Canadian Olympic race walker Evan Dunfee is back to tell us how race walking works. Really — we actually get into the sport this week (though don’t count out novela talk)!
Evan talks about the mechanics of the sport, the discrepancy between TV cameras and judges’ human eyes, and possible career opportunities once he ends his pro racing career. Oh, a little Rule 50 chat, just for fun.
You can follow Evan at @evandunfee on Twitter and Insta.
What are our TKFLASTANIs up to this week? A LOT! We’ve got news from:
- Leslie Klein
- Kikkan Randall
- Don Bigsby
- John Shuster
- Jacqueline Simoneau
- DeAnna Price
- Phil Andrews
- David Davis
Throughout 2021 we’re revisiting great stories from Atlanta 1996! For our Atlanta 1996 moment this week, we discuss the race walking competitions–a women’s distance that’s no longer contested, an amazing win in the men’s 20K and a men’s 50K racer with a training plan we can get behind.
We also have Games Updates from:
- Tokyo 2020 – We’re less than 100 days from the Tokyo 2020 Opening Ceremony! Japan’s oldest woman carried the torch in the torch relay! Australia’s planning live site watch parties and a kids’ art contest to decorate athletes’ room walls at the Village! More COVID-19 plans!
- Beijing 2022 – During the Team USA Media Summit, US Olympic & Paralympic Committee’s Board of Directors Chair Susanne Lyons had some words on the possibility of a boycott.
Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive!
TRANSCRIPT
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Episode 184 – Olympian Evan Dunfee on Race Walking Pt. 2
Evan Dunfee: [00:00:00] Yeah. The, what I love about the 50 K is that one so much can go wrong. Like I think my favorite thing about the 50 K is like how easy it is to screw up
Jill Jaracz: hello, fans of and welcome to another episode of keep the flame alive, the podcast for fans of the Olympics and Paralympics. I am your host to chill Jaris joined as always by my lovely co-host. Alison brown, Alison. Hello, how are you?
Alison Brown: I took a very nice brisk walk before we taped. So I am ready to go. Yes.
In honor, of our part, two of our interview [00:01:00] with Canadian race Walker, Evan Dunphy. Very nice. I’m ready to tow heel toe. Did you get that circular motion going to? I did. I got my hips. Don’t lie. They were moving. All right. Before we get to our interview with Evan, uh, let’s give a shout out to all of our Patrion patrons.
This show is pretty expensive to produce, especially as we go into Beijing where we will have on the ground presence. So we appreciate our Patrion patrons for helping to support the show financially, you can become a patron today at patrion.com/a flame alive pod, or go to flame alive pod.com and look for the store.
Evan Dunfee Interview
Today, we’ve got part two of our interview with Evan Dunphy. Evan is a, an Olympic race Walker who raced for Canada at the 2016 Olympics coming in fourth after some controversy. And he has qualified for Tokyo 2020 at the world athletics world champs [00:02:00] in 2019. He won bronze in the 50 K last week. We were supposed to talk about how race walking works, but that conversation went in a totally different direction.
If you haven’t listened to it, do because Marin novella talk T Bach talk. It’s awesome. Uh, but this week we are getting into the mechanics of the, how race walking works. And of course our conversation with Evan took some other interesting directions. Take a listen. Let’s talk about the sport itself and watching it a little bit.
How do you keep it to a walk and not a run? Cause we, we learned before about like, it’s the motion is all in your hips and they kind of move in a circular way, but when you’re going and trying to push it faster, how do you keep it to a walk?
Evan Dunfee: Yeah, I, for, for me, like I started race walking was 10 years old and I, I like race walk while I was running.
I still do. I’ve run the occasional, occasional race still [00:03:00] sometimes for fun. To me, they’re two completely different movements, you know, I’ve, I’ve never, there’s that idea of, you know, people ask like, well, when you’re side by side, someone sprinting to the finish line, like how do you not just break out into a run?
And for me, that’s not even an option. Like it’s just, they’re so separated in my head as being these two distinct motor patterns, two distinct movements that said my, my, my running style. Probably resembles that of a race locker. I don’t have much knee drive or, uh, when I run, but, but to me, I can’t really fathom the idea of breaking out into a run in that traditional sense.
Um, during a race walk, obviously like running in a race walking sense where you’re, you know, you got both feet off the ground, you’re lifting, you’re still race walking, but you’re, you, you’ve kind of gone beyond the, your, your technical limits. We would, we would call that a run, but mechanically it’s just race walking illegally, I [00:04:00] guess, would be the difference between that and like a traditional, like getting your knees up and landing on your toes and like actually sort of running, but.
Yeah. Like I, I probably am to, I’m an athlete who could actually stand to like, get more off the ground. I can’t lift as much as some of my competitors lift. And that’s, that’s another thing like race walking, as I’m sure it was talked about when you had the race walk officials on was race walking is judged by the human eye.
So one of our biggest problems is we get attention every four years of the Olympics. And all they do is show slow motion replays of all of us off the ground saying that we’re cheating. I was like, well, no, like cameras are just a lot better. Like humans kind of just suck at seeing things and, and we’re judged by humans.
And like, that’s just how it’s always been. And like, if you want to change that, that’s fine. If you want to bring technology and that’s fine, but let’s just realize at this point in time, we’re off the ground, but we’re not cheating. It’s a hard thing to get people to buy into, I guess. And I’m one of the [00:05:00] athletes who like, is probably more stuck to the ground than most.
And, and it certainly slows you down because any, any time you have flight, any flight phase you have is just bonus bonus speed for not doing any extra work. But yeah, to, to, to the initial question, they’re just completely distinct Mo movements for me. Okay. So you
Jill Jaracz: talked about Lyft and you talked about how you’re more down to the ground.
I don’t even know my question, but I just want to, like, when you say lift it is that when you try to get more lift, what are you trying to do with your body and lift, I guess helps propel you forward.
Evan Dunfee: Yeah. Yeah. So like any, so your flight phase is what sort of, so, so race walking is supposed to be a progression of steps where, you know, one foot is always on the ground, the speeds that we’re going at, because it’s judged by the human eye.
The human eye can only, only process visual information at about 400 per second. So if you’re lifting, if you’re, if you have both feet off the ground for about 400 to a [00:06:00] second, the judges can’t pick that up. So the best race walk technique is being off the ground for about 400 per second. Uh, and so, you know, that that’s you trying to push that, that, that limit of, of what you can get away with there are it’s, it’s not quite that simple because there are, you know, judges because judges are human, they aren’t always looking at the same thing.
So, so one of the things that you’ll see with race walking versus running is like our head don’t Bob, up and down at all. You know, you can, you can draw a straight line across. You know, if you had a stationary camera and someone walked by it like that kind of, that, that image of, of, you know, the, the prep school girls walking with the books on their head, old school, kind of like that style.
Like you could do that with a race law and you could put books on their head and they wouldn’t fall off. So some judges will look at that. Some judges even like for girls ponytails, they’ll look and see if like the ponytail was bouncing because of the, if you’re going up and down, then technically that you should be off the ground.
And so there are different [00:07:00] things that like form that judges like holistic opinion of like what lifting is for better, for worse. So there are some athletes that if you slow them down, they might be lifting more than others, but they never get lifting calls for other reasons. Then some athletes might be more on the ground, but they have, you know, other parts of their technique don’t look as good.
And so they get more calls. So there, there is a little bit of subjectivity. Which is not great, obviously, but I think, I think most athletes in race walk agree though that like the intrinsic validity from, you know, you kind of, the consistency of judging is there. So, you know, you at least know what you’re getting, which is probably more important than anything else.
