We’re just weeks away from registration for the ticket lottery for the Paris 2024 Olympics, so our TFKLASTANI travel expert Ken Hanscom is here to tell us about the new way tickets will be sold (and why it’s OK to not win a spot in the first ticket lottery). He also talks about the lodging situation, so you can start planning your trip!
Follow Ken on Twitter and Insta. He also runs the Paris 2024 Olympics Planning & Preparation Facebook Group, so if you’re not part of that, you should be. Its members have tons of great advice, whether this is your first or umpteenth Games. Ken’s also put out the “Ultimate Guide to Paris 2024 — Your Roadmap to the Summer Games in Paris, France,” so be sure to check out that as well!
In our Albertville 1992 history moment, Jill looks at the Men’s 20K Biathlon race — and a case of blood doping gone seriously wrong. Watch the highlights here (because you can count on 1992-era US coverage to condense a sport Americans weren’t doing well in):
In our visit to TKFLASTAN, we have news from Team Keep the Flame Alive members:
- Shooter Tim Sherry
- Short Track Speed Skater Ryan Shane
- Speed Skater Erin Jackson
- Curler John Shuster
- Shooter Ginny Thrasher
- Para Powerlifter Louise Sugden
- Modern Pentathlete Jo Muir
- Handball player Sarah Gascon
In our Games updates, we have the next steps on the Kamila Valieva situation (spoiler alert: Nothing’s resolved), a teaser on the Paris 2024 mascots, and a new leader for Milan-Cortina 2026
If this content provides value to you, please consider giving back. We have a variety of ways to support the show.
Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive!
Photo courtesy of Ken Hanscom.
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 Please do not quote from the transcript; use the audio file as the record of note.
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 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 feel like the universe is setting me up for a fall.
Jill: How so?
Alison: So remember last week, because of gymnastics, I said I felt really smart.
Jill: Mm-hmm.
Alison: My daughter came home from college this weekend and she said, Mom, can you help me study for my anthropology quiz? And I said, Uh, anthropology. I don’t know. What’s it on? She says, It’s on the history of gender testing in women’s sports. Whoa. And I said, I can help you with that , and I was really, really smart about it.
Obviously, we spoke to Dr. Victoria Jackson. We’ve done many shows on these things. I came out of this looking really, really good. Now I’m like, Okay, two weeks in a row. You’ve made me feel smart. I’m ready to get my face backed by a.
Jill: Aw, come on. Be nice to my friend. Alison, you are very smart in a lot of things.
You can be smart for three weeks in a row.
Alison: Clearly, I am due to get locked in a public restroom , with no toilet paper, and to fall through the door . That’ll, that’ll put my ego right back in check .
Jill: Oh, well, I’m gonna say there might be some noise in this show because I am in Atlanta for a day and we’re taping from a hotel room and outside.
There seems to be some drag racing going on.
Alison: Not an Olympic sport .
No, but, am, I’m got something fun planned. For Atlanta 1996 story. Sadly, we’re not talking about Atlanta 1996, but it keeps coming back up in life and this was an opportunity to come here and
Jill: uh,
I’ve got a good meeting plan. So hopefully we will bring that to you soon.
[00:02:26] Ken Hanscom Interview
Jill: today, Paul, this is so good. We are talking Paris 2024 and tickets and how you can plan your trip with the one, the only. Ken Hanscomb, one of our favorite TKFLASTANIs, although they’re all our favorite.
Alison: But when they come back, they are definitely a favorite. .
Jill: Ken is the Chief Operating Officer at Ticket Manager is a recognized event.
Ticketing expert and an influencer in the Olympic movement with corporations and sponsors. He’s been featured on NBC’s Primetime. Olympic coverage regularly contributes on ESPN Radio USA Today, MSN International Business Times, and he publishes a blog on the business of the Olympics. Ken last spoke to us in 2020 before Covid changed all of our to travel plans, and Kent is back to get us ready to go to Paris in 2024. Take a listen.
Alison: Ken Hanscom, thank you so much for coming back and raving the, the Shani waters again.
Ken Hanscom: Oh, I love it. I love it. It’s fantastic to be here.
Alison: So last time we spoke to you, we had our hearts broken. Uh, Yeah. From Tokyo more than once, right? Exactly. First for Tokyo 2020.
And then for for Beijing. Yeah. But Paris is a whole new game.
Ken Hanscom: It is a whole new game. A very exciting one. Exactly.
Alison: So let’s start with what do we know? Where do we stand?
Ken Hanscom: We’re way ahead of the game. I think that that’s the first place to start. It’s interesting because next few days, we have the start of the lottery process for tickets, Right.
And if we look. Back to Tokyo. This didn’t happen until like June 20th, 2019. And so Paris is starting this whole process like six months in advance of where it is. And I think there’s a lot of benefits to that. There’s also some risks inside of it, but I think, Paris is shaping up to be, you know, I thought we’re gonna like this bit massive peak of Tokyo and we come a little bit down for Paris and then we go back up for la. But the demand for, for Paris, you know, whether it’s people who missed out on Tokyo, otherwise it being back in Europe, general excitement for events returning, There’s a lot of excitement about Paris 2024 and I was just in the city a month and a half ago and, uh, you know, They’re busily preparing.
They’re, they’re getting ready to put on a fantastic show as we, you know, head towards 2024. So
Alison: were you there for Paralympic Day?
Ken Hanscom: I was not there for Paralympic day. I was, I was there on, on vacation visiting some friends who lived there and I took the time to see some sides meet with the, uh, Paris 2024 committee on ticketing and a few other
Alison: items as well.
How did that [00:05:00] meeting go? What were they telling? Yeah,
Ken Hanscom: it’s, I think, What we’re going to see is we’re gonna see the the ticketing programs completely change, and I’m sure we’ll get into some details on that. There’s no more at like, there’s so much that’s different and I think they’ve taken a lot of the lessons, the things that could be improved on from previous games, and they’re already starting to apply those and I think we’ll start seeing those here in December, January.
February is this kind of first round of lottery goes. But then we’ll continue to experience that. And I think the big thing that’s still surprising a number of folks, including sponsors, is that this is going to be a hundred percent electronic ticket games, it’ll be the first one that’s a hundred percent.
And there’s some very good reasons for that. Despite all the things that, you know, folks like you and my, and me love, such as I want my souvenir tickets. Right. Uh, I want those. And, and it’s, you know, we still don’t know whether or not they’re gonna offer that. Right? They may offer the ability to purchase them or otherwise, and frankly, I would recommend that they do that, cuz that could be another revenue stream for the business.
