When Olympic race walker Evan Dunfee joined us to talk about his sport, little did we know we were in for some maranovela talk! In part 1 of our interview with Evan, we talk about the marathon and race walks’ move to Sapporo and his opinions about the switch. Plus, the controversy over his race place at Rio 2016 and how Canadians embraced their best race walker.
What are our TKFLASTANIs up to this week? We’ve got news from:
- Film producer John MacLeod
- Modern pentathlete Samantha Schultz
- Curler John Shuster
Throughout 2021 we’re revisiting great stories from Atlanta 1996! For our Atlanta 1996 moment this week, Alison tells us how Atlanta’s Table used the Olympics to make a difference in the community.
We also have Games Updates from Tokyo 2020 and the torch relay. Sexism in Japan? Oh, yeah.
Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive!
Photo courtesy of Evan Dunfee.
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 Do not quote from the transcript; use the audio as the record of note.
Episode 183: Evan Dunfee – Pt. 1
Evan Dunfee: [00:00:00] So I looked down at my leg and I was like, K legs, come on, just take one more step. And, and they complied. And so this kept telling them, just take one more step. Just take one more step. Just take one more step. And by 49, K, I had made up the 18, second deficit on the athlete in third, uh, athlete from Japan named hero.
I, and we were both duh.
Jill Jaracz: Hello, fans of shook Stan, and welcome to another episode of keep the flame alive. The podcast for fans of the Olympics and Paralympics. I am your host of Jill. Jarris joined as always by my lovely co-host [00:01:00] Allison brown, Allison. Hello, how are you?
Happy 125th anniversary of the Athens 1896 Olympics
Happy? 125th anniversary of Athens 18 9, 18 96.
Alison Brown: I would like to pretend at this moment to be a Greek prince and present you with a commemorative bowl.
Jill Jaracz: and I will pretend to be a man. Because no women were at those games.
Alison Brown: no women .
Jill Jaracz: Yeah, it’s really weird because, uh, tach was in Greece the other week. Ready to, to celebrate that. But you have to imagine that the IOC wanted to do something bigger for this.
Alison Brown: Oh, sure. They wanted to have a whole event in Athens.
I’m sure. Make tie it into Tokyo and they just. Didn’t and couldn’t
Jill Jaracz: yeah, maybe, maybe Tokyo will do something in the opening ceremonies. I don’t know.
Alison Brown: And this was supposed to be an off year,
Jill Jaracz: right? Which would’ve been perfect. Would’ve been all big celebration, but,
Alison Brown: well, I guess [00:02:00] we’ll have to wait for another 25 years to the hundred 50th.
See what happens. Like
Jill Jaracz: no, we’re celebrating 126. Wow.
Alison Brown: you know, a lot of people who had big birthdays or big anniversaries, they are doing these. I’m celebrating my, you know, 61st birthday. So why not? IOC.
Jill Jaracz: There you go.
Alison Brown: Why not make it up as you go along?
Jill Jaracz: Uh, before we get to today’s interview, we’d like to thank our Patreon patrons, uh, this month.
If you haven’t, uh, listened to your bonus audio yet we’ve played mascot madness and you got to see who busted all of the brackets and who is the best mascot supposedly of the summer Olympics.
Alison Brown: It’s not who you would expect.
Jill Jaracz: No, but it was very
Alison Brown: that teaser out, not who you expect.
Jill Jaracz: It was a very fun competition.
And we will repeat that in future years, you [00:03:00] can become a patron at patreon.com/flame alive pod.
Evan Dunfee Interview
Today, we’ve got part one of our interview with Evan Dunphy. Evan is an Olympic race Walker who raced for Canada at the 2016 Olympics. He came in fourth after some controversy, and he has subsequently qualified for Tokyo this year at the world athletics world championships in 2019.
He won the bronze in the 50 K becoming Canada’s first ever world champs medalist. At that event, we’d planned to talk with Evan about how the sport works and his Rio experiences, but our didn’t our interview didn’t quite turn out as we planned it. So we’re going to start the interview with some pre-interview chat.
Uh, Evan was kind enough to listen to a couple of episodes of the show. So I asked which ones he listened to and that made the conversation go in a totally different direction. Take a listen. Out of curiosity, which episodes did you listen to?
Evan Dunfee: Uh, so I listened to the Jordan Gray.
Jill Jaracz: Okay.
Evan Dunfee: Which was, which was great.
Uh, cause I [00:04:00] just had a little bit of knowledge myself to, to sort of follow along with, and then, um, listened to the sort of the IOC session update, not the, the executive session update, not the general update.
Jill Jaracz: Okay.
Evan Dunfee: So I haven’t heard to get, I haven’t yet heard any. Your commentary on the fanning phrase for Thomas Bach
Jill Jaracz: well, you know, he’s doing what he can, we, we, uh, we like tach, but you know, it is, it’s hard when, when
Evan Dunfee: he does not like me.
Um oh, which is, which is, which is something I got to learn through an interview where I was like, Hey, wait, he’s talking about. That’s interesting, but
Jill Jaracz: okay. So let, let’s start with that story. What is that about? Yeah. Why does tach not like you.
Evan Dunfee: Yeah. So when the, when the race walk in the marathon were moved from, from Tokyo to Sapporo, you know, I was, as I am with, with [00:05:00] anything, I have an opinion on, I was quite vocal about it and, um, it just didn’t make sense.
And, and there was no rationale behind it. And I had a meeting with, uh, Haley Wickenheiser managed to organize a meeting with the medical lead, who. Wasn’t able to answer any of my questions. And, and then I found out that he had just was lying to me about some stuff. And so I was, I was fairly. Upset about that.
and, uh, I did a little, little tweet thread, basically showing how it just doesn’t make sense. And like, it’s just it’s I it’s optics it’s it’s not for athlete health. It’s not playing the athletes first. And it was just this unilateral decision by, by the IOC that no one agreed with the world. Athletics didn’t want this change.
The Tokyo government didn’t want this change. The Tokyo organizing committee didn’t want this change. And the IOC sort of said, wow, well, Don’t care. It’s not your choice to make. And, and Thomas Bob has asked about it and, and sort of basically just said something along the lines of, well, it’s, you know, we’re not going, like we don’t make our opinion based on the one [00:06:00] athlete who competes well in the heat getting upset.
And I was like, oh, that’s me.
Alison Brown: I remember him saying that. So now I didn’t, I didn’t put two and two together there, but yeah. Cause we did, we did talk about that. A lot at the time we called it the ma novella, because it was, it felt like a south American soap opera except about the marathon so yes, we did.
We did discuss those comments. So that’s funny now that we kind of know the background for that.
Jill Jaracz: Well, and it’s interesting because, you know, world athletics had no problem having a meat and Doha until people started dropping up like flies in the heat.
Evan Dunfee: Even even then, I mean, uh, I, I wouldn’t say it was world athletics, I think did a fantastic job that, that the organizing committee in Doha, I have like political reasons that the, that it shouldn’t have been there.
But from the standpoint of like how the marathons and the race walks were, were, were done and delivered, it was [00:07:00] fantastic. There’s a few different circumstances that also contributed beyond the heat you had. First of all, we had a race at. 1130 at night or for the race walkers 1130 at night and, and midnight for the marathons.
So that’s gonna, a lot of people weren’t, didn’t prepare for that, which is gonna lead to more athletes dropping out. Um, you also had the marathon on a looped course and you typically don’t get, you know, most marathons are, you know, you, you start and you, you get 21 kilometers out into the city and you some, at one point you turn around, you come back and, and so dropping, out’s a lot more difficult because if you drop out, you’re kind of like, oh, Now, now what now I’m in the middle of, of the city.
Like what do I do? What do I do now? It makes more sense just to like keep running, even if it’s slowly to make your way back to the, you know, to the finish. Whereas on a seven K it was a seven K loop for the marathon. You basically, you know, any point that you drop out of drop out at you’re your’re at you’re close to the finish line.
So just the. That feeling of, oh, this [00:08:00] is going poorly. I wanna drop out. Oh, Hey, my here’s the, here’s my bag with all my stuff in it. Okay. Yeah. I’m gonna drop out the, the, the pull to do that. I think’s a little bit easier. So there’s certainly the heat was certainly a factor, but we also had athletes in the Mar in the women’s marathon afterwards who dropped out and, and, you know, the media was all, oh, this is horrible.
It’s horrible. And, and one of the athletes said, oh, you know, like this, before the race, I knew it was gonna be really hot. So I, for the race, I decided to try a new salt. Concentration of my drinks. And then I like got cramping and I had to drop out. It’s like, yeah, well, you, you know, no, one’s gonna feel sorry for you, if you say, oh yeah, like I put these new shoes on that.
I’d never worn, but I’ve never tried before. And I got blistered so I could drop out. So why are we feeling sorry for people that say, oh, I wasn’t ready for the conditions. So I tried something new and it didn’t work that sort of, to me was, and we had it in the race walk as well, Johan. And is the world record holder basically came like said before the.
We shouldn’t be doing this it’s too dangerous. So he was already, and he was training like he was doing, he did like a 10 kilometer race [00:09:00] walk in his hotel room, hot lobby, like just doing like hundred meter laps of like the ho or a hotel, like, like within the hotel. I was like, ah, like, so you could just tell the guys were a little bit like intimidated by it.
And then after the race, he said, oh, I didn’t know, heat prep. So I didn’t prepare for these conditions at all. Like, well, like, come on like this. So there was a huge element of that of athletes just. Didn’t take it seriously. And that, that showed. So I, I, we did, I have all my core temperature data. I was part of the big study that was looking into that.
And, and anyone who’s part of that study. I mean, it’s probably skewed because of the people who sign up for that study are probably more towards the prepared edge of, of the spectrum anyways. But no one had came even close to suffering from, from anything like, like heats, like severe heat stroke wise. It was a little bit blown outta proportion.
I mean, you have pictures of athletes dropping out and looking like hell in every single, you know, single marathon and, and 50 K [00:10:00] race walk. It’s a long way to go. People get it wrong and and suffer. It doesn’t matter if it’s 10 degrees or, or 40 degrees. That was sort of my take on it was that yeah.
Conditions were hard, but it wasn’t anything beyond. You know, beyond what was reasonably expected and, and they could be prepared for, and, and all those risks were easily mitigated by preparation.
Jill Jaracz: Interesting. Interesting. So again, mayor novella back on so excited.
Alison Brown: So one, one last thing on the UN Sapporo, what’s the basic objection to having it in Sepro versus in Tokyo.
Evan Dunfee: Yeah. So this, this leads me like right into one of the things that I love about my event. So I, the last couple years, like I’ve kind of been a bit more disillusioned with, with the IOC and the Olympic movements and, and just sort of, how do I. Compartmentalize that with like being a part of it. [00:11:00] And, and for me, one of the things I love about the race walk and, and the marathon, and, and there’s some other events like the triathlon, the road cycling all, all the free events where anyone can rock up with their family and take part in the magic that is the athletes competing at the Olympic games.
You don’t need, you know, you don’t need thousands of dollars to take, to, to go to the Olympic stadium and see you saying bolt run. You can get up in close and personal. Five feet away and watch these events. So to me, that’s really important. Like that’s the thing that I, I absolutely love about my event, that, that anyone can be a part of it and, and come and watch and be inspired by it.
So for me, when they took it away from Tokyo, when you shut these five events away from Tokyo, especially like the race walks there in the men, in the two men’s race walks, they’re heavy metal favorites. And then the marathon is, is it’s the Canadian it’s like the Canadian equivalent would be the gold medal ice, ice hockey final.
Like it. It’s their bread and butter. It’s their national sport basically. So taking that away from Tokyo, [00:12:00] who the citizens are, the ones bearing the cost of these games. They’re the ones paying for it. And you’ve taken away five opportunities for them to, you know, freely take part in, in the games. I had a huge objection to that
Alison Brown: has COVID changed your mind at all since there’s gonna be a little bit.
Well, even for those free events, you’re, you’re not gonna have those big crowds anymore.
Evan Dunfee: Yeah, certainly. I mean that, that kind of like. Dampens. It makes the compartmentalization that much tougher when it’s like, oh, I’m not, I’m not even doing this to like inspire lots of people. Track side. I I’m, it becomes.
Much more selfish endeavor, especially when you, when you know, you look at the playbooks and, and it’s, it’s spelled it out right there. Like this is a personal decision. You are, there is risk involved. You are choosing to do this, that, that like onus becomes a lot more. Okay. Why am I doing this? This seems like a very selfish thing to be doing all of a sudden.
So
Jill Jaracz: why are you doing it?
Evan Dunfee: Because after 21 years of pursuing this, I’ve kind of [00:13:00] told myself it’s all right to be a little bit selfish. As long as I take. For me, the risk matrix is I’m putting myself at risk. I’m willing to, to do that. I just have to make sure I do everything humanly possible to mitigate that risk to anyone else.
Um, so those around me, like INO, um, but just as importantly, like when I come home and my family and all that stuff, like making sure I, I go straight into isolation and, and, you know, just, just take that risk away, um, from anyone else who. Isn’t making that selfish, just selfish decision.
Alison Brown: So I I’ve been wanting to ask athletes this and we haven’t had an opportunity.
Will you get the vaccine? That’s kind of a and two, are you concerned about getting the vaccine and messing up training?
Evan Dunfee: Um, no, to the second question, I will definitely get the vaccine. Um, Canada’s rollout is slow, um, compared to correct you guys. So it’s unlikely that I’m going to be getting [00:14:00] my, it depends a little bit.
I could potentially get, um, at least my first dose before we leave for the games. If things turn out where I’m able to go and do a, a preamp, uh, we normally go to St. Ritz in Switzerland to do our altitude training before a game. So if that’s still in the cards, then it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to get my first dose before, before heading out there.
And. If someone were to offer it to me tomorrow, um, as, as an Olympian, I’d say no, um, you know, absolutely not jumping, jumping the queue. My partner got got hers. Yes. Her first dose yesterday as a teacher, uh, my dad’s getting his first today and, and hopefully my mom will be able to get hers later in the week or, or early next week.
And that’s way more important to me cuz they are all way more at risk than I am. So yeah, that idea of, of. Remotely jumping in front of, you know, one person who, who needs it. Um, before I do is sort of unconscionable to me.
Jill Jaracz: So you mentioned a little bit of [00:15:00] disillusionment with the IOC and the Olympic movement.
Talk to us about that.
Evan Dunfee: Yeah. Um, it, it’s kind of been brewing for a number of years now. I mean, there’s D certainly I I’d say it started with the fact that my event. Universally hated by the IOC and they’re doing anything they can to get rid of it and they’ve been successful. Um, so that’s certainly an element of it.
And then I think this last year seeing, you know, becoming, I had way more time and less excuses to ignore what was happening in the world. And so with, with all the social movements and stuff like that, I, in the past as a pretty privileged white male, I’ve been able to like, be like, oh, I can’t focus on that.
I have to focus on our world championships next, you know, next month that’s, can’t waste my energy, like thinking about this thing, which [00:16:00] is awful, but it, it it’s, it’s what happened. And, um, and last year I was like, I, I can’t ignore this. Like I have. And, and just kind of got swept up in it and, and tried my best to, you know, to learn as, as, as much as I could.
And just really like, listen. And I think that sort of helped to shift my qualms. I had about the IOC from that personal level of like, oh, they hate my event. And like, I believe in my event, So where it odds with that to then seeing like some of the wider inequities around the Olympic movement and, and kind of the, the, the, the messaging that they have versus the outcomes that they produce and being able to kind of understand a little bit more like the Olympics tend to benefit.
Those that already have in [00:17:00] their, in the communities where the games are hosted and those that are already struggling, don’t tend to fare very well with, with the Olympics coming in and, and doing its thing and just, yeah, becoming a little bit more aware of those, those inequities and learning a little bit more about the history of, you know, every oh, appear to Cooper tan.
If the pursuit of trying hard is more important than winning. Yeah, that’s great. But also women shouldn’t be a part of the games. And this is for, you know, this is for aristocratic white males, that sort of stuff. Like just, just kind of like peek peeking behind the curtain, I guess. And then, yeah, still obviously like trying, like I still believe in the movement to a certain extent, you know, I, I definitely believe in the power of Olympians, you know, I, I believe that Olympians have this amazing.
Capacity to go off into their communities and to be role models and to inspire and to, you know, to, to be change makers in that regard. [00:18:00] But I think I’ve sort of lost the belief that the larger monolith of the Olympics has that same capacity. If that makes sense.
Jill Jaracz: It totally does. And. You know, and I think that’s something we struggle with.
Oh, Alison, we were on the, we were on the precipice of Avery. Brandage talk, which, you know, Avery, you know, but it’s really hard when you have an,
Alison Brown: we know better than to bring up Avery brandage to me, unless we have like five hours.
Jill Jaracz: It’s really hard. When you have an organization that was started by rich white men, aristocratic, they have, you know, and everything is for amateurs because of course.
When you’re got a ton of money in your pocket, you’ve got nothing but to, to do, but to do sports. So we don’t want the common folk playing. We definitely don’t want women around and to have these all, all ideals and then you, yeah. When you look deep and go, oh geez, you it’s, it’s really hard to get a body to [00:19:00] change when it’s made up of people who are accustomed to a certain lifestyle.
I think.
Evan Dunfee: Yeah, I agree. And, and, and I think, you know, they, the, the messaging, they do fantastic, like, so credit to, to how, you know, how they’ve been able to, um, you know, position themselves for 125 years. Um, it what’s remarkable to me. Or what’s, I guess what the most recent sort of learnings that I I’ve kind of ventured down is this idea that like, okay.
Yeah. Like women weren’t included because someone went, Hey, it’s a good idea to include women. Women were included. Women started their own thing. And it was like super successful and obviously went, ah, that’s a threat to us. We should probably just incorporate them and like same with the interwar period with, um, you know, with, with the bullshit it games and, and these like giant, giant Soviet, like multi-sport games that were bigger than the Olympics.
And they went, [00:20:00] ah, yeah. Hm. That’s gonna be a problem for us. Like we should probably like, let everyone compete it. Wasn’t these idealistic like, oh, like we need to do this to be good. It was like, oh no, we need to do this survive. It just, I, I find it really interesting and, and I think it is really hard, like to have that opinion and then also be like, well, no, I actually, like, I have the Olympic ranks tattooed on my calf.
And like, there are , you know, there are elements that I believe in and, and like, it’s obviously, you know what, I’ve pursued. To do for my entire life. So it’s, it’s a tricky balance sometimes for sure.
Alison Brown: Right? Because you’re still an athlete. It’s still the pinnacle of athletic competition. It’s still the best in the world showing up.
And yet it’s an organization, international monolith, all those things that cause problems. So to, to live with that,
Evan Dunfee: Yeah, exactly. It’s and, and like I was having this conversation with my brother last night is I I’m a bad example because I [00:21:00] have never been one for the, you know, for the razzle dazzle of it, like the, the ceremonies and, and all that stuff.
Like I at the world, university games, uh, opening ceremonies in Shehe massive stadium that just 80,000 people in there. And I have pictures of me just passed out, like full on asleep. During this terms of the ceremonies, like I’ve never, never been someone that that’s like, that’s been a relevant thing. So people always ask, like, that’s the one question you always get asked by?
People is like, oh, like how was walking the opening ceremonies? I was like, oh, we don’t do it. Like, and like athletics being a second week sport. We’re we’re not, we don’t get to go to the opening ceremonies. And it says, and people are like, oh, that must really suck. I’m like, yeah. But like, it’s mostly just, you just stand around for a few hours and you walk through the stadium where you can’t really hear anything and you wave to people you can’t see.
And then you sit down for three hours. It’s like, I, I don’t get it. . And, and so for me, like the Olympics has always been in my mind [00:22:00] an opportunity to compete against the best in the world. And so it’s never been any different than me than like a world championships or to me, it’s just, all right. I get to stand the start line.
With the best people in my event, in the world. And I gotta test myself against them. And so for, from the one hand, like, that’s why, you know, I I’m upset that there’s no fan that there will be no, like no international fans and, and my family and friends won’t be there. And, and it’ll be limited number of domestic fans because for them.
I think it’s like, it’s unfortunate. Like I want them to be able to enjoy it, but for me personally, it’s not, it’s not gonna be less motivating or anything like that because I still get to stand at the start line next to those same, those, those exact same guys and, and test myself. And that for me has always been like the biggest motivator.
Alison Brown: So let’s talk a bit, a little bit about then your experience in Rio and just what that, so obviously you didn’t go to the opening ceremonies.
Evan Dunfee: We watched it, uh, we were in. [00:23:00] Julie’s Defora for our, our preamp. And we had our athletics team, got all dressed up in our opening ceremonies kit and watched it from Aruba in our hotel.
And then, um, went up onto the roof and took some pictures and stuff. It was, it was, it was fun. I think it was actually probably more enjoyable than, than, than having been there personally.
Alison Brown: How was being in Rio in general? Because obviously it got some mixed reviews, you know, we’re talking about kind of the haves and the have nots of being in Brazil.
Evan Dunfee: Again, like I’m a terrible example because, so I. I came into the game. So we came into Rio, I think, two days before the 20 K event. So I was sort of in my bubble, raced the 20 K and then I had a week between the 20 K and the 50 K. And basically it was just, you know, didn’t leave. I didn’t leave the village.
I went to the stadium once to watch seen bolt hunter meter final and Wade Vandy, Kirk break, 400 meter world record. And. And that was exhausting. And I was like, I can’t, I can’t do that again. Um, I think we got back to, [00:24:00] to the stadium at, like, for, from the stadium, I think the bus left at like midnight and we got back to the village at like one, one o’clock in the morning, something like that.
I almost got in a fight with an American sprinter. Um, like it was just, it was exhausting. So then I just stayed in my, so I didn’t leave the village after that and then had the 50 K race. And then like two days later was the closing ceremonies and. By the time the 50 K ended, everyone had already done the fun tourist things and having just raced 50 K.
I was like, yeah, I don’t think I’m gonna go climb the steps to, uh, you know, to see, uh, um, you know, to see the, the big Jesus. And I was like, yeah, I think I’ll just I’ll stick around here. So I did nothing outside the, outside the village, so I can’t really say, um, I had a. Um, you know, watching everyone’s sports on TV, up in our athlete lounge and getting to talk to, you know, watching, cycling and being like, Hey, wait, you’re a cyclist.
Tell me what’s happening. And like learning, you know, learning the ins and outs of track cycling and, and, and all that stuff. Like for me, I was in heaven with that, cuz I’m just a sport nerd. [00:25:00] So I love that aspect of it, but I didn’t get to see any of Rio.
Alison Brown: So can we talk about the 50 K and, and what happened there?
Evan Dunfee: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, um, what do you wanna know?
Alison Brown: Well, just, okay, so you, you were bumped during the race and Canada appealed and then Japan. So there was a, there was a lot of controversy around the final standings.
Evan Dunfee: Yeah, certainly. So, so I’ll back up, uh, a little bit. So, so in the 20 K race, the week before I had finished 10th, that was by far my best ever performance, uh, at a sort of at a world.
And I was kinda like sweet. I was ranked I think, 12th going into the 50 K. So I was like, ah, sweet. I’ve already done better in a race than I was supposed to do. So I’ve kind of checked that box. Um, so going into the 50 K I was kinda like, man, like, all right, like let’s, I don’t know. Let’s just like, see what I can do.
Like no one thinks I belong up at the front. But I know that, that [00:26:00] I, that I’ve been going, everything’s been going really well. And like, let’s just give this a Chan, let’s give this try. So my goal for that race was literally just walk with the leaders until I couldn’t anymore. And so if I, if I dropped out at 40 K, because I had killed myself trying to stick with the leaders, that was gonna be fine for me.
Like I was, I was prepared to lead to, you know, feel successful in that, in that circumstance. And so the race started and I, I did exactly that. I, I placed myself up at the front. I got a little carried away and ended up. Walking off the front and leading the race until about 40 K, which was bonkers at 40 K got passed by, by the top three and spent the next five K kind of feeling, sorry for myself.
I was like, oh, like I’m in fourth. Like those guys ahead of me. I, I’m not gonna catch them. Like, they’re going, they’re too far ahead. And oh, the guy behind me is too far behind. Like, he’s not gonna catch me. So like, I’m gonna finish fourth. And like, Hey, that’s kind of cool and which is just, it was such a weird attitude.
Cause I was kinda like very complacent, but I was also like, this is amazing. And. But also still I have 5k [00:27:00] left to go, like, what are you doing? Like focus. So that 45 K I kinda like snapped myself back in. I was like, well, Hey, what are you doing? You told yourself you were gonna come here and fight with those leaders until you couldn’t walk another step.
So what are you doing? Sitting back here, feeling sorry for yourself. Like go catch those guys. So I looked down at my legs and I was like, K legs, come on. Just take one more step. And, and they complied. And so this kept telling them, just take one more step. Just take one more step. Just take one more step.
By 49 K. I had made up the 18, second deficit on the athlete in third athlete from Japan named and we were both done. Like we were at the end of our, of our rope three hours and 37 minutes into the, into, into the race under the hot, um, Rio sun. Four and a half minutes to go. And we were both just like, where’s the finish line getting, you know, um, neither of us could walk in a straight line and, and I kind of had that idea of like, all right, I’m gonna go past this guy.
And I need to like, make sure I like finish him. So I [00:28:00] need Tim. I need Tim to like, hear me go by him. I need to, you know, let him feel my breath as I go by. Which was a very bad idea when neither of us could walk in a straight line . And so, you know, we got a little bit too close and, and he ended that sort of, you know, veering into my line.
Our arms got, got tangled up and it was so minor. It was one of those things where if it had happened 10 K earlier, you would’ve been like, what are you doing? Go away, stop, stop touching me. But because I was so internally focused on telling my legs, just take one more step. Just take one more step. This one little thing that just proprioceptively.
Grabbed my attention. I went, oh, what’s, what’s what’s happening. And my legs went, oh, we’re not being asked to do anything we must be done. And my legs just sort of like, like buckled and I can actually remember it. It’s I remember people after the race being like, oh, he faked it. He faked it. And I was like, I thought that was so funny.
And then I watched the video and I was like, I can see why people think that cuz we kind of bump. I take about two more steps and then my knees buckle [00:29:00] and I’ll that all happens in the matter of, you know, a fraction of a second. But I can remember in my head that whole process, you know, like when there’s like, like a trauma and everything slows down, I have that weird, slow down feeling in my head from, from this moment of my, of the bump happening, my brain going, huh, what’s happening.
And then my legs going, we must be done. And then me looking down at my legs and shaking my hands at my legs, telling my legs to keep going and, and then sort of managed to so. Managed to like keep on my feet and get to the finish line completely col like collapsed across the finish line. And, you know, I, I, I had 50,000 meters in me and I didn’t have 50,000 in two that day.
And, and, and I was pretty stoked about that. And I was a little bit delirious as well. Um, I kept asking to go through the media mix zone and our, our head coach kept being like, no, you are, we are not putting you in front of cameras right now. Not to be [00:30:00] trusted. I was like, what are you talking about? And then I found out that they were like appealing.
They were like, the track officials were looking at what had happened and this, that, and the other thing. And so there was a pretty long delay with the fi with the initial decision. So we go through the process. I, I get I’m in doping control, so I I’m in the doping control room. Hero’s in the doping control room.
He comes over to me and you know, this is before anything’s happened. He’s not been as qualified. We don’t, no one knows what’s going on. And he came up to me and through his translator, like apologized for what had happened and, and, you know, we chatted for, for a couple minutes and it was so genuine. Like I knew then and there that like whatever happened, which I was still unsure of, like wasn’t done on purpose.
And, and so. It was just this weird feeling of like his, his name got taken off the, the, the, the bronze medal sort of placard thing. And my name got put up and it was just like, oh man, this, this doesn’t feel right. And wrote, um, Jared talent and Matt to who finished second at first, like are good, were good friends of mine.
And I [00:31:00] remember just sort of standing around getting ready for like the flower ceremony and being like this, just, just doesn’t telling them like this doesn’t, I don’t like this doesn’t feel right. And eventually made it my way back to the village and got to go look at the video. Was just like, oh no, like he barely touched me.
Like, we’re not appealing. We’re not like, this is, oh, this is after HKI had been reinstated. So we had the final right of appeal. And, and I, so I basically told the lawyers at, at can Olympic committee, like, no, like this is my decision. I will make this decision. Like when I’m ready, let me go eat. . Cause I haven’t eaten since the race ended, ended.
And then I will go and watch the video and make a decision. And I saw the video once and just like, this is what we’re talking about. Like, no, like this is, we’re not, he’s not, we’re not appealing this. And. That was that I kind of thought like, okay, cool. Like that’s, that’s fine. And hours later, our media person for athletics Canada was like, Hey Evan, like, you need to like, say something like people wanna hear from you.
And I remember my response to him was my parents are here. Who else watched? And so I [00:32:00] had no idea that that CBC at home had, you know, had ended up like carrying most of the race live and that this thing had kind of become a thing back home. I had no idea. So the whole thing was just, it was insane to me, but it was, for me, the most important thing was knowing that all of the people that I raced against.
Would’ve done the exact same thing I did and, and all thought it was crazy that it was even a question of appeal and those are the people whose opinions kind of matter the most to me. And, and at the end of the day, like my, I was super successful. Like my, I, I didn’t need earlier in my life. I certainly was an athlete.
I got into sport because I wanted to win, you know, I, I defined my, like, I defined success by winning and that was. That came to a head, not making the London Olympics in 2012 and worked for years of a sports site to really get rid of that attitude. And for me, Rio was the culmination of all that work because I was able to say, well, no, look, I don’t need this medal to define my success.[00:33:00]
You know, I, I had a goal going into this race. I met that goal. I checked every box that I wanted to check. I had the best race I’ve ever had. Yeah, I, I don’t that me, I don’t need that medal to tell me that I had a good race and that was huge for me. So, so for me, like more than anything that race symbolizes, the, the progress that I’ve made and sort of the growth that sports, you know, allowed me to have, which I I’m really, really proud of and happy to have.
Jill Jaracz: Thank you so much. Evan, you can follow evan@evandunphyontwitterandinstaandhiswebsiteisdunphywalks.com. We’ll have links to all of that in the show notes. Next week, we’ll have the second part of Evan’s interview and actually talk about the sport too. So don’t miss out on that because it is also fascinating.
Alison Brown: I love when someone is willing to tell us stories.
Jill Jaracz: I know, I know it was. I, I mean, like we go in thinking we’re gonna have race walking talk, and we actually have Marin Nove talk. It’s been forever.
Alison Brown: I know [00:34:00] Marin Nove has been on hiatus pretty much. Almost all of quarantine mm-hmm, , we’ve barely gone back to it.
So it’s like, I feel like we’re the Netflix show that took the really long break and hadn’t been able to film during quarantine and it’s been, you know, 18 months since the last episode aired like a like game of Thrones. There’s that long break between the last two seasons. So now we can get back into it.
And it’s we’re back. The Marin Noel is back.
Jill Jaracz: I know. And it’s amazing because we keep talking to people who are like, oh, we’re not so worried about Tokyo because Beijing, oh, that was hot Atlanta. Oh, that was hot. And this is the only one where they went, oh, we’re moving the marathon. And you know, Koy just was like, I have headed up to here with criticism.
We are Mo moving this. I have a solution it’s done.
Alison Brown: You think coy has a boomerang in his jacket pocket?
Jill Jaracz: I don’t know, but he should whip it and bring that marathon right back to Tokyo and, and the, and the race walking, [00:35:00]
Alison Brown: you know, that’ll be interesting cause I know nothing about Brisbane.
Jill Jaracz: Mm-hmm
Alison Brown: I, are we gonna have to worry about heat there, but it should be their spring, right?
When were there
Jill Jaracz: it’ll be spring. If they have it in July, August, you’re talking about end of, end of winter going into spring,
Alison Brown: so, oh, so we’re not gonna have a heat issue. Too bad. Cause I’d like to see what he’d say when it’s his own country. John coats. I’m talking to you.
Team Keep the Flame Alive News
Jill Jaracz: All right. Why don’t we check in with our team?
Keep the flame alive.
Alison Brown: Welcome to shook Luan
Jill Jaracz: team Keith, the flame alive our, uh, past guests of the show who are now citizens of our country shook Luan. Uh, let’s start off with, uh, John McLeod, our, uh, Olympian and film producer had a nice write up in swimming world magazine about his, uh, documentary on Steve Jenner, which we have [00:36:00] seen.
Very good. I’m very happy. He got more notice for that.
Alison Brown: Yeah, it’s quite a good, it’s quite an excellent documentary. Modern pen athlete. Samantha Schultz was featured in an article by the army news service and she’s competing in two world cup events in Bulgaria, uh, in a, uh, so April 7th through the 11th and 15th through the 18th to help maintain her world ranking.
And despite having already qualified for Tokyo, she must still be formally selected for the.
Jill Jaracz: Which really stinks as so many of these people have qualified, but now it’s probably, I assume it’s because they had the year off of competition and the federations wanna make sure that they are still at the right level, but still that’s nerve-wracking
Alison Brown: right.
And when we talked to Philip Dutton, there was also a question of when they’re putting a team together,
Jill Jaracz: mm-hmm
Alison Brown: you qualified, but. There’s probably more athletes that qualified than the country can send, [00:37:00]
Jill Jaracz: or he got the quota spot for the country, but he doesn’t necessarily get to fill the quota spot. It’s like,
Alison Brown: right.
So there’s all these different. Politics and setting up things that have to go on that just, Ugh, the athletes just wanna go and compete and do their best. They don’t wanna play politics like this.
Jill Jaracz: Right. And it’s so hard because it it’s really interesting to see all of these events get cramed into a, a very tiny.
Timeframe because so many sports don’t have qualified athletes yet. And their qualification system is based on rankings and points. And all of a sudden, all of these ranking events and points events are gone. So, so many athletes who thought they had time to work the system and, and time to get their qualification.
They don’t have that anymore. And it’s really hard because, and they went to that because a lot of sports also said, Hey, a one off event. If we had a bad day and we’re the best in the world that really stinks for [00:38:00] us.
Alison Brown: Right. It’s yet again, another complication from COVID. Is there anything that COVID made easier?
Jill Jaracz: No, I don’t think so. The longer we are in this COVID that the worse it gets really? Oh, finally, a team Schuster with our curler Johns Schuster is competing in the world. Men’s curling championships. So there are 14. And they compete in 13 round Robin games. And then the top two teams advances directly to the semifinals and then the next four teams below that, uh, compete for a spot in the semifinals.
And they are still in the round Robin stuff right now. Currently it’s Tuesday, April 6th and, and team Schuster has a five and three record. So they’re still time to watch finals are on April 11th. Hopefully they will do well. Honestly, they, the sporting news.com has a list of who won the last 10 world championships.
Canada, Sweden have each won for Norway won one. And the [00:39:00] last spot is COVID. COVID won one of the world champs
Alison Brown: yeah, COVID beat all of us.
Jill Jaracz: Right. So it’s the us, hasn’t been in the spot before, but hopefully they can pull it out and at least get to the semi.
Alison Brown: Well, they had an amazing pian Chang. So you would hope that that would still,
Jill Jaracz: yeah.
And they’ve been, yeah, they’ve been competing pretty well. They’ve had some blowouts they’ve. Been blown out, but, uh, they’ve had some really good games so far, so good luck to them. Before we move on to our next segment, I wanted to remind you that book club is coming up. We are reading the book Fox catcher.
You can get your copy at bookshop.org/flame alive pod. When you purchase through bookshop.org at our site, we get a commission from books. And that goes toward funding our on the ground coverage at Beijing 2022. We are constantly adding new titles to the storefront. So continue to check it out and buy your books from there.
Thank you.[00:40:00]
Atlanta 1996 Olympic History Moment: What happened to the leftover food?
It is the 25th anniversary of the Atlanta, 1996 Olympics. So every week we are looking back at some of the stories from these games, Allison, it is your turn this week. What do you got for.
Alison Brown: I’m doing something kind of different. Okay. Because I came across an article from 1996 in the Christian science monitor about what happened to the excess food.
Jill: What
Alison Brown: I know. So at the time there was a lot of controversy that Atlanta was shuffling off its homeless people that they were pulling them off the streets that they were. Knocking down some very low income housing to make way for the, uh, the Olympics
Theme Music: mm-hmm .
Alison Brown: So I came across this article that a group, uh, called Atlanta’s table had coordinated with the organizers to collect the excess food from both the village and Centennial park and redistribute it to soup kitchens and homeless [00:41:00] shelters and to the people who need the food.
Over the three weeks, you know, a little bit before, a little bit after over 500,000 pounds of food wow. Were collected and redistributed, and it only got more difficult to do this because of security. The volunteers from Atlanta’s table could not actually get into the village.
Theme Music: Oh.
Alison Brown: And then after the bombing, it was even worse.
Theme Music: Mm-hmm
Alison Brown: so they had developed this whole chain to move the food to a place. Where they could collect it. So the, the Olympic volunteers were involved in this as well.
Theme Music: Wow.
Alison Brown: To getting this excess food to them so that it wouldn’t get thrown away. They were working out of one warehouse. They spent about a hundred thousand dollars, which is nothing in this kind of operation and distributed 500,000 pounds of what would’ve gotten thrown.[00:42:00]
Jill Jaracz: Wow. That is amazing.
Alison Brown: So Atlanta’s table did just, they originally only had five trucks of their own. They borrowed trucks and had volunteers from other organizations around the country, come down to Atlanta and help them with this enormous logistical task.
Jill Jaracz: Wow. Can you imagine, like we need more trucks. We got the weight lifters didn’t need today.
They had to make weight. We need more trucks.
Alison Brown: And there was a lot of, they were saying there were these, they kept getting these, their favorite were these pre boxed lunches, which I guess were prepared for the volunteers or other staff so that if those didn’t get eaten, they didn’t have to do anything.
They could just take that box and hand it right over. So those were their favorite apparently.
Jill Jaracz: Wow. That is amazing. Hey, it did some good that’s
Alison Brown: that’s a thousand pounds of food. I’ll go. We’ll go pretty far. So this very small organization called Atlanta’s table just [00:43:00] really did something amazing when the Olympics come to town.
Cuz we so often we hear about how locals are put out
Jill Jaracz: mm-hmm
Alison Brown: and especially in Atlanta, there were so many stories about that. So it’s nice to hear that the, the Olympics did bring some benefit immediately to the much less fortunate in the.
Jill Jaracz: Very cool. Very cool.
Tokyo 2020 News
All right. Let’s look at what’s going on with Tokyo 2020,
Alison Brown: you know, what’s so exciting about this week.
Jill Jaracz: what
Alison Brown: nobody from the organizing committees made a sexist comment.
Jill Jaracz: oh, but there is sexism. We’ve got some sexism updates. Oh, did you hear though that they are not going to replace the, uh, opening ceremonies director who made the Olympic comment? I have [00:44:00] read this in, in several, uh, news stories, but apparently they were like, yeah, we’re far enough along with this.
We can, we can go on without having anybody in this
Alison Brown: room. We know the opening ceremonies has been cut way, way, way back.
Jill Jaracz: Right. Well, you know, and, and I’m not, I’m surprised that the IOC has not come out and said, oh, look more cost savings.
Alison Brown: Who’s the Olympic now
Jill Jaracz: okay. Well, this is, that’s a great segue to talking about the first item, but according to north Korea’s sports and the D PRK Korea website, it has said that. North Korea is not going to compete at Tokyo 2020 because of concerns about COVID. And then the IOC has said in a statement that they had not been formally told by the Olympic committee of the D PRK.
So they don’t know what’s up. And this is according to inside the games
Alison Brown: and let’s be honest. The D PRK [00:45:00] probably was gonna Boyt.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah.
Alison Brown: You know, any, I mean, I, this is a nice excuse.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. They don’t really get along with Japan. Yeah. But it puts a little crimp in the whole make piece with South Korea movement that, you know, Teebo loves.
Are you
Alison Brown: talking at all? About 2032?
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. Yeah. I know. They’ve been talking about doing it. Well, how, I mean that also does not,
Alison Brown: you can’t. Yeah. You can’t boycot 2020 and be like, by the way, We’d like to have the party at our house.
Jill Jaracz: So we’ll see what happens with that torch relay news. So the torch relay has gone through Nagano prefecture and interesting torch bears.
A note included astronaut, uh, Camia Yui and 2018 curling Olympian Yusuke Zumi who was inspired to take up curling when watching the 1998 games that were in Naga.
Alison Brown: We love those stories. And then [00:46:00] today I saw there was a robot handoff.
Jill Jaracz: Yes. Yeah. That was, uh, a Kitto GTA. Who is an engineer at Toyota. He carried the torch.
He has, he has invented this robot to that. It’s designed to increase mobility for those with impaired movement. So he was running with the robot, which was very cool. When the torch went to Honda in ACHI prefecture, the flame was carried on a traditional chin Toro boat to celebrate Honda NoJa Noshi Matsuri, which is a festival to welcome spring.
And that’s been celebrated since the 17th century. Now here’s where sexism bit comes in because the minchi Shinbo newspaper reported that organizers were forced to make a late change in who got to be on the boat because women traditionally have never been allowed to be on this boat, but, uh, that got soundly criticized.
So they let a few on, [00:47:00]
Alison Brown: it was a long history of not letting women on boats that their bad luck for boats.
Jill Jaracz: I did not know that.
Alison Brown: Yeah. If you go back even to, you know, American and European sailing history, it was bad luck to have a woman on your boat,
Jill Jaracz: but then why do they name the boats after women?
Alison Brown: Well, there you go.
Because the woman is the thing.
Jill Jaracz: Oh
Theme Music: yeah.
Alison Brown: But it’s amazing how all these, how these, I don’t wanna say microaggressions cuz I, I, I don’t. Take that word, but these kind of small pieces of sexism keep coming out in all this Tokyo planning, like, oh, guess what? That’s sexism. R prejudice. That’s bias. You know, we’re kind of calling this all out, which is fantastic.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. And they’re making changes for Tokyo 2020 cuz it’s the Olympics and the whole world is watching, but are those changes going to stick? [00:48:00] So next year when they celebrate this spring festival, will there be women on the tin, Toro boat?
Alison Brown: You know, if it mobilizes Japanese women, that’s the key.
Jill Jaracz: Interesting
Alison Brown: all when they, when they say, no, this is, this is not okay.
And we can say, it’s not okay.
Jill Jaracz: I hope so next week the torch is supposed to go to Osaka, but the Kyodo news has reported that there is talk of it not happening because there has been a rise in COVID cases in Osaka. We shall see about that tickets. If you’re in. Not Japan and and have cos sport as your authorized ticket reseller, you may have gotten an email that said, oh, you could hang onto your tickets and transfer them over to friends and family, if you would like, or take your chances that, that, uh, tourists will be allowed in.
To Japan. At some point I had a, [00:49:00] a quick message with, uh, Ken Hanscomb and he’s like, yeah. And it would be a violation of your agreement to resell those tickets. So
Alison Brown: this is gonna get messier and messier.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. So that has to be, I have to decide that in like a day or two, what to do, I don’t know. It’s so frustrating.
I don’t even wanna think about them taking 20% of what I’ve spent.
Alison Brown: And, you know, we all have, we have one friend in the entire country of Japan.
Jill Jaracz: Right.
Alison Brown: so I, I imagine that sending it to Japanese family and friends is not really an option for most people.
Jill Jaracz: Right, right.
and then the, the international Paralympic committee has suspended its zero classification policy and will allow athletes in 10 sports to be graded in the host city before Tokyo 2020. So usually all the classifications have to happen before a Paralympics and because [00:50:00] of the tight timeframe with COVID, the IPC has allowed these 10 sports to have their athlete leads, be classified and graded.
before Tokyo 2020, so they can be there and get classified. And you better hope you make it, I guess.
Alison Brown: Right. Or maybe, I guess if it’s a lot of the track, there’s so many classes and they’ve kind of know the classes so that it’s not gonna get too screwy, but yeah, this could get, this could also get a little tricky.
Jill Jaracz: Exactly. Exactly. Um,
Alison Brown: thanks. COVID again,
Jill Jaracz: right. It’s amazing that there’s no more real good news from Beijing. I know they’re doing some ice test events, but like everybody else is quiet and it’s so weird to have so many games be quiet.
Alison Brown: I think they’re keeping their heads down, to be honest.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. Right. Oh man.
Alison Brown: Nobody wants to cuz that’s the one who gets shot. the one who sticks their head above the the, the [00:51:00] whole,
Jill Jaracz: but it makes me wonder, when is Beijing going to like announce their medals? You know, because they haven’t done any of that kind of stuff. So they have to release their medals at some point, but are they going to wait until July and just, there’s gonna be a barrage of stuff happening in August, September, probably September, if they wanna avoid the Paralympics too,
Alison Brown: you know, and maybe they’re gonna use this to really concentrate and intensify the buildup, you know, usually we have a good steady year buildup.
Jill Jaracz: Mm-hmm.
Alison Brown: And this may be, you know, crunch it all into three months and just full throttle the whole way September through.
Evan Dunfee: We shall see.
Jill Jaracz: It’ll be interesting.
Alison Brown: Just thinking about it.
Jill Jaracz: I know, I know. I was watching the wrestling trials over the weekend, which, oh, by the way, us wrestling trials. Our very own superfan.
Sarah got to say hello to and take a selfie with the do [00:52:00] tones of Jason Bryant. So it was just awesome to see shook down, meet in real life,
Alison Brown: the diaspora coming together.
Jill Jaracz: Right but the, the trials were pretty intense and also intense was the amount of team USA commercial. Because that stuff is all starting.
They are really starting. The NBC here is really starting with its barrage of marketing to, to remind you that the games are coming up.
Alison Brown: I’m ready, man. I’ve got my, my Oreos. I’ve got my PS. I am in training now.
Jill Jaracz: All right. Well, we should get back to another session. It’s two days now from now through July. Oh, and all right, well, that’s good to do it for this week.
Let us know what you think about race walking,
Alison Brown: email us@flamealivepodgmail.com or call or text at two zero eight three five [00:53:00] two six three four. That’s 2 0 8 flame. It we’re flame alive pod on Twitter and Insta and keep the flame alive podcast group on Facebook.
Jill Jaracz: Join us next week for part two with Evan Dunphy.
And as we go out to music by Archdale. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time, keep the flame alive.
Closing Music: The
what’s inside.[00:54:00]
Alison Brown: Yeah, who’s the Olympic now.