As long as that judging is consistent time after time, then you can adapt to it and know what has to, how, how to get, how to get through a race. But I’m probably like closer to that 0.2 seconds off the ground. And so I could benefit [00:08:00] from, you know, trying to get that 0.4. And that’s just a little bit tech technique.
It’s a little bit like pushing harder with your feet and just allowing yourself to kind of travel through that air that little bit more. But especially for me, is that as a 50 K Walker, predominantly 50 Ks, my, my main event that, that there’s is less lifting cause you’re going slower. So you’ll, you’ll have way less lifting in, in the 50 K than you do in the 20 K just as a product of the pasting.
So then
Jill Jaracz: 50 K is just really a lot more focus on endurance and maintaining the form for that long.
Evan Dunfee: Yeah. Yeah. So, um, you know, the, what I love about the 50 K is that, I mean, one so much can go wrong. Like I think my favorite thing about the 50 K is like how easy it is to screw up. You look at a marathon, like so marathons, you know, their guys are running, the top guys are running those and just over two hours, top women are running them in, you know, two hours under two hours of 20, you run out of carbohydrates out of, you know, somewhere between that like hour [00:09:00] 42 hour mark.
So, you know, for the most part, there’s not that much time that, that if you run out of energy, you’re going to be suffering for it. There’s the, there’s the wall in, in the marathon that, that people are familiar with. And if you’re running a two hour marathon and you’re not really dealing with that wall at all, race walk in the 50 K it’s a three hour and 45 minute race, three hour, 40 minute ride.
That wall’s at the same point. Now that that point where you run out of energy, stored carbohydrates is still at that sort of two hour mark. So you gotta be taking in enough carbohydrate during the race to get you through it. You gotta be feeling yourself, you gotta be hydrating yourself properly. So like so much can go wrong.
And I love that because I sound the start line, knowing that I’m not the most genetically gifted, you know, I know there’s guys around me that have higher VO two max is, and, and, you know, have, are just, are just better than me, but I can do all those little things better than they can. And that closes the gap.
And [00:10:00] so, you know, it really, for me, it’s this kind of puzzle almost compared to the 20 cages. Like, Hey, who can, who can race walk the fastest for 20 K and the 50 K is alright, who can raise, walk the fastest, but also taking the most fuel, make sure they get enough water in, make sure they don’t overheat all that stuff.
It just becomes a factor. I for me, I love that because it makes me sort of believe that I can outperform better athletes who are better than me. How do
Jill Jaracz: you put that puzzle together? Like, how do you figure out, oh, I need this much water at this point and this much fuel at this point.
Evan Dunfee: Uh, so I work with sports nutritionist.
We do, we’ve done a lot of sports, nutrition, like studies, which are really fun, but, you know, I have a, I have an amazing team that sort of helps me. And then I also, my background is in sports science and kinesiology. So I love being able to kind of figure stuff out on my own as well. So, you know, a lot of it is trial and error, but a lot of it is following the science, knowing what’s what’s [00:11:00] available, what’s out there.
And then just figuring out best practices. Like it’s, it’s not as difficult as athletes make it seem to be on the basis of how many athletes do it poorly, you know, with how many athletes do it poorly. You think it’s really, really complicated. But it’s not it’s I I’ve had, I’ve had race block friends who talked to marathon runners, who, who were surprised that we eat breakfast before our long runs.
And I was like, what are you? Yeah, you’re going out and running for two hours. Why are you not eating breakfast before that? So it is, it is mind-boggling to me like how much, like people get caught up in like tradition of Elvis now it’s always been done. So this is how we do it. And it’s like, yeah, but that’s not the best way to do it.
And there’s lots of evidence to say that this is the best way to do it. So do it that way. Um, which is what we try to do. You know, our, my little team is, is as focused on like, okay, this is the best way to do things. This is, this is how we’re going to do it. So for, for fueling, like I have, uh, a fueling plan for 50 Ks that basically takes into account how much I’m drinking and eating every two kilometers.[00:12:00]
Um, so in race, walking, we race on a, on a one or a two kilometer loop, major championships are usually two kilometer loops. Um, and that’s so that you have the judges. There’ll be able to watch the entire race. You know, if we had like a marathon where we’re going through the streets, like you’d have to move the judges around or you’d have to have dozens and dozens of judges.
So racing on the loop kind of takes away those, those issues, but it also presents an amazing opportunity to be super detailed in, in those plans. So at major championships I’ll have a scale. I’ll have my bottles, I’ll figure out how much I want to drink every two kilometers. All that will be figured out with like what percentage of carbohydrate those drinks are based on what the weather is and how much water I think I need and how to get to my like fueling goals and all that stuff, but all be calculated beforehand.
And then we’ll have, uh, whoever’s on the drinks table for me, will weigh my bottle before and after I drank to know exactly to the middle leader, how much I took in that lap. [00:13:00] They’ll relay that information back to me on the next lap. So I know if I need to drink more or less to make up for or to, you know, to make sure I’m still on.
So we’re, we’re really, we’re really, really into the weeds with it, making sure that like that all those little details are taken care of. And I’ll in a 50 K race. I’ll take in about 5,000 calories during the race and about in a hot race, about four liters of fluid.
Jill Jaracz: And how much do you expend during a race?
Evan Dunfee: The part of the pro, as I say, that we’re really into the weeds. When we try to do everything best practice, I will admit that most of the times I’ve missed my post race weigh-ins because I just, I, after a 50 K I just don’t care anymore. Um, so I actually don’t know my sweat rates. I know my sweat rate is around 1.5 to two liters an hour.
So if we’re only taking in a liter per hour, which is about the most, your stomach can handle still on the higher end, losing four liters of water, [00:14:00] um, I should I, someone, someone weighed me after Doha. So someone knows how much, how much weight I lost. I should find out who that person was. They were, I should, I should preface that with, they were someone who should have been weighing me.
They weren’t just some random assay for my weight.
Jill Jaracz: Hey, listen, there’s a new job.
I just want to weigh you. It’s fine. Okay. So I wanted to ask about the focus because for three and a half hours, Obviously there’s a lot to think about with what you’re consuming, but what else? I mean, what do you think about for three and a half hours as you’re just walking in a circle?
Evan Dunfee: Yeah, I, I find like in a race, I end up getting really focused on okay.
Like, well, you know, what was my split? The last two kilometers. All right. What does that put me on pace for? Is that about what I think I’m capable of doing? How do I feel? How did the guys around me look? How, how many, like, does this, the oldest guy in this group has, you know, has already gotten a one red card, like, [00:15:00] Hmm.
Should we push the pace to see if we can get him another red card? And oh, this person looks like they’re starting to fall off the back of the group. Like, oh, if we put a surgeon here, like maybe we could drop them or I spend, yeah. I go through that, like repetition and then I think, okay, how much did I get enough water?
Like who, like, how do I, I go through that kind of repetition. Like every, every lap, almost certainly early in the race. Try not to think at all. You just try to like turn off mentally and. I am in, in Doha. I remember like the, my, my teammate and I, our race strategy was just, we were just going to sit at the bat, like sit near the back and just be very, very patient and move our way through the field.
And so when it came time to start on the start line, when they were saying like, on your marks, like him and I were still like maybe three or four meters behind the start line, like chatting, like we, you know, it wasn’t like, you know, everyone else is sort of up there with their hand on their watch, getting ready, you know, getting ready to charge off the start line for a four hour race.
[00:16:00] Um, which seems a little silly, but we were just hanging back kind of chatting had our like cold towel still wrapped around us. And then the race started. We’re like, oh, okay, let’s go. And kind of just, you know, spend the first couple of K chatting. We were joking about how the race was playing out exactly how we wanted it to in our minds with like the two of the guys go.
Off the front and being like, oh, this is perfect. Like they’re going to kill each other off. Like, this is, this is working out just how we want it. And like chatting and joking with each other and chatting to like our coaches on the sidelines and stuff. When we got a chance to, and just trying to stay really relaxed is sort of my best strategy.
Cause I, I know that I train really well, you know, I I’m, I know that I’m one of the best trainers in the world, but that hasn’t always translated into being one of the best racers in the world, but I really try to take that same attitude of like, okay, well, if I just treat this, like I do in training, then that’s usually like pretty successful for me.
So, so my mantra at a lot of times, it’s just like, Hey, just like training, just, just like training. And when I won the Pan-Am games in [00:17:00] 2015 at home in Toronto, I charge off the front of the race, two kilometers to the race, ended up like walking the entire thing on my own. And I remember just every like couple of minutes.
It’s okay. It’s just, it’s just a training session. It’s just, you’re out to do, you know, you’re up to a 12 K tempo now, you know, or oh eight K of your tempo left and not ever thinking of myself as being, you know, in this championship race with some of the best guys in the world, chasing me from behind. I was just like, no, it’s just like training.
Just like treat this as you would any other hard training session on your own. And that that’s for me where I find success. Other athletes are completely different. Like we have athletes who are the loveliest, most relaxed, kindest people, you know, you get into the call room and sunglasses on like battle, you know, war face, like it’s going to battle and you’re just like, you wouldn’t dare talk to them.
And so, you know, every athlete has to find that that ideal performance state or, you know, that, that level of [00:18:00] amped amness, that that is, is ideal for them. And for a 50 K race. I don’t think that little Atmos is very high because you know, you really act and then the gun goes, you know, like, okay, I got four hours of this.
It’s not like a, you know, an 800 meter race where you need to be like, all right, let’s, let’s do this. You know, like, let’s go and I’m going to put everything into this for a minute and 45 seconds. The gun I got, I can, I can worry about being amped in three hours.
Jill Jaracz: Is there ever any trash talking during
Evan Dunfee: the race?
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. It’s a lot of timing. It’s it’s sometimes the guys don’t speak English and then you’re like, oh, that one didn’t land, but more so stuff on when I’ve been on the sideline. So, so we’ve had our world racewalking cup in 2016, um, was in Rome and Alex Watser who won the 50 K race in 2008, Pete, my close friend, Jared talent.
- He didn’t get to compete. Cause he [00:19:00] tested positive for TPO, you know, went on this big crying thing about how he was stressed and went to Turkey and body PO and all this stuff. Then it turned out that he was working with Dr. Ferrari and potentially had been on drugs even in 2008 and all blah, blah, blah, and had said he’s gonna retire from sport and got his, his figure skating, girlfriends suspended because she made him lie for him and all this stuff.
And then in 2016, all of a sudden I’m coming back, I’m going to compete in Rio. He got a late entry into the world cup, having not qualified for it. And basically. No one, the race with ease. And so during that race, because I raised the 20 K the day before, so I was there watching, and I just spent three and a half hours hurling abuse at this drug sheet.
You know, we knew his pseudonym that he had used on Twitter to defend themselves. So I was yelling that at, um, I was, you know, I was going to going deep into the well of, of any references I could think of. And after the race, he won that race. And Jared was second again behind [00:20:00] them. And at the metal ceremony, I just, as they were walking up to the podium, I was walking beside him, just hurling abuse at him, asking him how he sleeps at night.
Like just all this terrible stuff. And I got kicked out of the metal ceremony. Uh, not surprisingly, you know, I, I feel really bad for the woman that at world athletics who had to come and ask me to leave because she was well within her, right. To ask me to leave. And, but at the same time, they turned out that they needed Alex to do a race because they had a suspicious sample on him from January.
But they were used, it was using the new urine passport that you needed to have a race, a race test in order to trigger the additional analyses of the original test. So they needed him to race so that they could go and test that old sample. And then in that old sample, they found steroids and he got suspended again and got that gold medal taken away from him.
And Jared became the gold medalist and I became completely justified in everything I was doing. And it was, it was fantastic. [00:21:00] But now he’s back and he’s claiming that it was all a conspiracy and that, uh, uh, uh, Italian court has ruled in his favor, even though Cass has found no merit in his case. And you know, there there’s lots of telenovelas and race walking that you could choose from these days.
Jill Jaracz: I think that doping is really problematic for your sport.
Evan Dunfee: Absolutely. I mean, and the Russians dominated racewalking for a generation basically. So Jerry talent, um, who just retired, just announced his retirement last week. He’s he’s won four global titles, either like Olympics, world champs, or world race, walking championships.
One for global titles, never cross the finish line. First never got to stand on top of the podium. And here at national Anthem, he played hundreds of thousands of dollars in prize money that he’ll never see. You know, the, the endorsements that come with being an Olympic gold medalist, he became the Olympic gold medalist, you know, a month before he became the Olympic [00:22:00] silver medalist.
Cause he got his gold medal from London in 26. Yeah, so that, and he really inspired me to, like, I, I got the first train with him in 2012, and that was kind of when I learned how to train properly and really dedicated myself to being like the best athlete I possibly could be. And he’s been very vocal for clean sports.
Um, in 2008, when he finished third behind Valerie abortion who won the 20 K race who had failed a test a month before the games. And then they just, the Russians went, no that didn’t happen and let them compete. And, and Jared sat there next to him and said that because the drug cheat shouldn’t be here, like, you know, all the credit that, that, that everyone gets in like 2015 for being vocal about Russian doping.
Like Jared was doing that back in 2008 and really blazed the trail for the race walkers to be vocal. So the race walkers have always been very vocal about clean. And that’s one of the things I love about it is that, you know, again, there’s also not much money in it. So like, you know, I’m not at risk. I can be a lot more vocal and say what I [00:23:00] think, cause I’m not, I don’t have any sponsors that, you know, want me to play nice and, and do all that stuff.
So, you know, that’s kind of, I guess there’s the reasonings, why we’re, we’re able to do what we do and not many people are paying attention to us so we can get away with being a little bit more vocal. But yeah, certainly that’s a huge issue and Alex Watser wants to come back for, for Tokyo. And I mean, it won’t happen, but, but, um, just the fact that, you know, it’s being talked about just shows that doping still a huge issue.
Well,
Jill Jaracz: and that’s the end of their problematic thing about the IOC is that they kind of want to sweep stuff under the rug and make things nice, but this problem keeps popping back. It seems like. And you know, if they don’t really do something besides a slap on the wrist, things don’t
Evan Dunfee: get. Yeah. Yeah. Like I recently learned that the international testing authority agency, international, whatever the ITA stands for was originally supposed to be called the independent testing, whatever the, a stands for and, [00:24:00] and were basically told by a Swiss court, no, you can’t do that.
You’re not independent. And the IOC still touts like, oh, we have this robust, independent organization dealing with testing. It’s like, wow. They’re not like the courts have decided that there are no hives. So yeah, exactly. Like it’s, it’s, there’s a lot of again, met good messaging with, you know, not a whole bunch of substance behind it.
Jill Jaracz: A little technique. How do you take the turns on your loop? Cause you got to do a lot of turns. So what do you do? Do you do anything? What do you do? That’s
Evan Dunfee: different it’s so sometimes you get really lucky and have races with really nice turns. At the London world championships in 2017, we actually had, one of our turnarounds was around the, um, the Victoria monument front of Buckingham palace.
So really nice big roundabout was perfect. Also you get to wave to the queen every lap, which was exciting, not as exciting as 2012 when I was there to spectator very, very drunk across the street from the queen. That was probably more [00:25:00] fun, but the turns are very, very difficult. I find, um, I just did a race on Friday actually, and it was weed like coach.
And I literally just measured out with a steel tape, 500 meters on a drag strip at a racecourse and put a cone down at zero meters. But it calmed down at 500 meters and it was like, Hey, this is our one kilometer loop. And we figured actually that I probably walked about 20 points to 20.3 kilometers because you know, every lap, there’s no way that I can just come around the corner and turn on a dime.
So every, every turn I was adding about three or four meters to get around that corner, but it. It really the technique isn’t really that different. It’s just having to like slow yourself down a little bit. And then that becomes like a huge deceleration and then a huge acceleration and that’s really taxing on your body.
So it does turn just more than anything has taken a lot out of you because you’re constantly having to slow yourself down and speed back up. And then to be honest, some athletes just jog around the corners. If there’s not a judge on the court, like we have some footage of some races where [00:26:00] it’s just, it’s a bit of a farce, like athletes will come around and come into the corner, take like three or four jobs.
And then start race walking again. So now we see a lot more often we have judges who are actually on the corner, making sure the athletes are actually walking around it. But yeah, um, again, it’s, it’s probably an issue that’s greater at the 20 K especially early on in the race. I remember in the Olympics and in the 20 K like there’s a group of like 40 of us on a one K loop, all walking together on a, you know, in the, road’s probably the equivalent of like a three lane road.
And so you come into these corners and guys are getting their, their numbers ripped off their backs. Their shoes are getting stepped on and, and it’s, it is a little bit of mayhem. And, and at that point, you basically, it’s an accordion, you know, the first guys go into the corner, everyone else comes together and then the top guys are stopped, basically like a traffic jam and then have to pick it back up.
So it is more than anything I’d say it’s just, it’s just physically taxing. Then, then, then mechanically. Do the
Jill Jaracz: [00:27:00] courses always go in the same direction. So are you always turning left or are you always turning right? Or that doesn’t reverse, which I’m hoping you’re going to
Evan Dunfee: say yes. So in, in my experience, funnily enough, so when we’re in countries where you drive on the right, you turn left and when we’re, when we race in Australia, we turn right.
And it’s something that I’d never thought about until I think probably my third race in Australia, where I went, wait a second, wait, every time I raced here, we’ve, we’ve walked on the left-hand side and turned her feet very strained. And I’ve only ever had one race where it was a mixture. So that reason Rome was kind of like a S S shape where you had like one right-hand turn in two left-hand turns, every loop, which was interesting.
It kind of was kind of nice. They kept everything pretty compact. So you could see the entire race kind of unfold from one vantage point, which was good for S made it very spectator.
Jill Jaracz: Well, I’m also thinking just the physical balance. Like I was thinking of, you’re constantly [00:28:00] turning in one direction. That foot gets a lot of the, you know, the outside of that foot would take a lot of abuse.
Evan Dunfee: Yeah. Yeah. It’d be really cool to be able to have a race where you kind of almost did it in like a figure eight shape where like in the middle of the loop you cross over and then, so like you’re doing one turn one way and the other turn the other way. That’d be really interesting. You’ll definitely get on the tracks.
Like when we do big track workouts or with we race race on the track, almost always the race walkers ended up like warming up and cooling down, going the opposite direction. Cause one they’re just bored of going the same way. And two, you just feel like, yeah, that, that, that inside leg, that left leg of going doing 50 laps of the track is this.
Done with that. And so you just try to undo, undo everything might go in the opposite direction. Okay.
Jill Jaracz: So now this is you’ll. You’ll totally get where I’m going here. I just had the mental image of the judge just yelling reverse in the middle of third base. And everybody’s
Evan Dunfee: got to go. Yeah,
like kind of like a, [00:29:00] I guess like a duck duck go almost
Jill Jaracz: well. I was thinking like roller rinks from when I was a kid and all that, that it was first and it would have to skate the opposite drag, all walk, all walk.
Evan Dunfee: I have this image now of her, of her Brooks, um, or, or, uh, whoever was who played her. Bruxton the in miracle.
Just yelling again.
Jill Jaracz: Um, how many pairs of shoes do you go through in a year?
Evan Dunfee: A lot. So my typically I would get about 400 cat, have a pair of shoes. Um, which for me is maybe three weeks. I will, I will do a little plug here for my, like my shoe sponsor Newfield. Cause they, they may like race locking specific shoes. And since I’ve started wearing those the last year I’ve found for whatever reason, I’ve been getting like 800 K out of them.
So I like doubled the lifespan on my shoes, which has been very nice, but it’s still not very much like it’s still, you’re still going through, you know, a pair of shoes every six weeks maybe. Um, [00:30:00] and that like annoyingly changes wildly with like the road you’re training on or the temperature outside. So when we train in Australia and 38 degrees, the shoes don’t last, nearly as long as I’m training at home in the winter, just because there’s so much more heat in the road and you’re just basically burned.
You’re basically burning through, through the pair of shoes.
Jill Jaracz: What is it about your new shoes that is different from,
Evan Dunfee: I think they must, they must just have more like a thicker rubber on the bottom. Like, so the. I guess those are the shoes I had before. Like, it was a thin layer of rubber that was this there for traction.
And then you have your foam underneath. Whereas these ones I think have like a little bit more rubber that’s there for traction, but also durability. I don’t think running shoes are typically mostly running shoes aren’t made with durability in mind, because then you would sell less running shoes
Jill Jaracz: kind of drift.
Oh, let’s talk about the fundraising you were doing for kids [00:31:00] sport. Cause you couldn’t go to Australia this year.
Evan Dunfee: Yeah. Yeah. So I’ve I’ve so kids sports, a local charity basically it’s catalyzed, but it was sort of started in British Columbia and their mission is really simple. It’s just like. Sports are expensive.
Some kids, you know, families can’t afford to put them in sports. That’s not fair. Let’s, let’s help more kids play sports. So, so they’ll pay, um, you know, towards registration fees for kids can’t afford it. They have such a low barrier to entry. Like you can just apply, you don’t need to prove your need for it.
You don’t have to prove like there’s, there’s really nothing stopping people from, from accessing the support. So I love that. Um, and I got involved with them after the Olympics in 2016, I got invited out to another. It was like an adult sports day where everyone ran around the firefighters were there with their truck and had like a real relay race set up, ready to put the fire suit on and unroll, unravel a hose and hook it up and fill up a bucket of water and stuff like that.
And I can spoon races and have wheelchair [00:32:00] basketball. And it was like, it was like, this is the coolest thing ever. And they raised, uh, it was something like a hundred thousand dollars, some of that that day. And I was like, Hey, this is the coolest thing ever. And we got free food. Like, can I come back? And basically since then, I have just become a kid sport ambassador and helped out with all, you know, whenever they’ve had local events and stuff, been able to, they want athletes there for it, just there and being an ambassador and eating free food and, and in 2018, We had a really early year.
Oh, we had Commonwealth games, our world cup, all that stuff was done early in the year. So we had nothing for the second half of the season and I just kind of thought, all right, well, huh, I should do something. I kind of want to, like, I have nothing, no major competition, like, all right, let’s do this, this thing.
It’s the kid was kids sports, 20th anniversary. So I decided I was going to walk 25 K a day for 25 days. And throughout the fall talk to 25 schools and we ended up raising $26,000. I spoke to over 10,000 kids [00:33:00] sharing, sort of my journey in sport. And then the value of sport that I think exists and all this different stuff.
And, you know, walked my 625 K and it was just so fantastic and just loved it. And so building off that success this year coming into, into January, not being down in Australia, having to do like my. Based training on my own in the Vancouver winter, I was kinda like, man, I just, I’m not very motivated for this.
Like I just need, I need that little spark. And one of our local running, running groups is doing a virtual event. Whereas just run as many kilometers as you can in January, you know, get these badges for every milestone you hit and all this stuff. And they had kids spores one of their partners. So I thought, okay, this is perfect.
I’m going to take this. I’m going to take this and run with it basically or walk with it, I guess. And so I just took it upon myself to make, make my own website and set everything up and basically just said, all right, I’m going to, I’m going to walk 600 K and. I’m looking, I’m hoping to get $10 for every [00:34:00] catwalk.
So let’s just see if we can raise $6,000. And some of my, some of my sponsors CLE threw in a bunch of hats to give away a, one of the Vancouver running stores. Ben Runko gave me a couple of shirts to give away. So a few giveaways, we just end up just making a big event of it and ended up raising $9,000 because sports just through walking.
And it was so fantastic. Cause, cause for me, it’s like, I want to give back to my community, but it’s like, all right, what are my skills? Like I only skill is, or my main skill is I can walk relatively fast for long periods of time. Like, you know, it’s not a particularly useful skill in this day and age. I think, you know, back in world war one, I would have been a great messenger.
I would have, you know, I could have delivered, you know, I could have delivered messages from the front. Great mail carrier, but that’s going out of fashion these days. So I was like, oh, how do I use this ability to walk fast, to, to do good. And you know, this is what we’ve sort of come up with. And it’s, it’s awesome.
So I love being able to, to use that. And that’s one of my messages to the kids is like, all right, like set really, [00:35:00] really, uh, dangerous goals and then follow those goals with like an unrelenting passion. But at a certain point, you’ve got to take a step back, look at how far you’ve come and then use, use that progress and use what you’ve learned to give back.
And so I’m sort of at that stage now where I’m trying to use the skills I’ve acquired to, to give back and, and help lift up those behind me.
Jill Jaracz: Oh, okay. So posts racing career, do you have a secret dream to work for the postal office?
Evan Dunfee: I mean, it would be, it’d be so awesome. I would just, it would, it would just, it would be great.
I, I there’s has to be. The other thing I thought of is being a, a dog. Well, You know how many look I don’t think they’re gonna, I don’t think my target audience will be listening to this. How many pretentious moms out there would pay a very high premium to tell their mom friends that their dogs are walked by the fastest Walker in Canada?
You know, that’s, that’s what I’m thinking. [00:36:00] That’s my angle. I think I could, you know, do a really high class, high brow target that, that, that, you know, upper echelon of society who can’t walk their own dogs and just position myself as like, you can get your dogs walked by the best Walker. Okay. May I also
Jill Jaracz: suggest you walk toddlers?
Evan Dunfee: I would, I would do that, but I would not, I would that’s open to everyone. That would be because that would just be fun. That would be so much fun. Like I would not, I would not go after the, the pretentious, uh, demographic on that. I would be like anyone whose kid wants a walk, let’s do this because that would just be enjoyable where
Jill Jaracz: that kid and that dog out.
That would be
Evan Dunfee: awesome. That is how, that is how, I mean, we think so much about how we grow the sport. That’s how we do it. We just get, we get them. We get them hooked when they’re, when they’re 2, 3, 4 years old. There we go. I think we’re onto something here. [00:37:00] World’s athletics. Give us a car.
Jill Jaracz: Uh, Evan, thank you so much. When do you take off for Tokyo? Do you know?
Evan Dunfee: No idea. Well, we’ll hopefully have more information in the next round of the playbooks and then we can start putting those finishing touches on. Three plans right now. And then we’ll just, we’ll kind of figure out which one works best with, with what we’re told to do.
All right.
Jill Jaracz: Oh, uh, you know, I do have one last question cause you like speaking your mind, what do you think about the rural 50 controversy?
Evan Dunfee: Yeah, I mean, I find it very like really interesting. I mean, the, the one thing that I find really interesting is the athletes who are very vocal about abolishing it and, you know, listening to the athlete, they were very much listening to them.
Like they say, listen to the ASOS, listen to the athletes, anything Olympic committee, athletes association. I think it does an amazing job. And they did a whole big survey getting the athlete input. I know the Germans did the exact same thing and a [00:38:00] bunch of, a bunch of the athlete commissions have done the same thing.
And what I find really funny is, cause I I’m, I think I’m in favor of abolishing the rule. I there’s nuances that, that I can be swayed on and all this, but I think generally I tend towards the, the abolish. Side of things, but that’s not what the overall average athlete voices, like all these surveys that come out of these athlete commissions find that there’s way more nuance to it.
But those who are the most vocal on social media about abolishing it, ironically don’t want to listen to that, to that athlete voice. And so I find that hilarious because it’s just, it’s just the, the hypocrisy is right there right in your face. So I, I, yeah, I, I, it’s a fascinating discussion. I mean, I love how the IOC, you know, they’ll prop up John Carlos and Tommie Smith and, and, and, you know, whenever that’s expedient for them to, to celebrate, they’ll do so.
And, but I don’t, I mean, it’ll be incredibly interesting to see how [00:39:00] Tokyo goes. It will be incredibly interesting to see how Beijing goes. You know, I think rural 50 is kind of this metaphor for kind of the, the troubles the IOC is going to be facing especially next year with, with. And, and in all honesty, I think this is probably the most, most telling time the IOC has had since probably the interwar period where they’re, they’re not at their future, isn’t as secure as it was a few years ago.
And so I think how these next two years ago is going to be incredibly pivotal to the direction and the future of, of the Olympic movement, more so than, than in recent history. And I think, I think rule 50, it plays a prominent kind of role in, you know, probably a marker of where those tides are going. I think where rule 50 goes, we’ll be in a good indication of where the Olympic movement is going.
So I [00:40:00] I’m, I’m fascinated by it. I’m intrigued by the discussion and yeah, that we’ll see where it goes.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah, it’s definitely, it’s really nuanced it’s that it is so fascinating to see trying to get a common playing field or, you know
Evan Dunfee: yeah. Or even just like, yeah. What average, what average Joe athlete once is just very different from what loud Jane athlete wants.
Like, it’s, it’s, it’s even within like, even if you take out all of the, you know, the, the human rights and like that element of discussion, just the, the part of discussion is like of, of what that, what do the athletes want is incredibly nuanced as well. And I, I think that’s, I, I find that really, really sort of fascinating and interesting.
And then the whole human rights stuff is just a, a larger element that, that is thrown on top of that. That’s kind of like, it just makes it, that makes the whole thing just. [00:41:00] Wild. And I mean, athletics is dealing with that with, with interest, the intersect stuff as well, where there’s all these sort of discussions in sport right now that you’re like, oh God, it is so hard to have a black and white opinion.
Like we’ve gotten to this point where we’ve made so much progress in, you know, in dealing with the easiest and inequities to like deal with have kind of, at least for the most part been dealt with. I say that as someone who’s in the only track and field event that doesn’t have a women’s equivalent at the Olympics for at least one March like, oh, and the solution was just to get rid of the men’s event, but we’ve dealt with those sort of, you know, the, the low-hanging fruit, if you will, of inequity.
And now we’re getting into sort of the mark, the more nuanced discussions. And it’s like, yeah, this isn’t black and white. Like there is, there is some gray here. There is some room for people to have like differing opinions to, you know, within, within still a progressive equitable framework. There’s [00:42:00] still a differing opinion.
Does that? I find, I find that it’s going to be such a fascinating, interesting time for the next couple of years in sport. Yeah, because
Jill Jaracz: you have, it’s very easy to say. Okay. Like in 36, when you’re talking about discriminating against Jewish athletes or times where you’re discriminating as, but we can all pretty easily say that’s wrong.
Evan Dunfee: Yeah. And, and, and Thomas Bach, isn’t Avery Brundage. Um, so
Jill Jaracz: these issues were good. People thinking very deeply trying to do the right thing, still come up with different answers.
Evan Dunfee: Exactly. We talk about this a lot. Yeah. I love it. I find it like. I don’t know. I, yeah, I don’t really have anything more to say about it then. Just like, it’s fascinating. It is, it is such an interesting place to be at, in sport now where, where we [00:43:00] can have these discussions.
And I find it interesting, even just talking to friends. Cause it’s gotten to the point now where like friends that aren’t don’t care about sports are kind of aware of these issues with, especially like the, the intersex and trans athlete issues. And it’s so interesting to like kind of be able to bring, you know, my perspective or like my kind of like people that have friends that have a really progressive lens in, in that part of society.
But don’t have the sport element down on top of it. It’s really interesting to then like kind of get to. Introduced them to the nuances of the sport world and, and see how they apply their lens to that, you know, new information that they didn’t have about like sport, uh, and see what they come up with as, as, as their opinion.
Um, as opposed to me who came at it with like sport was my initial. And then I like, I’ve tried to listen to those voices and apply those voices on top of my sporting lens. It’s just, it’s really interesting to see the differences that, that you come towards from those different areas. Um, yeah, it’s fascinating.
Jill Jaracz: [00:44:00] Excellent. Well, Evan, thank you so much. Really appreciate this. We’ll be cheering. Oh, you are officially a citizen of so we will be cheering for you. Come Tokyo.
Evan Dunfee: I look forward to us.
Jill Jaracz: Thank you so much. Evan, you can follow Evan at Evan Dunphy on Twitter and Insta. He is N Evan Dunphy on Strava. I forgot about this last week.
If, uh, Strava is a running app, I believe, and you can follow people. So he is Evan Dunphy on Strava and his website is Dunphy walks.com. It’s only appropriate that, that our conversation would take a different direction because we’re trying to keep our legs balance clockwise. Counter-clockwise do you feel, do you feel better after talking about that?
Cause that was one of the issues you had. Like how do you, how do you turn and no. So I actually do like to walk. I have a dog, we take a lot of long walks. We take a lot of fast walks cause she’s got little legs and they gotta go really fast, sort of like [00:45:00] me. And when you go to make a quick turn, you know, that’s when you’re going to roll an ankle, you know, that’s, that’s when the injuries are gonna happen.
So when he was discussing, you know, some people kind of cheat and do a little jog and something, I was like, yeah, because that makes total sense that the turns are where everything goes crazy. Yeah. I can imagine. And probably a lot of album wishes at the turns. And I think walking would be a lot more fun if you put dogs in there.
I truly believe we have horses in the Olympics. Why can’t we have dogs? That’s a slippery slope. It’s kind of like the service animal thing, because then you could have otters. You could probably have other things too. It’s going to do something cute. Well, that’s true.
Team Keep the Flame Alive News
Why don’t we check in with our team?
Keep the flame alive.
Welcome to. Leslie Klein has been named [00:46:00] director athletic relations for LA 28 and she will ensure athlete perspectives and viewpoints are integrated into the planning and execution of 20, 28. Very excited for her. I know. And that’s another front lawn we can camp out on. Yeah. Our cross country skier, Keke and Randall was one of 15 and female athletes chosen for wise women athletes business network, class of 2021.
So congratulations to her for that. Uh, Don Bigsby from a limpin was featured in an article, I guess, discussing the how pin collectors are not going to be allowed at Japan. Yeah, that’s really rough. I feel, I do feel all the pin collectors are there. They’re a little sad by this. And of course, especially when I’m in some of the pink collector communities on Facebook and they keep posting more Japanese and more Tokyo, 20, 20 pins.
And, you know, [00:47:00] there’s a whole subset of collectors in Japan who will get to collect pins. And I’m sure there’s going to be some surreptitious trading as people go from venue to venue. How can there not be, I mean, you, they reach the pins from the other countries. Yeah. That’s going to be the hard thing.
And so I think 20, 20 pins are going to be this interesting commodity in the market. Exactly. Because, uh, one of the, the moderators of this group said that some are not making pins at all. This year, they don’t want to encourage the trade. Exactly, exactly. So it’ll be interesting to see how many national Olympic committees actually do make pins for their country and how many get out into circulation in, in with trader.
So that’ll be interesting to see what happens. Team Schuster got into the quarter finals at the world’s men, curling championships, but lost to Switzerland seven to six in that last game. [00:48:00] So that’s really sad. They played really well, but they, the good thing is they clenched a quota spot for the U S at Beijing 2022.
And for John to go back for his, oh gosh, he started at Terino. I think so. So this is what, 2000 6, 10, 14. This would be his fifth Olympics, but he’s got to get through the U S trials first. So good luck to you on. Hammer thrower, Deanna price set a new American record of 78.6 meters. Very excited for her that bodes well going into the summer.
I’m so excited for her, uh, artistic swimmer, Jacqueline Seminole, raked in the hardware at leg two of the Faena artistic swimming world series in Budapest. She won four gold medals, her duet, one, both technical and free. And then her solo also won the technical and free. Phil Andrews has been appointed to the board of directors [00:49:00] at let’s empower advocate and do Inc.
An organization that provides mental health curriculum for schools, camps, organization, and athletics. He’ll be chair of the fundraising. I can tell ya, you know, CEO USA weightlifting gets around. He is on so many podcasts and does so many articles and now he gets to do more good work. And finally, author David Davis has won a Christopher award for his book, wheels of courage.
How paralyzed veterans from world war II invented wheelchair sports, fought for disability rights and inspired the, uh, nation. And the Christopher awards were established by father James Keller to salute media that affirmed the highest values of the human spirit. And the goal is to encourage men, women, and children to pursue excellence in creative arenas that have the potential to influence a mass audience positively.
That book was excellent. It was excellent. And it was positive. And we’re very excited for David. That [00:50:00] was really nice. Very well-deserved. Exactly. And if you haven’t read that book yet, you should, you can get a copy at our, a bookshop.org site. That’s bookshop.org/flame alive pod. We get a little commission from the books, purchased through our link, and I know we’ve got David’s book up there.
You could also still get our book Fox catcher. That’s part of our book club series. And, uh, the, the money we earned from that helps go towards funding our on the ground coverage at Beijing 2022, we are constantly adding new titles to that storefront. So check it out.
Atlanta 1996 Olympic History Moment: Race Walking
It is the 25th anniversary of the Atlanta, 1996 Olympics. So every week we’re looking back at some of the stories from these games, my turn this week. So I decided to look at race walking. Since we talked with Evan, I know. All right. So race walking, the men had a 20 K and a [00:51:00] 50 K race as they do today. The women had a K.
And now this is only the second Olympics for women’s race walking. It was introduced in Barcelona. Atlanta’s the second and final time for the 10 K it was bumped up to a 20 K in four Sydney, 2000. One of the main contenders of this race was Yulaina Nikolai, Eva, who was 30 years old at the time. She only took up athletics when she was 18.
So she came to the sport really late. She was second at Barcelona. And this time she’s going for gold. She’s competing against fellow Russian and current world champion arena. Stonking Stan Kino was disqualified in this race. She, she got the red card at six kilometers and that left Yulaina alone at the front.
So she cruise to a pretty easy gold. She also got an Olympic record for this. This was not her only Olympic. She also competed at 2004 [00:52:00] Athens eight years. Finished 17th. And she now serves in the Chu Vos Republic, which is part of it’s like one of the Russian states. Uh, she serves on their state council committee on social policy, health, physical education, and sports, what I’ve found from Olin media.
So then you move over to the men’s side and you’ve got two very different races going on with a 20 K in the 50 K. So in the 20 K there was a pretty big battle and a big group of athletes. And they got to about 19 kilometers and they’re, they’re down to like a pack of seven and Jefferson Perez from Ecuador breaks away from the pack.
And the next couple of people behind him who were, uh, from Russia and Mexico, they just could not get. I was watching this little great, they call the documentary, but, and it was just kind of clips from this race. And you hear the commentator go, Vamos. [00:53:00] Jefferson bought most during the, because they had the, the TV footage from this.
So Jefferson won gold when he goes into the stadium, like when they, when they started, the stadium was pretty empty. When they come back into the stadium to finish air in front of 85,000 people and the crowd’s going nuts, right. Jefferson crosses the line at first and first place Ecuador’s first ever Olympic medal.
And he was also the youngest Olympic champion in this discipline. He was only 22 and he was young. Right. Don’t tell me he got disqualified. No, no, no, no, no, no. It was fine. It was fine. Won the Olympic medal. He almost, I did wonder when I watched the metal ceremony, like how was the scrambled to find Ecuador’s Anthem?
Because they, they saying, okay, we’re down to a pack of seven, [00:54:00] get these lined up after the games, he walked 459 kilometers in a pilgrimage, across Ecuador from Quito to his home in Cuenca. I wow. And then along the way, do you think he went through on that? I don’t know. I don’t know. And then he went on to compete in 2000, in 2004 and 2008 in the first two, he got fourth place for both of those.
And then in 2008, he won the silver. So very stayed at the top of his game for a long time. Exactly. Also at the top of his game for a long time was. who is from Poland. He was, uh, in the 50 K race. He was one of the favorites because in 1992, he had been disqualified and was one of the favorites back then, too.
So I think you would like Robert because he trained in [00:55:00] Northern France. So his training days would be, get up, eat breakfast, walk to Belgium, walk back to France and eat lunch. I’m sorry. I would have lunch in Belgium. I know I would like some French fries. I had to reread that. That was in my favorite Olympic reference book by David Walton, ski I’m like, wait, I would, I would walk to build them.
I would have a snack. And then I turned around and walked back to France, you know, some Pumphrey and it’d be all sad. Exactly. So he’s one of the favorites going into 96. Other favorites are Valentin, uh, Cunanan from Finland and hazers are Garcia from Spain. So Garcia took the early lead, but he got dropped around 40 kilometers and he also got disqualified at that time.
Robert’s pulling away from the pack and he continues to pull away at 43 kilometers. He’s pretty much sealed the deal wins the [00:56:00] gold canola and finished seventh. And then the surprise silver medalist was from Russia, who is only making his second start at this distance. Right. That’s like a story we heard a lot of on, uh, from like the 1920s, like, oh, I just felt like doing this race.
I’ve never done it before. Let me get a metal. You don’t really hear too many stories like that once you get past the seventies. Right. So Robert goes on to become probably the world’s greatest Raceway. In Sydney, he won the gold for both the 20 K and the 50 K only man to ever do that. And he also won the golden, the 50 K and 2004.
So those trips to Belgium maybe, but he retired at in 2004 and now he does a lot of coaching and motivational speaking. He is also a [00:57:00] Eurosport ambassador expert and host. So he’s putting together programming around Tokyo 2020 for the Polish audience, and is also a member of the world athletics hall of fame.
I wonder if he still walk in a Belgium? I don’t know. Maybe we can run into him one day. He does speak five languages, so well he can walk through every country in Europe. He can start in Poland and just keep going. So as time to learn exactly. And he can pick up his pick and pick up Jefferson along the way.
Cause we know Jefferson can walk massive distances. Vamos Vamos Jefferson Vamos.
Tokyo 2020 News
It’s a hundred days to Tokyo. It’s actually less than a hundred days. I know as we tape it’s Wednesday, it is a hundred, 100 days to Tokyo. So as [00:58:00] you listen to it, it will be less than 100 days, but it’s still 100 days out. Oh my goodness. I know when you think about it, we were supposed to probably be in New York city in times square at a, at a celebration of Colorado Springs.
And instead we’re watching a team USA video. Yeah, not quite the same energy, but they did. They, the athletes certainly were very enthusiastic. Exactly what the team USA media summit. And we got lots of interesting stories and lots of people we’re going to talk to again, but it didn’t quite have that same AME level of smores and Oreos that it did when we went to the piano Chang a hundred days out.
Exactly. Exactly. I was, I was missing snacks. Well, I guess we had to make our own. Now I know. Do you remember those little gold? What were those goals? It was the Hershey’s gold because that was their new Carmel based candy bar. Those were so [00:59:00] good. And the lady gave us so many of them. I was eating them the whole train ride home.
I was like, you know why? I really think I enjoyed that day besides meeting everybody, I was on such a sugar high between the smores, my first smores and the Oreos and the chips. And then the, the Hershey gold. Some more snacks apparently. Right. So last week we did do the team USA virtual media summit, and we’ll have highlights from that over the coming weeks.
We’ll have a highlight later on in the show actually, um, and met a lot of great athletes, heard a lot of interesting stories. We’re going to have some longer interviews based off of that. So that’s something to look forward to. If you’re in Australia, you’re going to have the chance to go to a live site.
So just as Tokyo, 2020 was planning on live. Around the city for watching the Olympics together, Australia is going to do that all over the country. So they will [01:00:00] have sites in Sydney at the rocks and Sydney Olympic park, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide. And then they’re also doing a regional road show.
You can go to Olympics, live.com.edu for more info. They’ve also got, this was a rabbit hole. I went down, but not too far because they have details on how you can host your own live event. And then they have all the kit for it as well. And they have a whole catalog of stuff. You can buy like tents and big signage and things like that.
But, but when I looked at the prices I went, oh, this is not meant for me. I can not spend a thousand dollars or more. And, uh, have that shipped to my house, to put on my front lawn. Got people together yet. Anyway, exactly. One other very cool thing that Australia is doing is inside the game’s reported that the Australian Olympic committee is collecting artwork [01:01:00] for, from, uh, students and they will select some of that and put it on the walls of the athletes room in the Olympic village.
That’s much nicer than getting buzzed by the New Zealand bracelet. Yeah, probably, probably. That’s very cute. So, uh, we’ll have a little bit more information in the show notes. The deadline for entries is June. Also other hundred days out celebrations, the Canadian Olympic foundation launched a Olympians supporting Olympians bursary, which will provide financial support to 30 summer and winter Olympians and Olympic hopefuls.
So that will help them with their training costs. The Olympic channel has released an anime series called heroes. This is a five episode series that tells the origins of the Olympics and features ancient games and ancient athletes and their journeys. So I have not checked [01:02:00] this out yet. I’m very curious as what this is going to look like and to be lightening involved.
Cause all the anime series always have, you know, if somebody, oh, and I’m sure that’s going to be exciting. Greek gods. Oh yeah. And then team USA also released its closing ceremony outfit, which is a lot of ways like a chef’s outfit. It’s all. White polo, white jeans, white jacket with blue accents. Uh, the belt.
I think the belt is cool cause it’s red, white, and blue. But I think it’s also the only thing with color. Yeah. NBC Olympics posted, uh, pictures on its Instagram feed and, and there’s one of Katie Ledecky in that outfit looking very sad. Well, it would be sad too, if you were putting this Pillsbury Doughboy of a closing ceremonies outfit and you know, this is me, I’d just go, oh, white pants, no stains right away.
I, I spill everything on them instantly. Well, you know what? There’s going to be. So few people at the [01:03:00] closing ceremony that I guess, you know, the white pants will stay clean. Don’t talk to me. Maybe, maybe that’s how their contact tracing people. It’s like, if there’s any fingerprints on the white pants, then they know somebody has been too close to torch, relay update.
This was so exciting to see the 109 year old woman. We talked about her last year, when they talked about the torch relay Kagawa Shige co carried the torch. She made it alive, stayed alive. She carried the torch and she was pushed in a wheelchair for the whole time. They had the wheelchair, the Flint, the torch mounted on her wheelchair, but she did hold it at the beginning.
And then they got her up out of the chair to stand, to pass it off to the next torch carrier. It was amazing, man. And she was waving the whole time. And that’s the good news on the torch relay. It’s now having really [01:04:00] tough time, not going forward because once the torch is lit, they’re moving forward with the relay, but there are several legs that are getting moved to places that have little to no spectators because they’re having an issue with coronavirus cases in Japan.
And, uh, they really want to discourage crowds. And I know when, when I’ve watched it, there’ve been some places where it’s been kind of crowded. So in Osaka, the Torchbearers did lapse in the expo, 70 commemorative park and the only other people who were there were their guests who, so they could be seen by, by their friends and family.
Uh, next week it will not run on public roads in Matsuyama, over virus concerns. So we’ll see how this affects the torch relay schedule going for. Japan today announced a reported that the organizing committee has set aside 300 hotel rooms for athletes who have [01:05:00] minor or no COVID symptoms. So there’s already this anticipation positive.
Yes. Who test positive. So there’s will have something to do with those hotel rooms since they’re not allowing. Right. Yeah. I guess that would help. It’s interesting that they’re anticipating that there’s going to be cases too, but I guess you can’t, and there’s a lot of places where you can’t help, but I think that most sports have had some incidents of COVID as they’ve continued to compete, but no massive breakout.
So let’s hope that there’s no massive breakout. Those 300 rooms do not get used pretty much, pretty much the international Paralympic committee will do a massive reduction on their guests that they allow into Tokyo so much like the Olympic. I told people we’re, we’re not having a lot of guests around.
They, uh, the IPC is also not having a lot of accompanying guests and they are significantly [01:06:00] reducing the number of people that they themselves, a credit for the IPC category. So no honorary board memberships, no honorary board members and that kind of thing. They are doing their part to cut down the numbers.
I also saw on Reddit that coast sport has gotten in touch with the Paralympic ticket holders that they sold to about their refunds or their option to keep the tickets. This is a good one. So somebody has screen the email they got. So this is going to set that story up for you. I haven’t really seen anything else in the, in the regular press.
That’s documented this, but, uh, according to the screen cap and, and the conversation around it, Paralympic ticket holders, have the option to request a refund or keep the tickets and the keeping the tickets is you hope you can go to Japan somehow, or you can transfer them to [01:07:00] people in Japan. If you refund the tickets, you’ll get face value, but your refund amount has to be at least $150.
And if you don’t have $150 worth of tickets, they will donate that money to the Adidas foundation, which is crazy. There was somebody on, in the Reddit discussion who said, yeah, Paralympic tickets were so much cheaper and we got some in our, our refund is like a hundred bucks and it’s not even worth, but they will process a hundred dollars.
Right. And it’s it. That’s not fair, but they also don’t. It’s not worth it to them to fight for that a hundred dollars. The time involved to get that money back would be too much. Wow. That’s a little, it has not come off. Well, I don’t think any of the ATRs are coming off well in this whole, no scenario. No.
Which makes me very, very curious what they’re going to do with tickets going forward, especially cause they’ve been working on different solutions for Beijing. So we will, and [01:08:00] Paris especially has been. Yeah, we’ll see what happens.
Beijing 2022 News
Speaking of Beijing. Uh, you know, it’s been nonstop, boycott talk. That’s all we can hear about Beijing now. Yes. So one of the nice things about at, at the, the media summit that we went to for team USA is that, uh, Suzanne Lyons, who was the chair of the U S OPC board of directors, was very proactive in talking about how they felt about this boycott.
We’ve got a little bit of tape from that. But I wanted to start with one of the things that happened yesterday, which I know many of you are interested in, which are the comments that were made by the state department regarding the games in Beijing. So let me start there. Um, since yesterday, the state department has clarified their position.
They’ve denied that they were [01:09:00] saying that a boy cop was moving ahead. And they said that the Biden administration is more generally in talks with ally. Overt by China’s human rights violations. So, you know, I think we will continue to see a lot of discussion on the topic of boycotts. And I want to just point out again what we have said very consistently.
We had the USO PC oppose athlete boycotts because they’ve been shown to negatively impact athletes while not effectively addressing global issues in the past. And, um, you know, they also place honestly unfair pressure on our sponsors who provide the major financial support for our athletes and our athlete programs over the long-term not just for any single specific set of games and for our athletes, their only dream is to represent the USA and what we stand for on the international field of play.
So we certainly do not want in any way to minimize the serious human rights issues that are happening in China, but the us has many tools to constructively respond to [01:10:00] these concerns. Which we believe should be handled by government officials, including the department of state and it’s team of ambassadors, trade negotiators, and other diplomats.
We do not believe that team USA is young athletes to be used as political pawns in these issues. Thank you so much, Suzanne. I really appreciated that. Yeah. The F when I was taking notes, the first thing I wrote was good on you, Susanne, for just addressing that right. In your opening statement, not waiting for a question, not waiting, not playing any games, not being around the Bush, just we know this is out there and we’re on it.
So it was very reassuring as a fan. Nevermind. You know, as a journalist side. So I had two hats on and as a fan, I’m like, okay, they’re, they’re doing as much as they can do to make sure the athletes will be competing in 2022. However that looks yes. So I hope that this [01:11:00] can’t talk can die down a little, but it won’t.
I won’t. But as long as they keep putting out the fires, I’m okay with, you know, it’s just like, people are still talking about will Tokyo happen. They need to talk about something they need to fill. They need their clickbait. They need to fill their spaces. Just don’t click on it. Don’t click on it at all.
It’s like Kardashians, just fill the pages. And that’s really all that. That’s the news. We’re getting tons and tons of Tokyo stuff. Hundred less than a hundred days now. So it’s getting real, it’s getting real exciting. It’s getting real scary for us. I’m scared. I’m scared. And I’m finally starting to be like, okay, we’re going to, we’re going to actually do this.
And Tokyo is going to happen and everything’s going to be okay. And we’re going to make it through. I’m getting excited. I am getting excited. So it’s going to be a lot of fasting. I have my rose quartz, crystal Ray. What does that do? It helps me manifest. That’s what my daughter tells me [01:12:00] manifest what I’m manifesting that Tokyo 20 0 20 in 2021 is going to be all.
Okay. But soap let’s hope that works. Hey, I’ll take anything. I can get, take crystals. I’ll take lighting candles. I’ll whatever works, man. All right, well, that’s going to do it for this week. Let us know what you think about race walking. Email us@flamealivepodatgmail.com. Call or text us at (208) 352-6348.
That’s 2 0 8. Where flame alive pod on Twitter and Insta and keep the flame alive podcast group on Facebook. Join us next week for more Olympic stories. And as we go out to music by Archdale, thank you so much for listening. And until next time, keep up.[01:13:00] [01:14:00]
Evan Dunfee: I can, I can worry about being amped in three hours.