But it sounds like, they’re preparing and, and they’re ready to launch here, you know, come early. With this first phase of, of ticketing, which is gonna, you know, it’ll play out over 18 months, but this first phase is exciting for a lot of folks.
Alison: Okay. So let’s get right into ticketing. What, Yeah.
You know, we’ve talked a little bit about on the show that we’re gonna have lots of price ranges that we’ve gotten rid of the cos boards and the resellers of the world. Yeah. But how is this gonna operate if you’ve never bought tickets before, where do you start?
Ken Hanscom: Yeah. I think where you start is with any good planning to attend an Olympic games, you really gotta understand when you wanna be there.
And, and the reason for that is, is as you know, is that there’s a different dynamic between the first week and the second week. The first week is frenetic, right? There are hundreds of events happening. A session’s happening at the same time. You have all your preliminaries. You could literally pull off going over to four events a day if you had the stomach for that, and the pricing is also lower.
In addition to that, you have generally swimming the first. Which is one of the bigger draws, and you have track and field or athletics the second week. And so when you start looking at the schedule, you have to make some determinations on if, if you have a more limited budget, I would definitely encourage someone to say, you know, I wanna target the first week because there are these preliminary events, which are, you know, one third, one fourth, one fifth, the cost of the finals events.
And then as you kinda go into the usher in that second week, right, you have all of the, you know, team competitions and those kinds of things, kind of crescendoing. Into the end of the Olympic Games where you, then you have the gold medal, basketball final, you know, whatever. All those different finals are are happening.
And so you get to the point where the last two or three days, there’s really only three or four events happening that you have to choose from. You not only have more competition for those particular events, and then you also are, it’s gonna be more expensive.
So I think the first part of when you think about playing to go Olympic games and you think about ticketing, you think about like what is my schedule? What are the events I want to see? And then what am I going to target? Because in the first couple phases, it’s kind of random what you get and I’ll be, I’ll be transparent. I have never been selected during the lottery phase to purchase a ticket. I think this is good news for everyone out there.
Cause there’s all this excitement, which mean millions of people that are gonna register And we know the allocations work in a general way as they have for the past Olympics, where 70% of the tickets are gonna go to the host. I mean that, that’s the rough numbers. Is it 62? Is it 70? That 20% are gonna go to sponsors, stakeholders, all of those.
And then 10% are available for the rest of the world. So, you know, if you look at these 10 million tickets that are possibly out there for the games, you know, get down to 10% for us that are for, you know, potentially in the United States. And then think about what slice is gonna be available for the first couple phases, right?
It’s gonna be limited. It’s gonna be limited. And so the people that get. Or I think we’re gonna be very excited and we still don’t know what tickets are going to be there, but I think it’s, it’s really important early on to keep your expectations even. Like I said, I’ve generally attended about 30 events per Olympics for the last several, and I will do that again.
My wife and I, we planned to attend between 30 and 35 events in Paris. And I’ve never gotten a single ticket from the lottery phase. So I think that should be an encouraging, So if you do get a ticket as part part of that phase, I think if you’re a resident of France, I think your, your obviously, your chances of, you know, knowing that 70% of the, you know, tickets are allocated for the host country, your chances are much, much higher.
So I think that’s kind of where you start thinking about that. Then if it makes sense, we can talk about this first phase. What’s gonna happen? Then we go go into the second phase and because at that time then hotels and all these other things start coming into play.
Alison: Okay. So what we have been telling our listeners is, yeah, the club, everybody must join the club If you want to get tickets. So, let’s talk a little bit about what that is and, and what else you would say as to how that first phase is going to
Ken Hanscom: work. Yeah. I think right now at least the documentation that’s out there is pretty clear that Le Club is not going to give you a better chance of getting a ticket or winning. But you absolutely should join Le Club or the [00:10:00] Club for Paris 2024.
And the reason being is that if you are in Le Club and you happen to be selected during the lottery, you know, your draw, your name’s drawn, you’ll be moved to the front of the line, right? So there’s a period of, we’ll see what it is, 15 days, 20 days, whatever the number is. that you can buy tickets and we’ll all be, if we win, we get slot into a 48 hour slot.
And that’s when we can come in, log in and, and have some selection there. Obviously, the earlier you, again, I don’t know how the Paris team is going to release the tickets, but the conventional wins. Wisdom is the earlier that you can get in, the better selection you will have. And given that, and right now if you are in Le Club, you’ll be moved to the first four days of purchasing.
So that is a big advantage. There’s our 800,000 people that have signed up for Look Club, and I think that if you are taking a chance on the lottery to get in and get your first tickets for Paris 2024, you absolutely should sign up for Look
Alison: Club. Okay. So if that’s kind of a bonus how is it going to work in terms of what everybody else is doing.
Ken Hanscom: Well, I, I think what, what everyone else is going to be doing is starting December 1st and all the way through January 31st, we can go in and create a ticketing account. it should be on the, sales platform, which is gonna be ave him, They also did Rio 2016. I would say they did a fantastic job, Rio 2016.
Once we got to the point where we could use the platform as international visitors, their resale platform was fantastic. The availability was, it was easy to navigate. Invent did a fantastic job in Rio 2016, so we’ll be able to log in there, we’ll create our account, and then we get to wait and hopefully, hopefully February 13th, around that timeframe of us will get emails.
This is another, I think, great lesson learned from Tokyo 2020. I don’t know if you remember Tokyo 2020, but when they did the Tokyo only lottery and they announced the results, you had to log in to find out within the first 15 minutes of an opening, the queue to get in was over a million people.
And some people waited 17 or 24 hours to be able to log in and just to see if they want. So I mean, if you think getting into a Taylor Swift on sale or an Ed Sheeran on sale is like, like hard, like reimagine being in line with a million other people and that’s what it was in Tokyo and what Paris is going to do, which is, absolutely the right way to do it.
Fantastic. Kind of learning from that experience in in Tokyo is they’re gonna send out emails and then that. You’ll get your timeframe, and during that 48 hour window, that’s when you’ll be able to log in and you’ll be able to, you know, it’s ticket packs, right? The first stage of the first phase, right?
The first phase is, is really the lottery. The first stage is multi-session packs where you can pick up to, three events. So that’s what we’re going to experience. ,
Yeah, and, and I say, you know, as part of that is what we don’t know either is, are we each gonna get two, can we get the four of its family of four?
I highly doubt it’s gonna be six or eight if you have a larger group. I, I would anticipate it being somewhere between two and four. Just, you know, this first phase.
Alison: Okay, so we’ve got first phase of tickets.
Do you expect there to be a decent market of resale and week, month of availability?
Ken Hanscom: Ab. Absolutely. And not from a second, not from a secondary market standpoint. I think there’s gonna be a very concerted effort to, to limit those for the brokers of scalpers. I think there’s a lot of, lot of technologies out there.
Again, eventually some brokers, they’re gonna get their hands on ’em, build. It takes, I think a couple things are very interesting. I think when we are making plan 18 in months in advance, I think we’re gonna have a higher degree of people who get tickets in the lottery that will decide not to go in to 2024.
It’s just the way it is, right? We don’t know anything about hotels yet. We can talk about that. What we do know about hotels in a little bit, we don’t know anything about flights and so some people are just kind of, don’t even really know what the budget’s going to be or whether or not going to the, but why would you not take a chance at getting those tickets and because, you know, through a, the veto platform, Paris Point Tour is gonna have a fan to fan resale site Which means that as a, and again, this existed in Rio, so that’s not the first time we, we’ve seen this, it was on, on stone platform and it worked extremely well. You know, if you decide, you know what, my son’s getting married or I’m getting married and, and it’s gonna happen into 2024 and now I can’t go to the game or whatever.
My best friend, whatever, you can now be able to go on this platform and just click ’em to be resale. Something happens while you there. So, so I expect that to happen and continue. And I always, this is my, one of my two favorite phrases, which is, is, getting your Olympic tickets is a marathon, not a sprint.
And I think it’s very easy to get discouraged early on if you get shut out of a lottery or something like that. And I said, Don’t get discouraged. Like you’re gonna have a multiple, you know, multitude of opportunities over the next 18 months up until including during the Games to acquire additional tickets.
Is it gonna be easy? Are they gonna fall in your lap? Absolutely not. But if you work at it and you, kinda understand, you know, what the opportunities are, I think a lot, you know, a good, good [00:15:00] portion of people who are committed to going to the Olympic games will be able to obtain a good portion of the number of tickets that they’d like to have.
Alison: Hotels, the place of price go. Of any situation. Yeah. Paris is not a cheap city. I know you have been there many times before. What are you expecting? What are you
Ken Hanscom: seeing? It’s, it’s interesting. You know, usually what happens is, whenever the bid is announced or confirmed, you know, what we know happens, you know, eight, 10 years in advance is all of the sponsors all of the, exclusive hospitality providers, like an On Location. And also as part of the bid contract, a number of the top hotels are all they’re all committed to, they’re signed over. So if you had dreams and you had the unlimited budget, and it’s one of my other favorite things is that you can go to the Olympics on $2,000, but you could, I also know people who spend 2 million dollars going to an Olympic games, and you can really do that if you really wanna stay in the Four Seasons or you know, any of the other top hotels, Ritz Carlton I can, you know, go on and on. In terms of all the ones that are there, you are not going to, unless you’re with a sponsor or you go through a provider, like, On Location.
Yeah, Normal folks, we’re not gonna be able to go onto the website 365 days in advance and look at that. Now, when I was in Paris a month ago, one of the things I was surprised cause I went and talked with a number of hotels. I said, Hey, I’m still searching for a place myself.
I’m likely, cause I’m there for about, you know, five weeks usually I’m likely to end up with apartment. Uh, I might end up in a fortunate situation with one of my friends, might trade houses with me for a month, which would be fantastic. But I was just curious in terms of like where they were.
So I went to several Are affiliated with major brands, major international brands that you and I know, and I asked them like, So what’s the deal like is this the Coca-Cola hotel or is this the, you know, whoever made whatever sponsor of the day, you know, the sponsor that’s a major top sponsor, NBC or Attos or any of these others.
And they’re like, No, we, we decide opt out of the host city contract. And and actually I talked with several and it was a little bit surprising to me. So I think as we get, again, that means not under contract right now. There’s nothing that keeps a sponsor from going in over the next eight months and writing a contract on those hotels.
I think we might be surprised now, not necessarily with the pricing, but we might be surprised with the availability of hotels that you know the names of, that you recognize, the names of, not just the boutique, you know, 30 room type of hotels that you might see that would kind of normally be available.
So I think that that’s gonna be something interesting to follow, I think over the next six to seven months to see if that happens. And, you know, I, I made contact with a few of them now and I’ll, I’ll email back and forth to see what, what their plans are to do that. People might even be fortunate enough to be able to go on points if if they time it correctly given.
Some these hotels I talked to have robust point programs for which you can opt in and, and go to. so, yeah, so that’s the hotels and then we have the whole Airbnb piece of it.
Alison: Thank you for asking the question. Before I did , that was the, I could see Airbnb is a sponsor and they’ve talked about this.
It is a sponsor, you know, the organizing committee, creating this whole system with them. But what is. Actually panning out to look like.
Ken Hanscom: I I I think we see a lot of benefit from it. I, I know that Paris general has not been a huge, uh, short term rental market. And just in terms of the, overall political environment and even, even the resident environment in terms of that.
But, but I think there, there’s gonna be enough of an impact from. In terms of both the relationship with Paris 2024 with Airbnb, where you’ll, see meaningful, you know, inventory that is available will be cheap. I, I sincerely doubt it but I think that we will see a meaningful impact, which again, the more availability you have, whether it’s hotels or Airbnbs or even, you know, you might have a lot of private, folks rent out uh, apartments and otherwise I, I think the better it is for, for all fans who want to, visit, Paris, France and attend 2024
Alison: Generally hotel bookings are a year in advance. Yep. Rules sometimes change with the Olympics and they will cancel your booking and reprice it. So how, Yeah. What do you expect from from
Ken Hanscom: Paris? What I expect is,
Major multinational brands or much more unlikely to cancel any reservation that you have. And I think, and that’s just a general brand protection, you know, et cetera. You know, I think with Airbnb, I think they’re gonna add some additional protections to that with hosts and otherwise, or as part of that part partnership there.
But I, I think, you know, we saw us in Tokyo early on. some people, and this was really more I think was on the private residence side in terms of more of kind, again, I’m using Airbnb as a category, not necessarily the brand, which is fantastic for the brand cause it’s a category. But people that who were doing it independently of a large organization, like, like Airbnb, that’s where we saw the majority of kind of those, those cancellations or people didn’t really, they didn’t look out in the calendar 18 months in advance like you and I are doing right now, and saying, Hey, how exactly, what are the.
When do I log onto this site? When do I log onto this, that site? When do I check, you know, airline flights? And so I think early on in July, maybe early August, we could see some of that.
Alison: Paris is a big city. There’s event happening all over the city and outside the city. Yeah. How [00:20:00] do you figure out where to stay?
