Sports marketing, sponsorship and bid city consultant Terrence Burns is back for part two of our conversation. This time we’re focusing on bidding for the Olympics. Terrence has been part of a number of bids–both successful and unsuccessful–since his time working for Delta Air Lines on its sponsorship of Atlanta 1996.
We talk through the bids he’s worked on and why they worked. Why did a small South Korean city no one had ever heard of win the 2018 Winter Olympics? Why did a Russian resort town host the 2014 Winter Olympics? Will we ever see an Olympics in the Middle East? Well, Terrence has an opinion on that.
Learn more about Terrence’s work at his website and blog (the blog has more fascinating details about some of the bids he’s worked on), and follow him on Twitter.
In our Albertville 1992 history moment, Jill’s shares part two of her story on the bobsled competition at these Winter Olympics. First off is the color pukesplosion and amazing ride of this Unified Team:
Then we move on to Jill’s promised story of espionage. This involves German driver Harald Czudaj, who’d been outed as a Stasi informer. At the time, this cause a huge uproar, as East and West Germany had only been reunified for a couple of years at this point, and people in the country were dealing with the revelations that friends, neighbors and even family members had been spying on them for the Stasi, East Germany’s secret police.
How did the outing of Czudaj affect his Olympics? And what surprising person was involved in the decision of whether he should compete? Listen to the show to find out.
In our news from TKFLASTAN, we have updates from:
- Boxer Ginny Fuchs
- Retired biathlete Clare Egan
- Race walker Evan Dunfee
- Paralympian John Register
- Beach volleyball player Kelly Cheng
- Speedskater Erin Jackson — catch her competition this weekend on US Speedskating’s YouTube channel.
- Curler John Shuster — catch his competition on Sportsnet, Sportsnet ONE or Sportsnet 360, and stream the action on SN NOW.
Paris 2024 announced more details about its volunteer program and the application process. Find out more here and here (and join Le Club).
Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive!
Photo courtesy of Terrence Burns.
TRANSCRIPT
Note: This is an uncorrected machine-generated transcript. It contains errors. Please do not quote from the transcript; use the audio file as the record of note. If you would like to see transcripts that are more accurate, please support the show.
Episode 258: Terrence Burns on Bidding for the Olympics
Intro
Jill: [00:00:00] Hello fans of TKFLASTAN and welcome to another episode of Keep the Flame Alive, the podcast for fans of the Olympics and Paralympics. I am your host, Jill Jaracz, joined as always by my lovely cohost, Alison Brown. Alison, hello, how are you?
Alison: Hello. I have a very quick little story I do wanna tell you.
Jill: Okay.
Alison: So last night I had a lot of trouble sleeping, but I did sleep. And one of the reasons I had a lot of trouble sleeping was because I had some very weird dreams. I had a dream that 2030 got awarded to Vancouver, but not Vancouver. Vancouver and Vancouver, like a cross country joint bid,
Jill: which was like great Vancouver, Washington, and Vancouver, British Co.
Alison: Yes. Which actually is kind of an interesting thought. But here’s the thing. So we were there and we had to go from one Vancouver to the other. Vancouver, what you think would be a plane, a train, a ferry? No, it was a roller coaster. And the roller coaster, Wait, it gets better. The roller coaster went underwater.
Oh. And can I just say in my dream, you handled it like a pro. I was a disaster. I was literally hanging on by the straps and I was being flung out of the roller coaster underwater . And you were in the car ahead of me just to editing the show on the underwater roller coaster
Jill: I’m Love it.
Alison: But wait, there’s, there’s another element to this. So as the roller coasters going through, we were knocking children out of the path of the roller coaster. But here’s the best part. When the roller coaster pulled into the second Vancouver, it was the Beijing volunteers who were helping us get outta the roller coaster
So just a thought for people doing joint city bids, possibly a water bound roller coaster could answer your transportation. I love it.
Jill: I love roller coasters. This sounds fantastic to me. The 2030 Express. All right.
Alison: Since we’re talking bids today,
Jill: right? We are talking once again with Terrence Burns. We had him on last week and we’ve got him on again this week to talk about the history or what they call the golden age of Olympic bids.
Terrence is the owner, chairman and CEO of G Burns Sports Group, llc, which does sports marketing, sponsorship sales and negotiation and strategy bidding, advisory services, and brand and communications development. We talked about sponsorship last week. This week we’re talking bids. Terrence has worked on a number of Olympic bids, both successful and unsuccessful, as well as some World Cup bids. So in this interview, we wanted to note that Terrence mention Terrence mentions George several times, and that George is referenced to George Hirthler who spoke with us on episode 2 47. So if you haven’t gotten that listened to yet, you, you might wanna go back and check it out.
Take a listen.
Interview with Terrance Burns
Speaking of new Norm, let’s talk bids.
Terrence Burns: A Okay. Let’s go to bidding bids. Okay.
Alison: You have worked on a ton of bids,
Terrence Burns: 13 or 14 Olympic bids two World Cup bids, couple world championship bids, presidential bids.
Alison: so how do you decide
Terrence Burns: golf wrestling specifically for the Olympic bids? Who to work with?
Boy, everybody asked me that. , honestly. They come to me. I mean, there’s no way to market that. What do you do? Put an ad in around the rings or No, I mean, you just don’t, And it’s just because I’ve been in this so long that I know a lot of people, you know, and there have been a few, cycles where it was a tough decision.
you know, And I was a small businessman and I still am, I’ve had two or three companies that do that working. Now it’s me. I am the company. I’m just at a point where I don’t wanna build an agency anymore and be responsible for 50 people’s lives and constantly chasing revenue. And I loved all that.
But there’s a time and place for everything. I’m not 40 anymore. And a lot of that in the early days, brutally honest with you, is revenue driven. What’s the best deal I could get? You know, I didn’t want to take a city that I thought had zero chance, but I’ve done it. Cause
Jill: example.
Doha 2016
Terrence Burns: Doha 2016.
I just finished Sochi. We just finished the uh, final presentations. We had just won Guatemala City. Everybody thought I [00:05:00] was a nut for taking Sochi, and that’s a long story too. But we had just finished and we’re kind of in the catbird seat for bidding assignments, which, thank goodness, more often than not I have been.
Then I met with them and they were very nice and they said, we’re gonna bid on 2016. I said, You don’t have a chance. You just don’t have a chance politically, operationally. Well, we want you to do it. And I could see they were sincere and I could see that they had no idea why they couldn’t win.
There was a couple people that were Q guitars I was dealing with, but the people with whom I was dealing with directly in the deal were British expats who were construction people. But in those days, the Arabs and the guitars in particular, they, trusted people with whom they had done business before.
And this gentleman that I was talking to had built the first Western hotel and Qatar, and it had been there, way before the onslaught of Western consultants rushing there to milk them outta money, which is typically what happens in, in the Middle East. They’re wing up to that. They’re not an ATM anymore for consultants, which is good, but I’m dealing with a guy who, not a sports guy, not Olympics guy, but he’s just somebody they trust.
And that made it hard, really hard. But it was a financial decision for me. Sat down, I looked at, what the opportunities were and I said, Okay, you know, in those days, if you recall, there was an application phase and a candidate at your phase application phase, you had to write a mini bid book.
And if you went through that, you write the bid bid book. So I, I, structured the deal, I structured all of my deals. In those days, if you don’t make it past the applicant page you owe be half of the entire contract because I can’t work for another city. Well, that proved to be wrong Later on in the process, I think for 2020 I worked for Rome Baku, and then Madrid.
I think those were the three I did for 2020. So that’s an example of when, where frankly the financial upside was strong and, and extraordinarily strong compared to the other opportunities. And I took it and I knew that they weren’t gonna make it. I wasn’t particularly interested in working for Rio, and I can’t remember who else was in 16, how well the Istanbul has been in all of em, it seems like.
So, yeah, that’s an example where it was a financial decision. You know, We had a small company, had a lot of people cash flows King, I needed, a 12 month solid cash flow that could go into 24 months. it makes it through, but even if it didn’t, it was a good payoff. Didn’t mean that I didn’t work my butt off for them. I, we did. I still have that applicant file we wrote somewhere. We were doing the best of what we had to work with.
Other ones, honestly, let’s just go quickly through it sequentially and it’ll maybe help focus my mind.
Beijing 2008
Beijing, I was working with George on that one, and the reality is we got a call from a, third party who wanted us to help the last six months of the campaign. The reality was the IC was going to pick them anyway.
And the Chinese were terrible at communications, international communications especially, you know, So the, the subtitle on that was, They’re gonna win anyway, but, so let’s make it look good. So they hired us and we kind of rejigged their messaging, George and I, and worked on their presentation. It was still pretty nascent stuff in those days.
I remember teaching the mayor of Beijing to give a a minute and a half speech in phonetic English. He had no idea what he was saying. He was looking Chinese characters that made the sound of English. And I’ve done that with a mayor of Beijing, Mayor of Mosco Sports Minister Russia, Muco. They had no idea what they were saying.
They just were saying the words reading the Russian or the Chinese or whatever. And it made the sound that sounded like an English word. And then you could check the box. Boy, see, we gave a speech in English, vote for us.
Post-Beijing 2008
Then Vancouver called us. I had cracked an knee or broken my ankle.
So George had to go up there, closed the deal. We worked for them. Nine 11 happened, killed our business. I went away and work for NASCAR for a year. Went out in the desert, kinda like Jesus came back, tempted by the devil. NASCAR’s, fantastic product, great people. George Pine I met and I still have a relationship with George, but the product wasn’t me.
Yeah. I just didn’t, I didn’t get nascar and a lot of people do what I didn’t. So I came back, I got a call from Frank Craig Hill who started Advantage, which became Octagon. And Frank said, I’ve got a call from a friend in Moscow who has gotten, no, he’s in Beijing. Yon, Brooksie. And somehow Octagon has gotten the contract for the Moscow 2012 Olympic bid, but they don’t know anything about bidding.
Moscow 2012 and Sochi 2014
So they wanted me to call you. And it happened at a perfect time, cuz I was trying to get outta nascar. And here’s a, just a golden opportunity. And I had, I’d moved to Moscow in 1992, right after the fall of the Soviet Union with Delta. So I was familiar, very familiar with Russia. [00:10:00] but that’s the first time I’d been back in five or six years.
Moscow 2012 proved to be the worst professional experience of my life. I still love Russian people. They were good people. The guy running it probably wasn’t in it to win it, budgets mysteriously vanished. Putin wasn’t really behind it. The government wasn’t really behind it.
It was a na it was a, it was a Moscow led initiative. Kind of hapless and amateurish on their side. But I did it and I worked really hard, tried to do it right. And the Russians, to their credit, when it was. They said, We think you believed in this bid more than we did and you worked really hard and we’re not gonna give up.
We’re gonna, we’re gonna bid for the winter games in 14. And by then I had already visited the Bojormi in Georgia. That’s an out that wasn’t gonna work. Salzburg, I think I had an issue with a guy running it. He’d never done a bit in his life and no. And he said, There’s nothing you can tell me about bidding.
I don’t know. So I said, Well, we’re not gonna work well together. See you. So the Russians gave me that and it was a blank piece of paper. And that was in August of oh five. And I hired Bob Styles, who’s on the venue side. Charlie Battle hired designer David Woodward hired two or three consultants and we wrote, the mini bid book.
We did it. There was no bid committee, I had no contract. I spent about 400 grand of my company’s money. So from August and then in November I got a call that said a guy named Dimitri Cko is the new CEO of Sochi bid. And he’s gonna call you and you need to know that he’s gonna fire you and he’s gonna hire IMG cuz they’re here and they say they can do all of this that he doesn’t need Helios, which was my company.
I said, Okay. I was leaving Australia going to London, so I had to stop in Dubai. So I got Dubai and I had a voicemail from Dima and I called him back and uh, he said, I understand you have my bid. I said, I have a bid. It’s not your bid. Right now it’s in my bid and it’s done and it’s in French and it’s in English.
It’s designed all the venues done. But I don’t have a contract. I haven’t been paid for this. And I understand you’re gonna fire me and hire IMG. So here’s what’s gonna happen. I’m going now in about an hour to London and here’s where I’m staying. Here’s the fax number and I’d like a fax from you on your company’s letterhead. Media Arts. I don’t want it on Sochi 2014 cuz there is no Sochi 2014. You don’t represent anybody. When I land, I’d like to have a fax from you to me, from your company. And it says you’re hired for the next two years. Here’s your scope of work, here’s how much you’re gonna pay. And if I don’t get it, then I’ll burn this, I’ll burn it to the ground, I will put it in the trash.
I’ll take every file and destroy it. And you and IMG have 45 days to put a bid together and get it to the isc. It’s do it February. Good luck. So I landed and he did it anda and I got along wonderfully for two years. I mean, I loaned, I had to loan them money to get their bid books printed. People always think, Oh there’s Russians.
They had all this money and Putin was behind it. And they never were, they were never, they were always short on money. We’d literally were ready to go to press with the bid books. And they were beautiful bid books in those days. Expensive, crazy money. And we did the printing in, in the States.
We didn’t trust the print. I didn’t know any printers in Russia. Cuz it had, you know, it’s a coffee table, beautiful book, 200 bucks a copy or two 50, I don’t know what it was. But they needed half the money up front or they wouldn’t do it. And Dema called me and he says, There’s no way I can get this money.
There’s no way I can get this foreign currency out of Russia to them in 24 hours or whatever it was they wanted was, You pay it and I promise you I’ll pay you back. And I, I said, Oh, I’m sure I’ll do it. Cuz I trusted him and I did it. And they paid me back. And by the way, they did hire MG and we got a lot of incremental business outta that bid because IMD didn’t know what they were doing either.
Cuz bidding is pretty unique and precise. So that’s, that’s how Sochi happened.
Alison: Um, I have a question on Sochi. Mm-hmm. . So when you’re bringing in all these Americans and you’re doing all these things separate from this organizing committee, how do you reconcile that in terms of they really don’t have an organizing committee, you’re having all these problems with the Russian bid and yet you’re doing all these things to make the Russian bid happen?
Terrence Burns: Yeah. I trusted the three individuals who, who gave me that bid. There were three guys with whom I worked in the Moscow bid, Demetri Suski, who was gold medal modern athlete from Sydney Thema, a guy named Alex Sorokin, who became the head of the Russia 2018 bid and the CEO of the, the World Cup and a guy named Alexander Chin.
And those were the three guys that, that I could relate to that I worked with every day. And to a greater or lesser extent, two out of the three were attached to security apparatus and that’s how it is in Russia. [00:15:00] Everybody with whom I’ve ever worked, who’s in a decision making role Probably has more than one job description.
So those guys said, we can’t do a contract yet. We don’t have any money yet, but I promise you this will get done. And interestingly enough, those three guys got cut out of the whole deal after it got going. They did get cut out. Those three guys were abandoned and went their own ways.
They were not part of Sochi 2014. The guys who actually made it happen for me. I mean, I remember going down and visiting the mayor of Sochi and he had no idea who I was. He hadn’t got the memo from Moscow. And he um, said something fairly disparaging in Russian that I could understand, 30% of it. And the translator said, Oh, the mayor’s so happy to meet you, Mr.
Burns . That’s not what he said. It’s so happy to meet you Mr. Burns. But he’s busy. Can you go back to your hotel and we’ll call you? They, they literally didn’t know. So later they called and I went back, Oh boy, brought, boy, brought my brother, my brother, everybody’s happy.
So, you know, I’ve been grilled about this. I’ve been eviscerated a little bit on Twitter about working for Sochi and for uh, the World Cup bid. All I can say is it’s not in my defense. It’s, it’s in my true belief. You know, Those bids were respectively 17 and 15, 11 years ago. I, McDonald’s, Coke, every brand you can think of on the planet, every country you can think of on the planet, literally thought we were helping Russia change.
What better way than. sport And I spent a lot of time there and I was never treated with anything but kindness. My first stint there with, with belt, I mean, I was by myself in 1992. I walked all over that city with more money in my pocket than people had making it a year. I got lost a thousand times.
I got confused a million times. Every single time somebody would help me gladly. So I thought that there was a good chance that we could modernize Russia Not We just, the Olympics, but everything, I mean, I was there when, was there a year after McDonald’s opened. I was there when all this stuff was opening when, you know, the first Western brand would put a store in GUM And it was exciting and the world was changing and, and Russia was becoming a responsible member of, the world community. And we were part of that and we’re proud of that. And we were wrong. We were wrong. So am I sorry I did it? No. Am I sorry it failed? Immeasurably. So, so that’s, that’s what I’ll say about it.
And people who have their own point of view and or axe to grind that’s not enough for them. Some of them on Twitter and I don’t care. You know, there was a moment there where we had an opportunity. We, the collective West had an opportunity and it didn’t work. For whatever reason, whatever reason you believe it didn’t work.
We were wrong. And here we are, people getting slaughtered. It’s terrible. It’s, it’s extraordinarily depressing. So that was Sochi.
PyeongChang 2018
and then 2018 was interesting. The Koreans called me immediately cuz they knew I had worked for Sochi and they knew I’d worked for Vancouver, both of whom defeated punk chunks first and second bid.
And I had once again cracked a knee on a motorcycle. And I went over, I remember I went over on crutches. I ride motorcycles off road, like go across Alaska and never get on pavement. That’s what we like to do. I don’t like to ride on streets. People in trucks run over you on streets, but you break things when you, you still going slow.
But if you land
Alison: on Alaska, just say it doesn’t sound like you, You’re much safer off road.
Terrence Burns: You are. You’re going slow, but
Jill: You stay alive.
Terrence Burns: Yeah. Nobody runs over you once you fall down, which is a good thing. So I went over to see him and I remember it’s classic Korea. It’s me in a room with 40 Koreans and a translator.
Oh, Mr. Burns, well we’re glad you’re here and we are going to once again focus on reuniting the Korean peninsula. And I just remember saying, Well then I, when’s the next flight outta here?
Cuz I’m gonna go to work for Munich and beat you. They didn’t understand. And I said, Look, the only reason people hire me is cuz I understand the target audience. You’ve got a message that you think resonates with the world. And it does. And peace on the Korean peninsula is important.
Reunification, it’s important geopolitically. Is it important to the people voting on the Olympic games? You tell me you’ve tried it twice. You lost to a city. No one had ever heard of– a summer resort in Russia and you lost to Vancouver cuz they had better stories. So we fought. I love, I like Korea a lot because they’re very aggressive.
Like you go to Japan, I love Japan by the way. It’s my favorite, country in Asia. But you go to Japan and everybody’s so nice and you think, you hear what you want to hear and you don’t know. And you get on the plane, you sit back and you go, Wow. Oh, there’s the knife in my back. . But in Korea, you go [00:20:00] into a business meeting, everybody’s knives are on the table.
And I like that. And they’re super aggressive and combative and I like it. So we fought and fought, fought, fought, fought, fought, fought. So Chairman Cho, who owned Korean Air, ran that bid and he’s a princeling. You know, He’s, he runs the Chi Bowl. He did God rest his soul.
He’s now did. But he and I just did not hit it off the beginning. He was used to deference and he would stand up in somebody to put his jacket on for him. And I just said, Here’s how this is gonna work. My name’s Terrence, your name is Y h and that’s what I’m gonna call you. And you gotta trust me.
And I, I have been accused and it’s, it’s a fair accusation and it’s probably cost me more than it’s gotten me. But it’s how I’m. But in a bid, what they don’t understand. You can have all the money in the world, but you don’t have a lot of time and you can’t buy time. If you lose one day in a bid, you don’t get that back, unlike a business.
So my job is to cut through the bull– and focus on what matters. And sometimes you’ve got to have really sharp elbows and sometimes you bowl over people. Cause my job is to help them win the games and not make friends, and not listen to someone who truly has no idea what they’re talking about and is truly wasting precious time.
And those sharp elbows have to be deployed in the beginning. And then once you get their trust, then you don’t need ’em anymore. So that’s the way it was with me. And Chairman chose to the point where I wrote a letter, to be read it is eulogy. The last day of the games in Ppy chain, he was dying.
And he took me and several of the other consultants that worked on the bid just with him that day. We went around all day in his private car and went to the events that he wanted to go to, took us to dinner, lunch, excuse me. He wanted to be with us, and he knew he was dying. And I could tell he was deathly ill.
He became a great friend.
I, I I struggled with him with his English. He called me one time in the middle of the night and he said, Have you seen King Speech? I said, What? . He never knew what time it was. He would always call me at the wrong time. . And he said, Have you seen King speech? I said, King speech. King speech. You’re talking about the movie with Colin first?
He goes, Yeah, yeah. I said, Yeah, I’ve seen it. He goes, Ha, you and me. Haha. Then he hangs up. But he, he did so terrible in one speech that I eviscerated him in a room full of all of his underlings, which you just don’t do. It was a presentation to the eoc, European Olympic Council, one of our 11 presentations.
He was terrible. He told me I was terrible cuz my wife was in the front row. I said, Well then we’re not inviting her anymore. And he literally took me aside. He said, The president of Korea asked me to do this. I do not want to be the reason we win. I don’t need to do this. I’m a wealthy man. I have 10 companies to run.
If you want me to sit on the stage and say not one word, that’s what I’ll do. I don’t care. I don’t need to speak. I’ve never heard of bid chairman in my entire experience, not wanna be a stage hog. They just all do. And that’s my job as the foreigner is to say, You sit down. No, you get one minute, you suck.
You just sit there. They just kind of have to take it cuz you’ve got that store bought credibility and it really moved me that he said that. And I committed to him. I’m going to, I’m gonna work with you. You’re not gonna sit on that stage. We need the chairman of Korean Air to stand up and say why you believe in this.
But I did use Therea Raw, who became my muse for that whole bid. Then I started writing for her. Cause she’s just extraordinary communicator and I told him, I said, Look, I’ve got, I’ve got seven Korean old dudes in suits and six of you been in jail and none of you can speak English.
What am I supposed to do with. I’m turning this whole thing around. You’re gonna be hip, you’re gonna be cool, we’re gonna have a woman speak. We just changed it all and we’re gonna call this new Horizons and here’s the reason why: you’re gonna bring winter sport to Asia for the first time since Sapporo.
So, you know, that really worked. We had a story, There’s no way we should have beaten Munich. Munich had everything. It’s a beautiful city. It’s a winter sports capital, Young Chan’s, nothing. You went there. But we had a story and that story was so good that even Bach started saying things like, Well, you can’t always be thinking about New Horizons.
You’ve gotta replenish the roots. That became their message then I knew we’d beat ’em. I knew we had beaten him and he got really mad after it and said, You know, these damn consultants. I said, You’re just mad cuz you hired the wrong one. You know, La laughing at him. I do think that was the beginning at the end for the old bid process.
but he had to know that he could have you at the presidency or 2018, but not both. Anyway, So Pang was very, very satisfying. It was a soup to nuts, completely changing their entire approach. And they let me and entrusted me, and it was very personal for me. My father thought there in the war as a young boy, and it, it changed his life.
Being in Korea, he’d never been out of his little town in Tennessee, never been outta the county, they were poor. And going to Korea, he had always [00:25:00] said to me, Son, hardest working people in the world. I’ve never seen anything like it. And the two years he was there just changed him. And he was dead.
So anyway that was important. That was an important bid for me emotionally. And we were able to help them, our team were able to help them. And then 2020, I was being feted by everybody. Almost went to Istanbul. Here’s you asked the question, Alison. I had two good offers. Istanbul in Rome.
Rome 2024
Rome was a lot more risky politically, which proved to be right. But I said, Man, I have just spent 10 days out of every month for the last two years in Korea. I’m exhausted. And what if I could go to somewhere like Rome and just eat pasta for the next two years and drink great red wine? And then I said, Boom, Rome.
And um, I love that bed. We wrote there, we had about six months, and then they pulled the bid. Professor Monty came in as their new pm and killed it the day we were delivering the, the application file. He waited to that day. So then Bku called, and I did that for a few months. I got whacked.
Madrid 2024
And then Madrid called and I did those.
I did Madrid for their last six months, and I liked that one too. I enjoyed working with who’s now the king. Felipe, one of the nicest men I’ve ever met. One of the most genuine royalty and or cion or giant in the world I’ve ever met. A very personable, I remember going out to his private residence and a young lady named Ansley O’Neil, who worked for me at the time.
Angela and I are in his little study at his house. It’s a beautiful royal residence outside of the city to sit down and work with him on his speeches. And I wrote him all. And I said, I’m an American, so that means genetically. I’m not disposed even remotely understanding how to address you. What am I supposed to call you?
And he said, My name’s Felipe. Your name’s Terrence. That’s what we call each other in here. And so what about when we’re outside of this room? He said, It’s confusing to me, so just do what everybody else does. And he laughed. I thought it was wonderful. Another great little thing about him and I, you know, you work late, late in tonight on these presentations.
we have a presentation at nine in the morning and we’re still up at two, redoing the slides. And he’s sitting there with us. And I had a kid, one of the, we had designers from Spain who I loved those guys. I still use them, but one of ’em was a dude who was very anti everything. And we’re sitting there working and he’d been a little distant, with Felipe Was the, he apparent then? He was Prince. He wasn’t the king yet. But I think his name was Jose. Jose had intimated that he wasn’t a monarchist and blah, blah, blah, blah.
So we’re sitting there working, It’s about two in the morning and Felipe walks into our work room and, they all, we all stand up. Jose just keeps working. So Felipe goes over and goes, Well, what are you working on there? That’s just beautiful what you’re doing there. And it was, their work was incredible.
He told him, and he’s kinda like future king’s talking to me. You could see, you could see him crawling a little bit. So Philippe says, You guys gotta be tired. Does anybody need something to drink? And thinking, you know, he’d snap his fingers. And so Jose says, I’d like a coke. So Felipe goes over, cracks open a coke, puts ice in it, pours it, brings it back to him.
Jose says, Can I have my picture made with you, ? It’s those little things and there’s just a million stories like that for every bit. Those little things, so it just goes on. Um, 22, I tried levee, it blew up just because friends of me likes j b could calls you and says, Well, you help me.
What are you gonna do? Say no to Serge. So I did it, it blew up. And then friends of mine called me and asked me if I could help Almaty. I’d never been to Kazakhstan. Another reason I’d like to see Kazakhstan, I’ll take it. I went and we almost won. If we’d had six more months, we would’ve won.
Boston 2024/LA 2024
So that’s how those things go. La first one I went to was Boston. Didn’t wanna do it, told the people with whom I worked, I don’t wanna do it. I thought American bids were, I had always been toned, deaf and terrible. And Boston, I could tell like the first week that it wasn’t gonna happen. And four months, three months later it blew up.
I was asked to go to la, didn’t wanna do it, talked to Casey, had a great nice phone conversation. He said, You’re hired. I said, Well, first I wanna meet you and spend some time with you because this is incredibly emotional, what we’re gonna do for me, and I need to know if we’re gonna get along. So I went and met him and he was charming and funny and all those things.
The secret to a successful bid
So that’s how that happens. And the secret to my modest success in the Olympics, I think is I understood working with George in the beginning. George was very generous in teaching me about the values of the Olympics. I mean, I hired George and his partner Brad, to work on my Atlanta sponsorship for Delta.
That’s where I met George and his enthusiasm for the values and what it was all, what it all meant is infectious if you aren’t a cynic. And George is a lot of things and are all wonderful, but most of all, he’s not a cynic. He’s, he’s a believer. And so I learned a lot from George [00:30:00] on storytelling and what the Olympics meant.
And then I realized that the bidding process
was about telling stories. It was about making people love you and the hair stand up on their arms and the back. So to me it became a branding and a messaging exercise, not a technical exercise. And I must have been onto something cuz we did pretty well bidding. And I think the dark side of that is, if you’re really good and sophisticated at that, sometimes cities that win maybe shouldn’t have won.
And sometimes cities that should have won don’t win. There’s a lot of politics the go on behind Bidding Ladies said, I, I don’t pretend to know. I’ve never done lobbying. I don’t do that. I don’t sit in the bar at the Bo Ravage and talk to IC members about my job is to do what I do, create the brand, create the messaging, manage all the external communications, do the presentations, set the strategy.
But I’m not gonna go talk to one Juanito about why he should vote for K Chan. Just he’s a friend. And that’s where I think friendships cross into business. And I don’t wanna do that. And I think it’s kind of useless to have a third party bidding on behalf of a city. It makes no sense for me as an American to lobby on behalf of k Chan.
It looks like I’m a hired gun and I am a hired gun to some extent, but not, not in that particular role. , and I’m not denigrating people who do it, it’s just something I’m not comfortable doing that I don’t know how to do it and I don’t do it. So there’s the political aspect, You know, is it geographical rotation used to be a deal?
More often than not, it’s do they like you, do they trust you? Then you’re halfway home, you really are halfway home. Have you put in the effort to communicate with them, not just in the presentations, but at all the events that happen throughout the Olympic calendar, et cetera. It’s just a lot to it. So to pretend that me or just what I do is the key to winning Olympic bids is, is fous. It’s wrong. Winning an Olympic bid is an equation with 20 variables in it. They’re all weighted differently, but they’re there and you have to, put some weight to all of them. But if you don’t have a story, you’re not gonna win. But you can have a story and still lose, if that makes sense.
Jill: Yeah, yeah. I was gonna ask about, your target audience and mm-hmm. not just creating stories and Yes, you did not lobby, but you know, when you look at the target audience and how it changed over the course of your time mm-hmm. in, the, as George called it, the golden era of bidding. You’re dealing with three different presidents of the IOC, which probably set three different tones.
So how does, how did your audience change over time and how did you change your approach over time when you took on a bid?
Terrence Burns: I made the assumption that when we walked into that room on the final day, excuse me, I made the assumption always that 85% of the people have made up their minds. There might be 15% of the people in that room that I could swing a.
We not I, we, the team, and I think I was right. P Chang won 63 votes to 25. That’s, that’s a little more than a 15%. But you know, China, the first voting round I’ve heard that we tie them the second round of voting, we lost by three votes. So, it doesn’t get down to targeting IC individuals specifically for me, but as a group of people, they’re there to choose an Olympic games host city, and they’re all human beings.
I’ve had ISTE members I know saying, Hey, Terence, Who are you representing today? And I’ll tell them, Oh, I didn’t even know they were bidding on the day of the vote. So you can’t assume that they know anything about your city. You can’t assume that they’ve seen you present in the old days.
They would have seen, or a lot of them would’ve seen you present in various presentations. I mean, honestly, Pang, we did 11 presentations around the world in two years. So you can’t assume anything. So I tailor it to what I think they need to hear during that bid race and what the issues are surrounding the cities and what I think is important to the members themselves. And that I realize that, that sounds arrogant. It’s not meant to be, but it’s, it’s a best. For example, the last one I worked on was a Stockholm 26.
Stockholm 2026
Very frustrating. Then I’m on record for saying it was frustrating. They obviously finally had a Nordic city at the table. Finally, finally had a city that could maybe replicate a little of the little hammer magic. That certainly is what I tried to do with its positioning and with the film we made on what, $12 and in a rusty bone, You know, the Swedes, they’re not gonna spend much money and they weren’t gonna spend much money on the bid.
But we got through it and the, as he worked with them diligently for months to try to create a acceptable alternative to the host city contract and guarantees.
And they finally got to something that everybody agreed was feasible. It wasn’t the guarantees that[00:35:00] Milan Cortina finally signed, but they were told in my memory up until the end that it’s okay. We understand that this is, this is different in Sweden and Scandinavia and maybe we need to be more flexible on our side to understand how to do this.
So more cities in Western Europe will bid on games. Then suddenly you have Italy that says, I will sign anything. So the new norm became the old norm, and I was sitting there in Lizanne and I heard the coordination evaluation commission make its presentation before we went. And literally eviscerate us, basically say the, the guarantees were not good.
I’m sorry, but that’s not what we’ve been led to believe, let’s put it that way.
Alison: We were big fans of the Stockholm bed
Terrence Burns: and uh, we’re in the green room. I’m with a Prime Minister suite. You just got smoked, bro. You just got run over by a truck. And the Swedes, you know, are so nice and almost naive.
And what I said, it’s, it’s, it’s over. So I sat down with the chairman of Volvo, I had one speech for some guy, I can’t even remember what he ran, was a part of the Nobel Committee and we’re 30 minutes to show time. I pulled him, created another speech in his time slot for the Volvo guy to get up and talk about what guarantees mean in Sweden.
That our word is our bond. When has Sweden ever defaulted on anything? Look at our economy. Look at our socioeconomic system. And I was trying to not say it, but slightly juxtapose it with our competitor.
I see. Had what they needed from Italy and, they made a decision. it’s their right If they had all the guarantees that they’ve always had. So to me, the message that was sent there was all the creativity. The SW tried to apply all the negative activity that they overcame in Sweden from the populace who had a very definitive view. Not on the Olympics, but on the ic
It was all for not, So, you know, you went some, you lose some. And that was an exciting bid where as, where we’re gonna do the sliding over in, in Lavia. I mean it was, it was the right bid at the right time. And I think that Sweden’s humanitarian brand and values would’ve helped the Olympic brand in a lot of ways.
And I think they could have injected a lot of Nordic magic and to the winter brand, the Winter Games brand, which is a struggling brand, both in relevance viewership and now with the climate. So, that was a disappointing one, but I always say this, if you lose, you need to look in the mirror cuz that’s the only thing you can control.
Only thing that we could control is how we did what we did. So we lost. So we can blame that or this or whom or them or whatever look in the mirror. What didn’t we do well enough that we should have? That’s how I feel when I’m with the bid that loses. And it’s easy for people in bids to say we lost because they did this and they did that, or they had money or densu or whatever.
You can’t control any of that. You just lost because they had a better bid. That’s what I say and it’s painful, but it’s true.
2030 Winter Olympic bids
Alison: Are you working on any 2030 bids?
Terrence Burns: I’m discussing with some people, but. That’s gonna be an interesting one. Japan economically, going back to Asia, just from my point of view is not the best commercial decision for the movement and it’s commercial stakeholders simply because Tokyo and Beijing underperformed.
I’m sorry, but they did from the commercial perspective, not from sport, but from the sponsors and broadcasters. Yeah, they were, they were muted games. So are you gonna go back to Japan and are the Japanese people are, they kind of have an Olympic hangover? I don’t know. You get Vancouver, they had it in 2010.
I did that bid, worked on that bid with George. They did a great job, smaller market. You got Salt Lake who on paper looks perfect. But it’s complicated with LA two years prior. So their promotional window, if you figure, just, just say it’s go backwards and say it’s a standard seven year window.
Their promotional period went from seven years to two years. Their fundraising period ostensibly would have to be conducted along with la But I can tell you that organizing committees like LA are summer ones. They’re selling right up to the last minute. And the US O P P is the entity that would be selling both of those games at the same time.
And I’m not sure that Salt Lake would be a priority for that entity. But from what I understand, Salt Lake’s budget is solid. It’s very fiscally conserv. They think they can raise the money that they need in sponsorship revenue almost in Utah. So, it’s an interesting conundrum.
So, you know, I don’t know what’s gonna happen to 30, 34 is interesting. Thomas has said he’s not going to do a [00:40:00] dual award, and I have to believe him since he went out of his way to say it.
I understand why takes that responsibility away from the next president or honor or opportunity or however one wants to describe it. And if Salt Lake thinks they wanna wait for 34, I don’t know. What if a city in Northern Europe comes back again? Even though you got Melan, Cortina in in 26.
You know, The, IOC always loves winter games in Northern Europe. So it, it’s a tough one. but I think that the new bidding process is smart. It’s certainly something that, similar to something I’ve abdicated a long time and in writing I think they need to not make it a beauty contest.
It needs to have much more objective assessment of these cities. They need to work with them. I’ve always said that Olympic brand management really begins when you choose a host city. That is the embodiment of the Olympic brand y and the games that take place in that city.
I mean, it doesn’t get any more basic in that. So if you pick a problematic place, you see what happens to the brand. So, I always thought that they should look, two cycles out. They should say, let’s look at the fundamental principles of the Olympic charter, which says that we should place the Olympic Games at the service of sport or of service of man everywhere.
The word everywhere is important. Where can the Olympic movement be and best fulfill its destiny? And once you look at that, then okay, that’s all great, but what’s one of those cities can really do this? And if one can’t, but you still wanna be there, why not go to that city, which is what they’re doing and say, Let’s talk about you hosting the games in 10 years or eight years or whatever.
And let’s get you prepared and help you understand what it takes to be. If you wanna do it, fine. If you don’t, fine. But if you do, we can at least help you be prepared. We’re not guaranteeing you’ll get it, but here, here’s what you need at the bare minimum to bid on the Olympic games. And we’d sure like to have an Olympic games in your region or your country or whatever.
To me, that’s brand management rather than the dog and pony show in the beauty contest that it was when I was really doing it for a living.
Measuring Olympic legacy
Jill: Do you think that the IOC learned something from putting a host city in Rio because that was a move into South America, but that was problematic games?
Terrence Burns: I think it was a big boy moment for. I think if you look at what FIFA has done, FIFA puts their money when they, you know, went to South Africa, they made a statement, They knew the cost would be great, but it was worth it. So I think to answer your question about Rio, there’s two pieces to it. Did they learn a lesson? yeah, I’m sure they did. I think relying on economic indicators and promises from politicians seven years out from an event is a kind of a backwards way to do it.
And that bit ’em a little bit. I think they knew what they were getting into in terms of the stability or lack thereof, or the economic veracity, or the lack thereof of the Brazilian market. I think they wanted, to make a geopolitical statement. They wanted to show their support for South America.
And I’m glad they did. And um, I’m sure it exhausted the staff. I know it did. But you took to the games to a place it’s never been before and I think you don’t measure the efficacy of an Olympic Games impact in a few years. It takes a long time. Interestingly enough, and sadly enough, one of the guys that I wrote speeches for in the Sochi bid.
Who’s now in the Duma and it’s Nota, He’s my age and I sat down with him. I’m trying to figure out what to write for him. You know, I typically approach it, I know what I want him to say, but I want to hear them tell me some things too. But I have to script it. It’s a play, you know, it’s got seven actors and there’s a thread of continuity and I can’t just let everybody say this is what I wanna say, cuz it won’t work.
But anyway, I wanted to get some background and he said, when the Moscow Games came, I was a student and I was a volunteer. And one of my job, one of the things I did was I, I poured cement for Dynamo, the stadium. It was one of the stadiums they built for the games Dynamo, the soccer stadium.
And um, he said I was 22 or whatever. And he said, We just, we had never seen all these foreigners. And we couldn’t help but notice that these foreigners who weren’t of the Soviet system, especially the Westerners, they weren’t poor. We were told that they were poor. They had great shoes and clothes, and their teeth were nice, they had good glasses.
And he said, for someone in my generation that was in 1980, he said, I think that’s when glass nose and began, that’s when the subtle, so many Russians in Moscow saw so many foreigners for the first time in their lives. And it, he just said it as an offhand comment. And it took me years to think about it in a broader construct.
That’s why you can’t measure the efficacy of a games quickly. The Soviet Union didn’t fall until 19 91, 11 years later, So it takes time. And the impacts of the games in Rio may not be immediate, but I think they’re there as long as the OC [00:45:00] understood what the price is. And you know, I was there.
You were there. Those were tough games, but they made a decision to go there and they followed through for it, through it, and they made it happen.
Jill: Thank you so much Terrence. You can follow Terrence t burns sports.com. He also has Terrence h burns blog.com, and on that blog, he’s got some really in-depth stories about a couple of the bids he’s worked on there. Really fascinating. You can follow him on Twitter at t Burns Sports.
We’ll have links to those in the show notes. Terrence also has an opinion on whether or not the Middle East should host a games, and he wrote that opinion in sports business.com and will have a link to that as a Well,
Alison: I have no doubt Terrence has an opinion.
Albertville 1992 History Moment
Jill: That sound means it’s time for our history moment and all year long we’ve been focusing on Albertville in 1992 as it is the 30th anniversary of those Winter Olympics. My turn for a story, And
Alison: you have been promising me espionage.
Jill: I have promised you espionage and I have promised you a color puke explosion.
So we will start with that. And this is a little quick aside because it’s really based on a video I saw, which I will post the A link to the video in the show notes as well. Yes, this is really kind of amazing. We’re still in, we’re back to bobsled. This is Bobs LED’s story, part two. The unified Unified Team Uniforms.
So this is the countries that used to be the Soviet Union. Oh my goodness. These uniforms have random different color blocks on them and different places, and sometimes they look like stripes and yeah, you know what I’m talking about 92. Style. The colors are teal, bright pink, yellow, light blue, white, and black.
And to top it off, yes, the Bobs SLS are wearing red helmets,
Alison: teal, the only color that could survive in the 92 Olympics.
Jill: But One thing about the helmet situation, is I noticed it today when I was watching the video. there’s an equipment evolution that happens because everybody’s got the big almost motorcycles helmet on that they’ve got now.
So it’s, it’s a big helmet, covers your head, covers your chin area. But today people wear face shields and back then the three pushers were wearing nothing. And then the driver wore goggles and his goggles were bright pink too.
Alison: Fantastic .
Jill: anyway, one of the runs on this unified team’s, Bob SL, has a disaster start because the number two man slips while he’s trying to jump into the sled and I, and they’re going around to turn at the same time, so you don’t get a clear angle of what is going on, but you just see him slipping and then it’s just like everyone’s trying to get into the sled.
Somehow he made it. But he’s backwards the whole way down.
Alison: You do not wanna be looking at one of your teammates in a bobsled.
Jill: No, not at. But I, I will definitely post that in show notes. So take a look. It’s, it’s pretty amazed balls, but onto the espionage, which is the star of the, this week story. So it’s 1992. As you remember, Germany’s competing as one country for the first time in decades, and German officials had to work to hold the team together at this point because it was discovered by a Dresden newspaper that at least one member of the German team was a Stasi informant. This was the East German secret police. A lot of people in East Germany sped on their friends and relatives and neighbors for the police. A lot of bad stuff happened because of that. And this Stasi informant was first time Olympic bobsled driver and one of the favorites at Albertville Harald Czudaj.
And he became an informant for the Stasi after police caught him driving while intoxicated. And that’s how they’d get a lot of people. They’d arrest him for something and say, Well, you can get out of it if you become an informant for us. So he chose the informant route and the AP reported that as an informer.
He wrote at least 10 reports about his teammates and officials from the Dynamo Bob SL Club, which was an Altenburg. And Altenburg is one of the, the tracks on the World Cup circuit. He did that for two years, from 88 to 90 and only stopped because the East German country fell apart and the Stasi also was dissolved as well.
So a New York Times report by Steven Kinser said Harald’s reports focused on personal lives and political opinions. And although he didn’t know how the information was used, he believed that they caused no. So huge deal in Germany. Big uproar just countrywide about who had collaborated with the Stassi.
And Czudaj was the first member of the Olympic team to be outed. So, it was a shock to his teammates. Tina Bon Oxil Young and Alexander Shale. But they got it. They [00:50:00] understood, they supported him and it, it also helped that Czudaj also apologize profusely to his teammates, so they made it work. Still, the German National Olympic Committee has to investigate the case and figure out whether he should compete.
Who is deciding? Czudaj’s fate? German Olympic Committee President Willi Daume, who was also the head of Munich, 1972 His Secretary General Walter Kroger, Togar CLOs Cotter, who is the president of the German Bobsled and Lu Federation, and one Thomas Bach, a German member of the ioc
Alison: Wow. That was not where I thought you were going with that story, . I know it was, It’s really interesting because at the time, you know, the whole idea of who worked with and for the Stai was a huge issue with the reunification. Mm-hmm. , I mean, not that I had any personal knowledge, but I just remember being in the news, the whole idea of I can’t.
With this person because they informed on their neighbors and it was so pervasive in Eastern society, you know, And, and the Stasi were no joke. I mean, we make jokes about the kgb, but this was so. seeped into every pour of East German society that to have been a Stasi informant wasn’t funny
Jill: at all.
No, and, and of course you have people like Katarina Witt who also insisted that she was not a Stassi informant, but she was very pro-communist and very good, like friend of the government, so to speak, because she, she did a lot of stuff with them.
Alison: Right. And she certainly was a.
I don’t wanna say a, a prop of the regime, but she was certainly a poster child that they showed saying, Look at how wonderful East German sports is. Look at this beautiful girl. So this was not a simple question and so interesting that Thomas Bach yet again, comes back in these pieces, you know, played such a role in 1980, played such a role.
And then of course now is. Papa TBach. There you go. Takes care of everything. , it reminds you of what generation he is.
Jill: It does, and it also reminds you how people work their way up a system as well. It’s all very fascinating when, when you see these names pop up again and again throughout history.
So this. Committee decided to let Czudaj compete. They did ask all the Olympic athletes and coaches to admit Statsi connections, but they also seemed to understand what the East German system was like and that people may have been coerced into this role.
And even one Antonio Samran advised as Kinser wrote, You should look ahead and not instead of back.
Needless to say, this whole event was really stressful on Czudaj, and although he was a favorite for gold, officials started saying it would be amazing if they med at all. And sadly, he did not live up to early expectations and the team finished sixth, but. Harald and his teammate, Alexander Shayle Stella stayed together.
They added two other teammates, and at Lillehammer in 94, they won gold. Then he went on to drive for one more Olympics at Nagano and he finished eighth there. Czudaj went on to have a short coaching career. He coached the Dutch women’s team at Torino 2006 and now he runs fitness studios with the Bob Sled trainer, Gared Leopold, who trained him back in Albertville.
And notably, and you will love this, his son Alexander, won gold in the boys’ mono Bob at the 2020 Winter Youth Olympic.
Alison: I’m so overwhelmed right now, . I’m still stuck on TBO being on this company, . Oh. And you know, I wonder what 1992 TBO looked like because the sideburns and the stash would’ve been gone.
Jill: Yeah, that’s a good question.
Alison: We’ll find a picture to post Yes. Of what TBO looked in the
Jill: day Exactly. So we may look to find another Czudaj in the Olympics at some point.
Team Keep the Flame Alive Update (TKFLASTAN)
Alison: Welcome to TKFLASTAN.
Jill: It is the time of the show where we check in with our team, Keep the flame alive. These are past guests of the show who now make up our citizenship of TKFLASTAN, our very own country. Checking in with results.
Alison: Yeah, so Ginny Fuchs has now become a professional boxer and she is two and oh as a pro.
And this was the bout that was delayed because of the death of Queen Elizabeth and she won the six round match against Gemma rug.
Jill: And in other Shook on News, Clare Egan will be inducted into the main Sports Hall of Fame on October 30th.
Alison: Evan Dunfee’s election results from Richmond came in this week and unfortunately he came close, but he did not win his bid for the city Council.
Jill: Paralympian John Register is the cover story on the fall 2022 issue of [00:55:00] Diverse Ability Magazine.
Alison: And Kelly Cheng has a new partner in her most recent competition, or I should say a new old partner. So she’s back again competing this time with Sarah Hughes, which is who she started with back at the beginning of the Tokyo Cycle.
So we’ll see where that goes.
Jill: We have some upcoming competitions too. Erin Jackson is going to compete in the US speed skating long track, fall, World Cup qualifier and AM Cup one. That is this week, Thursday through Saturday. She’s in the 501,000 and 1500 meters. You can watch that on US Speed Skatings YouTube channel.
Alison: John Schuster is competing with Team Schuster in Grand Prairie, Alberta at the Hearing Life Toward Challenge, which started on October 8th. And runs through October 23rd. Right now he’s Owen one and Round Robin action.
Obviously very early in the competition. Uh, You can watch it live on Sports Net SportsNet one or Sports Net 360 and stream the action on SN now.
Jill: And also we are in the process of choosing official elements for TKFLASTAN. So if you are in our Facebook group, look for polls. Alison, you have posted the first one of these.
What are we looking for now?
Alison: Yes. So right now we are choosing TKFLASTAN’s official flower. So we are choosing between the flame lil, the Torch Lily and the Lotus fine, which even though it does not have a flame reference name, the buds look like. A whole bunch of flames. Very cool. So there are pictures, pictures in the Facebook group and it’s pinned to the tops.
You just go in there and, And it is, very close right now.
Jill: Well, I’m excited. So vote by the end of October and we will have more polls coming out soon because there are many things we need to choose about chla Don,
Paris 2024 Update
We have some news from Paris 2024. This is exciting. This is a what a lot of people have been wondering about how to volunteer and that information came out this week. So, they’re looking for about 45,000 volunteers. You have to. 18 plus on or before January 1st, 2024 required that you speak either English or French.
Volunteer stints will be at least 10 days long and they will take place between July and September of 2024. So you can be from anywhere in the world. Just as long as you meet those requirements. You have to join. Look club. You’d have to do for everything.
That application portal will open March, 2023, and it’s going to be open for about six to eight weeks. And then starting in September, 2023, candidates will be notified whether or not they’ve been selected,
or is olympics.com said assigned a volunteer mission?
Alison: And the, the criteria are very clear. It sounds like the portal is going to be very simple and once again, with everything else, with Paris 2024, it’s based from Le Club. So they are making information, very easy to find and very clear. You join the club, you get the information. That’s all you need to know.
Basical.
Jill: The information will come to you in French
Alison: Google translate.
though you have to be careful because Google translates sometimes will make siren into mermaid.
Jill: Ooh, that’s very different. And I can see that happening like a
Alison: mermaid when there is a fire
Jill: and, and I can see that being a big problem when we’re talking about Olympic or Paralympic stuff, right? . ,
Alison: right. So when they talk about, you know, danger, danger, listen for the mermaid, it doesn’t quite have the same, does it quite have the same impact?
Right? So when we were in Beijing and we saw all that fire equip. It would’ve been a lot less scary if they had mermaids painted on it. True .
Jill: So let us know if you apply to volunteer. We would love to hear what the portal experience is like. We’d love to know if you get called for assignment and what you get to do.
We’ve talked about volunteer gig. Extensively from Beijing. So you do all sorts of stuff like help athletes. You make the sports run, you help manage transportation. You work with the media in the venues and in the press center to make sure that their lives run a little bit more smoothly. So it’s, all very interesting work in different ways.
Alison: Occasionally you have to haul me up a mountain
Bless those two little girls. I hope they are doing well,
Jill: But yeah, it’s, it’s a really rewarding experience. So many people have said, so we would love if one of you or many of you got volunteer gig. that’s going to do it for this week. So I, I do wanna know what do you think of the golden years of bidding and is this new bid process, which is supposedly less transparent, say some detractors?
Do you think it’s a good idea?
Alison: [01:00:00] And you can let us know through email at flame alive pod gmail.com. You can 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 and pick a flower
Jill: Next week, we hope you’ll be flipping over our guest. We’re we scheduled to record an interview later this week, and we’ll share it with you on next week’s show. But as we like to say, it doesn’t happen until it happens. So we’re not going to share necessarily who that is yet.
Alison: We’re dropping Easter eggs like Taylor Swift.
Jill: There you go, . All right, so hope you’re picking ’em all up. So thank you so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive.