Olympic runners have it easy: They pack running shoes and clothes. But for equestrians, how do their horses get to the Olympics? Luckily, there’s a service that helps with that. In this episode we’re joined by Martin Atock, Managing Director at Peden Bloodstock, the firm that’s been transporting horses to the Olympics since Montreal 1976. Martin tells us the incredible amount of logistical work that’s involved and what it’s like for a horse to fly on an airplane.
You can learn more about Peden Bloodstock at its website, and its Facebook page has great videos showing them in action with the horses.
This episode is also chock full of fun facts, including Taiwan government ministers making promises of snacks if Taiwan gets 4 golds in Tokyo. We don’t get it either (we obviously missed an earlier story that explains more), but we’d certainly be in line for them if it happens. Alison’s on snack watch!
We also talk legacy — Jill’s got another Olympic swimming pool to put on her list, and we discuss what responsibilities international federations have in ensuring the legacy of Olympic venues.
DISCLAIMER: OLYMPIC® is a trademark of the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee (“USOPC”). Any use of OLYMPIC® in the Olympic Fever podcast is strictly for informational and commentary purposes. The Olympic Fever podcast is not an official podcast of the USOPC. The Olympic Fever podcast is not a sponsor of the USOPC, nor is Olympic Fever associated with or endorsed by USOPC in any way. The content of Olympic Fever podcast does not reflect the opinions, standards, views, or policies of the USOPC, and the USOPC in no way warrants that content featured in Olympic Fever is accurate.
TRANSCRIPT
Note: This is an uncorrected machine-generated transcript and may contain errors. Please check its accuracy against the audio. Do not quote from the transcript; use the audio as the record of note.
85-Martin Atock on How Horses Get to the Olympics
Jill Jaracz: Hi, this is Jill Jaracz from September, 2017 through April, 2020. This podcast was known as Olympic Fever. We’ve since changed its name to keep the flame alive, but we’re committed to keeping our back catalog available to you. So please keep the name change and this disclaimer in mind as you listen to it.
Olympic is a trademark of the United States, Olympic and Paralympic Committee, or U-S-O-P-C. Any use of Olympic in the Olympic Fever Podcast is strictly for informational and commentary purposes. The Olympic Fever Podcast is not an official podcast of the U-S-O-P-C. The Olympic Fever Podcast is not a sponsor of the U-S-O-P-C, nor is Olympic Fever associated with or endorsed by the U-S-O-P-C in any way.
The content of Olympic Fever Podcast does not reflect the opinions. Standards, views, or policies of the U-S-O-P-C and the U-S-O-P-C in no way warrants that content of featured in Olympic fever is accurate. Thanks for listening. And now onto the show.
Martin Atock: I mean, if you look at Hong Kong in 2008, I was there 17 times before we started flying horses there.
17 trips. That’s how long it takes to set these things up.
Theme Music: The greatest festival of our contemporary society, the Olympic Games, is about to begin. This is gonna be close.
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.
Jill Jaracz: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Olympic Fever, the podcast for Olympic fans. I am your host, Jill Jaracz, joined as always by my lovely co-host, Alison Brown. Alison, hello, how are you today I was gonna sing a horse song,
Alison Brown: and then I realized that was probably not a good idea.
Jill Jaracz: Why the long face?
Alison Brown: I’m going to see a man about a horse.
Jill Jaracz: Yes, we are talking horses today. I’m excited. We’ve been, uh, having requests on the Facebook group to, uh, start looking at equestrian, and finally we gotta start on it. And we had a great conversation and we’re really excited to talk about it. But I, I wanna tell you that I had an Olympic ish moment this weekend.
Okay. Or you can say, I did some reffing of the roller derby in Columbus, Ohio, and the halftime entertainment were some B boys and B girls.
Alison Brown: Oh, no,
Jill Jaracz: they, and of course they’re little kids, so they’re adorable. There are two things I noticed while watching them, because it would be, they’d have the music pump in and they’d all stand in a line in the back, and then, uh, somebody would come out and do a little solo, or they’d come out and do some duets and trios and then go back in line.
And I did think that, okay, some of them are doing cartwheels into moves or handstands into moves, somersaults, there’s a gymnastics element to it, so you can make a tie to sport like that. But then at the same time, I thought, wow, this also reminds me of. Folk dancing. When I was in college, I was in the folk dance troupe, and we do two shows a year.
And every time you ended with a Ukrainian number, because the Ukrainian dancing has these huge show offs, you know the things where they kick and they spin and they do stuff on their heads and jump all over the place. So you always wanted that at the end because it got the crowd going. And we would do the same thing.
We’d all stand in a semicircle and people would go out one at a time and like, well, that is just what breaking is.
Alison Brown: So breaking is Ukrainian folk dancing
Jill Jaracz: urban.
Alison Brown: Okay, now here’s my real question. Do you wear the headpiece
Jill Jaracz: for your Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You had, uh, yeah. Yeah. So we had, um, the, the costumes were always really involved. Then you definitely had the big headdress with the ribbons.
Alison Brown: Well, then you couldn’t spin on your head if you had the headrest on. No, because
Jill Jaracz: the guys spin on their head.
The girls just spin on their feet.
Alison Brown: Isn’t that always the way?
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. Right. The men
Alison Brown: get the flashy moves, but the women have to do all the work.
Jill Jaracz: Right. The Bulgarian costumes, they were from the Valley of the Roses area, so they had these huge headdresses that went, they were plastic roses, but they went all the way down the back.
It was just this big flowing flowered headdress. They were very cool. So
Alison Brown: basically you looked like a Kentucky Derby horse.
Interview with Martin Atock
Jill Jaracz: Mm. That is a nice segue to our interview today. Today we are talking about horse transportation. So we went to the man, the genius, Martin Atoc, who is managing director of Peed in Bloodstock, a global horse transportation company, and Martin has been transporting horses to the Olympics since Soul 1988.
And he is done every Olympics since then and he does most of the Major cups and uh, federation tournaments. And so he talked to us about what it takes to get a horse to the Olympics. Take a listen. How long do you spend on the road? Every year?
Martin Atock: I do over 200 nights in hotels. I mean, I’ve just done a seven week, I’ve just done seven weeks.
Um, scooting back and forth between North Central America and the far East. Just scooting back and forth. And I’m here now for a couple of days, which is really nice. And then I’ll go on Friday and I’ll go back to Tokyo ’cause I’ve got Tokyo next week. So I spent a lot of time in the air, unfortunately. But that’s just part of, uh, of what I do because, um, when I don’t obviously load horses, my home offers and most of our time, 95% of our time is spent in the preparation of these operations.
Not the execution. The execution is minimal. It’s the preparation of which, where all the time goes in which no one actually sees what we do. But it’s all the behind the scenes stuff. I mean, if you look at Hong Kong in 2008, I was there 17 times before we started flying horses there, 17 trips. That’s how long it takes to set these things up.
Alison Brown: Now, where is home? Where is home base?
Martin Atock: I am in Germany at the moment. I’m about 25 minutes north of Disseldorf in the countryside, heading up towards the Dutch border, but not in Holland. I guarantee to you in Germany, I’ve fortunately got no neighbors. I’ve got horses, I’ve got bees, I’ve got dogs. There’s cats, there’s deer and everything, and hens and everything else.
The one would have, and one lives in the countryside. And most importantly, no neighbors. Just horses. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was, when I’m here, I’m very, very happy ’cause I don’t actually have to see anyone or talk to anyone as in, in person. I get a little bit of privacy. I think that’s probably the balance you get when you spend so much time in hotels, in airplanes.
Alison Brown: Absolutely.
Martin Atock: And that’s what I need.
Jill Jaracz: Well, let’s talk about the nuts and bolts of moving a horse. Uh, you mentioned that 95% of what you do is in the preparation aspect, so
Theme Music: mm-hmm.
Jill Jaracz: How long, if we’re looking at Tokyo 2020, when did you start preparing for this?
Martin Atock: We start with Tokyo about four years ago. So you, you’ll spend four or five years bleeding up to a major event like in Olympic games.
’cause basically you can move horses, move from and to most parts of the globe every day of the week. That’s common traffic, that’s normal. And they move with standard operating procedures whereby they go from one country to the other and they might have to have extended periods of quarantine or whatever they might have.
But that is not optimum to keep horses in peak competition fitness. So our job leading up to Olympic games for all the preparatory time we put into this is to create SOPs, standard operating procedures in the host country to ensure an absolute streamless smooth arrival process uneventful to get the horses as swiftly and as calmly as possible into their stables at the host venue.
And that involves. Primarily education, bonding with stakeholders, creating stakeholder groups, and creating an organization of all those various stakeholders that work hand in hand to ensure this smooth transfer. If I go on a tangent, if one of your leading carriers or luthans, for example, in Germany, if Luthans is going to open a new hub in Lima and Peru and they’ve got first class passengers to think about, they’re not just gonna turn up with a three 80 or with a 7, 4, 7, they’re gonna spend weeks and months working out.
All their procedures there to make it an absolute seamless process for those passengers they’ve been doing. They do it now every day, but that’s before what even started. So in our case, every time we’ve got Olympic games, I’ve been doing this since the, in 1988, so I’m probably about the ninth or 10th Olympic games now.
None of the host countries have ever received horses in this magnitude before or at this level of this level of peak fitness. So that’s why everything has to be rewritten to create the optimal SOPs. So how many,
Alison Brown: absolutely. How many horses are we talking about for an Olympic games?
Martin Atock: Uh, you’re talking about about 320 horses.
326 horses for an Olympic and Paralympic games. So you’ve got, of course, the Olympic Games. You’ve got first and then, uh, about 10 days later, you’ve then got the Paralympic games so that they both go hand in hand with each other.
Jill Jaracz: So how does that amount of horses compare to something like the, uh, a, a equestrian world cup or a regular event?
Martin Atock: We don’t, you don’t que Well, you’ve got, that’s a loose one, if I may. Okay. Uh, you’ve got a World Cup final every year in show jumping that takes place either in North America or in Europe. And you tend to have 40 or fifth, no, not that many. You’d have 30 or maybe 40 horses, either going from Europe to North America, or you might have 15 horses going from North America to come to Europe.
’cause the World Cup finals tends to be in Europe every year, with the exception of Kuala Lumpa in 2007. The World Equestrian games in Tryon in North Carolina last year in your country, we’ve bought in 530 horses from Europe. And then another 40 odd horses came from South America and then there was, uh, three or four other individual horses came from various points around the globe.
So Olympic games is quite a significant, um, significant event. ’cause don’t forget, of course, Olympics is it’s sports, but at the end of the day, it’s the success of those nations competing as Olympic games. Thereby they secure with their good results. They secure future funding from the National Olympic Committees to go into the next Olympic cycle.
That’s why it’s so important. And in our sport, uh, our unique sport where we’ve got men competing against women on, uh, an animal on a horse. There’s years and years go into the preparation, probably like any other sport. I mean, I mean, I’m not authority on, on swimming or anything, but you’ll be spending, uh, six, seven years getting a horse up to this level of competition and for the rider an awful lot longer.
Alison Brown: So how old are the Olympic horses generally?
Martin Atock: Uh, generally you can’t have generally, but I, and I don’t know if you can quote me on this, I think it’s between, well, they can start, they can start from eight years of age, but on average that 12 to 14 is the sort of average age that they would be the Olympic courses and the Paralympic courses would be slightly older.
And the reason for that being is possibly the more mature horses, they’re simply more mature for the para equestrian, uh, riders that are riding them.
Jill Jaracz: So they also have a whole lot of training to do before they get to Olympic caliber. Uh.
Martin Atock: Absolutely. It’s years and years and years and years and years. It’s, you can’t, it’s not comparable with you getting a new dog tomorrow and you might spend six, six months working at sitcom and all the different commands you’ve got to actually bond with horse, uh, or to get a horse up to that level.
It takes many, many years. Hard work. And our job is to let the National Olympic Committees and the National Federations and the National Paralympic Committees focus purely on the sport and that aspect and that aspect, which is huge in itself. And our job is to take care of everything involved with health, transport, quarantine, logistics, and the back of house stable management, of course, at these venues to make sure that we do our bits, the federations can, cons, can concentrate exclusively on their bid.
That’s how I like to see it anyway.
Alison Brown: Okay. So what you need to obviously fly this horse from one country to another. When does that preparation for the actual trip begin For the horse?
Martin Atock: That depends very much from country to country where you’re going. Because the import requirements from Korea in 88 to Hong Kong in 2008, to Sydney in 2000 to Rio in 2016 and to Tokyo in 2020.
The import requirements for every country are totally different. For example, 2024, as you know, the Olympic game is going to be in Paris and you know, or you, maybe you don’t, but 85% of all competing horses are based in the European Union. So that means the preparation, the actual transport, logistics side of that ex of that exercise for the athletes in 2024 will start a couple of days before they leave.
Whereby for the Olympic athletes going to. Tokyo, that preparation, they’re already starting it now, to be perfectly honest with you. And you might say, that’s ridiculous, Martin. No, not at all. Because you’ve got the test event in August, this year in Tokyo, and the test event is eventing. And as you know, eventing is three individual disciplines.
Well, three individual segments. You’ve got dressage, you’ve got cross country, and you’ve got your show jumping. So the horses to build up to peak competition fitness, that process starts many, many months in advance to make sure that on the given day the. When the cross country takes place at Olympic games, they are absolutely smack bang on.
So that process starts many months in advance. And we’re already, now we’re in May. We’ve started with the horses going to compete in the test event in Tokyo in August. They’ve already very much started their preparations. And the teams, the National Olympic Committees for next year will be starting their campaigns.
If on the assumption that they’re qualified, they’ll be starting their campaigns now. They’ll be working out because these horses don’t compete. I’m not sure about other athletes. They don’t compete every weekend. They only do so many events in a given year in eventing, for example. So they’ll be working out exactly their calendars all the way through working back from the departure date that they will leave to travel to Tokyo.
They’ll be working backwards on that. And then on the flip side, working forwards from the departure date to get that peak competition fitness for the, when they actually start competing. Does that make sense?
Alison Brown: Absolutely. How far in advance of the competition is the horse actually arriving?
Martin Atock: That depends from discipline to discipline.
Now, you might ask me, why is that? It’s quite simple. I’ve got to go on a tangent. Now, the show jumping horses are very. Most of the top five star horses, that’s the, the top level are accustomed to flying. The mature horses, they’re used to flying, so it’s nothing new for them. So their recovery time is a little bit, is is shorter, possibly.
Just like you and I. If I fly to Tokyo on Friday, I’ll get there on Saturday, I’ll do a full day’s work on Saturday. I’ll sleep all Saturday night and I’ll get back to work again on Sunday. You might spend Saturday night and Sunday night looking at the ceiling and counting flies or counting sheep and not making any progress.
Because I’m experienced at it. I’m used to it, and you are not exactly the same beliefs, not with horses, because horses like you and I are mammals. There’s no difference. And their recovery times are the same as yours. So the show jumping horses need a lesser re recovery time. The event horses need a slightly longer recovery time.
That’s just the way it is. They like that little bit more time, and the dressage horses also need a little bit longer. So in fact, it does vary from discipline to discipline. The average is you. You are looking at between five and 10 days with the various disciplines.
Theme Music: So can I
Martin Atock: go on a tangent for you? Yes.
Can I go on a tangent for you? Oh,
Theme Music: please do.
Martin Atock: Right. I get on one of your, and I’m not being anti-American, I get one of your economy class flights in America and I am totally stressed because you’ve got stress and the security cues. You can’t get a cup of coffee. You are stressed, standing, waiting at the gate.
Then you’ve got to push yourself onto the airplane. Then you’ve got to try and find where you’re gonna put your little computer bag. And if you get a spot for your little computer bag, you are then told to remove it and put it between your legs. ’cause someone else has got a bigger one that needs to go in your spot.
You fly. This can be not in America, this could be in Europe as well. You fly really cramped, your stress, the hostess is maybe having a bad morning and everything’s going against you. And then she spills coffee on your trousers. You have a bumpy flight, you arrive and your suitcase isn’t there, or. You get collected by an Emirates in a 500 Mercedes.
It drives you to the, to the airports. You get out of the car, somebody takes your passport and they take your um, suitcase, theys escort you to the first class lounge. They then bring you your passport. They bring you your boarding pass. Your suitcase is already checked through when everybody else has bought the aircraft.
They take you by the hand saying, are you ready to go now? And they’ll bring you onto the aircraft. They sit you in your little seat, you get a glass of champagne close. Your eyes relax and you arrive at the other end. You get off the aircraft first. You’re first through immigration. Your bag is waiting for you.
They put you in a show driven car, and they send you off to your hotel and your hotel room’s ready as well. So it’s no difference with horses. Our job is to create this, I won’t say first class experience and I don’t know what the word is in English ’cause it just sounds like, oh, it’s a very flippant thing that anyone could say.
But to create this first class experience for the horses, that they are totally unstressed because you know as well as I do, if you arrive somewhere having had a relaxing experience getting there and that you are not stressed, your recovery period is gonna be vastly shorter than somebody’s had a really shitty flight down the back if you sit.
I mean, so that’s what we’ve got to do and that’s where at these exotic airports around the world that we go through, we go to with our horses on these big projects, that’s where we’ve got to redesign all airport operations and convince all airport stakeholders that. A better way to do things to create this smooth, seamless first class transfer for the horses from the time those aircraft arrive until they get into the stables.
Because once a horse gets into a stable, it can relax and most importantly it can pee. I as in, I mean, urinate because a number of horses, or many horses can’t actually comfortably get in a position on a narrow plane to urinate. And one thing they’d really like to do is to urinate. So for me, it’s very important to get them into their stables as smoothly, calmly, and swiftly as possible so they can have a pee, and then they will start the recovery period.
So that’s basically what we’re trying to do. Did that make sense? Yeah,
Jill Jaracz: it does. And I’m glad you talked about the urination, because that was one of my questions. Do, do you find then that while they’re in the air, then they’ll, they don’t want to drink as much, but they need to drink?
Martin Atock: The trick is, in flying horses what we’ve got to do, hydration is one of the most important things.
Just like you, like I’ve got to go again. They’re mammals just like you and I. Mm-hmm. If you have three gin and tonics, you’re gonna feel pretty blur when you get where you’re going. If you’ve drunk two liters of water, you’ll feel ly absolutely fine. We, it’s crucial for us to keep those horses hydrated.
And how we do that is quite simply, if you’ve got a relaxed horse in the right frame of mind and he’s comfortable in his, in the environment he’s in, they will hydrate. They will drink. So that’s most, most important for us to keep the horses well hydrated. That and of course, the airflow in the air, in the airplane itself.
You know, if it’s too hot in an airplane or if it’s too cold, if it’s too hot, you know you’re going to get sick. ’cause somebody right down the back has cost a sneeze. I don’t mean to be disgusting, but it’s true. And you get a bug because of that nasty warm air. Or if it’s too cold, you’re not gonna feel comfortable either.
We’ve got to get the optimum temperature on that aircraft for the horses. To create the environment for them that they will not have any travel sickness when they arrive. As in travel sickness, I mean an extended recovery period, getting over jet lag.
Alison Brown: So besides the recovery time, what kind of illnesses or injuries are you concerned about on, on a long haul flight?
Martin Atock: None. And I’ll tell you why. None. Quite simply, our job is we, we deal with the horses every day of the week. That’s all we do. And all our crew, all they do is they take care of horses. So for a horse to get injured is absolutely the exception. I mean, how often have you traveled as a passenger? You see somebody getting hurt.
It’s so, it’s, it’s very, very, so for a horse to get injured is very, very, very, um, running XI don’t, it’s not even mentionable ’cause it never happens. I mean, we’ve always got vets at the airport, but how often the vets get to do something is very, very, very, very rarely. But they’re there as a course, as a safety precaution.
But they don’t do anything to be honest with you, except observe the process and be ready. Just like a probably any sporting event. You’ve got the ambulance sitting there. So in transit, we don’t expect that. And horses getting sick? Not at all. No. ’cause if the horses have a good flight, if I’ve got have a horrible flight, Japan on Friday, I might feel pretty lousy on Saturday.
If I have a good flight on Friday, I’ll be absolutely fine. It’s exactly the same with the horses. And don’t forget, these horses are coming to the airport. They’ve already met the receiving country’s health requirements. They’re in peak competition fitness. So they’re at the absolute top of their game. So all their systems are working 100%.
So you wouldn’t be expecting a horse to have any detrimental effects. Not at all. Although, of course, the recovery period, as in getting over jet lag with one horse might take a day longer than another till he’s got his system in place that he knows it’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner, or when he’s supposed to sleep.
But that’s the same as humans. So how well do you. Sorry, go ahead. I keep on making the comparison to humans because there’s so many things that are similar. The only difference is a horse can’t actually tell you if it’s got an ailment or something. It can’t tell you that, but it’s your job to read that horse from the outside just to make sure it’s as comfortable as possible, and it doesn’t have anything.
Alison Brown: How well do you know each of the horses that you’re moving?
Martin Atock: Some of them, you know, remarkably well. That would be, those would be the characters that be more inclined to perhaps have a go or try to, um, be more entertaining at the airport. I’m just talking about horses that might be a bit more excitable, but the majority of horses, you drop the ramp and you see that horse and you spend the 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 seconds with that horse that it takes you to attach, to untie the horse.
To put on whatever form of lead rope you’re using to lead that horse. That’s the time you’ve got to get to know the horse. I mean, you can see him, you can see his confirmation immediately. You can see if it’s settled, if it’s nervous, you just see the, you just subconsciously like an air. I go again, an air host desk picking up passengers, walking into an airplane.
They can see, oops, he’s nervous. Oh, she needs nice and calm. He might have had a drink, not sure about that child. A bit of runny nose. So we, you’d do that process in eight or 10 seconds when you are actually, um, getting ready to load or unload horse, you’d see how it is and what it is. Tangent, world equestrian games in Tryon last year we had the eight FBI disciplines arrived on different flights coming into Greenville, and when you opened the ramps, you could tell the discipline of the horse.
As soon as you opened the ramp, you could actually identify the discipline of the horse simultaneously at the same time that you subconsciously identified how that horse was. Because they’re all different personalities and they’re all different characters. And that’s how you’ve got to treat them.
Alison Brown: So what kind of things, when you say an excitable horse, what does that mean?
What, what do they do?
Martin Atock: I would say just a slightly more that they might just be a little more, bit more enthusiastic to unload or to, to, uh, to load. Some might, it’s just that the characters, you might have a stallion that’s a bit bit more excitable ’cause he knows that there’s MAs in the area. But it’s, it’s ter it’s not a, it’s not an issue whatsoever.
You are just identifying the demeanor or the character of that, of that individual before you load or, or you unload them. Some might be they’re sort of what amber along behind you. Some might be more enthusiastic to go, uh, trotting across to the, to the loading ramps. So it’s just, you see in that very short space of time, what sort of character is there?
What sort of personality
Alison Brown: now what kind of plane are these? Horse are the, is the horse transport.
Martin Atock: Horses can travel in numerous wide bodied aircraft. So it varies, uh, from seven four sevens to 7, 7 7 sevens, seven seven sevens. You’ve got MD 11 aircraft, you’ve got a three Airbus three hundreds, you’ve got seven two sevens.
There’s a huge fleet of aircraft. They can transport horses. But the reality is we just need the airframe. By the airframe, I mean the exterior bit of the aircraft because we need an airframe that we can put the air stables into. We, of course, need a, uh, we need a cockpit crew, but we need the airframe that we put in the horse stables.
We need the belly of the aircraft for horse equipment. And of course, we need the seats for the attendants who are accompanying the horses. And you can do that in a large variety of aircraft around the world. But the most cost effective and the most environmentally friendly aircraft to utilize at the moment are undoubtedly the triple seven aircraft, Boeing Triple Sevens.
Jill Jaracz: Are they all nonstop flights or do you have They can only be an hour. So, so, so many hours in the air and then they have to stop not being,
Martin Atock: not being flippant. It totally and utterly depends on the roofing and what the payload of the aircraft is. So if you’ve got a, a full aircraft of horses and a full belly of equipment, of course you’ve got a lesser range in that aircraft than if you’ve only got one or two horses on board.
So it varies very, very much on the roofings. For example, going from Europe to Greenville last year for the world equestrian games, they were nonstop flights, which were perfect. We flew to Rio, uh, in 2016. We had nonstop flights and yet many of the flights going to the Far East, they’ll make technical stops in the Middle East.
And a technical stop means you change the crew and you refuel the aircraft before continuing on the way. So it very much depends on where you’re coming from and where you’re going to.
Alison Brown: Okay. So probably for Sydney. I was gonna say Sydney, there was a lot of stopping.
Martin Atock: No, well, a lot is, a lot is slightly. We stopped twice going to Sydney.
We went and we made a 90 minute technical stop in Dubai and we made a 90 minute technical stop in Singapore. And the reason was in 2000 we were using a Luhan 7 4, 7 200 aircraft. That’s the series, uh, back in those days. And that’s what the range they had back then. But the horses from Australia that competed in the 1964 Olympic Games, they came up to Europe on a ship.
And that took an awful lot longer to come from Australia to England on a ship. And one of the chaps who accompanied the horses, they were actually in very, very comfortable containers. And he put jute, I dunno if you know what jute is. Jute is what farmers use to put sacks of grain. Perhaps they, they still do it in America as well.
So they put jute under the horse’s hooves to make sure they didn’t slip. And he rode the horses around the deck of the ship every day as they were on route to, to England prior to going to Tokyo. So distance is quite relative actually.
Alison Brown: That would’ve been a fun shift to be on.
Martin Atock: Oh Lord, yes. They had an absolute ball.
I’m sure there’s a huge amount of alcohol on there and had a great time. It was basically six weeks, no internet, no mobile phones, and no laptops.
Theme Music: Can we get on that boat?
Martin Atock: I know it sounds like heaven, doesn’t it? And of course you’ve got horses to keep you company
Jill Jaracz: back to Tokyo. Mm-hmm. You spent four years working on it.
What are the, the stables like in Tokyo?
Martin Atock: They are going to be exceptionally impressive. They’ve been finalized. They’ve been finalized At the moment they’re making it a first class. As always, it’s a first class complex that’s been built in the venue, which is called Baji Cohen, as you probably know. And that’s actually the same venue they had the Olympics in 1964.
Uh, it’s the same venue but very, very, very nice, uh, stables. They’re being built new for this Olympic games. And of course they’ve got a huge legacy because after the Olympic games there, it’s a permanent structure. So that will then be used by, um, I believe the Japan Racing Association after the Olympic Games, but really, really, really nice stables.
It’s a first class venue and they’re very, very advanced with their planning.
Alison Brown: So what have there been issues in dealing with Japanese import criteria?
Martin Atock: No, not at all. Isn’t this, I mean, an issue would, issue would sound something, an, an issue would be something negative. There’s all these challenges with all the, there’s all these challenges, but the, the, the job is, is not just to mitigate the challenges, but to find the, the most, the optimum conditions with all the authorities to facilitate the movement of these horses.
And that’s exactly what we’re doing with, uh, huge support from the, uh, from the, all the Japanese authorities. I mean, I have to tell you, they really, really are very, very advanced and they’re doing a sterling job over there. And they’re working with all of the authorities very, very closely involved in this process to make it as smooth and streamless as possible.
And I don’t mean to keep repeating those words, two words, but that’s what it gets down to. That’s the bottom line. That’s what it’s all about. This smooth streamless process. That’s what all the work’s about.
Jill Jaracz: So what are some of the challenges you are working on Mitigating, I think.
Martin Atock: You’ve basically got, in every country, you’ve got a standard procedure, how they might receive cargo, how they might receive passengers, how they might receive horses.
And you’ve had this procedure that’s been in place historically for many, many, many years in these countries. So we are trying to change these operating procedures to optimize operating procedures, to create this absolute streamless seamless transfer for the horses. And the challenge is not, the challenge is much more, it’s.
It’s not a challenge, it’s much more the time that you need to invest to bond with the authorities that they can understand and comprehend exactly what you’re trying to achieve. Just like you admitted a a few minutes ago that you might know huge amount about horses, that’s possibly the case with many of the authorities in in Japan that were dealing with at the airports there.
They’re not familiar with horses. So our job is to not educate, ’cause that sounds like you are teaching a subor or something. It’s nothing like that. But our job is to work with them to explain and let them comprehend exactly what we need to do and then we can achieve our goals. Do you see what I mean?
Theme Music: Mm-hmm.
Martin Atock: So it’s basically to try, you’ve got in your head, I mean, I know from A to Z exactly what we need to do and what we’ve got to do, but you’ve got, every airport in the world is unique. Not any airport in the world is made for horses. It’s a unique commodity that comes through these airports, but you’ve just got to optimize everything that you’ve got.
And you can’t have a standard operating procedure identical in every country because no two airports are the same, and no two countries receiving or or or dispatching procedures are the same. So you’ve just got to work through all those, I won’t say hurdles, but work with all the authorities to create this seamless process.
Alison Brown: What makes an airport easier or more difficult to work with?
Martin Atock: Small and regional is for us absolutely perfect. For example, Greenville Spartanburg Airport. Absolutely perfect. Brilliant because it’s a small regional airport and they were delighted to have us. So it’s very, very easy. They’ve got long runways, a dedicated crew, lovely, lovely people to work with, and you can bond with the people straight away, and it works.
If I then try to do this sort of operation in London, Heathrow Airport or at JFK, I wouldn’t have hope in Haley’s ’cause. Quite simply, those ginormous airports with the massive volume they’ve got going through there, the airport authorities simply can’t dedicate what you need to make this happen. So that’s why we.
Always aim for small regional airports and a small regional is, might sound derogatory to the airport. I don’t mean it like that at all. I mean, Greenville, Spartanburg, which is uh, the airline code GSP, it just happens to be, it’s not a huge international hub and that’s why it was perfect for us and we’ve got it.
For example, in Belgium, in S in Belgium and s located about an hour and a half from Brussels, it’s again a small airport where if you run out of water, they’re quite happy. The fire brigade will come out to an aircraft to give you more water. It’s things like that. It’s small, it’s regional, and you know everybody, and that’s what makes it so much easier.
So that’s what we always try to aim for. As, as much as can.
Jill Jaracz: So for London 2012, did you find a a smaller airport on the outskirts and not T three? Without,
Martin Atock: with, with, without meaning to sound flippant. As I mentioned to you a little bit earlier, 85% of all horses are actually based in Europe anyway, which means they all, they all came per ferry.
So all the horses. Oh yeah.
Theme Music: Right, okay. Yeah, yeah.
Martin Atock: All the horses in central Europe, the majority of those 85% horses, 85% of horses are actually based in Belgium, Holland, and Germany. That’s a fact. So going to London, all they did was they drove down to Cali, they jumped in the channel tunnel or jumped in the ferry.
And an hour and a half later they were in, in Durva. And then they drove up to London exactly the same as going to Paris in 2024. So in London, I don’t believe we flew one single horse directly into the United Kingdom. ’cause they were all already either there or they were in Central Europe. Central Western Europe.
Theme Music: Okay. Okay.
Alison Brown: So Tokyo’s gonna be very different in that they’ll all be, they won’t be in Asia.
Martin Atock: Well, no, if Tokyo will be different, but it’s no different to, it’s no different to, uh, to Rio or Atlanta or anywhere else. So you’ll have 85% will be in Europe. You’d have of course some horses based in, in North America as in Canada, in the United and the, and the United States.
And you’ll of course have some horses based in Australia, Australia and New Zealand. But the vast majority will be in Europe. Why? That’s where all the competition hap is happening and they’ve got to be competing against their peers. And I’m sure that’s identical with all the other sports you deal with because Europe is, that’s where the focal point is of equestrian sport.
I’m not saying it’s the only pla that’s where the focal point is of the top level equestrian sport. Please don’t misquote me on that one. You’ve still got the Rolex and Lex, you’ve got huge competitions in America that are enormously significant, but the most competition against your peers is taking place in Europe.
Jill Jaracz: Right, right. Do you see what I’m that’s Yeah. It’s like other sports, like handball is a very European. Sport and like table tennis and badman are very big in Asia comparatively, so that, that makes sense. Do you have horses that are like, oh, just get me off this plane, or I’d much rather be riding on the train or in a, in a truck?
Martin Atock: Not, not really, no. I mean, you have some horses that say, thanks Peter to God, we’re here. That just, you see, oh, they’re so delighted to be unloaded. But most of them these days, it’s, it’s, I, I’m not joking. They actually travel so well and they’re traveling in very, very optimal circumstances. They’re very comfortable up there.
They really are. I mean, it’s a lot more comfortable getting on a flight from here to New York than it would be for horses going on a 12 hour journey by road, uh, driving around North America in places. ’cause it’s a smooth ride. ’cause you’ve got crews who are dead. The, the cockpit crews. They don’t, this is also very, very important.
You’ve been on little business flights, I’m sure on a Friday evening that you know full well the ca captain’s as desperate to get home as you are. He revs up the engines, he goes tearing down the, uh, taxiway turns the left turn full thrust, and he goes tearing off and he, he climbs as quickly as he can.
You’ve been on that experience, haven’t you?
Alison Brown: Yes, absolutely.
Martin Atock: Yeah. So our guys, uh. We push them back really slowly. They indicate, they very, very gently pull off. They’re always indicating to the horses which direction they’re going to go. Now, you won’t get this one, but if you are driving a car with a two horse trailer behind your car, you can’t just drive around the corner.
You’ve gotta let the horse go, oh, we’re going to go right here, or we’re going to go left here. The, the pilots do exactly the same for us with our horses, a very gentle taxi. It’s very smooth onto the runway, and they don’t go tearing off down the runway. They roll first, which means the horses can get the optimal balance.
And then we’ve got a very shallow takeoff and not a sharp curve, but they’ll fly for a number of kilometers before they start turning. Case in point, Las Vegas. In 2008 or 2009, we had a Federal Express MD 11 with all the European horses flying back from the World Cup finals in Las Vegas. And I was standing at, just outside the end of the runway after we’d loaded the horses and we saw the taxi and we couldn’t actually see the aircraft had started moving.
And it was a lady pilot, we couldn’t see the stars moving ’cause it was so gentle to start. And once that aircraft had taken off, we probably watched it for 10 minutes and it still hadn’t started its turn. It climbed so gently. And then after about 10 minutes, it must have started to turn ’cause it had to at some stage, uh, do that.
The pilots, the crews we’ve got are very, very good. So the horses don’t know, and if they don’t know they’re in the air, but they know the feeling when they’re going to be changing direction or they’re ascending or, or, or climbing. Does
Alison Brown: that make sense? I wanna fly with the horses.
Martin Atock: You would really, really, really enjoy the experience because it’s very calm.
Theme Music: How did the crews deal with turbulence?
Martin Atock: Well, you try to, you avoid as much as possible, right? I mean, they will let us, if there’s gonna be turbulence that it’s unavoidable. But often, I mean, with the technology you’ve got available today, you could often climb and climb over it or you could fly rounded, and that’s what we try to do as much as possible.
Although in some reason, I mean, sometimes it is simply unavoidable, but they do try to fly around the turbulence as much as possible. But the horses, again, just like if you’ve got passengers and airplane, if you’ve got competent stewards and steward Ss taking care of the passengers, they’re not gonna be afraid or worried or nervous.
Horses are exactly the same. It’s no different. Turbulence is no different than in the comparison to a car driving over a road with potholes. Let’s be honest. You go boom, boom, boom.
Alison Brown: And if they don’t have the pressures of, say, commercial aircraft where they have to make the schedule in a certain way, they can,
Martin Atock: well, they, they do have the pressures.
’cause of course these are all commercial aircraft and you are paying for the aircraft and you’re paying for the fuel burn. You’re paying for everything else. But it goes hand in hand. The airlines, when they take courses, they know this is part of the deal. We’re going to give them a nice smooth ride.
Jill Jaracz: Speaking of paying how, how much does it cost or how much will it cost to get like the horses from Europe to Tokyo?
Martin Atock: Quite a lot, but it’s the same if you, you and your daughter take a flight tomorrow and you book your ticket tomorrow and your, you book your daughter’s ticket in two weeks, uh, later on the same airline, same flight, same timing.
There’s gonna be a difference in price. So the, the, the pricing for these flights is of course quite expensive, but one, one of the most significant factors, of course, is jet fuel, because jet fuel represents about 40% of the cost. So as fuel prices go up, for example, fuel prices went up yesterday, quite significantly after it was identified that a couple of Saudi ships had got damaged in, um, in their part of the world.
So fuel has a very significant, significant influence on the, on the flight costs.
Theme Music: And do, do the athletes pay for the, the concert
Martin Atock: varies. It, it, it varies from organization to org. It varies very, very much. Some of the time it’s invitational whereby the host organizing committee will pay for everything.
Some of the times the athletes are playing for paying for themselves. So that varies very much from competition to competition.
Jill Jaracz: Okay. And horses of course have to have passports?
Martin Atock: Absolutely. Horses have got passports and everything is recorded in those passports. And the passports are issued by the National Breeding Association, and of course the identification card by the FEI, which is the ruling body of equestrian sports around the world.
So every horse has got a passport with all its details in there, all its vaccination history in there. And all the places where the horse has competed, its breeding history. Everything is in those, in those passports. They’re much more comprehensive than the passports that you or I have got in our bags.
Alison Brown: Did they put a picture on the pet passport?
Martin Atock: No, they don’t. You’ve got an identification. You’ve got an identification page where the identification of the horse is clearly marked because horses like human beings change over the years. ’cause you, we all look probably a little bit younger. Many, many years ago.
And our first passports, and we’ve looked maybe a little bit older now, so a horse, because the passport can stay with the horse all its life, you’ve got the markings in there. So it shows if it’s got a fall. A fall is where the hair twists around. So you’ve got falls, you’ve got all horses, or the majority of horse have got markings, some have got brands on them.
They’ve got markings on their legs, they’ve got markings on their faces, they’ve got markings in their body. So, because a horse can live anywhere up to 30, 35 years and you don’t reg, you don’t often change their passports, if at all. That’s why you’ve got a marking diagram as opposed to a photograph. And of course they’ve all got microchips.
So they’re all microchips as well. And that’s the, it can you, through the microchip, you can find the full identification of the horse.
Theme Music: Where do they put the chip?
Martin Atock: In the, in the horse’s necks.
Theme Music: Okay.
Martin Atock: Just like your dog in your cat. Yeah. I was gonna say, gonna
Alison Brown: say for a dog. Yeah. It goes in the same spot.
Jill Jaracz: Interesting. Martin, how did you get involved in this business?
Martin Atock: I don’t really know. I, I’ve always, I used to ride myself. I had a bit of a very heavy crash when I was younger, and that was my riding career was finished and then at this somehow evolved, then I started moving horses and then I, I purposely consciously moved to Germany in 1988 and that’s when, uh, Eden started in Germany in 1988.
Uh, that’s 31 years ago. I moved over here with the object of moving horses around the world. And I base myself in quite simply ’cause it’s centralized, if you look at the map geographically to Frankfurt, par, Frankfurt, Brussels, Amsterdam, and Paris isn’t too far away. So it’s, it’s, I’m right in the middle of, of logistically, I’m ideally, uh, located in Europe to do this job.
And it’s just something that’s evolved over all those, um, over the years. But it’s because I don’t ride anymore. And of course I couldn’t give up horses that I somehow just landed here. Not, uh, one of those things That’s evolved.
Jill Jaracz: Is there anything else important that we’ve missed? When we think about how the horses are getting there,
Martin Atock: it’s a fascinating part of the industry or the business that we’re involved in.
And it’s also, we’re very lucky to be in this part of the industry ’cause we get to participate in the delivery of these amazing animals going to their top competitions. So it is, it’s a very important aspect to what we do and we’re just very lucky that we’re able to do it.
Jill Jaracz: How long after the competition do they go home?
Do they stick around for a little while or is it No
Martin Atock: gen? Generally not. So basically the competition finishes, we’d always build in 24 or 48 hours contingency, quite simply contingency. And then we would fly them home.
Jill Jaracz: Okay. Uh, because I was, I was wondering like, do they need a day or so of recover for competition?
Martin Atock: I’m not joking. It’s ex I, I, I’m saying it again. It’s the same as all your athletes. Many of your athletes will leave on the same night, but we always build in a day or two of contingency because we were using charter aircraft most of the time, which means it’s a time definite delivery and you’ve got to have contingency with unexpected acts of force majeure that you simply can’t anticipate.
’cause they are force majeure. So that’s why we always build in 24, 48 hours contingency before we fly them home. And of course, of course, to give those horses some time to, uh, to rest and recover from the, uh, just to basically to rest, recover, and get the frame of mind to jump in a airplane again.
Theme Music: When they’re at a big event like the Olympics.
And do they have like friends, do they have, like, you know, is it like the Olympic village for the athletes? Oh, totally.
Martin Atock: Yeah, totally, totally, totally. Because don’t forget, these horses are competing against each other all year round. So all the riders know each other at this level. All the grooms know each other, the vets do the federation officials, everybody knows each other.
So it is yet very much like an Olympic, uh, your Olympic village experience. Although I have to tell you in nine Olympic games, I’ve never been to an Olympic village, but it’s what I imagine is, it’s like very much so. Yes, back of house and the stables, that’s what it all happens. And uh, you’ve got everybody mixing in there with the horses and it’s, it’s one big happily family.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah, because it was one, I was wondering like, do the horses go, Hey, there’s my friend who I don’t see very often.
Martin Atock: Oh yeah, they see, they see each other. ’cause the horses be out grazing and the grooms, he’ll be friends anyway. Okay, so the groomers, a friend will bring his horse and stand next to the other horse.
They, they know each other. Yes, of course they do. Okay. And you’ve always got a few that like each other more and the few that like each other less. And that’s why you make a very good, stable plan, which is also paramount to make sure you’ve got a, everybody is compatible where they’re actually positioned in the stables.
Bit like doing a room, a rooming list at an Olympic venue or anywhere if you get the rooms all screwed up, it’s not gonna be a happy event. A happy event.
Alison Brown: Right. Oh, so this is like when we go to the dog park. Exactly, exactly. And you, you to keep that dog away from that dog because he’s mean, or he’s fi so the, the horses have that same, of course,
Martin Atock: if, if you’ve got an alpha, what I would call an alpha stallion, a breeding stallion who would consider himself an alpha and he may be an alpha stallion in his world, in his part of the world.
And you’ve got a lot of other alpha stallions who are also alpha, where they come from. So of course, you’re not gonna have a load of alpha stallions standing next to each other. ’cause that will only create a little, um, bit of confrontation. Same as dogs. Same as your husband’s probably.
Alison Brown: We are not gonna go there, Martin.
We’re not that kind of show.
Martin Atock: No, I know. But yes, of course. You, you’ve got to allow for all these, and of course you’re not gonna put a a, a mayor beside a stallion. There’s all those things. The, it’s very much common sense. I spend a long time putting stable plans together to make sure that everybody is happy, happy and it all works.
’cause that’s one of our jobs as well. But it’s, it’s no different than doing a, setting up a, a hotel occupancy, who’s going to share rooms with who and who’s gonna be next door and who’s gonna have adjoining rooms, all those sorts of things.
Jill Jaracz: Thank you so much Martin. You can find more information about peed in bloodstock@peedinbloodstock.com.
That’s P-E-D-E-N bloodstock and we will have a link to that in the show notes. You can also follow them on Facebook and they put a lot of videos on Facebook of what they’re doing with the horses and how they transport them. It’s really cool. So, um, we posted one of those in our Facebook group, Olympic Fever podcast, ’cause they got a group members Got a little sneak peek of what we were talking about today.
So if you go and join our group, you too will start getting some sneak peeks of what we’re working on. He was fun.
Alison Brown: He was a lot of fun and we talked about it right after the interview, but I think our favorite part was how he made Spartanburg German. When he was talking about the, the airport. It was spot and bug.
I’m like, no, it’s the Carolinas. Thanks from trying to make US American sound classy.
Jill Jaracz: I know. I wanted to say, oh, bless your heart.
Alison Brown: But he was, what he knows about horses and just the institutional knowledge. It’s amazing. It’s
Jill Jaracz: so incredible. And it’s funny because we were on Skype with our cameras on and he was on the telephone and thank goodness, because I think our jaws were open most of the time if we weren’t talking.
We just sat there in amazement at how much work and effort it takes to bring these horses to another country.
Alison Brown: It’s one of those aspects of the Olympics, and we, we talk about this all the time. Somehow it just happens and we never think about it. And then you talk to the people who do it and you realize how complex and Amma, it’s amazing the, the Olympics happens at all.
When you really get down to the nitty gritty, it’s like, how did this many moving parts all come together?
Jill Jaracz: Yes, it is amazing and beyond the fact that they’re shipping hundreds of horses and you forget how many horses are involved in the competition. But also the fact that it takes four years to get a horse to the Olympics.
So basically, right, they finish one, they start the next one, and every time you add a new city, there’s more airports to make friends with and work with. And part of me was just like, oh, you must be so happy. Paris is is next.
Alison Brown: Right. And even Los Angeles, I have a feeling they’ve done a lot of flying in and out of L lax.
Right. Right. Before, so these will probably be two easier ones, but certainly Paris. ’cause there’ll be so few horses that have to come from too far.
Jill Jaracz: Right, right, right. But it’s nice to get that little bit of insight and gives me a huge appreciation for what he has to go through 209th a year on the road.
Oh, that’s insane.
Alison Brown: I think he deserves a sugar cube.
Jill Jaracz: He does. Maybe an apple. Alright, thank you Martin.
Team Olympic Fever Update
Uh, moving on to our team, Olympic Fever, update
Tofu. Our team Olympic Fever shotgun shooter. Kim Roddy broke another record, won a fourth consecutive World Cup title in Xang one, South Korea, so congratulations to her. She’s just killing it. She,
Alison Brown: I don’t think she ages seriously. It’s just, it like the, the rifle of Dorian Gray or something. The
Jill Jaracz: reflexes, she’s incredible.
Also, our team, Olympic Fever Hockey skater, Brianna Decker, was inducted to the Wisconsin Hockey Hall of Fame.
Alison Brown: As she should be. I had a little bit of fun convergence of tofu. Oh really? Yes. Lauren Gibbs, our Bob’s letter, posted a video from when she went to see stars on ice and the video that she posted was of Charlie White and Meryl Davis.
And when we spoke to it, I said, oh my goodness. Is this like a break in the space time continuum of two of our former guests are in the same room at the same time.
Jill Jaracz: I love it because that was
Alison Brown: fun.
Other Olympics News
Jill Jaracz: Well, in some other Olympic news, I saw this fun little bit in Taiwan. The Minister of Education said that if the nation wins at least four gold medals at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, he is willing to buy 1000 cups of pearl milk tea as a treat to match a legislator’s pledge to buy 1000 fried chicken cutlets.
Alison Brown: I’m not even sure I understand this. I don’t understand it either. But who, who are getting these treats?
Jill Jaracz: I don’t know. But yeah, we’re, maybe they go to the Olympians
Alison Brown: or are they just gonna hand them out in front of town? Uh, or city hall or the, I don’t know.
Jill Jaracz: So we’re gonna have to keep ministry. We’re gonna have to keep an eye on this.
Taiwan does have, uh, some possibilities. They’ve got the world’s number one badminton player right now. Uh, it’s tied to Ying. There’s also a, what they call the pummel horse, prince Lee Chika.
Alison Brown: Yes.
Jill Jaracz: Uh, three time World Champion weightlifter quo Sing tune, and a Javelin Champion Chang Chow Soon.
Alison Brown: Okay. So you would eat your fried chicken cutlet and drink your pearl milk.
Your pearl milk tea?
Jill Jaracz: Yes.
Alison Brown: That sounds like a very nice afternoon snack actually. It does.
Jill Jaracz: It does. So, you know, hopefully we will have that fantasy Olympic game again. So keep those names in mind. If you are, you know, trying to pick people to root for and cheer for, I
Alison Brown: want some fried chicken.
Jill Jaracz: Can we get in on this Minister of Education?
Alison Brown: If they’re just handing them out outside of the ministry, just walk up and say, I want my fried chicken and my Pearl milk tea, please.
Jill Jaracz: I know. Well, we’ll definitely keep tabs on that. ’cause there’s, there’s nothing we like more. It’s food and beverage specials.
Alison Brown: I mean,
Jill Jaracz: Olympic tie-in food and beverage specials.
Could it get any better? Oh, I know. And I just saw today that came over the news that Team GB just signed a sponsorship with Mc VDIs, the biscuit brand.
Alison Brown: Do you think they’re gonna make Olympic cookies? I don’t know.
Jill Jaracz: I also saw that the swimming pool from the 1952 Helsinki Olympics and really the 1940 Olympics because Helsinki was supposed to host then.
And then that got canceled because of World War ii. But the pool has opened for the summer and that made me very happy because it was a legacy thing. Oh, I like that. And you can go, it’s a big outdoor pool and you can swim. It’s huge. It’s got a big diving platform at the end. And coincidentally, we had a lovely email from listener Manu, who lives in Helsinki, and Manu and I were talking a little bit, uh, I asked him, well, have you swam in the pool?
And he said, as
Alison Brown: you will, like, that’s a
Jill Jaracz: totally normal question. He said, well, sw there when, when they were kid. But it’s a very nice place to go swimming, especially when the weather’s nice. It’s on my list. And if you go to Helsinki and you swim at the pool, let us know. Take pictures for me. Manu told me, and I had forgotten about this, they’re renovating the Olympic stadium and so it will reopen next year in 2020.
Alison Brown: Okay. So renew my passport right now
Jill Jaracz: it’s pretty much the only venue that’s still able to host major events, he said. Hmm. So speaking of legacies, I have a little beef, and I wanted to talk about this with you because I saw on ESPN that the, uh, international Gymnastics Federation had just named Antwerp as the host of the world championships in 2023.
You know, who else bid for those championships? Tokyo. And they did not get it. Huh? So when we complain about legacy and venues going unused, I think there should be a mandate that, that the federation should have to have championships within a cer in those venues, again, at the, that whole city within a certain timeframe.
Alison Brown: Right? ’cause they all have venues. They all have amazing venues. Why aren’t we going back and using those venues?
Jill Jaracz: Right? And then people, people, the general public or journalists will go, well, these venues are a waste of money. Nobody’s using them anymore. Well, it’s really up to the international federations to keep that legacy going because these, but these buildings were built or repurposed for their sports.
So why are you not trying? But
Alison Brown: on the flip side, cities that could not handle an Olympics should not be shut out from hosting other championships. Like Antwerp, even though it has host Olympics, probably couldn’t handle an Olympics anymore. It’s not a big enough city anymore.
Jill Jaracz: Right. But so should
Alison Brown: it be totally shut out.
Jill Jaracz: But they also held the Gymnastics World Championships in 2013. So it’s 10 years between their, their hosting. Tokyo last hosted it in 2011.
Alison Brown: Oh. So they’re not even, they’re cycling through cities anyway, in,
Jill Jaracz: in a sense, I mean the, mm-hmm. I, I did a little research and found that they don’t have championships on in Olympic year, so it was in 2011, it was Tokyo, then Antwerp, then Ning in China, Glasgow, Montreal, Doha.
Then this year it will be in Stuttgart. Then 21, it’ll be Copenhagen, then Liverpool, then Antwerp again.
Alison Brown: Oh, and then you have the issue, if you have, what, five in a row in Europe,
Jill Jaracz: right,
Alison Brown: as well?
Jill Jaracz: Yeah.
Alison Brown: Okay. I, I see where you’re going.
Jill Jaracz: Right. So
Alison Brown: I, and well, to be fair, again, gymnastics in Tokyo, I’m not sure how much of a, I mean, I wonder if they’re not going back to Tokyo.
’cause 2011 there wasn’t enough interest.
Jill Jaracz: That is a good and legitimate question, although that’s also being dismissive of something that happened 10 years ago.
Alison Brown: Fair.
Jill Jaracz: And it’s also interesting that Tokyo not only has to work on getting these Olympics now, but I, I don’t know who’s behind the bid for the gymnastics competition, but it’s interesting that there are organizing efforts going on plus bidding efforts going on at the same time.
Alison Brown: Right. Because just like when we were talking to Martin, you’re always thinking of the next event,
Jill Jaracz: right? Right. Very quickly
Alison Brown: you gotta switch off. Right.
Jill Jaracz: So at least they’re trying. It would be, I didn’t have a chance to look at any other international federations and see if they were planning to use Tokyo in future competitions.
It’s interesting because I don’t, I also don’t know how many federations plan that far out, right. In their world championships or even cups. So I don’t know, maybe they’ll get, uh, a cup in Tokyo soon, over the next couple years. That would be something. But I do think it’s up to that legacy isn’t necessarily all.
Resting on, well, it doesn’t rest on the IOC ’cause they don’t take any responsibility for that. It shouldn’t rest on, it shouldn’t. Or the NGOs. Right. And yeah, it doesn’t rest on the Olympic organization. It kind of rests on the organizing committee to think about what happens next. But it really also is like, hey, we gotta build strong relations with the international federations and go, dude,
Alison Brown: we have
Jill Jaracz: a facility for you.
We have facility. Nice. Better use it. And you know, don’t make ’em, don’t make an organizing a, I’m not sure they should make host cities jump through tons of hoops. To have to bid for another event
Alison Brown: right around our games. Well, doesn’t that, doesn’t that go back to that conversation that we had several months ago about the very bizarre family tree of the IOC and the NGOs and the sports federations mm-hmm.
And how they’re all siloed off, not necessarily talking to one another. Certainly not working hand in glove with each other. Right. And so each one is functioning as if the other doesn’t exist.
Jill Jaracz: Mm-hmm.
Alison Brown: Except when they want money.
Jill Jaracz: Right. Or when they see, like, they’ll see each other at something like Sport Accord, which is a big conference where people do a lot of glad happening.
I understand. I dunno. That was, that was disappointing to me.
Alison Brown: Yeah.
Jill Jaracz: And you have to wonder how much, how much it costs. To put together a bid for, uh, world championships. That’s, that’s something I don’t know, I don’t know what cities do for putting those packages together ’cause it does take time to put something together and, and incentivizing people.
I would put it on our list, but our list is pretty long. But if anybody out there knows if Tokyo’s getting to host some World Cups and championships beyond the Olympics, let us know. We are very interested to find out
Alison Brown: because we love Legacy.
Jill Jaracz: On that note, I think we should wrap it up for this week and we will catch you back here next week for more Olympic stories.
Thank you so much for listening and until next time, keep the
Theme Music: flame alive. Stay in touch. Email us@lyfeatgmail.com. That’s OLYM Fever at gmail. You can also leave us a voicemail at 5 3 0 7 6 3 3 8 3 7. That’s 5 3 0 7 oh Fever. We’re on Twitter at Lym Fever and you can join in the conversation at our Facebook group Olympic Fever Podcast.
Thanks again for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive.
Martin Atock: Absolutely perfect. Brilliant.