Ken Hanscom: I, I think places where general for me, when I think about it, I wanna be where the action normally is in the city cuz the, like, the popular places in cities. So my plans are to stay in the first of days. Like, then that’s, that’s, you know, the opera area you know, there’s a lot of, you know, lot of excitement happening in that area.
Alison: Um, I’m gonna stop you for a second. When you say first and eighth, what does that. What does that mean?
Ken Hanscom: Yeah, I mean there, there’s, I only wanna call ’em burrows, you know, I butcher the French language. So, so I, I just start with the first and the eighth. So, but their areas,
Alison: the two of us will try and say, Err dal,
Ken Hanscom: desal.
Exactly. But, but effectively right there, there’s basically 20 areas within the kind of traditional city limits. Paris or city Walls, whatever you want to call, you know, however it’s classified. And those 20 zones, the first and the eighth are basically where, like the louv, uh, where the opera area is.
You know, Shawn j which I of course butcher as well cause I’m terrible. Arc, all those things are kind of in that area. It’s along the, you know, Sun River. And so I think for, just experience even being there, that’s where I stayed. I stayed in the first one when my wife and I were there.
A couple. We just enjoyed it, right? The number of cafes that sit down, the accessibility in Paris is like the ultimately walkable city. So I think anywhere for the most part within that kind of main area of Paris, I think is a good place to target. It has a, it has a fantastic, you know, metro system and you can get anywhere kind of 20, 30 minutes.
And you know, the other thing I think will be, Interesting to watch too is that, in the summer months some of our best friends are Parisians and they’re like, We don’t stay in the city. And Susan we’re out. Like, and so I think we had that kind of experience in London back in 2012 where a lot of people just left the city.
And so I think we, it’s likely we might see a similar behavior for those who are not. really into sport either or they stay for the beginning or come back at the end. But I think there is gonna be a, you know, significant portion of the population that will choose to leave the city as, as they may do on an annual basis.
Alison: How difficult is it in Paris to stay outside the city and get into the city?
Ken Hanscom: I think if you stay around a major metro line, not so much. for example, when I went out to the Paris 2024 offices, which is outside the limits, out in St. And Sy it just took me like 20 minutes to get up there. So it really wasn’t, uh, a big deal.
And, and it was, you know, 20 minutes by by Metro and it was like 25 minutes by Uber. So it, it’s, you know, whatever ride share taxi you choose to take. So I, I think it, it’s still pretty relatively compact. I think the main thing that you’d be looking for if you are staying outside the city is your proximity to a line of the metro that can get you into the central area fairly quickly, you know, less than, less than 30 minutes kind of thing.
That, that’s probably what I would encourage people to do.
Alison: You mentioned budget and your budget can be, zero to a million. If people are saving up. What do those numbers actually translate to? Like what would be a budget? Budget? A mid-range budget? A luxury budget?
Ken Hanscom: Yeah. I think a lower budget. I think we say, let’s say, call it two people again, family of four, you multiply it, whatever, and I’m assuming you’re gonna have $1,500 flight tickets, right? Maybe they’re down at a thousand, maybe they’re there 2000. You know, if we use those sort of estimates somewhere in the five to $7,000 range is, and again, it all depends.
Are you using points? Because if you’re using points and you can get there on a flight and you can get your hotel room during that, and then you can look at, you know, event tickets starting at 45 euros and you’re kind of saying, Well, hey, I can probably do this for under 1500 bucks. Right. I think if you look at like budget, budget and, and doing all that, I mean, I think $1,500 is kind of like a $2,000 kind of your minimum entry level.
Then when you start putting kind of like flights and you’re paying for that, it’s probably five to seven. And then now if you start getting into kind of a mid range, like now I wanna go to gymnastics all around finals and I wanna, you know, I wanna do category a’s, and you know, that’ll be a whole thing too.
I think with some of the preemie hospitality. I think you get very quickly into the five figures and you know, I think you start talking about, you know, luxury experiences. They’re north of six figures
Alison: and this is all based on if you’re coming out of the.
Ken Hanscom: Yeah, you, I would say as long as you’re not living, Yeah.
Coming outta us. And you also need a hotel, cause your flight’s gonna be, a portion of it, but also the hotel, potentially the food, potentially the event tickets. Those are gonna be kinda your ma I would say ultimately those are probably gonna be, your two most expensive things are generally gonna be your accommodations and then your event tickets
Alison: I have never been to Paris, I have never been to France.
So what kinds of things are you expecting of the Olympics? That would either be problematic because it’s French, and especially great because it’s French.
Ken Hanscom: I don’t see anything on, on the problematic side. You know, I, I know worldwide right now we have like, you know, some issues in airports, international airports.
I expect all that stuff to get worked through by the time time we get there. Yeah. You know, I always advise people advise traveling. Arriving on opening, you know, day of opening ceremony or leaving the day after closing. Cause the airports are a mess. And it gonna take you to, it’s just the way it is.
Anytime, you know, a hundred thousand people go to an airport on any given day, no matter how much you plan for it, when that’s not your normal capacity. Right. It’s an issue. So I think those things are, and you can, avoid those sorts of things. But I think, you know, there’s just, so, [00:25:00] it’s really interesting for, you know, my experience in France, I’ve always enjoyed it in Paris, but this.
You know, week or so that my wife, I just like, I don’t know, I won’t say I fell in love with it, but I just, the experience I had was such more, I almost got more romantic than it, than it had been. And, and I look at like, you know, it’s a hundred years since 1924, third time me being hosted in, in Paris.
I look at all the, you know, they’re doing a fantastic job of, of putting. Events in iconic places, right? Beach volleyball, the apple tower, you know, where you look, you’re gonna have archery like, all these locations that are kind of lined along the river. There’s just gonna be so many iconic places.
It’s like the, Beach volleyball, you know, happening at, on the Copa Cabana Beach in, in Rio, and, some of the other sites that we had in London. But there seems to be more of those and, I, I don’t think we’re gonna have experienced again. I think we would’ve had a similar experience in Tokyo to be frank.
I just, fortunately we all couldn’t take part of that. There’s a worldwide pandemic happening in case you hadn’t heard about it. But this is gonna really be the best we’ve had, I think opportunity we’ve had really since London and London was, for most people, if you ask ’em what their favorite one they went to, I think Sydney is often at the, off the top of a lot of people’s lists.
And I think London is right up there as well. How much French do
Alison: we need?
Ken Hanscom: I You don’t need any. My personal view on this is I try to be respectful and where I can especially in shorter asking questions, that, that I can speak a little bit.
I’m Italy, I, I’m terrible, but, but I, I’ve found that, you know, Lisa , everyone there was very, very understanding and maybe that’s also some, some level of, with tourism struggling. Multiple years with the pandemic. I think there’s lots of, as, tourism starts to come back, I also think there’s also this, we need this, right?
We, we want, this actually helps our businesses. So I think there’s a little bit more openness in terms of there, but you know, Yeah, I know you’re in, in the Facebook group, we already have people in there insisting that we use it’s a multinational group and you know, we’re up to 6,500 people and we’ve already had request.
From French nationals, that French is used inside that group. And we’ve had to politely say is, Hey, this is a multinational group. Whatever line language people are comfortable in know, please go ahead and use the language to Google Translate and all those things. So I, there’ll be some, maybe some elements of that in some places, but I think the French people in general gonna be very welcoming, uh, and excited to be able to host and show off.
Third great city, they’re great country, you know, a little over 18 months or so. Do we
Alison: need to go to Tahiti?
Ken Hanscom: kind of always need to go tot I gonna say you never kinda always need to go. It’s, you know, you gotta, I have to come back to LA if I was going to do that, cuz I think right, Air Tahiti basically goes through Seattle, San Francisco and, and la But you, you know, it, it’s, it’s pretty exciting.
I think that’ll be there. I, yeah, obviously, I don’t know what the, I think originally it was supposed to be on the, on the southern coast of. Before it got moved there, I think it would, I was actually gonna consider taking the train out southern France to see the event, but I probably won’t make it to Heti while I’m, While I’m in Paris.
Alison: Yeah. We’re, we’re sort of saying, you know, does one of us go to Tahiti and the other goes to Paris? ?
Ken Hanscom: Yeah. We are fortunate to be in Bora a year ago about the, about this time a year ago. And it, it’s an amazing place and I’d love to go there for an event, but I don’t know. I’d actually frankly, rather be under the water diving if I’m in, Tahiti.
Alison: You’re not gonna be watching television in ta. No, No. Are you watching
Ken Hanscom: the waves
Alison: traveling around in Paris? And you were talking about that this is very popular. People are really interested in coming. Should we be expecting kind of the most densely crowded city that we’ve seen in a long time for an event like this?
Ken Hanscom: It’s a really good question. And what I think about is, as we talked about a little bit earlier, I think a lot of Persians are, are already planning to not be in the city during the Olympics. Just like we, like we saw in London. In in London, it didn’t feel overly crowded. It’s, it’s also during the summertime, which is generally a high tourist time, but if you were a tourist.
And you are, don’t wanna go to the Olympic games. And that’s not, not something for you. You’re not going to go to Paris in the summer of 2024. So I think if you kinda remove that and kind of substitute it with the Olympic traffic, I, I think you’re gonna see just simply a different set of interests in terms of people.
But I don’t necessarily, you’re gonna, you’re gonna see a more densely populate maybe the first week because there’s so many people coming and going to, cuz there are so many events, you know, happening during that time. And maybe the metros are a little bit. Crowded than they normally would be, but I think as you get in the second week, I think it’ll, it’ll normalize quite a bit.
Alison: Other than ticketing, does any of this change for Paralympics?
Ken Hanscom: You know, I think we’ll see. I don’t think, I don’t think so. You know, I think a lot of it is, costs will definitely be lower cuz not as many.
do travel. But I think all the same basic kind of tips and locations and where you wanna stay and where the centers of gravity are gonna be, are gonna be very, very similar.
Alison: What did I not ask That you wanna tell people to get ready for Paris?
Ken Hanscom: We just talked about the first phase of ticket sales, which is the multi pack, and then that is gonna be December through January. You’ll have the opportunity in March, and the next phase will roll into another lottery, which is March, April, and then you can do those in May.[00:30:00]
Then all the other activities. Start happening around, I would call more open sales roughly one year before the event. And that’s when you start seeing kinda larger inventories, a more diverse inventory and kinda have the ability to go in and, and generally purchase. So I think really with your, you’re targeting things is kind of that one year mark to go is when you really see that pickup.
I think one of the other big changes for Paris 2024 is the hospitality. And the premium side of things. So as part of the deal that On Location did, and if you guys don’t know who On Location is, On Location is the same provider. it’s part of, of Endeavor, which is a publicly traded company here in the United States, but it’s the same company that does the Superbowl Entertainment.
It does a lot of the cfp hospitality, entertainment. They have the entire exclusive arrangement for hospitality and packages for the Paris 2024 games. And what that means is, you know what Ken, budgets not a problem for me. I have X amount to spend and I don’t want to go through all this.
Like, I love ticket honey. Like that’s, it’s kind of like a hobby for me. Uh, even if I have other opportunities and other ways to get tickets, I still really enjoy that. You’re like, You know what? No stress, nothing. I just wanna know. I’m going these seven days, I’m gonna stay in a great hotel. I want to have the in venue hospitality, and I want someone to just take me all around so I don’t have to worry about that.
So On Location’s gonna do a fantastic job, right now it’s information only you can go there, but eventually, I think the next few months they’re gonna start launching that phase and you’ll be go able to go in there. And, you know, I’m not gonna say similar to coast work, it’s very, very different.
Cause they’re also act offering activities and you know, things from like food tours and all these other things that you can kind of. Fit into an overall package. If you’re looking for those sorts of experiences, that’s what’s one thing to change. You’re gonna have one place to go regardless of where you live in the world, and that’s gonna be the On Location experiences.
Alison: So start saving now.
Ken Hanscom: Yeah. I mean, yeah, exactly. And like I said, it’s, you know there, I know people that spend $2,000. Visiting Olympic games. I know people that spend almost 2 million and it, it’s, a tremendous array. I mean, there’s people out there that have private planes and, you know, fly, they take their private planes there and they happen to have those means.
And there’s other people, it’s their first time and, you know, maybe they’re early in their career or they’re in college and, you know, they’re bootstrap, you know, whatever it may be. but I think the great thing is about the Olympics. There’s something for everyone. And I think the other thing we, gosh, you asked me what else we haven’t talked about.
We haven’t talked about all the other stuff that’s not about. Uh, I mean, I
Alison: was gonna ask you about the opening ceremonies and being in the city. So all the things, if you’re not getting tickets, What do you expect to see? Because it’s Paris
Ken Hanscom: and I think it’s one, what my wife and I like to, we like to go year before and actually do all the sites, so we don’t do with it, but people choose to do that there.
And it’s often fine, you know, it’s a, because it’s a summer busy season, you’re basically replacing one sort of visitor, which is know your normal cheer risk, going to visit parish for the first time with Olympic visitors. And so I don’t, you know, there’ll be some level of crowds, but probably no more than you would normally see.
But I would actively encourage people not to. Tickets for every single, day that you will be there. There’s gonna be what they call hospitality houses. This, you know, it’s one of my favorite things to do is a lot of countries, and it’s gonna be there between 12 and 15 countries. It could be as high as 20 or 25 in Paris, but they will have a house or you can go and visit and, the Holland and Heineken house is, is one of the most popular ones, and it’s popular one cuz it’s Heineken.
It’s a big party Every single night that a, an athlete wins a medal for Holland, basically what they do is they’re contracted to come there and celebrate with whoever’s there that night. And so if you wanna have like an athlete experience, a guaranteed athlete, experie. That’s one way to do it. And Germany Team usa, which happens is, is usually a closed house.
We’ll see as more information comes out, what it happens be. There’s all these other opportunities to visit, experience local food, different foods, meet people. I think that’s one of my favorite things to do during Olympic games, outside events, is the opportunity. To meet others that, you know, enjoy sport and the type of sports that you do.
And some of the best friends I have now, I met for the first time in London, you know, at London in 2012. And so, so there’s gonna be that. I think the other thing is, Paris is also looking to add a lot of cultural events that are gonna coincide with the same timeframe. As the summer games, and I think there’ll be other opportunities to engage in cultural experiences that aren’t necessarily directly involved with sport, but during that same time.
So you know what I’d actively encourage people to do is make sure you plan a couple of days. If you’re gonna be there two weeks, make sure if there’s three to four days where you’re really not going to events and you can kinda enjoy these other things,
Alison: and going to events every day is exhausting.
Ken Hanscom: It is, it is the most, I think we’ve done four one day and that, that was crazy.
Fortunately, they were all in the Olympic Park at Rio, so we didn’t really have to, walk around. But yeah, you I would generally encourage people to do no more in two a day. Make sure that they’re relatively closely, located to each other. Cause just ultimately between security and getting in venue and just looking, you just wanna take in some of these venues that you’ve never been in before, just your time starts getting really, really crunched.
But yeah, it can be very exhausting especially if you’re not used, used to visceral level of activity,[00:35:00]
Alison: what’s your number one must. For Paris 2024.
Ken Hanscom: That’s such a good question. I don’t know if I have a great answer for it. I think my must do is I must be at several swing finals.
And we must be at the gymnastics finals for, for women’s, both team and all round. I know, I’m, I’m signed up for that, those are my wife’s favorite things. Uh, swimming happens to be my favorite. And then I think I, I’ll absolutely make sure I am at, um, several US women’s soccer. Teams. I mean, my wife and I, love the supporting team.
We’re heading down to Australia next summer to watch the World Cup down there. So I think those are kind of our must do things. Obviously spend some time in the Team USA house. We’re fortunate enough to be able to do that at times. So those are kind of things that, that I think are, are kind of must dos outside of meeting new people.
That, and getting to know people and, making friends that, probably will, end up being lifetime.
Alison: Mona, me, ,
Ken Hanscom: Mona, me. What’s yours? What What’s yours?
Alison: For right now, it’s just getting there. Yeah. Cause I have never been to a summer now. Yeah. And certainly a non C and I’ve never been to Paris.
So there are so many things on this list that make it very overwhelming.
Ken Hanscom: Yeah. Uh, those piece I would add is I, I planned anything that’s an iconic, like venue, beach volleyball, archery, we’ll make sure we attend those. Yeah, yeah. Roll and Garrett, of course. Yes. You know. Fantastic. And I think the real question is, is, I don’t want to.
Be a predictor. I don’t know the next time that breaking will be in the Olympics. And so do I take the potential one opportunity to experience that? Cause that’s a unique experience that I may never, you know, have the opportunity to have. And I think the other pieces are the other Olympic sports like skateboarding, and three on three basketball as well as Sport climbing. That’s, Or ones that were new Tokyo but didn’t have spectators. So it’ll be first time for spectators. So that’s a general thing I try to do is I, I try to, visit and experience sports I haven’t seen
Alison: before. You gonna try to get to the opening ceremonies on
Ken Hanscom: the sun?
I’ll be there one way or the.
Alison: You’ll be swimming and holding onto a,
Ken Hanscom: if needed. The interesting thing about opening ceremony is gonna be 650,000 people opening ceremony. That’s, that’s a massive, massive change is we’re not limited to the 68,000 people who, Were at, at, you know, at previous opening surveys.
So I think there’s a lot of opportunity to experience that. And I know that the, the committees figured out exactly how to do that, both from a security as well as from a ticketing standpoint. Cause there’s expected to be both cost based tickets as well as potentially free tickets for the public.
Alison: Yeah. I have a feeling it may be sort of like the Rose Bowl parade where you have like sections of seating and then other places where it’s first come first.
Ken Hanscom: I entirely expect that depending on where, you know, obviously the Flo Till is coming down, but depending on what you’re doing with, you know, the speeches, the live entertainment and, and some of the other, you know, aspects of the ceremony.
But I, I expect that anyone kind of lining the, the river during it will have the opportunity to, the athletes go by what ends up, I think at the, eel. Right,
Alison: Of course. Because, you know, it’s the Eiffel Tower. The most ends, It’s the Eiffel Tower. Of
Ken Hanscom: course. . Yeah, exactly. So yeah, so, so I, I think, even you will likely be at the opening ceremony if you want to.
it all comes down to, I think anyone who wants to, will likely have, the opportunity to do it. Now, what we don’t know is, are we, you, we have to camp out the night before, like we’re camping out for, you know, back in the, back in the old days when you had to camp out for concert tickets,
Alison: Ken, I thank you so
Ken Hanscom: much. My pleasure. You know, it’s, we’re at the very beginning here. We’re super early, earlier than we’ve ever been in an Olympic cycle, and a lot’s gonna happen over the next 18 months.
Uh, but I think by the time we get there, most people who really want to go will have the opportunity to find reasonable prices for airlines, for hotel rooms, and be able to attain, a decent number of tickets at reasonable prices if they, uh, put the time and effort into it.
Jill: Thank you so much Ken. You can follow Ken on Twitter at Ken Hanscom and Insta. He is the Ken Hanscom. If you are looking for more news follow the Facebook group, Paris 2024 Olympics Planning and Preparation. And then we’ll also have a link to Ken’s Ultimate Guide to Paris 2024. Your Roadmap to the Summer Games in Paris, France.
[00:38:58] History Moment – Albertville 1992
Jill: That sound means it’s a time for our history moment and all year long. We are looking at Albertville in 1992 as it is the 30th anniversary of those Olympics. It is my turn for a story, We haven’t talked about biathlon yet, or even started talking biathlon. We know how, you had weeks of figure skating
Alison: and you’re running outta weeks
Jill: here, Jill.
I know I’m running outta weeks, but we may not have that many bilon, but we’re having more than just one Bilon story because Albertville was a big Olympics for Bilon. This was the last games that the sport would be associated with the International Federation, U I P M B because in 1993 it would break off and form the International Bilon Union.
Leaving modern pentathlon all on its own.
Alison: I’m so confused why they were ever together in the first place, but the shooting elements of it, I can see the shooting and racing.
Jill: Yeah. Albertville was also the first Olympics where women competed in biathlon, so we’re definitely talking about that.
But today I just wanna focus on [00:40:00] one race, which would be the Men’s 20 K. At Albertville, each gender had three events. They had a sprint, they had an individual event. And the relay, The biathlon venue was a notable 1,650 meters above sea level.
Which is close to a mile.
Alison: Okay, thanks . I was trying to do the math there. .
Jill: For the men’s 20 K, which was the individual race, it had five laps and four bouts of shooting. They did prone standing, prone standing, if you missed a target, you got a one minute penalty.
The total climb in this race was 728 meters, so an already high course got even higher in altitude. That made it tougher on all the athletes.
Alison: Were they yod at the, in the
Jill: middle of this race? They might have. I’m sure the fans were for sure. So the 20 K was the very last race of the whole entire bilon competition at Albertville.
It was notable for many reasons, but one of the big ones was who wasn’t there, and that would be the unified teams. Sergei Tarasov. Who was one of the favorites? He got sick in Albertville just before the competition. And my favorite David Wallechinsky Complete Guide to the Olympics book said food poisoning and have seen another official.
Words that he had eight bed mushrooms and that was the story given at the time. But years later, Tarasov told Sport Express, which is a Russian media outlet. and by Russian media outlet, I mean, I read this via Google Translate, so some of the words might be a little off. That he was sick because of blood.
Do. He had decided to try blood doping and they took some blood from the summer prior to this when they had been training at altitude. So the blood, red blood cells were higher. Somewhere along the way either the blood was not refrigerated properly, or he was doped with somebody else’s blood, which was the wrong blood type.
So his blood got infected, he went into a coma and was clinically dead. , but doctors got him back. They were able to take all of his blood out. They infused him with hees, which caused his bone marrow to start producing blood again. And it’s pretty gruesome what they, what he talks about what happened.
So we won’t talk about that here. So Tarasov obviously out of it for these gains. He surprisingly came back for Lila Humer and he wore a full set of medals.
Alison: I’d love to know what the results of those testing.
Jill: No, he, if he could run it now, he has claimed because he talked with Sport Express somewhere around 2015 and he has said he, that was the first time he had ever tried blood doping and he didn’t compete, so he’s never competed doping. Cuz obviously when once that happens to you, I think you kind of get scared from trying blood doping.
Alison: and this was the height of blood doping that late eighties, early nineties. Mm-hmm. , because they were starting to get caught for all the anabolic steroids. So they were trying something else.
Jill: Exactly. So now with Tarasov out, who is going to win gold, would it be defending gold medalist Frank-Peter Roetsch from Germany, and he was formally East German.
And this again is the first time that the, two countries are competing again after. Few decades off. Roetsch was one of the first by athletes to start skate skiing, and he had done this several years earlier, but so that, that was not new for Albertville, but he was one of the first ones to employ that technique and won gold in Calgary 1988.
Unfortunately, he did not repeat his success because he missed seven targets. Adding seven minutes of time to his total and he finished 53rd
Alison: clean shooting.
Jill: Right? So would the winner be the Unified team’s Sergey Chepikov, who had won the overall by Athlon World Cups in 1990? 1991, He had the fourth fastest key time at this event.
He missed three target. Finished 10th. So how about the reigning world champ in the 20 K? Who is Mark Kirchner also from Germany that we and Kirchner had won two golds and the other two by Lon events at Albertville. So he’s primed years having a great games. He’s the second fastest time of the race. Also missed three targets.
He got silver. So who wins? This guy named Yevgeny Redzkin. From Unified team and everyone said, Who is this? Because he’d only won a couple of events at a 1990 world junior champs and nobody else knew much else about him, and he was not even listed in the Soviet team book or unified team book before Albertville and found out he was racing just two days before the event.
He didn’t ski all that great. His ski time was 18th overall, but he was the only competitor in the top 10 who shot cleanly, made all the difference, and he won the gold. So [00:45:00] that was really his glory moment as an athlete. He did keep competing for Bella Ro because he was Bella Rush, and as the Unified team only competed in that Olympics together for the winter.
He did try to defend his gold medal at Little Hammerer, but instead of winning gold, he ironically repeated the results of the man he ousted from the podium. Exactly as Frank-Peter Roetsch had in 53rd place.
[00:45:27] TKFLASTAN Update
Alison: Oh, welcome to sh.
Jill: It is the time of the show where we check in with our team, keep the flame alive. These our past guests of the show who make up our citizenship of our very own country. Shukla. We got some results.
Alison: So Shooter Tim Sherry finished second at the cmp. Dixie Doubles and we will be seeing him again next week at the Championships of the Americas.
Jill: Ryan Shane, who was on our show last week, competed in his first short track speed skating World Cup event in Salt Lake City. Got into some trouble with penalties in both the 500 meter and the 1000 meter, and the US men finished eighth in the.
Alison: Erin Jackson left the world scape games with a gold, a silver, and a bronze in the inline road races.
And she is back on the ice this week in Norway for the first World Cup races in
Jill: long track. Amazing. And Team Schuster won the 2022 New Floors Pen curling Classic.
Alison: Ginny Thrasher was on History Channel’s, Mountain Men, Ultimate Marksman last Thursday.
Jill: I did watch this. It was quite fun cause if you were a fan, if you were a fan of Top Shot, which I was not only because it was shooting and that’s fun to watch, but it was also hosted by Colby Donaldson.
From season two of Survivor Colby is back .
Alison: Does he have his Texas flag wrapped around him
Jill: again? No, he does not. But he’s back and gin’s there and they’re shooting a lot of different guns and keep saying, Oh Jenny’s, this is a heavy gun.
Jenny’s only used to holding in their rifle. How’s she gonna. ,
Alison: Does she shoot any of them for that ?
Jill: No, because you’re a better woman than I. Jenny Shinny is a professional .
Alison: She silences them with her marksmanship pretty much.
Jill: And oh, Louise Sugden and Joe Muir visited Buckingham Palace for the official royal reception of Team GB athletes in Tokyo and Beijing.
Alison: I was texting or rather messaging with Louise and I said, Did you meet Anne the Princess Royal? Cause that’s all I really cared about. But she said she chatted with King Charles and with Princess Anne and that they were lovely.
Jill: Oh, of course. But how exciting. I saw some of those pictures and they looked, it’s almost better than going to the White House.
I would say
Alison: Oh, it’s way better. Because there were way, There’s only one p. They got King Charles, Queen Concert, Camilla, they had Princess Ann. They had the Earl Encounters of Wessex. I mean, they had a whole panel p going on of royalty.
Jill: and competing this week, actually. , They probably will have competed by the time you read this. Sarah Gascon and Team USA is in the 2023 North American PanAm Games qualifier.
This is versus Canada on Thursday, November 10th. The winner of this will go to the PanAm games next year, so I am super excited for her N Team usa. Before we continue on, wanted to remind you that it’s almost book club time. So if you haven’t gotten your book. It’s at the bottom. Oh, please do so it, We are reading Snowball’s Chance by David Antonucci and you can get it@ourbookshop.org.
Storefront, that’s bookshop.org/shop/flame alive pod. We have a link to that in our show notes and really any book you buy through that link we get a little commission on and that really helps to, defray the costs of the show and for coverage of future Olympic and Paralympic events. So thank you so much,
[00:49:06] Beijing 2022 Update
Jill: Haven’t heard that music in a while. Yeah.
Alison: And to be honest, given the situation that’s really the music
Jill: I should have played. Yeah. So we do have an update to the Kamila Valieva situation. what do you know? Okay.
Alison: So, you’ll see this in a lot of places. I got it off Sports Examiner. You saw it from the New York Times.
Rada has said, so the Russian anti-doping agency, Rada has said it will not release the results of its investigation of Kamila Valieva and her suspension for finding an illegal substance at the Russian National Championships last December. So the World Anti-Doping Agency, Waa said, Oh, [00:50:00] yes, you have to release the results, but that’s fine.
We’ll just take it to the Court of Arbitration for. So that means if Wadada doesn’t think that a national body is moving quickly enough or responsibly enough, or is doing anything to undermine the legitimacy of anti-doping efforts, they can just bypass the country’s agency and go to cas, which is basically what Wadada is doing cuz the assumption is then made that the national agency found no violate.
So WA is saying there was a violation, and now there’s the assumption since Rada is refusing to release its results, that there was no violation. So now WA brings it to Cas. So honestly, even though, guess what’s gonna happen next, If Rada doesn’t respond properly, they’re gonna get suspended again. But for the val of a case, this actually will move it along more quickly.
Which is
Jill: a good thing, but even so, it’s, kind of frustrating how going through the proper channels gets you back to where you would have been if you bypassed the proper channels in this case.
Alison: So it’s probably going to be a full year after the violation was announced back in February, that we will get a decision from Cass if we’re lucky, but, Silver lining of this Russia is banned from competition from all the skate, the isu events for the year.
So we’re not dealing with a potentially suspended athlete competing anyway. Very good. Unlike what happened in Beijing and those poor team athletes still have no medal.
Jill: Oh, so frustrating.
[00:51:39] Paris 2024 Update
Jill: Oh, some Paris 2024 teasers dropped as
Alison: if we didn’t give you enough. Paris 2024 today. Now we have legs.
Jill: That’s right. The mascots are coming. The mascots are coming. And Paris 2024 put out a little teaser that showed legs. Of the Olympic mascot and a leg and a running blade for the Paralympic mascot,
Alison: and this has released all kinds of speculation.
Are they going to be humanlike, Are they going to be not humanlike? They are clearly not going to be Picasso like in the Kobe, sideways fashion
Jill: that we know of. I mean, they could be sideways, I
Alison: guess they could be, but their feet are forward. So, I guess mm-hmm. . And they have normal feet, unlike Athens
Jill: And they teach,
Alison: have two lower limbs unlike London.
Jill: Very true. Very true. And they’re wearing sneakers when they have shoes.
Alison: So there’s definitely some, some positive hints
Jill: here. So very excited. it makes it feel more real once you get a mascot going. We also have some news on a, an event name change.
So, one of the new events for Paris is going to be extreme slalom, but that is now going to be called Kayak Cross because that puts it more in line with other cross type instances. It’s a head to head competition on a, an extreme course. Basical. And then good news for the organization is that Danone, the yogurt company, has agreed to be an official sponsor for pairs 2024.
Good news
Alison: for me. Maybe that means that drinkable yogurt will be in the media rooms again, .
Jill: We can hope. So it’s, cool because if you’re having a opening ceremonies party, Get some Deni own products except for we in the US will not be lucky enough to see big advertising and Olympic tie-ins because they’re just advertising in France.
Alison: Maybe one of the denin animals, animals will be the mascot. That would
Jill: be cool. Do they have Deni animals in France?
Alison: Don’t know. Den me.
[00:53:54] Milan-Cortina 2026 Update
Jill: Little news from Milan Cortina. What’s going on here?
Alison: Sports Examiner is reporting that the organized A committee finally has a new chief executive four years out. So Entertainment executive Andrea Varner, uh, was the image and events director for Torino 2006. So it’s got some Olympic experience.
Mostly he’s been in movies and TV and amusement park management. And as we’ve talked about before, the marketing and the sponsorships for Milan Cortina have been very problem. They’ve got no money, They’ve got no sponsors. So Coney, which is the Italian Olympic Committee, had Giovanni Malago, I loved this quote, said, Now we can no longer make mistakes, so poor and is just going to be thrown on the hill.
Hope
he
Jill: gets on his skis. I do too, and comes up with a good game. Don’t have much time. Something will get done, [00:55:00] that’s for sure. So that is going to do it for this week. Let us know your plans for 20 a Paris 2024. Are you planning on going? Are you gonna be a good couch potato? are you getting extra monitors set up?
A
Alison: couch, palmed a tear. de tear the so far
And you can tell me how bad my French is by email at flame live pod gmail.com. Call or text us at (208) 352-6348. That’s 2 0 8. 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. Book Club Claire will be back. So we can talk about snowball’s.
Chance, the story of the 1960 Olympic Winter Games by David c Antonucci. Looking forward to delving back into some interesting history of the time. Speaking of enter, Leaders, Walt Disney, big part of the entertainment of this games. So that will be fun to talk about. Thank you so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive.