that much water , you know, um, and you have to just base it out, but we finish races and we take big blocks of ice and shove it down our gear, you know, and, and just try to take those 10 or 15 minutes between races to get your body temperature down, hydrate as fast as possible with as much electrolytes powder as you can stand, you know, and go for it again.
Some teams had like, they made they’d makeshift ice baths and like garbage bins. [00:26:00] everyone is like, whatever you can do, you know, there’s step loves to make fun of me when I put my ice vest on and I’ve got a big brimed hat on and I like Spanx on, you know, and I’m like, I’m ready and have just smeared, zinc, oxide over my face.
But the, the thread is real. Like there, a lot of people got heat stroke in the first couple forgot as we did there. And yeah, you really have to manage it.
Stephanie Roble: Gear wise, we do have like different gear for different conditions. Like, you know, if it’s really cold and really windy, we have super thick, wet suits that have knee pads and shin pads and are reinforced in certain areas.
And then like for lighter air, we have like, or hot conditions or lighter air. We have like lighter weight wet suits that maybe just have like knee pads, light, lighter weight, knee pads built into them. And we just wear like a like red top as opposed to wetsuit top. And so we do have like, obviously different gear that we wear.
And, but one thing that we do always have to have on is our harness and our life jacket. So in those extreme conditions, it does get pretty hot. So that’s why [00:27:00] Maggie was saying, you know, between races, like your core temperature is just like out of control from that race. You really try to like, get your, your core temperature down from having your life jacket and harness on.
So you gotta get the ice block system has been working pretty well for us.
Alison Brown: so wind speed. The amount of waves, but does the water temperature make a difference to how fast you can go?
Maggie Shea: No, the water temperature doesn’t um, it really changes like how painful it is when the water hits your face.
Stephanie Roble: luckily I have Maggie to block the waves for me.
Maggie Shea: yeah, some really cool days. I can tell she’s like tucking behind me. I’m like, yeah. Okay. Back there, you know but, um, we joked that in San Francisco bay, the water’s so cold, it’s like ice daggers, you know, it just really hurts. Um, and then in Japan, when it’s so hot, you’re like, please, please spray me. You know, you like want it to get, you wanna be wet.
The, so the, the water temperature doesn’t affect that as much, but the, um, air temperature affects like the density of the air. So you, it feels a little different to sail in a, in a venue where the puffs are very cold [00:28:00] and it’s like, it hits harder, you know? Whereas like Miami is very like nice sailing.
Generally. It’s very pleasant in Miami. It’s quite nice. It’s like light air, warm air, warm air. So temperature wise, that’s a big factor.
Alison Brown: How much have you been able to sail. In Japan, just previously in your careers and, and obviously not leading up to Tokyo,
Stephanie Roble: we’ve done what four or five trips there, four trips, um, over the last three years.
Um, so we’ve spent a good bit of time there and it’s important that we spend time there during like a similar time to the Olympics, because if you know, we’ll have certain conditions at that time of year. Whereas like if you were to go in the fall, like in October, you’d have different conditions. That being said, it’s still nice to go and get the experience of actually being there because even on shore, it’s such a different place.
And, you know, getting used to, you know, the logistics on shore and even the different food is, is really important. So we’ve [00:29:00] been there enough times to feel really comfortable in the venue, um, on and off the water.
Alison Brown: How are people able? Because when I know Jill was saying she was watching, I was watching some as well, and obviously there’s the safety boats and, and the, the officials boats.
But are there any spectator boats out there?
Maggie Shea: Occasionally? Yeah. Um, the best sailing coverage is the live like drone coverage or onboard live cams. Those are really cool to watch. Spectator boats are very kind of rare at the Olympic level, regardless, like sometimes the professional regardless will have a bigger spectator build out, but, um, we generally race like pretty close to shore, but it, it would be very hard to see from a far distance what’s actually going on.
Alison Brown: So when we’re watching it on television and we’re watching the drones, how can we tell? I mean, it’s sometimes hard to tell who’s in the lead, you know, and how, how to watch a race is, is a little tricky, cuz it’s not just, you know, like. The a hundred yard dash. Oh, the person who crossed the line first, because there [00:30:00] isn’t a set lane.
Stephanie Roble: Yeah, for sure. And there’s so much changing all the time. You know, the wind changes a little bit and you can go from looking really bad in the race to looking really, really good. So it, that, and it’s, so sometimes for us, it’s really hard to tell who’s winning and you know, when it’s that kind of day, we just have to focus on what we sailing.
What we think is our shortest course to the mark and trying to sail on the most amount of wind as possible. Yeah. To answer your question, it is really hard. to be
Maggie Shea: one rule of thumb that you can usually use, like on the first leg, which is upwind. So we’re going toward the direction of where the wind is coming from boats that are basically like blocking other boats from the wind, generally have an advantage.
So people, when you see two boats and if one is closer to where the wind is coming from and the boat behind. Or what we call it to lured. So like further away from where the wind is coming from, you know, if, if their wind is basically being [00:31:00] obstructed by the boat in front, then that’s a big disadvantage.
So that’s one thing to look for. I dunno if that’s helpful. if that’s what you might.
Alison Brown: It absolutely is. What about the coverage of sailing bothers you as the athletes in the, in the, in the sport?
Stephanie Roble: Well, I think first of all, like the coverage has gotten so much better over the last few years that the, I actually think we should take a moment to like, praise that because the coverage has gotten so much better.
And it’s actually really cool for us as athletes, because after an event, we’ll go back and watch a lot of the footage and like getting that drone perspective is actually really cool. We can learn a lot about our tactics and strategy and, um, what other competitors are doing. So that’s pretty cool.
Alison Brown: Or even what you wish was different, what you would like to see what you think.
People, because a lot of people don’t, you know, like we were saying, don’t watch sailing because they don’t show it. And when they do show it, it’s. Confusing as to what’s happening. So what do you think could be to, to draw more people into it?
Maggie Shea: I think the science behind ceiling is really cool. Um, [00:32:00] and, and people actually like they know a lot more about ceiling than they think they do.
You know, when you, when you start comparing sales to airplane wings, people are like, oh yeah, I get that. Okay. I think if people, if yeah, if we could promote like a short explanation of the science behind sailing, I think it could help people understand a little more of what they’re looking at, maybe, but maybe that’s just boring.
I don’t know. I find that so cool. But I don’t know. Maybe it would be like, uh, this is, this sport seems even more complicated than we thought and it would scare them away. I’m not sure.
