It’s time for movie club! Film Buff Fran is back with the official film of the 1992 Albertville Winter Olympics “One Light One World,” directed by Joe Jay Jalbert and R. Douglas Copsey.
This is our first discussion of an official Olympic film. These have become a standard part of documenting an Olympic Games. Early Games did not have films–the first sort of film we get is from the Stockholm 1912 Games, and that’s a compilation of newsreels. It wasn’t until 1930 that the IOC decided that every Organizing Committee must also produced some sort of film that documents the Games.
Six years after this decision, Germany hosted the Berlin 1936 Games, which came to be known for their Nazi propaganda. Its official film “Olympia,” directed by Leni Riefenstahl was groundbreaking in its portrayal of the Olympics. It is still the most well-known of all of the official films. [Riefenstahl will make an appearance in our next Movie Club discussion, which will be on “Race,” a biopic of Jesse Owens.]
“One Light, One World” is no “Olympia, but it’s got some funky POV camerawork from skiing, and it uses the Bud Greenspan technique of interviewing and profiling certain breakout athletes of the Games, including Bonnie Blair, Alberto Tomba, and Donna Weinbrecht. The film also has some classic early 1990s fashion which might give you an appreciation for the color teal.
The movie’s not the only Albertville spectacle for this episode! Alison has part two of the women’s figure skating competition, and she focuses on the two women who won gold and silver: Kristi Yamaguchi and Midori Ito. How do their programs rank in your eyes?
Kristi Yamaguchi
Original (Short) Program:
Free Skate:
Midori Ito
Original Program:
Free Skate:
The Kristi Yamaguchi videos certainly take us back — it’s easy to forget that she was the first woman to win Olympic gold in figure skating since Dorothy Hamill in 1976. That was such a big deal on TV!
In this episode we also have updates from TKFLASTAN, including:
- Connor Fields‘ retirement from BMX racing:
- Michelle Carter – Check out her new jewelry collection
- Retired bobsledder Lauren Gibbs
- Figure skater Nate Bartholomay
- Beach volleyball player Kelly Cheng
- Author David Maraniss
- Karate-ka Tom Scott and former biathlete Clare Egan – both are running for the World Anti-Doping Agency’s Athlete Council
- Speedskater Erin Jackson and snowboarder Chloe Kim are both finalists for the 2022 Women’s Sports Foundation Sportswoman of the Year. Cast your vote here by August 22.
In our look at the upcoming Games, Paris has some construction wins and some project woes — seems that not even Tahiti is on schedule (or is it?).
LA 2028 announced the nine sports it’s shortlisting as the host city sport choices for these Games. They include cricket, breakin’, baseball/softball, flag football, karate, lacrosse, motorsport, kickboxing, and squash.
Plus, 33 sports have applied to be on the program of the 2028 Paralympic Games. They include everything that’s on the Paris 2024 program, plus arm wrestling, climbing, CP (cerebral palsy) football, golf, karate, Para dance sport, powerchair football, sailing, surfing, wheelchair handball and beach ParaVolley. The final decision will come out by the end of January 2023.
And various entities in Brisbane are having heated discussions over the budget for demolishing and replacing the main stadium for Brisbane 2032, locally called the Gabba. Who is surprised by this? (h/t Rich Perelman)
Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive!
TRANSCRIPT
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Jill: [00:00:00]
Hello, fans of TKFLASTAN and welcome to another episode of Keep the Flame Alive, the podcast four fans of the Olympics in Paralympics. I am your host. Jill. Jaracz joined as always by my lovely co-host Alison brown, Alison. Hello, how are you?
Alison: I’m doing okay. I know you’ve been watching some artistic gymnastics at the European championships.
I have been watching artistic gymnastics at the European championships, and I’m starting to get concerns that just by watching it, I’m going to get hurt. Really?
So many of these gymnasts went down in the event finals. It was awful. Like every event final, we lost two girls. Oh no. Oh yeah. And not little injuries like Asia Demato couldn’t come out for her silver medal that she won because she was so badly injured in the fall final.
So yeah. Be careful watching it that you’re not manifest. A blown ACL.
Jill: Well, I hope she’s better. I only watched the very beginning of European championships. It’s it is so hard not to get sucked into the multisport verse once you start.
Alison: Yes. And apparently it’s also hard not to get hurt.
Jill: Well today, hopefully we won’t be getting hurt because we’re watching a movie. not, not, not a competition. Don’t choke on popcorn. it is time for movie club. Film B is back and we are talking about the official film of the 1992 Albertville winter Olympics, it’s called One Light, One World, which is directed by Joe Jay Jalbert and R Douglas Copsey.
Take a listen.
Fran. Welcome back. We are discussing One Light, One World, the official film from the Albertville 1992 Olympics. What do you got for us?
Fran: Why did you make me watch this movie?
I wanted so many times to text you guys.
Alison: I think this was my. I pick all responsibility, blame for this. I’m sorry.
Fran: They did have Jean Claude Killy though.
Jill: but I don’t think we’ve done an official film yet.
Fran: We did not do an official film. So yeah, it actually, it was actually interesting to see how the people behind the film actually put together their take on the Olympics. I thought the opening fire montage, the flame montage was a little long drawn out, but it was like a slow burn.
It felt like it was kind of awkward at first. And then it kind of fell into a nice rhythm where they went through multiple disciplines and showcased a lot of the events at the 92 games and, and showcased some of the stars of the events. So it really was more factual than probably most of the movies we’ve watched lately. Um, there was no Bollywood dances, no spontaneous Bollywood.
Alison: This could have really used a Bollywood number.
Fran: It could have used one. Definitely. I, I have to admit, I kind of nodded off at about the hour 10 mark but wow. It was hard. It was rough.
Alison: When we read the Rome, 1960 book, I then went and watched the Rome 1960 movie. And there was a through line in that movie having to do with ancient Rome. And they kept coming back to that theme. This, even though they called it One World, One Light and they started off with this flame theme. They never seemed to come back to it. It, there was no through line with this. It just felt like their through line was, now we’re gonna talk to Jean Claude Killy again and show this weird little face drawing. Correct. And that’s supposed to be the touchstone. There was no touchstone to hang onto. So it was like watching just a series of vignettes, which for an Olympic, you know, at a film about a particular Olympics, you’ve gotta work really hard for it not to be a series of vignettes.
Fran: Hmm.
Alison: [00:05:00] And there was a lot about this movie that they did not work hard on.
Fran: What was really interesting. I thought, I thought the most surprising thing to me, watching the more recent winter games is how much of this Olympics was set completely outdoors, because not only was the opening and closing ceremonies completely outside.
All of the speed skating, skating events were all outside. It was just really interesting to see and the conditions looked pretty extreme in some instances um, especially on. One of the downhill races that they were commenting on. I mean, it, looked more intense, and the fields had to deal with more, of the, the weather issues than you saw in more recent games.
Alison: Yeah. It was the women’s downhill mm-hmm and the women’s moguls that they showed both mm-hmm had snow and, and the moguls had the wind. When I was looking at the outdoor events, like you mentioned, it made me a little sad because I kind of felt like none of that was manmade, snow. It was all natural snow.
And it made me wonder we’re only 30 years on and yet how many more Olympics are we going to see with natural snow? Just because of climate change.
Fran: Mm. True. That’s a good point. I mean, when you think about, the last Olympics in Beijing and how, what was there anything but artificial, snow anywhere?
I mean, and just to see what they had to go through to get these games going. And I mean, I’m sure it was just as difficult with all the weather conditions back then. Just being able to have the courses habitable to the athletes. I mean, it was really cool actually that one segment where they were showing them digging out I believe the lose track. That was really kind of cool.
I thought, showing that kind of behind the scenes action and they didn’t really do much of that. It was like you said more of just a lot of vignettes about, certain athletes and it wasn’t even, it was a really wide smattering. I mean, there was a couple of Americans and then they brought in, I believe some French, obviously some French athletes that were excellent and a Canadian.
And so they tried to make it, I guess that was the, that whole one world thing where they try to kind of bring in, you know, a lot of different athletes from different places, but knowing that it was such a long time ago. I almost kind of wished they did like a 2.0 version with those athletes now, as they reminisce and look back on those moments rather than when they talked to them immediately after the games.
Alison: Right. Cuz the films are made very quickly afterwards and it was mm-hmm strange to hear them, like you said, reminisce about something that had just happened. And some of those interviews were so stilted, you know, I wonder if their answers not were scripted in that they were told what to say, but they rehearsed them all so that when they actually recorded the interviews, there was nothing spontaneous.
There was nothing off the cuff. It just felt like, Paul Wiley and Donna Weinbrecht and Bonnie Blair, even mm-hmm, just sounded like they were reading from a page, which is not how they sounded in interview.
Fran: In real life
Alison: in real life at the time. I mean, especially Bonnie Blair has a lot of charm to her and that did not, I mean, they managed to make Alberto Tomba boring in this movie.
Fran: You know what wasn’t boring. The outfits. I loved the outfits. And mustaches and the mustache–. I, I loved all of the unbelievable bright ski outfits. It was great. It was pure early nineties joy watching them in those outfits.
Alison: Lots of mustaches, lots of mullets.
Lots of, of very large perms. pulled back. Good hair bang. Standing straight up. It took us right back to college, right?
Fran: It was oh, definitely. Oh, Kristi Yamaguchi’s hair in, in her last skating event. I mean, how it did not move There was so much Aquanet in her hair. It was amazing.
Alison: Defied gravity. Did you catch in the opening montage? There was a very quick glimpse of Tonya Harding.
Fran: Oh, was there. Oh, I missed her.
Jill: Yes. I did notice that. I thought it was interesting. But I do wanna say, like, it was weird that this was kind of like a travel log movie almost, or a daily diary, cuz they kind of went day by day.
This was directed by Joe Jay Jalbert and this was not his first rodeo with Olympic films either. He’s done other ones. One of the things he did do[00:10:00] was pioneer or implement point of view cameras. and I gotta say, I really liked that on the downhill skiing and in the loose, but there wasn’t enough.
Like, I mm-hmm, really felt how fast the downhill skiers go when they’re doing those courses. And it makes you think, oh my gosh, how fast they have to be able to react and see the course. It’s just unbelievable what they can do. But yeah, the, the whole. beginning with this very long torch relay, which was very odd because they handed the torch off.
There was no, not everybody got their own torch. They just kind of passed it off to each other. You got a little glimpse of the Concord. Did you notice that? Yes. Yes. The Napa bomb. Wow. Where you no, But yeah, it, it was interest. the sports they chose, the stories they chose to tell. And it also seemed like it had an awfully American bent mm-hmm
Fran: like not right away, but then it, all of a sudden became the American show.
I felt like,
Jill: right, right. In a way that was, oh, well, Bonnie Blair, you expected because she did well mm-hmm Donna Weinberg did well, but. in the women’s downhill, where they talked with both the Canadian skier and the us skier mm-hmm that didn’t really pan out. Hockey barely gotta mention. Cause the us was out right.
Um, Sports that we didn’t do. Like you never saw anything about biathlon. You never saw anything about
Fran: how about curling?
Jill: No curling. And it was a, a demonstration sport. You never saw anything about speed skiing, but maybe that’s because somebody died. And you didn’t see anything about Nordic combined either.
It was just kind of like, oh, we’re gonna ignore some of these sports and, and, or men’s figure skating. Right. That was surprising that they did a lot of figure skating, but not the men’s.
Alison: Yeah. They had a little segment where they talked to Paul Wiley for a minute that he prays and that was it.
When we, we talked about men’s figure skating this was the competition of who stayed standing one. Mmm.
Jill: And I gotta say, I know you said you had a million stories about figure skating. Allison does. One of those stories include the costumes that Lloyd Eisler and Isabelle Brasseur wore because those were jaw dropping.
Alison: I did not remember those costumes. I remember their costumes from 94. I did not remember them from 92 because all I could remember was CLE OFA, long red permed. MMCO and I did not remember that she wore it down for the finals, cuz she always had all this hair viewer, but usually it was up in a ponytail.
But when they showed that I’m like, and she had the wings, she had those gray mm-hmm wings. And I was like, oh man, I had totally forgotten where costumes were at that stage.
Fran: And it was and how did she perform with that hair? Like that’s impressive too. I mean, with all the spins and the leaps and the, I mean, that’s incredible.
Alison: I know I, it was long and it was everywhere. Mm-hmm
Fran: and you know what I also noticed too, on the skiing who didn’t wear helmets, a lot of the women at that point still we’re not wearing helmets. My mind was like boggled by that
Alison: there was still some knit caps coming down the hill.
Fran: Wow or no caps, nothing.
Alison: Just your mullet blowing in the breeze. you know what I think it was cuz they had so much hairspray and moose,
Fran: it wasn’t going anywhere that protected you like
Alison: a helmet, things bouncing off.
Fran: But how about, how about the people that they showed on the ski courses? there were so many spectators or judges or officials on the courses.
It was starting to make me nervous because I mean, there was so many people all over that course. I’m like at any moment, any of those skiers could have gone outta control. I mean, and you don’t see that now at all.
Alison: Gave you flashbacks of Other Side of the Mountain.
Fran: It did. It totally did.
Alison: I had forgotten about Georg Hackl and again, how did they manage to make him boring? He was handsome and charming and brilliant. And. Oh, and how dominant he was in luge was nice to be reminded of.
Fran: Well, one thing I think they did really well was the scenery.
It really made you want to go to those ski areas. I mean, even the chalets and the scenes of the mountains and, just everything just looked so beautiful. I mean, it was like your quintessential [00:15:00] Alpine, you know, setting, you know, when you think of a winter Olympics, you think, oh, this is like the perfect setting, to host, this contest.
Jill: Yeah, it really was beautiful. And what I really wanted to see more of, and I’m gonna have to go back and, and watch the opening ceremonies and the closing ceremonies, which just looked so very French with the, the dancing and the acrobats and the very circ, like elements to it that. we got some of that flare in the opening ceremony montage, which showed Team USA walking in, and then we hardly got, it was like, oh, we ran out of time for the closing
Fran: we gotta go.
It was, it was verys Dule yep. That’s what I thought myself. The
Alison: other thing I noticed from the opening ceremony was all the wool trench coat. All the teams had, these will trench coats. That was the theme and fedoras. It was probably
Fran: freezing ,
Alison: but you know, they were not doing the high tech. Insulated wear.
It was, you got a long wheel coat. You got a fedora good luck.
Jill: Well, and then all of the uniforms, but besides the, ceremonies outfits, the uniforms, you forget what a color puke explosion that they were. Just like how many teal pink, green, what or yellow can we throw up on one ski suit? Or did you notice in the little bit that they did on cross country, the Finn cross country uniforms, which were like Harlequin, I guess you would say where The front of one leg would be green and the front of the other leg might be blue. And then the back of the one leg would be red and the other leg would be yellow. So it would be like the Olympic colors. And I don’t know if there was a black section of the, the suit at all. but it was like, oh wow, you are really going with this Olympic rings thing here.
Alison: I had forgotten how much teal there was in 1992.
Fran: teal was.
Alison: Everywhere everywhere. It was, it is a lost color. I’m glad it’s a lost color. it is, it is a lost color that is just begging to come back.
Jill: Oh, and then can you bring back all of like the parachutey type as the drapey clothes? Oh my goodness. The warmups.
Fran: Yes. The warm up the, those Reebok style, like, Ugh. It was. It definitely brings you back to college and we’re totally dating ourselves.
Alison: Speaking of dating ourselves, appearance of Herschel Walker. Oh, I know. I had completely forgotten. So Herschel Walker was a football player, but ended up pushing for Bob’s sled, like so many Bob’s letters.
Do they switch sports? And I had completely forgotten. that he had been on that team and they interview him and unfortunately did not catch him at a good moment. That was, he did not come up well in that interview.
Jill: And, and you did you know that he is now running for Senator in the state of Georgia?
Alison: well, his opponent can just drag up this footage.
that in an attack ad, I guess it, yeah, it was not, did not. One of the,
Fran: one of the little vignettes that I really liked was Kathy Turner the, the short track speed skater because, I, not really remembering her, I mean, I, of course I remember Tomba and of course I remember Yamaguchi and and Kegan and all these other amazing athletes, Bonnie Blair, but her name, I, didn’t recall.
And when they told her story about how she had given up short track and then decided, to get back into. and just against all odds, became the gold medalist. that was really inspiring to me.
Alison: I had forgotten that short track was in 92. I don’t remember short track until we get to Apollo Ono.
Fran: that’s I think they said it was in my brain
Alison: where short track starts, which is not.
Fran: Accurate, right. I think they said in 88 it was a demonstration sport. So I think this was the first actual year of medals.
Alison: It just, yeah, it’s one of those things that didn’t stick.
Jill: and, and speaking of new sports or demonstrate and demonstration sports, both with moguls being a new, correct.
When Tom Kelly was on, he talked. Just the level of difficulty and how different it was. I don’t wanna say it was easy. Cause it was tough then, but you could tell, oh my goodness, just how the moguls were smaller. The jumps were a lot easier because everything was so new in this sport and it’s amazing how far [00:20:00] athletes have come and how far they’ve pushed the envelope just in 30 years.
Fran: But it seemed to me too that the skiers, the footage of the skiing I thought was actually kind of exciting and it seemed more fresh and alive. Like, I don’t feel like I felt that way watching Beijing. And I don’t know if it was just because. Of the footage or the fact that I knew that they weren’t on real snow or, what it was, it just felt really exciting to watch even just those little clips that they gave at the end of this Mo movie.
Jill: And it could be just the way they shot this because correct. Gel bear was, had a background in skiing, so he probably had a better feel of how to shoot that. Maybe more so than some other sports.
Alison: I think it also could have been the French crowd came through in the footage that they included in the movie.
Mm-hmm they showed all that footage of the giant crowds and you could hear them mm. In the background and the flags and the bells, and all of that was included in the full footage.
Fran: And you saw how many people attended? I mean, it was thousands. I mean, it was really well attended. Just looking at that footage.
Jill: yeah. What we’re used to nowadays. It’s so different.
Fran: and what I also like to see, and the, and I don’t think they gave her enough credit was uh, Surya Bonaly. No, at the
Jill: end. No, we did not hear much. It was also like, oh, we’ve covered two figure. Like we’re going to talk a lot about figure skating because it’s an important sport in the Olympic program, but we gave so much time to some of the other.
disciplines that we didn’t have time for, to say much about women mm-hmm so, yeah, we didn’t see a whole lot of Surya Bonaly, which would’ve been fantastic because she was a hometown favorite, even though she didn’t do well in the finals also in figure skating, a very happy looking Nancy ke. A very right.
Very much different. I mean, obviously when you get whacked in the knee, you’re not gonna, it’s not gonna be pleasant. You’re, you’ve got all this media scrutiny, but this film showed a really different side to her.
Fran: Very much different. She was very, yeah, she was very warm and engaging and yeah, I, I thought she had a lot of poise.
The one outfit that did stand out was hers on the ice because it was just so elegant. and Regal and it was interesting to see, you know, that they pointed out that, back then that she didn’t have the technical skill that Yamaguchi had or Midori Ito had. But she was still up there in the top three Vera Wang special yes.
Dress that’s right. That’s. I mean what a difference. And, and that is timeless. I mean, you could have worn that at this Olympics and it would’ve looked appropriate. I don’t know. You put that hair yeah, the hair. Yamaguchi’s was a little bit too much. . And what
Alison: what’s funny about ya UCCI dress is that is not the same dress that she wore at the us nationals.
She had a new dress made for the Olympics. So this one was.
Fran: Fancier. Ah,
Jill: well, it was certainly sparkly, also a huge fixture at the skating rink. The fur coats on
Fran: everybody. Oh, oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Jill: Like, oh, what a bike on era that is,
Alison: it’s like there’s Tamara mosque who is still coaching. Th for code, but there, she it’s bigger than she is.
Fran: well, I think Bonnie Blair’s mom had one on too. Yeah. She was rocking one.
Jill: It was interesting to see the talks with the families and the focus on watching them in the crowd and, Fannie Blair’s mother was just hilarious to .
Alison: She was not putting up with any of this. Cheering before she won. No, there are so many skaters still to come she was just such the, Midwestern mom going, no, we will not celebrate until it’s official.
Jill: One interesting thing that Bonnie Blair said in her interview was something that still happens today, which we heard with Erin Jackson, our speed skate. we only care about speed skating once every four years.
Fran: Yeah. That was a shame. I, I caught that. That was a big dig and unfortunately, still true.
Alison: and yet Bonnie Blair was one of the biggest stars that came outta the games. I mean, she was on the cereal boxes. She was everywhere. She was on the Campbell Soup commercials.
Fran: She must have been the role model, four girls like Erin Jackson and all the people that have come up since Bonnie Blair. Just seeing what she could do.
I mean, she was a master technician. I mean, looking, just looking at the footage, [00:25:00] I mean, they kept saying she was so per, perfection on ice, but you could really see it when she was skating. No wonder she blew everybody else away just because you could, you could see it in what she, what she was and how strong she was.
Alison: And you mentioned this before. I miss it being outside. But as I mentioned earlier about climate change, you really can’t
Fran: do that anymore.
Alison: it’s very hard to control that temperature and environment and settings, you really need the ovals now indoors mm-hmm to, to
Fran: manage that,
Jill: One very important detail.
We have not mentioned our narrat.
Fran: In a world.
Jill: when I saw DMA, wait, when I saw. Don Lafontaine’s name popped up. I’m like, oh my gosh, I can’t believe it. It was
Fran: Josh. Oh, that was, that was, that was the whole, it was over completely over the top. It was unbelievable. I did not enjoy that. No, I didn’t either because it too much.
Alison: Right. It made everything sound. And part of it is because that has become such trope that in a world mm-hmm, where the, where everything is about to explode. And then he became a parody of himself as
Fran: time went. Exactly.
Alison: And he did exactly. No, that’s how he made his career, was doing those over the top movie previews.
And then he started making fun of that style because that was no longer the style, but on this. because of what happened subsequently it just sounded like he was making fun of everybody all
Fran: the time. Mm-hmm because doesn’t require this, didn’t give prop seriousness
but yeah, the, the whole over the top announcing was just the icing on the bad cake. this. And I
Alison: wonder if it’s a nineties thing and we will have to go back now and watch some of the other like 88 summer 92, 94, 96, because this felt so of its time in a bad. Like some of the earlier films that I have watched felt of their time, but in a lovely nostalgic way.
And maybe it’s just because of the age I was in 92, that this just felt like a parody of 92. Like I, I wanted it to capture more of the timeless quality of the winter Olympics. and less of the ridiculousness of the time. Mm. But maybe 92 was just too
Fran: ridiculous. be contained for words.
Jill: well, you know, when you put a headband on people, , there were a lot of headbands.
Can I say, cuz I, I went back to my, the top of my notes and I’m back to those uniforms that they had for the torch relay, which were pure white pants and the puffy jacket. And puffy athletic jacket, not a puffy coat and a headband. And they had this little tiny torch that they passed back and forth.
That was very thick. So it looked like it was hard to hold and honest to Pete. When I saw those people in their white uniforms, I’m like, wow, that is not much different from all of the TYC people we saw in Beijing. all, all hazmat it up. it’s different. Maybe they could have used some head vans.
Alison: And at the, it had that very nineties, double zipper at the collar.
like, oh, this is unfortunate.
Fran: I’m still waiting for Tomba to become a Hollywood star. they said he want, he was going to Hollywood. What happened? Well, you
Alison: know, we’ve got our Al Veril moments. We have many months of those still to come. So, no doubt. Tombo will.
Fran: Front morning of the week. I mean, it did kind of.
Give us a, a true sense of how accomplished he was, because I didn’t realize he was so young and so accomplished at these games. I mean, he always seemed larger than life and it was really kind of funny, interesting how Jean Claude Killy said, this guy, shouldn’t be the number one. He’s too big.
He’s too muscular. you know, he’s just too much, but he’s just pure muscle and skill. And he does incredibly well.
Alison: And the other thing that Killy said that I thought was really insightful. He said he’s a lot smarter than people think he is. Yes. That Tomba had this persona, that beli what a fierce competitor he was mm-hmm and how serious he took winning that medal and how much that meant to.
And he was always party boys shaking the champagne, but he got on that course and nobody was better than
him.
Fran: Yep. He just went to work.
Jill: You know what I just thought of maybe the through line was the one light that they kept showing the cauldrons at all of the different venues. And maybe that’s, what’s supposed to be the through line [00:30:00] because it just, it made me go, wow, those are really funky cauldrons,
Fran: but wasn’t it nice to have a cauldron
Jill: it was nice to have a caldron and, and, but they also looked like the massive bouquets that the medalist got.
I saw
Alison: that I was like,
Fran: Those are bigger than they are
Alison: they were, they were not concerned about the environmental impact of cutting flowers and wrapping them in plastic.
Fran: And then the double kisses I’m like, oh my gosh, they’re touching each other.
Jill: right. Right. And then, and then, and the figure skating, the women’s figure skating.
The podium for the gold medalist was so high. That Juan Antonio Samaranch almost couldn’t give Kristi Yamaguchi, her medal.
Fran: It’s like one
Alison: Antonio semi was not a particularly short man, but between the skates and the height, it was like, how do we lean over this far without toping? And she had that hair . So when she leaned forward, those banks could have taken her over. Now
Fran: question. Did they mention that in Midor Ito’s performance?
She had a quad. She didn’t. Is that true?
Alison: She had it. The
Fran: triple ax. I thought they mentioned a quad and I said, there’s no way
Jill: they did mention a quad because I did note that as well.
Fran: I was really shocked and I’m like, oh my gosh, they were actually trying to do quads back in the early nineties. I’m like, that’s Kurt.
Pretty incredible. Kurt Browning had
Alison: landed the first quad
Fran: prior to that. When was that?
Alison: Eight. Oh, now you’re gonna make me sound stupid. I think it was 89 or 90. Oh, okay. He had landed the first quad in competition.
Fran: Okay. So it was something on the minds of all the more technical jumping skaters then.
Right. But I was really surprised to hear that, that, that was part of her plan. Right. She was
Alison: attempting it. She didn’t land it though. Right, right, right. Okay. That makes more, I’m like, wait a second. I missed that too. I totally, I was so dazzled by all that spark. I’d be very curious. And obviously none of us can answer this question, how this movie plays to people who do not remember Albertville.
Hmm. Does it just look like this very bizarre time capsule or does it capture, I mean, Albertville
Fran: was fun. Mm-hmm there
Alison: was a lot of fun athletes. There was a lot of fun events. It was beautiful. Like we were saying. and I’m not sure this movie captured it that well, but we will all fill in the blanks with our own memories.
Correct. So I’m, I’m curious to hear from people who don’t remember it and how this
Fran: movie plays to them. It’s interesting in the end, when you were saying about how you were looking at older Olympic movies, I went way back and did some from the twenties. And like you were saying, I, I think you nailed it before, they, they had this kind of ethereal nostalgia.
For those games. And obviously these were not even talkies, so it had that quality to it, but there was just kind of a more interesting kind of feel to it than this one had this one, I felt it just kind of plotted along and, you know, I was like, okay, it’s an hour and 43 minutes. Okay. I can get, to the finish line. Like I could watch it all and it just felt, it felt hard to watch, even though they had, like you said, they had so many interesting characters, but the movie itself, I feel like didn’t, portray everything in the best light. It
Jill: makes me want to go back and watch maybe Sara AVO 1984, because that would be one where I personally.
don’t have a memory of anything, except for, I know of Torville and Dean now and Scott Hamilton, but I don’t know much else about the competitions. So it would be interesting to go back because that’s certainly close enough in time where you’d still have this wacky style. I could have a touchpoint with the fashion.
would be interesting to see if that told me a story or if I really got the feel for what those games were like by just watching that.
Fran: Well, 84 had Katarina Witt. Mm that’s true. the queen of the ice
Alison: and her feathered fishy
Jill: Well, we tried. I think the Olympic films are gonna be hit and miss to be quite honest, but it was a fun experiment and it certainly gave me more of a feel of for Albertville. Mm. Just, just as a location. And it makes me totally wanna stay in the Calgary hotel
Fran: at that one time. oh boy.
And you know what? It was very nice because you did see the. The patriotism and the feeling of respect and awe and, just with Jean Claude Killy and the other French representatives who [00:35:00] put on the games, you could tell, like they, treated it very seriously, wanted everybody to have a wonderful experience.
And you got the sense that they really put their all into the games just on this. Okay. Last
Alison: thing, you know, what really made me mad? The
use
Jill: of the marker font on the title.
Fran: the
Alison: pairs figure skating. Gold medalist is mish, NIC and Demetri.
Fran: Oh, and do they mutilate their names? Oh,
Alison: repeatedly said her name. with vows that don’t even exist.
Fran: shame on them. Don Lafonte let me down in a world. where I announced that Russian pronounced the Russian unified team names.
Jill: well, okay. I know that was the last thing for you, but I had do, had to say we slipped to Russia a lot. Because this was the first games with the Unified Team. They had been put together fairly quickly, but it wasn’t all Russia.
And they kept saying Russia, Russia all over again. It was so interesting, but you’re still in that kind of cold war mentality where for us, the Soviets and the Russians were interchangeable. Mm-hmm and you I’ve really got that feeling so well. we tried it Fran
Fran: it was a worthwhile effort. Yep. You let me, you make me watch this and you don’t let us watch the cutting edge. Come on.
Jill: You never know.
Fran: I’ll wear you, you guys down. I’ll wear Alison down someday, someday.
Jill: all right. What is our next film.
Fran: So our next. Movie club movie is Race, which will be the story of Jesse Owens. So we will be going way back in time before any of us were in inkling. So this should be interesting because like you said before, Jill, we don’t have any preconceived notions, for what we’re about to watch.
And I was really looking forward. I, I miss seeing. When it came out. So I’m really looking forward to seeing this and see how they portray both him and the Olympics in this film. Excellent.
Jill: Well, Fran, thank you so much. And we will see you soon.
Fran: Thank you.
Jill: Thank you so much, Fran, you can watch One Light, One World in its entirety on the official Olympics website@olympics.com. And we will have a link to that in the show notes. I will say I am very glad that the IOC has put up all of the official films to watch for free. That’s really interesting.
Alison: I can’t believe we made it through this film.
Jill: well, you know, ah, that sound means it’s time for our history segment. So we are staying in Albertville, which is the Olympics that we’re looking at all year long. It is the 30th anniversary of those games. Alison, you have women’s figure skating part two for us. I do. So
Alison: last week we talked about. Tonya and Nancy, and now we’re actually gonna talk about the other people on the podium, which is Midori Ito and Kristi Yamaguchi who won the golden silver respectively.
So 1992 was the first Olympics after compulsory figures were eliminated from figure skating. So this sort of shook up the whole top tier of figure skating. Jill Trenery from the United States won the 1990 world championships and she was kind of a compulsory specialist. So yeah, 91 was not a good year for her at the world championships.
And then by 92, she had a severe ankle. and that did her in. So we never heard from Jill Trenery again.
Jill: shame because I did love her as a skater and I was very sorry. She couldn’t make it on the Olympic stage.
Alison: Absolutely. So now it looks like the competition is gonna be between 1989 world champion Mado ITO, who was the first world champion skater from.
And we have since seen Japanese skaters really come to the fore and Kristi Yamaguchi, who is from the United States, ITO was the first woman to land a triple excellent competition. And the Japanese press leading up to Albertville was really, really hard on her. So she had an incredible amount of pressure going in.
She ended up taking the axle out of the short program because she was having so much trouble on it, but fell on the jump that she replaced it with, which was a triple Lotz. So she ended up in fourth after the short program and Kristi had a perfect short program and she was first. So in the long program, Kristi stated first of the final group to [00:40:00] Carmen, one of our favorite music choices for figure skating.
And she fell as well on a triple loop, but otherwise she was brilliant. So ITO comes on, decides that she’s gonna do the triple axle falls. But she tried it again in the second half of her program and landed it. So she became the first woman to land the triple axle in the Olympics. And her long program was so good that she pulled herself up to the silver medal.
So that was a very exciting ending to a lot of falling in the women’s competition. And it would be almost 20 years until another woman landed a triple axle at the Olympics. And interestingly enough, another Japanese skater Malata in 2010. Oh, very nice. So I do wanna mention this last little bit about Jill Trenery because I mentioned this back when we talked about ice.
where we mentioned Isabelle Duchenne was the first wife of Christopher Dean. Jill tr was the second wife. Are they still married?
Jill: No. Oh,
Alison: they did have two sons and they were married for a long time. I believe they separated like in the early 20 teens, he’s married again. To another. Nope. think you finally learned his lesson.
Welcome to TKFLASTAN.
Jill: Yes. It’s time to check in with our team. Keep the Flame Alive. These are past guests at the show, which now make up our citizens of our country TKFLASTAN. First up some sad news. Connor Fields has retired from BMX racing, not a surprise. No, and it, it just, it’s really sad, I think to have a forced retirement, but he was, he posted a YouTube video, which will link to in the show notes.
And he’s just so grateful for everything, the sports given it, given him. And it just, got me right in the fields right in the fields. No,
so
Alison: putter, Michelle Carter has collaborated with jewelry company Mabel and Maine to co-design and develop a new collection, which is out and incredibly beautiful.
Jill: I would agree. I was gonna say good for her. Bob Sluder Lauren Gibbs has joined grow class as a mentor and grow class is a company that offers online marketing classes and mentorship.
Alison: And the figure skating schedule is out and para skater. Nate Martay and partner, Katie McBeth are stated are slated to compete at two grand pre events. This season scape Canada international on October 28th to 30th.
And then the MK John Wilson trophy. In Great Britain, which it’ll be November 11th to the 13th.
Jill: Kelly Cheng and Betsi Flint won gold at the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour in Hamburg beating Switzerland of Bruner and ly two to zero
Alison: David Maraniss’ book Path Lit by Lightning. The Life of Jim Thorpe was featured on the cover of the New York Times Book.
Jill: We’ve got two Shani in the running for the world. Antiope age agencies, athletes, council. They are Tom Scott and Clare Egan. They are two of 34 candidates vying for eight seats representing international federations on the council. So the election will be held virtually at the end of August.
And results will be announced in early September. So thank you to listener Meredith for that tip.
Alison: And speed skater. Erin Jackson and snowboarder. Chloe Kim have been selected as finalists for the 2022 Women’s Sports Foundation, Sportswoman of the Year award in the individual category. And we will have a link to the voting place for that it’s sportswoman of the year.com and the deadline is August
Jill: 22nd.
Uh, We have some news from Paris, 2024. Thank you. Listener David for this tip, there is a new footbridge that links the Stad de France and the site of the Olympics aquatic center during the Paris 2024 Olympics per Inside the Games. This bridge will span the, a one motorway. And that will help cut down the amount of time it takes to get from one side of the highway to the other, which is currently 20 to 25 minutes.
So a nice little bit of legacy there.
Alison: This made me think of us trying to get from the curling venue to the hockey venue back in Beijing, like there was. A pathway that we could have walked across, but we weren’t allowed to. So I will be very joyous if they actually let us walk across [00:45:00] this motorway ,
Jill: Pairs 2020 forehead.
Tony Estanguet has visited Tahiti to check out the surfing location. Shocking,
Alison: there are issues,
Jill: right? So per Radio One and Tahiti and Inside the Games Stange is touched by the land’s commitment to the projects, which is the most decentralized game site in Olympic history. And I do kind of wonder if this will ever happen again, it will either be a beautiful competition and be so.
Far removed that it doesn’t feel Olympic unless you’re on TV and you don’t notice, or it will not go well because it’s so far away. So now as Sungue has said, he’s hoping that more local organizations get involved with the effort because, Hey, guess what? There’s a lack of progress on the whole project.
Alison: And according to that article in Inside the Games, there’s some local opposition to the building,
Jill: right? So they need to refurbish a hotel that could used that as an athlete’s village. There’s some refurbishment work to do at the, at taboo marina and they’re gonna build a parking lot. And then they’ve got temporary facilities to use for competition sites and they have a.
A month and a half to get the work program for that done, which needs to happen by October in order to be on time for the whole project. Yeah.
Hey LA 2028 shortlisted their new sports. So as you remember, a whole bunch of sports, keep vine to get on the Olympic program. Now nine have been. Asked to make a final presentation or final application that would include cricket, which is going to be a T 20 format. And. I’m not really up on cricket, but this is if you are it’s the T 20 format is 20 overs and each side has just 80 minutes to get through there 20 overs.
And there’s a 15 minute break between innings. So this is a much condensed version of the game, obviously, to be quick that they’re looking for in the Olympics. Also shortlisted break in baseball, softball. Which I know, you’re hoping
Alison: I don’t even care about baseball. I want softball in, I actually don’t want baseball in and it makes me angry that they’re shackled to
Jill: each other.
Mm. Flag football, lacrosse, karate, kickboxing squash, and motor sport. Now you may wonder why motor sport is on this list because the Olympic charter. Did say at one time that sports disciplines or events in which performance depends essentially on mechanical propulsion are not acceptable, but that little phrase has been taken out of the charter, leading to the inclusion of Motorsports and also water sports because the, the motor sports association was recognized by the IOC in 20.
So now they are on inclusion list. Electric karting also known as E carding was an ex exhibition event at the youth Olympic games in BU sari’s in 2018. So, that could be what the motor sport is for 2028. You are not thrilled by this .
Alison: Well, one of the criteria that they are considering is environmental sustain.
How can you have motor sports and consider that environmentally sustainable? Well,
Jill: it’s an electric cart.
Alison: You still have to power it with something. The electricity has to come from somewhere. Is it coming from wind? Is it coming from solar?
Jill: Right? I, I think my initial beef with electric carting is that it’s the low end of motor sports.
You don’t see professional motor sport drivers necessarily. I don’t know all of the motor sports circuit, but you are not going to get the best of the best in motor sports. You are going to get the junior levels, which is like having another football tournament in the Olympics, because that is also a junior level thing on the men’s side.
So maybe on the women’s side, it’d be a little bit better because there aren’t as many women in the top tiers of driving as there are men, but I, I just, I’m not convinced yet. No on electric card,
Alison: there’s no way you’re gonna convince me on, motor sports.
when you think about how expensive and how UN environmentally friendly, you know, moving horses. Are for equestrian And now we’re talking about moving people’s carts or cars or boats, nevermind. The actual expense and environmental expense of electrifying things. It that’s what you’re gonna add.
Jill: [00:50:00] Don’t know. because they also have to meet. Athlete quoted that’s 10,500 athletes. Now we don’t know if boxing or weightlifting or modern pentathlon will be in LA 2028. That’s yet to be determined. Like you said, they’ve got these criteria. They have to include on their proposal. Such as environmental stability, they have to uphold integrity and fairness and recognize the interest in the host country and also offer global appeal.
I also don’t think E carding has local or global appeal unless you’re in the sport, but the kids like it. Yeah. I know. I say, yeah, I know you can say, you can say that about break in too. I’m very curious to see what would get in. I mean, you are talking about several team sports here, and that’s always been an issue with dealing with the quota.
But you’ve also got a bunch of individual sports. So we’ll see what, what makes it, what, what did not make this cut Sambo flying disk, which is push and hard to get in and tech ball, which I don’t really see tech ball getting into the Olympics anytime. The International Paralympic Committee has announced that for the Paralympics in 2028, 33 sports have applied to be in the games.
Now, apparently they don’t have a set program like the IOC does. So the 33 sports that have applied include the 22 sports that are on the Paris 2024 program.
And then there are 11 additional sports. These include arm wrestling, sport climbing, golf, karate, cerebral palsy. Also known as CP football, power chair, football, dance, sport, sailing, surfing, wheelchair, handball, and beach para of valley, which would be volleyball on the beach. So, Inside the Games noted that sailing and CP football have been on the program before they competed at last at Rio 2016 and visually impaired wrestling was on the program in the 1980s.
So I was trying to get back. It
Alison: actually makes sense in some ways that the sports have to reapply because other than say para athletics and para swimming, the participation probably swings. Mm, interesting. A great deal. And then when you have updates, say for prosthetics, that might eliminate an entire sport.
If you have a change in therapy or a change in prosthetics, just like they’re redoing the classification. Medical advances probably could eliminate some categories. Interesting.
Jill: So we shall see, this is, it’s also interesting development to see what wants to get into the Paralympics and, or get back into the Paralympics as well.
Um, We’ve got a little bit of Brisbane2032 news. We’ve gotta get a sounder for Brisbane 22.
Alison: I know we’re, we’re not ready for this.
Jill: Our friend Rich Pearlman over at The Sports Examiner mentioned that there are some shocking arguments about budgets and construction. So one of the big deals is that the.
Queensland government wants to demolish and rebuild the GA the GABA, which is what they call the Brisbane Cricket Ground. And that’s the main stadium. Now, if you remember, cuz this will be always a sticking point in my mind when the future host commission did their reports, they said, you do not need to build a new stadium.
This one is fine. And the government said, oh no, no, no, no. We need a new stadium. So of course the Brisbane times has, has been reporting. Look, we get some issues with the project proposals. It could cost major budget overruns to the tune of 1 billion Australian dollars. Queen government still committed to the project.
And there’s no infrastructure schedule in place which would include plan delivery, timelines, and cost. That was something that was promised last year and people are going well. We still have 10 years,
Alison: no big deal. I wonder if there is any provision to take away in Olympics from a. I don’t know
Jill: because that’s,
Alison: it happened in the winter 76 when Denver was gonna host and
Jill: then, well, they turned it down.
So I don’t know if that’s the same exact situation, but we’ve never really had a games taken away. I don’t think this would be enough to take the games away. They just would be in, it’d be 10 years of bad press. Right.
Alison: And. It gets to a point where there’s corruption and there’s budget overruns, and, that host city committee feels like they’ve been lied to how do they address that?
Because we’ve, we’ve awarded a game so far ahead of time. What happens when things go wrong?[00:55:00]
Jill: I don’t know because Rio happened. Right. But that was a. Different era, of course, but I, I don’t know. I don’t, I don’t know if they’ve ever really thought about, would we ever take a games away? Do we have a
Alison: premarital contract that allows for divorce?
Jill: I don’t know, but yeah, I don’t, I don’t know what would push the IOC to say you cannot host these games. Haven’t there been other games that have been.
Taken away or moved, not Olympic games or Paralympic games, but other
Alison: oh sure. World championships and right. Cuz they weren’t ready either. They weren’t ready. Or in the case of most recently things that were scheduled to be in Russia have all been moved.
Jill: Right. And a lot of stuff in China got moved because of COVID.
A lot of stuff got moved around because of COVID regardless, but, not necessarily. An outside event happening to a committee an organizing committee. It’s the organizing committee imploding in such a way that an event got moved. I don’t know if you, if you know of something listeners let us know.
All right. We would like to give a big shout out to our Patreon patrons who keep our flame alive.
You can find out more about patronage at patreon.com/flame, a live
Alison: pod. And one of the bonuses you get as a Patreon patron is some extra material that Jill and I. This month, you find out how Jill risked my life again. and almost got a sent to Chinese prison once again. so just go check out patreon.com and flame slash flame, a live pod, and you can see what a criminal she is.
Jill: I’m not a criminal, I’m not a criminal. Also our patrons got a little extra input. We’re gonna have a special event in the spring and they have been asked to help us decide when it should happen. So if you’d like to be in on that kind of contributions to the show, check out patreon.com/flamealivepod.
Oh, that will do it for this week. Let us know your thoughts about Albertville 1992. And it’s a wonderful official
Alison: film. You can get in touch with us by email@flamealivepodgmail.com. Call or text us at (208) 352-6348. That’s 2 0 8. Flame it, our social handle is at flame alive pod and be sure to join the, keep the flame alive podcast group on Facebook.
Jill: Next week, we will be staying in the arts and entertainment category. We are talking with Julia Meinwald and Gordon Leary, creators of the new musical, The Magnificent Seven, which is based on the women’s gymnastics tournament at Atlanta 1996. Thank you so much for listening and until next time, keep the flame alive.