Jill Jaracz: well, it’s interesting how much science is involved with sport and how many, like angles you have to measure and for you measuring the wind and know, knowing that stuff.
And I, I think it’s fascinating.
Maggie Shea: Totally. Yeah. And Ste and I, we love to. Take a really academic approach to our campaign. So we love when a coach is like, okay, we’re gonna sit down and have a debrief and teach a lesson. And then we cherish our notebooks and our call books and our spreadsheets and our game plans and our [00:33:00] playbooks, you know, like all those things are, we’re very, uh, we like taking an academic approach to it.
So we, we find that stuff. We love geeking out on that stuff.
Jill Jaracz: So in turn terms of game plan, do you build different game plans for different weather situations?
Stephanie Roble: Yeah, for sure. So our process each day is to on a racing day will receive a forecast from a professional meteorologist and then our coach and well, our coach and Maggie will read it.
I don’t, I’m Maggie fan of reading it. I like to get the, the cliff notes version from the coach and Maggie then after the forecast is red, then we actually get on the water and we say like, okay, are we seeing what they forecasted? Okay. Like, Yes or no. And then we also like take into account, like, okay, what type of day is it?
Is it a day where the wind is just like coming from the open ocean, we call that maybe like a sea breeze day and the wind has certain characteristics on that type of day, or is the wind like coming over the land where you have like super sh the wind is like really [00:34:00] shifty and changing a lot in velocity and changing a lot in angle.
So those are two totally different types of days. And then that changes our tactics and our strategy and how we set up the boat and all sorts of things. So we definitely have like different plays and different moves for those different conditions.
Jill Jaracz: Maggie, I mean, when you look at the weather report, what excites you about that
Maggie Shea: wind strength can excite me for sure.
If I see a windy day, I’m like it’s on, it’s gonna be a big one. It’s important as a crew. Also to just have an idea of how physical the day’s gonna be, because I might require a lot more calories or a lot more water, or, you know, those are pretty basic, a lot more gear if it’s gonna be cold, you know, that that’s all pretty like basic on forecast.
Cool thing about forecast is like you basically conduct a scientific method every day. You know, you have this forecast, which is a hypothesis and it’s someone saying, Hey, high, high confidence, low confidence, average, you know, they kind of tell you how sure they are based on all the different models they look at and they have this guess of what’s gonna [00:35:00] happen.
Then you go out sailing and it’s just a race to see who can make more observations about the race course. Cuz like step said, it’s just never the same day to day. No two race courses are ever identical. You know, it’s never consistent wind all the time. Exactly the same. Sometimes the patterns will be similar.
You’ll get used to like sailing in that venue. You have to race to that wall, you know, and that, and the patterns can be similar, you know, and the geographic features can have the same impact on the wind, in different race courses, but they’re really never, ever, ever the same. So you go out throughout the day and you’re just gathering data.
Right. Okay. We thought the wind was gonna shift right at 10 o’clock. We think that’s gonna happen. Uh, 10 o’clock rolls on. Did that happen? Yes or no, you know, and yes. Okay. Then, then our confidence in the next thing that the forecast mentioned is higher. Uh, and if not, it’s lower, you know, so we’re constantly assessing, like, this is what we think is gonna happen.
Did that happen? Yes or no, gather that piece of data and helps us make the next decision. Even better. Some days we say you have to have a short memory, you know, like it’s, it’s anyone’s game. The forecast was [00:36:00] totally weird or, or we get out there and not at all, what it.
Stephanie Roble: Rip it up and throw it out.
Maggie Shea: Yeah.
Just forget what you read completely. And we’ll remind each other, have a short memory, cuz we’ll say, okay, last leg, that side gained. And then that side gained and then unclear what happened after that, you know? And then we just say, okay, we gotta forget about whatever’s happened in the past stuff has to look up the course, see what she sees, trust her gut and sail to that one.
So the, yeah, the, the forecast is cool in the sense of, it’s just a guess what’s gonna happen. But the strategy that we tweak throughout the day is, uh, is another really interesting part of sailing. I think.
Alison Brown: How are you able to communicate during the race? Cause I would imagine it’s very loud.
Stephanie Roble: It’s not like super loud, but it, like, I think clear something we focus on is super clear communication.
We’re actually like standing like literally right next to each other. Like I could whisper in Maggie’s ear if I wanted to and like downwind, we actually like, basically like, hold hands sometimes when it’s really wavy. Um, so we’re we spend a lot of time, like really [00:37:00] close to each other.
Maggie Shea: Yeah. Did you get new detergent?
I’m like, come on how you know that much we’re right next to each other. Yeah.
Stephanie Roble: Sometimes like Maggie has bad breath or something. I’m like, oh,
Maggie Shea: I would never have
Stephanie Roble: no, I’m kidding.
Maggie Shea: It’s from all the shop blocks I eat stuff can like take the shop blocks and go gels and everything. She’s like, what’s that? So talking isn’t hard.
I would say like when my heart rate gets up, I mumble and stuff is really good at deciphering Maggie mumble, you know? So that’s one thing. Like when we’ve had coaches, they put audio recorders in our life jackets to. So that we can improve our communication sometimes. I’m sure they’re like, we have no idea what Maggie said all day.
And stuff’s like, yeah, I did. I got it. You know? And, uh, so they, the audio recorder almost always goes on Steph now, cuz they gave up on deciphering me my mumble. But um, Steph Steph gets it
Stephanie Roble: sometimes
Maggie Shea: there’s, it’s probably a very small vocabulary words we use. You know, if you, if you wrote down all the words we use during a race, it’s probably like less than a hundred words because you [00:38:00] get so used to seeing the same situations that the SA and you have to use the same words every time.
So we debrief that a lot. You know, if I say one thing or Steph says one thing like calls out play and I do the opposite, you know, that’s uh, that’s not fast. So, um, we, we talk a lot about what those short little phrases mean.
Stephanie Roble: Mm-hmm .
Maggie Shea: We communicate with other boats. We actually, our coach told us recently that , I was shouting in another boat because some rules require you to shout and like kind of alert the other boats.
Um, and then some situations from a, from a self-preservation standpoint require you to shout, you know, when boats are converging quickly and you’re not sure what they’re going to do. And it was funny. Cause our coach was like, I have no idea what you’re yelling about to that vote and, and, and languages come into it.
You know, it’s all we’re saying, English is the, the official language of sailing. But if I’m not clear in what I’m saying in English, or if, uh, heart rates are high and boats are converging at fast speeds, like you have to make sure your point gets across. And so she was saying, Hey, say this one thing instead of that, cuz that really makes a point and that doesn’t.
So I think that’s [00:39:00] an interesting part of it. When,
Jill Jaracz: when you talk about your heart rate, getting high, what numbers are we talking about?
Maggie Shea: My heart rate I’ll reach my max, uh, 1 95 sometimes on the boat. Um, if it, especially if it’s really a physical day, but over the course of a race, it’ll probably average one 60.
Um, and then spike, when we do a lot of maneuver. Steph has a different day. I think
Stephanie Roble: no comment. No. Um, um, I usually, I average like one 10 to one 20 during racing, like around the, around the marks. Um, maybe 1 40, 1 50, if we’re yelling at another boat or things are really intense, like maybe one 60. Um, yeah. I have a very different day on the boat than Maggie does.
Alison Brown: so is your off boat training then? Very different.
Stephanie Roble: Yeah.
Maggie Shea: Yeah. And it’s a big reason why our jobs are so different. You know, when my heart rate’s one 70 for several minutes, uh, and spiking in the one [00:40:00] eighties, one nineties, like I just can’t think as clearly as step, you know, and that’s why our words are really quick and concise.
And sometimes I’ll even communicate that like, Hey, yes, I’m maxed out. You gotta, you have to think for both of us basically is what that means for the next five minutes or two minutes until I recover. You gotta think for both of us. And we, we have a lot of those trade off moments, you know, like, especially steps, really focusing on something driving, she’ll say, okay, uh, no eyes or something.
And that means to me, okay, you look at what that boat’s doing, cuz tactically next move D is determined by when they do that. And so we have a lot of these trade offs where we’ll say, we’ll tell the other person whether you’re thinking clearly or whether you can see well or, um, yeah, so some of it has to do with physicality and then some just, just a job division responsibility.
Alison Brown: So how long were you sailing together before you felt like you would really do well together in races? Like how long does that relationship take?
Stephanie Roble: Uh, we’ve been sailing together since we were in high school. So was that 16, 15, [00:41:00] 16 years ago. And then we’ve been sailing on and off together, um, ever since then and the summer or fall of 2016.
Um, after the Rio. Maggie called me and was like, Hey, like, let’s go, let’s go sail together in this bow. Let’s let’s do this. Obviously it was a lot more complicated than that, but that’s a short version. Um, and it was a no brainer for me to sign up to sail with Maggie. And she’s an amazing crew, an amazing athlete and, and incredibly to determined person, which are obviously all important qualities to have, um, on this campaign trail.
And we, we put in a lot of time together on and off the water. And I would say like, what? So we’ve been sailing together in this boat for four years now. Right. And I don’t, I don’t know. And like, but I guess I’ve just always believed in our team and believed in us. And it’s a matter of, I, I had never sailed the boat before, when we got, when we started sailing together, Maggie had sailed the boat for four years before.
So she obviously came with a lot of [00:42:00] experience and I was like, she was able to teach me a lot. And I was just like trying to keep up with her. So I, you know, there’s a lot of learning going on early on and yeah.
Maggie Shea: I’ll chime in and instead you’re making me blush now you’re thanks for saying the sweet things.
I mean, I, I have a ton of respect and, uh, admiration for step, and I think that’s, you know, one thing at the base, the core of our team is that we have a ton of trust and mutual admiration and, and mutual respect for each other. Um, we do very different jobs on the boat and we, you know, I’ll say, Hey, no one can, no one can drive better than Steph, you know?
And, and there are things that she does that no one else can do. And, uh, that’s a really cool feeling to say with someone. And we also push each other really hard past our limits. We had to stop working out with each other, cuz we were getting too competitive, you know, and, and we would do stupid things. I mean, we love to race each other.
We love everything is so competitive. You know, even like I’ve sent more emails or, you know, in, in a fun way, we’re always competing with everything. Uh, [00:43:00] and, and we have to consciously like kind of cool that down sometimes, you know? Um, and what we really like that because it, it just pushes. We find new limits in ourselves.
And, uh, I really appreciate that about stuff that she’s like, you know, sometimes it’s so irritating. No, I’m kidding, but we’ll finish a day and she’ll be like, but that could be a little bit better. I’m like, oh my gosh, we just made so much progress on this. Can we please just check this box, move on the next thing step’s like, yeah.
But you know, I really think it could still be better. And that’s the quality about her that I think has really carried, you know, that in addition to her work ethic has really helped just drive the team forward because you know, you just don’t accept good. You know, you always, okay. It can always be better.
It can always be better and it can be exhausting, but it’s, uh, it’s a pretty cool quality that has left. I think steps, determination to like continually improve has, has leaves us hungry. You know, we’re like, yeah, that was a good regatta, but we could probably do 20 things differently. So next time, you know, it it’s, um, it’s a funny thing cuz you just never feel like you’re gonna get to the end goal.
And I think that’s a nice [00:44:00] way to keep the focus on the process instead of on the results.
Alison Brown: I’m totally fascinated by pair sports, because it’s such a, an interesting dynamic, because obviously you’re not on your own competing yourself and it’s not a team where you’ve got 6, 10, 12 people. It’s this very intimate pairing, but you’re not individuals.
Right? Totally. You’re always reliant on the other person, but there’s only two of you. So there’s no buffer. There’s no making it simple. And oh, I just won’t deal with her today. I’ll work with everybody else. There’s, it’s just the two of you. And on top of this, you’re alone on a boat in the middle of the sea.
Maggie Shea: Yeah. And like
Alison Brown: really,
Maggie Shea: and travel partners and we’re business partners. You know, we, we share a bank account, we room together. Most of the time we travel, we go crazy with each other sometimes and that team dynamic is probably one thing that we spend half our time. You know, if we, if we think about the amount of time we talk with the sports psychologist or debrief in our debriefs, like we’re debriefing, teamwork and [00:45:00] communication so much of the time.
And we’re really lucky. I mean, we laugh together so much. We love hanging out with each other. We choose to be around each other, which is nice. You know, when usually, you know, if you’re in this kind of an intense relationship, you’re like, I need space, you know, where people kind of frame the rest of their lives to, to have space with each other.
Whereas we both live in Miami, we’ve got similar friends. And so we’re really lucky in that sense, but that’s not to say that it doesn’t get really hard. It gets hard. It gets uncomfortable. Sometimes we do our best work when actually when we’re chafing each other a little bit, , you know, when there’s a little bit of tension and there’s a lot of feedback or maybe, you know, not a lot of feedback, but someone’s wrestling with a new concept and it’s, it gets uncomfortable.
But we spend a lot of time and energy kind of figuring out this dynamic because we learn differently. For example, I, I can hear things and process them pretty. I, I process better that way when I can hear and, and write things down later, and step is much more visual, you know? So even in a debrief, like I’ll rapid fire questions and coaches [00:46:00] will, you know, and step will be.
Preferring a diagram, you know, whereas all a spreadsheet and be like, that doesn’t mean anything to me and step will get it right away, you know? So we have to be sensitive to different learning styles, different, uh, mental coping mechanisms.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah.
Maggie Shea: I’m very like checklist oriented stuff is very to-do list oriented, you know, very different ways of getting things done.
Uh, and that can cause tension obviously, but we put a lot of effort into getting along.
Jill Jaracz: yeah. Do you see different team dynamics in your competitors? Do you see when the teamwork’s not working or, or how that affects their races?
Maggie Shea: Yeah, I mean, I love a good ballpark meltdown.
It’s terrible, but you’re like, woo. There’s some way go going on over there. You know? Uh, no, we’ve all been there.
Stephanie Roble: you can tell like the way, like, sometimes people are like sitting in their boat together, like they’re kind of like on different sides of the boat, not looking at each other and it’s like, you could almost like feel the [00:47:00] awkwardness flying off the boat, whereas like you could see like another team or whatever, like engaging and laughing or whatever.
Like you can, I feel like you can tell a lot, or just like some mornings, like you go down to the boat park and on a race day and it’s you say good morning to someone and they like don’t acknowledge you or whatever. It’s like, okay. Okay.
Maggie Shea: you have a good day.
Stephanie Roble: Yeah.
Maggie Shea: We’ll see.
Stephanie Roble: See you on the race course.
Maggie Shea: yeah.
I think some of those team dynamics are also, um, we learn that culture plays a really big role in what’s the norm team dynamics. And so some of our training partners are from different countries obviously. And, uh, you know, I don’t wanna share some stereotypes, but like, it’s, it’ll be interesting cuz sometimes they’ll say, gosh, you guys are just talking about this for so long.
And I’m like, yeah, we’re Americans. That’s what we do. We talk things out, we talk about it, you know? And then we talk about how we talk about it and uh, Our coach is Italian. And so sometimes she’ll be saying things and she’ll be very expressive. And I’m [00:48:00] like, why are you yelling at me? And she’s like, I’m not yelling.
And I’m okay. That that’s true. She’s not yelling. That’s just kind of the nature of how we communicate is different, you know? And so we’ve learned a lot about different cultures through this lens, you know, the teamwork that we’ve seen, but yeah, it’s a really, it’s a really important part of it. If, if we’re not good, like teamwork wise, it’s not gonna be a good day, you know?
Yeah. And we have some rules like, Hey, well with this bump before races, and even if we’re so mad at each other, we’ll still do that. , you know, sometimes step sends me first swim when she’s really mad. did that once. ,
Alison Brown: it’s like a marriage, but you can die during it
Stephanie Roble: no, it actually really is like a marriage.
Like we, we kind of joke about that all the time. Like we spend so much time together and like, I know Maggie’s favorite meal. I know like, yeah, I know exactly like. A lot about her .
Jill Jaracz: So you’ve got the team communication. How do you communicate with the race officials? Or how did they communicate with [00:49:00] you
Maggie Shea: flags?
Yeah, actually, this is old school nautical stuff. Like there’s a, an nautical alphabet and each, each alphabet letter has a different flag. And then that flag means something in nautical terms. So for example, the L flag is yellow and black checkered race committee puts that up. That means come within hail.
So follow me , you know, and that means they’re moving race courses. So, you know, uh, they, they put different pents up to tell you different numbers, like, uh, how many laps on your race course or which way if they move the mark, there will be a
Stephanie Roble: change course. Flag,
Maggie Shea: a C horse. Yeah. Which is for Charlie is C and it stands for change.
Of course. And then they’ll do a yellow, I mean, sorry, a red or green one, and that’ll tell you which direction it went. So flags it’s. Yeah. It’s kind of old school part of ceiling that I love.
Alison Brown: And that’s consistent across all of sailing, not just competitive racing, correct?
Maggie Shea: Yeah. Like international codes.
Yeah. Back to [00:50:00] like pirate days. Yeah. Like the flags like mean the same everyone kind of thing. But other race, other fleets, like professional sailing, you can communicate video radio, you know, that’s, that’s helpful, but we can’t race with a radio on board cuz we’re uh, one design Olympic sail.
Jill Jaracz: I know this is out of order, but I do wanna know how you start a race.
How do you get the boat to stay still enough to be behind? I assume you have to be behind the line. So how do you stay behind the line and how do you get the boat started?
Stephanie Roble: We’ve actually recently been spending a lot of time on these specific drills. So it’s a very relevant question to right now we both have different jobs on the boat during the pre-start we call, which is the time before the start.
Um, and. A lot of it is managing like our, like you said, our speed to the line, like our closing speed and then like knowing where the line is. So basically Maggie’s job is to know where the line is. Um, she’s sitting further forward in the boat so she can kind of get a better feel. And she [00:51:00] has references that she takes on land, um, to help her gauge, like where we are, um, underneath the line and to be clear, like the starting line is a race committee, boat and a buoy or another race committee boat.
And then it’s an invisible line between a flag and that buoy. So it’s like kind of like a trick thing. , it’s really hard to tell. And we spend a lot of time working on, on identifying where the line is in all different conditions. But yeah, so Maggie’s in charge of like our distance to the line and I’m in charge of our speed.
So she’ll say like, you know, we’re two boat lengths under and. We have like target distances for like the time that we are in the sequence and like the amount of wind and like a general rule of thumb would be we’d want to be like two boat lengths under the line, um, at 20 seconds to go. So I’m like managing that, you know, managing the speed of the boat and like also managing like the boats around us, like trying to attack them and like gain like a [00:52:00] powerful position on them.
So to say, so there’s, there’s a lot going on in the pre start of the race. We’re like trying to gain like an advantage on the boats around us, but also like have our best start possible. Um, so once we’ve like managed the distance, the line and the speed, then we actually get into like the final acceleration and usually like, we’re going, what?
Like two knots, maybe Maggie, um, in this like pre-start time from any like under, from like a minute to 15 seconds. And then Maggie will, Maggie will say, okay, like, you know, we’re good on our time and distance. And then I’ll say, okay, like we’re pulling the trigger. Seven seconds. So then we start pulling the sales in, we start building speed and we start as the sales start coming in, we start pushing our weight out on the boat.
Cause the boat is taking on more power. So we spend a lot of time on the actual start. There’s so many different layers to it and there’s so many different ways to execute it. And a lot of teamwork and good communication is required from both of us to, to execute a good [00:53:00] start. Yeah. It’s, it’s a really hard skill, but a really fun skill to learn.
Jill Jaracz: If you misjudge that you can’t back up. Can you, can you back up, you can back up.
Stephanie Roble: We can’t. Yeah.
Alison Brown: How?
Stephanie Roble: Yeah. So our boat is like, it’s it, our, our boat is really fun in the start because we can kind of like really like use our weight and our, our power and our strength to kind of like throw the boat around so to stay.
So I’ll say like I have. Terms that I say to Maggie, like reverse and she like knows, okay, what we need to do with the sales and our body weight and okay, we need flow. We need to go forward. She knows what to do with that. Or we, I want to attack the boat next to us. So we’ll double tack up to them. And we have all these terms, like we were talking about earlier, like these short little pieces of communication so that we know what to do.
And you know, we’re really under the pressure of time to execute everything.
Maggie Shea: But I’ll say the I’ll just add that. Yeah, we do a lot of drills to figure out how fast you can go from two [00:54:00] knots to 10 knots or basically two and a half miles an hour to 10 and a half miles an hour. And you wanna be as close to that invisible line as possible without being on the course side of it.
And if you are on the course side of it, you are basically disqualified from the race and the backup maneuver is pretty doable. If you’re already going slow, , but if you’ve, um, pulled the trigger, like Steph said, if you’ve trimmed in your sales, you’ve applied all weight outboard, and then the boat’s going 10 knots at the line.
You can’t really stop at that point. You know, you, you could like drop sales, but you’d ruin your race and you could basically stop the boat, but in order to go backwards, you have to be at a complete dead stop. So once you made your decision to go, you’re kind of going, um,
Stephanie Roble: yeah, you’re committed to it.
Maggie Shea: Yeah.
Jill Jaracz: And if you fall start, basically, do they call it a fall start?
Maggie Shea: They call it OCS, which stands for on course side. And sometimes you’ll see it a U flag, [00:55:00] which is, which means that you cannot be over that invisible line after a minute to go. And they do that to kind of prevent people from just going over the line, backing up just enough and going.
Because that would be almost impossible to then accurately call the whole line if everyone was over the majority of the time. So they want everyone below the line for that last minute they fly this thing called U flag. So sometimes in the scores you’ll see OCS or U FD. And both of those are just basically a disqualification.
You get last place, plus two points or something.
Jill Jaracz: Okay. Cause I was gonna say, did do, do they pull the boat off or do they let that boat race and then say, well, sorry, suckers. You find out at the end,
Stephanie Roble: you find out at the end. Yeah. Which is hard because actually like that, if that boat has a false start, like let’s say, you know, you’re like really close to the line and you hold back a little bit and that boat has a false start, but they don’t know it.
Like maybe they’re in a more powerful position than you are. And like that can kind of screw up your whole race. And so like that person then like has a really great race, but they were [00:56:00] disqualified. And then you don’t, maybe you don’t have a great race because you didn’t wanna push it on the line. Yeah, it can.
And yeah, I can, can get tricky with that.
Maggie Shea: And on the other side, usually if you have a false start and you start ahead of everyone, you usually have a pretty good race, you know?
Stephanie Roble: Yeah.
Maggie Shea: Put you in a pretty strong position. So they’re generally like your best finishes that you finish across like, oh yeah. Top five.
Awesome. You know, and then you, there’s a whiteboard on the back of the motorboat that they post, who was you flagged in the previous race. So that’s like the, the sale of shame, you know, you put the spinner girl away, your heart rate up, and then you look up at the whiteboard and it’s like, no, we did not get a second place.
We got a U flag. Sometimes. I won’t tell Steph that’s happened in the past where I haven’t told Steph, like, if I knew we were over or saw it, cuz it can really ruin your mojo. you know, you’re like,
Jill Jaracz: yeah. At that point, do you just wanna do the race to get the practice then? Or?
Maggie Shea: Well, you don’t know, you can’t see that whiteboard until you cross the finish line.
Yeah. Until it’s all said and [00:57:00] done
Alison Brown: because there’s always the chance that you’re misjudging it very slightly or the officials don’t see it. So you still have to race the race. Yeah. Assuming it’s gonna count. Okay. Because, or if somebody else caused you to be over, is that an issue as well, that somebody else could kind of push you in a way where they would get disqualified and you wouldn’t.
Stephanie Roble: I mean, there’s ways to like, kind of cover yourself up. So to say like, and that’s like, if, if the, if the boats around you are like getting like pretty pushy on the line, we could say like, and Maggie’s like, we’re really close. We’re really close. Then I’ll say like, I’ll try to like, keep us like a little bit further back.
So that like the ends of the starting line can’t maybe see our number or like, maybe we’re a little bit
Maggie Shea: it’s part of the game, knowing that they are on the line or over early, you know, that they’re they’re pushy or punchy and then bailing out early enough. Yeah. You know, sailing backwards and away from that group is part of the strategy.
So generally [00:58:00] it’s a misjudgment, the whole group misjudges and they’re all over, you know, or just a couple people misjudge and then everyone can say, yeah, they’re over the.
Jill Jaracz: Wow finishing. Is it just the first part of your boat that has to get over the line or do you have to get the whole boat over
Maggie Shea: you finish when any part of your hu touches the line?
Jill Jaracz: Okay.
Maggie Shea: So the hu is the actual fiberglass boat platform that we’re on. So none of the sales, the bodies, the extensions, nothing else matters except the whole. Wow.
Jill Jaracz: It’s just kind of amazing cuz you’ve, you know, in other, other sports they finish the race and you know, at a hundred meter dash, you know who won mm-hmm now you have to wait for everybody to finish and you have to wait for the whiteboard.
Stephanie Roble: Yeah. I mean there’s sometimes like our finishes are super close. Like I remember we had one. In Germany in September that we came in from opposite ends of the finishing line, um, with the Norwegian team. And we both like came in and then like sailed our boats to an angle that we thought would like, make us [00:59:00] cross the line sooner.
And we, we, you can see us on the video app. Like, we’re both like who got it. you have no idea.
Alison Brown: And depending on how far away that boat is and the angles of vision you, you really can’t tell.
Stephanie Roble: Yeah,
Maggie Shea: totally.
Stephanie Roble: Yeah.
Maggie Shea: I really appreciate the volunteer race committees that call that line because that’s gotta be so hard.
And sometimes in fleets, they’re calling a hundred boats. Luckily our fleets are usually 50 or 25 or something, but that’s gotta be a really hard job,
Stephanie Roble: a skill .
Alison Brown: Do they ever employ the drones to like photo finishes?
Stephanie Roble: I don’t think they can actually use it as a way to score. Like I think this, but.
Jill Jaracz: Oh, man, I’m sorry, Al.
I just got my whole little, I, I officiate roller Derby, so I like the official side of everything. You got me on whiteboard. You’re getting me on the arguments that are probably going on within your race officials committee about, do we use drones or not? I’m so excited already. [01:00:00]
Alison Brown: No, she’s gonna look into,
Jill Jaracz: well, you know, and he live in Cleveland, so I have a lake right there.
Maggie Shea: Perfect. Sweet. We know some people and Hey, Jill, actually, you might get a kick outta this, the rules change every four years.
Jill Jaracz: Oh,
Maggie Shea: okay. And so the, which is yeah, fun for sailers, you know, cuz there are all these tactics that come from the rules and then you kind of learn the new plays every year and it’s a race to learn them.
And this year is unusual because the rules changed the year before the Olympics. So usually it’s the same for an Olympic quad. And so it’s kind of a, yeah, I think it’s fun. You know? And, and one of the rules that specifically changed was when your boat. The definition of starting and finishing. And so it used to be that if your bodies or your sales or equipment were over the line, you could be called over the line early, but your, you know, your body was, but your hu was not, or vice versa on the finish line.
If your sales cross the finish line, that you’d be called fi cross, you know, finished. But now it’s just the hu and, and there is some kind of scuttlebutt to use the ceiling term that [01:01:00] the reason it’s the hu is because they might be able to, they’re hoping to use like GPS devices, some point in this quad, um, to, to either substantiate the finish or to determine it at the time real lifetime, you know, so that we’re hoping technology goes in that direction, that they could have trackers on the boats that would definitively say when the boat finished, but we’ll see.
Alison Brown: So because of the delay, you have the new quad rules, they didn’t postpone that.
Maggie Shea: Yeah, exactly.
Alison Brown: Because some sports did postpone. Because you a lot of sports do that quad rule adjustment mm-hmm but they wanted to make it interesting for you ladies. Wow.
Maggie Shea: Yeah. yeah, we love it. I geek out on the rules and our training partners are like, oh, let’s talk about them.
And we love that part of it. It’s a good strategic part. So.
Jill Jaracz: Excellent. Okay. This has been, oh my gosh. Fantastic. So excited about sailing now.
Stephanie Roble: Thank you. You’re excited. You’re excited.
Jill Jaracz: thank you so much, Steph and Maggie, you can follow their [01:02:00] endeavors@roboshasailing.com and they are on Facebook and Instagram at robo SHA sailing.
We will have links to all of that in the show notes.
Alison Brown: Our next book club meeting is coming up at the end of April, featuring Fox catcher. The true story of my brother’s murder, John DuPont’s madness and the quest for Olympic gold by Mark Schultz and David Thomas. And you can get your copy@bookshop.org slash.
Shop slash flame alive pod, or go to flame alive pod.com/store to link to our affiliate store. We’ll also be watching the movie version for movie club in may. I finished it already.
Jill Jaracz: Did you, did you, oh man, I have to start. I’ve been on, I haven’t watched
Alison Brown: the movie yet though.
Jill Jaracz: Okay. I’ve been on a little 1968 kick and I have 3 19 60, at least 3, 19 68 books.
So I’m on my last one now.
Team Keep the Flame Alive News
Alison Brown: Welcome to shook. Stan
Jill Jaracz: Laura Wilkinson [01:03:00] placed seventh and scratched at the 2021 coral Springs, winter invitational. And she got a nice write up and then Miami Herald too, about her quest to get back to the Olympics. So that was nice. We’ll have link to that in the show notes
Alison Brown: and Bob’s letter, Josh Williamson was racing with hunter church at the, I think these would be the Olympic trials for the USA.
Aren’t
Jill Jaracz: like the national team selection.
Alison Brown: And they finished first out on the, uh, west coast version. And now they’re coming back to lake Placid to race the second half. So if you know what this means,
Jill Jaracz: he could be the next Olympic hopeful.
Alison Brown: I know you have no idea. Well, you do. If you’ve listened to the show, um, desperately, we need Josh to go to Beijing.
I just, I want him there so much. It’s not even funny.
Jill Jaracz: I know our by athlete, Claire Egan was competing at Nova MEO last week. So the us women’s relay team placed sixth, which was their best finish. Since 1995. And [01:04:00] that was awesome. It was a fantastic race. Uh, they all did so well, but then refe wasn’t feeling it.
And Claire shot really poorly in the sprint and placed to 76th. So that meant she didn’t qualify for the pursuit race. She’s dropped to 33rd in the overall rankings, but there’s still a couple weeks left. They’re in Nova MEO again this weekend and she can redeem herself
Alison Brown: and she did post a picture of Ofri in the corner.
Jill Jaracz: She did
Alison Brown: with its it’s sort of face turn to the corner, like just standing there in shame with the dances hat on a rifle, which I didn’t know you could do. I didn’t know. You could shame a rifle like that, but it is well deserved after that race. And speed skater. Aaron Jackson had kind of a nice week at the us championships.
She plays second overall among sprinters, and she competed in both the 500 meter and 1000 meter and like killed it with first and seconds all the way, except for one way where she was all the way down at [01:05:00] fifth. Nice week for Aaron.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. And
Alison Brown: she was new Toyota.
Jill Jaracz: Right. And she was featured in Forbes on forbes.com.
Nice little article about her there. Author Andrew Marinis has re released his new young adult book singled out. The true story of Glen Burke Burke was the first openly gay major league baseball player and invented the high five. You can get the book on our store at books. shop.org/shop/flame live pod or@flamelivepod.com slash store
Alison Brown: and beach volleyball players, Kelly Clay with her partner, Sarah bonk will be competing this week in Doha.
Still trying to pull into that second spot for the us. To get to Tokyo. So we’ll, we’re cheering for you, Kelly.
Jill Jaracz: Oh, speaking of cheering for, do you have friends who love the Olympics in Paralympics? Please tell them about this show because we’re still looking for more of our people. We are@flamelivepod.com and all of your favorite podcast apps, including apple podcasts, Google podcast, [01:06:00] Spotify and Ghana.
So you can find us there and follow us.
Atlanta 1996 Olympic History Moment: Sailing
All right. It’s time for our Atlanta moment. We are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Atlanta, 1996 Olympics all year long with, uh, stories and anecdotes. And I figured since we talked about sailing today, why don’t we talk about how the sailing was organized for 1990?
Alison Brown: okay. I know nothing. Cuz I can guarantee you.
I watched no sailing in 96.
Jill Jaracz: Uh, no, neither did I. Sailing was held in Savannah and Savannah was really excited when Atlanta won the bid and they really were gunning to host a whole bunch of stuff. They wanted to host softball. They wanted to host beach volleyball. They lost out on both of those, but because uh, Atlanta is landlocked and Savannah is the closest city to open water.
Savannah was the shoe in to get the sailing competition and they went to town, man. They had their [01:07:00] own opening ceremonies and closing ceremonies. I’m not kidding you. They have a caldron. The caldron is still there along the river. You can see it. So the sailing competition was pretty big. They had 4,461 athletes from 78 countries and they had 10 classes of boats.
Wow. So it was like 10 races a day or more. It was a lot of stuff. So kind of here. It was kind of a fun timeline too. The Atlantic games opened on July 19th. Right? So July 9th, the torch relay comes to Savannah and it, the torch arrives by a big schooner boat. And then they kind of transfer that to a little motorboat and they motorboat brings it to shore and they have a big ceremony.
And then the torch goes on its way. Uh, three days later, hurricane Bertha made landfall in Southeast North Carolina. It was a category two storm. So it was far enough away that Savannah wasn’t really affected, but they did pull on all [01:08:00] the boats outta the water for a couple of days. And you know what that meant if they’re pulling boats out of the water, um,
Alison Brown: logistical nightmare.
Jill Jaracz: exactly. So on the 19th, Atlanta has their opening ceremonies on the 20th. Savannah has its opening ceremonies, and this was the first time ever that the city outside of the host city also had. Opening ceremonies for their event. And it was a big deal. Walter Cronkite was there, cuz apparently he was a big, he was a big sailing Aiona so he was there to speak.
Trisha Yearwood performed I know it was a big deal and it was really rainy. So apparently, uh, Walter Cronkite didn’t really get to talk much because it just poured rain and they were shuttled him off stage. But then the flame arrived by boat. Again made its way around. The city, came to Forsyth park where the caldron was and the person who lit the flame was named [01:09:00] Michael Cohen and he was a weightlifter.
From the 1980 Olympic team
Alison Brown: who stopped.
Jill Jaracz: I know. So then the events took place over nine days in the WASA sound of the Atlanta ocean. So to get there, they, they had a marina on Wilmington island. They had a little temporary barge structure. They had, um, for all the facilities, spectators could only watch them from boats, but you couldn’t bring your personal boat.
You had to get on a large boat that held like 150 people and you sailed from kind of downtown Savannah through the river and out into the sound. And then they. You’d be out there basically all day. And they’d give you a buffet and lunch on the boat too. Not a bad deal. Be lovely.
Alison Brown: That sounds lovely, actually.
Jill Jaracz: Exactly. Yeah. And you’re with a bunch of people and there were like a thousand people got tickets per day, basically. So they had all of these boats, there could have, it sounded like it could have been a lot of fun. Then on [01:10:00] top of that, Savannah had a whole bunch of arts events during this time cuz they had a 100 day cultural and educational festival called arts ashore that started at the beginning of may and went through the, the Olympic games and they did a hundred event events.
So event and event a day. And so it would be like theater and concerts. And one of the ones while, uh, the sailing was on was a free concert with Ray Charles, not a bad deal.
Alison Brown: Savannah seemed like the best place to be.
Jill Jaracz: Right. So they also had a, a closing ceremonies. Along and the, the music, this time was a beach music review with the shells, the platers and the embers.
Alison Brown: They better have kept the shells away from the flame cuz their hair. Would’ve just gone up with all the hairspray involved.
Jill Jaracz: Probably, probably. So one, I wanna tell you one little quick story about the, the metals kind of were allocated. [01:11:00] It ended up a whole bunch of countries got a few metals each on, on river street in downtown Savannah.
There’s an Olympic cafe. It was a Greek di a Greek eatery. So it was one of the places where the sailors like to hang out
Alison Brown: who doesn’t like to hang out at a Greek diner.
Jill Jaracz: right. So they were there every night and then Nicholas Cochlan Monas won gold and windsurfing. So of course he came in with a gold medal.
Owners are going crazy over this cuz he was like their son by that point. Right?
Alison Brown: Of course.
Jill Jaracz: So they had this huge party that lasted till three or four in the morning and smashing plates every place as you do.
Alison Brown: Yeah. I mean, this is a Greek diner with a Greek gold medal in the city. That’s already having a party every night.
Jill Jaracz: Right.
Alison Brown: Smash some plates, man.
Jill Jaracz: So yeah, that was sailing in Savannah.[01:12:00]
Tokyo 2020 News
So we have a little bit of Tokyo, 2020 news for you. The new head of the organizing committee for Tokyo 2020 Saco Hashimoto said the other week, we will decide by March 25th, whether or not we will have foreign spectators at the games, however. Now there are reports. This is coming from the Kyodo news that has, uh, some government sources unnamed, who says that there will be no foreign spectators allowed at the games.
Apparently there’s going to be a meeting next week with a formal announcement, which made me think this is kind of like last year where it was, are we gonna have the games? Are we gonna have the games? And they just kind of kept forcing the committee’s hand to make a decision.
Alison Brown: Yeah. Well, we can’t, we can’t say if that is the official decision that we’re really surprised.
Jill Jaracz: No, I’m not surprised. So the committee would now need to deal with refunding foreign ticket holders, how to deal with spectators that are [01:13:00] invited by corporate sponsors, which would be, it’s an interesting twist. Like if you’re Coca-Cola and you wanna invite. People who aren’t living in Japan to the games.
Are you allowed to do that?
Alison Brown: And even Coca-Cola executives mm-hmm nevermind. Just the invites, like the actual sponsors themselves. Can they come?
Jill Jaracz: Good question. Good, good question. So we will find more out about that in the coming days and weeks. The Kyodo news also said that athletes will likely be tested more often than at least once every four days, because of all the variants that are out and about now.
And then they said the number of athletes to March in the opening ceremony is expected to be around a third of previous games, mostly due to the fact that they won’t be at the athlete’s village yet.
Alison Brown: I’m kind of surprised that it even would be that many.
Jill Jaracz: That’s a good point. So it’ll be, it’ll be a, you know, what shorter period of nations.
Alison Brown: Yeah.
Jill Jaracz: Oh,
Alison Brown: and I was kind of thinking they might just do [01:14:00] the flag bearers.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. You, you wonder why they wouldn’t do just that, but maybe it’s. Part of the deal. We cannot let this go. Right. And maybe, maybe they’re hoping that by July, it will be, the pandemic will be more in control by then. That’s, that’s kind of what I’m hoping.
Okay. We have to make a tough decision about foreign spectators, but maybe that means if, if things keep going in the right direction, maybe we can have all of these athletes around each other.
Alison Brown: So we’ll see in that decision, they really don’t have to make until I don’t wanna say the last minute, but kind of the last minute.
Jill Jaracz: Right? And then the torch relay opening ceremony will be held without spectators to prevent the spread of the virus.
Scary thought it’s one year to go to the Paralympics.
Alison Brown: So today for the first time ever, I saw some [01:15:00] video of para by Athlon
Jill Jaracz: mm-hmm.
Alison Brown: it’s amazing. It was in the, they were sort of in the ski, uh, I don’t know what the ski
Jill Jaracz: thing,
Alison Brown: the like the sled.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. Yeah.
Alison Brown: The ski sled.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah.
Alison Brown: And they throw themselves over.
Jill Jaracz: Oh, right.
Yeah.
Alison Brown: I don’t know why I never thought of this, but watching it. So now I’m super excited for pat. We’re excited for para by Athlon,
Jill Jaracz: but they are continuing to go on with their test events and we will have more of a report, uh, later this week from the IOC. So we will bring you more news from Beijing. Next week.
Milano Cortina 2026 News
Milan cor has announced its logo competition.
Alison Brown: The Italians need your help in deciding
Jill Jaracz: right. So they’ve whittled it down to two choices and they want you to vote for the logo. And it looks like you can vote three times. We’ll have a link in the show notes, but it’s [01:16:00] Milan Cortina 20, 20 six.org. So they’ve got the, the two logos, one looks, looks like they wrote 26 in, uh, like an icy window or in the snow.
And it looks, it also looks like a ZB if you’re me. And the video that went with that is one of those inspirational uplifting.
Alison Brown: Oh, there was videos with the logos
Jill Jaracz: mm-hmm oh yeah, because then the other logo is kind of boxy and it has it’s red and green and, and, um,
Maggie Shea: has a snowflake
Jill Jaracz: has a snowflake, but that one actually, when you see the video it’s dynamic, so it kind of turns and there’s different.
Things that go into those boxy areas. So it’s kind of, it reminded me of the LA 2028 logo, which is a lot more dynamic too. So, um, that, that’s why I was voting for that one.
Alison Brown: I was very torn between the two of them. I have not yet voted because I really can’t decide. So I love to hear people’s [01:17:00] opinions on these two, those
Jill Jaracz: listener, Donna and I were talking about it on Twitter and he’s a little underwhelmed and he’s a, he’s a designer.
So, um, but he also
Alison Brown: having trouble.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. So he also thought that the, uh, 26 was a ZB. The, the one problem you have not you, but the one problem that exists with that second logo, the, the Doto there’s like the, the logo Futura, and then the logo Doto, that’s the one with it’s. It looks like a, a, a, a tall cube with a snowflake on the top and a two on one side and the six on the other, and the font is reminiscent of video games.
Alison Brown: Well, I would like to hear people pitch which one they like better because I am really indecisive.
Jill Jaracz: All right. Get at us. We are at, uh, flame live pod@gmail.com or 2 0 8 flame. It is our voicemail line. Mullan cor also announced it’s fan club, which I immediately signed up for. And it sounds like,
Alison Brown: oh, this is not like [01:18:00] Paris where they don’t let us in.
See it’s cuz the Italians yeah, I know gig’s coming over. Mario’s coming over. Georgia’s coming over. Everybody’s coming over
Jill Jaracz: the big bull of pasta. Now I I’m guessing that even though you’re in the fan, like I’m in the fan club, but I’m in America. There’s probably not going to be as many opportunities for me here in America as there might be in Europe, but it was, I felt very include.
Not part of Lu club. So do, uh, they’re gonna have ambassadors and you’ll be able to extend exclusive events with them. They’ll probably have some experiences, probably virtual experiences. I’m guessing to explore the Olympic territories. There’s gonna be an Olympic tour. They’re gonna have a fan wall where you can get your photo added.
They’ll have exclusive content, they’ve got a newsletter and, uh, you could become, uh, be selected to become a voice of Milan cor on, uh, social networks. And you’d be the first to participate in [01:19:00] these selection of volunteers. So if you wanted to volunteer for 20, 26, join the fan.
Alison Brown: I just want them to give me some BASCA and espresso and I’ll sit in the corner and not cause any trouble.
Jill Jaracz: well, you’d be one of those kind of volunteers who sits in the chair and it’s just like, yeah, I don’t do anything. I don’t know anything, whatever, go over there.
Alison Brown: no, I would be one of those volunteers who would be, you know, yelling at people to get off their lawn. what,
what you call this pasta? This is, this is the nothing.
Jill Jaracz: All right. Well, you work on that. I think that’ll do it for this week. We’ll call it a show. Let us know what you think of 49 or FX sailing.
Alison Brown: Email us at flame alive pod, gmail.com or call our voicemail hotline at two zero eight. Flame. It we’re flame alive pod on Twitter and Insta and keep the flame alive podcast group on Facebook.
Jill Jaracz: We have a whole bunch of athlete interviews lined up [01:20:00] to bring you, uh, but they haven’t happened yet. So they. Don’t happen until they happen. We’ll let you know who’s coming on. Well, we’ll probably post it in the Facebook group. So get on there and you’ll find out who’s coming on the show soon. So as we go out to music by Archdale, thank you so much for listening.
And until next time, keep the flame alive.
Closing Music
Maggie Shea: over there, you some way go going on over there, you know?