We have made it to Milano, and the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Games are underway!
We have a couple of days learning the city, and we’ve found all sorts of great Olympic stuff, including the cauldron, which is still under construction.
The Milano Cortina 2026 caudron in the center of the Arco della Pace on January 31, 2026, still under construction.
While the flame might be small, it’ll be better than Beijing 2022’s snowflame. The dynamic circular rings should also make this exciting to see!
We’ve seen a number of sponsor houses–Coke, Esselunga, Alibaba, the Alfa Romeo family of auto brands–to name a few. We also found the Milano Cortina 2026 Fan Zone and On Location Clubhouse 26. Everything was still under construction, but it should all come together in time for the Games.
A couple of country houses are already open, and we popped into Switzerland House to enjoy trains, chocolate, and traditional horn music.
Of course, Olympic souvenirs are essential, and we’ve been to multiple official shops and the Megastore. We take you inside to tell you what the good souvenirs are, what’s unusual, and what’s really expensive (and it’s not just the Armani Team Italia kit!).
Thanks to the Yes, Milano media center, we got to go to the preview of Anselm Kiefer’s Le Alchimiste, which was an exhibition of 38 enormous paintings, designed especially for the space at the Palazzo Reale. It runs through September 27, so if you’re in Milano, put it on your list!
Plus, Olympic competition kicked off today with the start of the Mixed Doubles Curling tournament. We’ve got the results on the show, plus info on Alpine skiing downhill training.
Keep our Flame Alive! We podcast about the Games all year. If you appreciate the indepedent voice that we provide, please consider supporting us today. Go to our support page to learn about our one-time and ongoing patronage options (as well as the bonus content for our patrons).
Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive!
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 Do not quote from the transcript; use the audio as the record of note.
Milano Cortina Olympics: Day -2
Jill Jaracz: [00:00:00] Juano and welcome to Keep the Flame Alive, day minus two coverage of the Milano Corina 2026 Winter Olympic Games. I am your host, Jill Jaracz, joined as always by my lovely co-host, Alison Brown. Alison Ciao.
We made it.
We’ve made it to Italy!
Alison Brown: We made it, and we made it with our extremely limited Italian and we’re still doing okay. Gets you far I have discovered. [00:01:00]
Jill Jaracz: So yes, we have made it to Milan, compared to Paris. We have great accommodations.
Alison Brown: This is. The penthouse suite compared to Paris? No. We have a great little apartment. It’s a good amount of space.
It’s in a great location. We’re nice and safe and comfortable and can get our work done, and we’re not going to pass out or catch any diseases or
Jill Jaracz: or kill each other
Alison Brown: or kill each other because we are literally on top of each other in bunk beds.
Jill Jaracz: That’s right. And, uh, we’re near a grocery store. We’re like a.
15 minute walk from the main press center. So if we need to get there, that’s fantastic. So much appreciated on this. Uh, what’s your initial impression of the city?
Alison Brown: Well, it’s a city that loves its dogs. So I’m pretty happy there are dogs everywhere. They’re on the street, they’re in the, uh, on the subways.
They’re in the stores. So I, I’m a [00:02:00] happy woman with all these dogs. They love their dogs here, and they have these water fountains. Have you noticed those?
Jill Jaracz: The water fountains on the streets?
Alison Brown: Yeah. On the street, yes. Where it not only has a water fountain, it has a little bowl in the bottom designed to keep the dogs well hydrated.
So, yes, so far this is a great city.
First impressions of Milano
Jill Jaracz: Yeah, I am. I am. Pleasantly surprised. I didn’t know what to expect and I feel very comfortable here. This feels very familiar. I mean, I spent time in Germany and Austria. This kind of feels like one of those cities and don’t at me Italians for, for saying that. But it’s, you know, there’s a, a, an industrial ness, a little bit to this.
There’s a ton of graffiti, which makes me feel like this is. Like Berlin, even though I haven’t been to Berlin in ages, but tons of graffiti everywhere. But at the same time, I see what you were talking about a couple of episodes ago when you went to that cultural event in New York
Alison Brown: when they were talking about how [00:03:00] Milano is a very modern city.
It. It is of course steeped in history. We walked through the, the Costello, uh, earlier in the week, but they’re really focused on the future and where the city is going in the future. So it feels. Almost American in that way.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah, kind of. So it’s, it’s got a lot of design elements as well. And just kind of everywhere you turn is something else that’s surprising and surprisingly cool.
Kiefer’s Le Alchimiste at the Palazzo Reale
And one of the things that’s cool that we got to go to yesterday was this, the opening of this art exhibit. Um. Alchemy by Kiefer?
Alison Brown: Yes. At, uh, MUO Cast, uh, Castello. So it’s in the Museum of the Castle. And talk about a modern art exhibit. It was these. Uh, how do you would describe them? They were 20 foot tall [00:04:00] panels and about 40 or so of them.
Yeah,
Jill Jaracz: yeah. 38. I think they, the thing said
Alison Brown: it was enormous and they were all women from history, most of whom I did not recognize, but that the artists referred to as alchemists in some way, some way changing the culture. Of her time, and it was certainly like nothing I’ve ever seen before.
Jill Jaracz: Oh yeah. It was just unreal how enormous these paintings were.
And this show is designed specifically for this space. And so if it’s planned through September, basically, so if you’re deciding to come to Milano, check that out for sure, because it’s just the magnitude and the, the, the scope you and. J just the feeling. You, you said you could still smell the paint.
Alison Brown: I felt like I could because the, the thickness of the paint, the way that she used it was more like, um, [00:05:00] a tool rather than a, a medium, you know?
’cause it was so thick that she was sculpting it.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah.
What the Milano Cortina 2026 Megastore is like
Also grand in scope. The Mega store.
Alison Brown: Mega store. And surprisingly we’ve been to several stores ’cause we’ve been to the store at the main, uh, press center. We’ve been to the mega store. We were. In the little corner of the department store and then another store that was in a second section near the Omo, was it?
No. Near the, the, the Aade Apache,
Jill Jaracz: yes.
Alison Brown: There’s a lot of Olympic stores.
Jill Jaracz: Right. And there’s one more that you haven’t been to, but I’ve been to, uh, further away from the do duomo.
Alison Brown: So the main one is a mega store. It is not as mega as the Paris store.
Jill Jaracz: You think so? Well, the Paris store was wide and this is long.
Alison Brown: Okay, fair. And it felt the Paris store felt more established. This feels a little bit more like they just threw it together.
Jill Jaracz: Oh, okay. I don’t, I, [00:06:00] yeah, I, I would not agree. But it’s interesting because they have women’s clothes on one side and men’s clothes on the other. And I think the organization is very good and, uh, tons of stuff that we hadn’t seen before,
Alison Brown: but not many Tina.
Jill Jaracz: No, Tina is going.
Alison Brown: Tina is gone. The
Jill Jaracz: and Yeah. Which is surprising. Uh, and I will say that the big Tina and Milos, which would be like the standard size mascot, I would say there’s like a teeny tiny one. There’s a a little bit bigger one, and then there’s a, a regularized, and that’s going for like 55, 60 euros, which to me is quite expensive.
Alison Brown: Definitely more expensive than we saw in either Paris or Beijing.
Jill Jaracz: Right.
Alison Brown: For kind of that standard size mascot that you’d assume that you’d wanna take home.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. And uh, we also have MAs, uh, stuffed animal versions of the flow.
Alison Brown: Very cute,
Jill Jaracz: very cute. Lots of ones to choose from, but the one that was really hanging [00:07:00] out in the bins was poor, anxious flow.
Alison Brown: You know, anxious flow needs a home and I think everyone should go and order anxious flow and give that poor girl a home because that flower is very scared.
Jill Jaracz: Um. There are, uh, there’s a Milano Cortina sweater that is very cool that I managed to snag, and we have found out that the price has gone up on that one too.
It, it was in the mega store when I first arrived, and, uh, for 55 Euros, I got it at Yama Ma, which also sells official clothing. I got it there, four 40. And, uh, listener Charlotte
Alison Brown: now.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah, listener Charlotte sends us a picture and went, oh, that sweater’s 70 now.
Alison Brown: Yeah. I think that sweater is going fast. And they realize they could get a few extra euro for it.
Exactly. It actually was quite a bargain at 40 Euros.
Jill Jaracz: It was a bargain.
Alison Brown: It’s a nice sweater.
Jill Jaracz: So I will be wearing that for Charlotte. There’s, there’s a lot of. Milano and Corina versions of [00:08:00] things where they have the geographical coordinates of the city or the town. And then, uh, there’s like a jacket with the coordinates on the front and on the back is, uh, topographical.
Map of Cortina for that one, or like a city map of Milan. It’s very cool.
Alison Brown: And then Milan is turquoise and the mountain ones are pink.
Jill Jaracz: Yes.
Alison Brown: So they use the colors that are in all the, the various emblems as well. Very well.
Jill Jaracz: Mm-hmm.
Alison Brown: They’re really bringing out those colors that we saw just. In the beginning and saying, oh, now this is how they’re using them.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah, so very, very cool. Some, some whole range of figurines, which surprised me.
Alison Brown: Yes, they looked very 1950s. I think that’s a bit of a throwback to 1956. Cortina damn petso. And they did look like something that would be in your grandma’s house of different winter. Sports and scenes. So these little ceramic [00:09:00] knickknacks, for lack of a better word, that, that you can get, uh, a whole collection of them.
Jill Jaracz: Lots of hats.
Alison Brown: You got sucked into a hat.
Jill Jaracz: I did get sucked into a, a pictogram ball camp, which the first time I saw it was at the media. Official store and I bought mine yesterday and today we only saw a couple, a couple left. So that may be going as well.
Alison Brown: Yeah. And there was a sweater at the media store, or rather at the store in the media center that I was eyeing that we hadn’t seen anywhere else.
So I may scoop that up as my, my, uh, souvenir.
Jill Jaracz: But lots of fun hats as well. Winter camps, the, um, there’s some IOC wear. Here as well, which is cool. There’s a throwback version of the 1956 Corina little collection in clothing, bunch of notebooks, hockey pucks, magnets, you know, the, the usual stuff. Snow globes, [00:10:00] which are kind of nice,
Alison Brown: and the snow globe comes up later.
We’ll talk about that when we talk about the duomo
Jill Jaracz: and um. Oh, uh, the entire team, Italia Armani kit is here if you would like it. And it is, it’s nice. It is, uh, made me wanna be an Olympian.
Alison Brown: Made you wanna be an Italian?
Jill Jaracz: Yeah, I know. Well, no, an Italian Olympian. ’cause then it just gives to you, gives the kids give it.
Alison Brown: It’s pretty sweet.
Jill Jaracz: So, um, yeah, so the mega store is interesting. I’ll be, I’ll be curious to walk by there in a couple days and see what the lines are like and what if you get in, like what the stock is. ’cause they’re gonna run outta stuff they have if you were in Paris. Uh. And saw all those pictogram T-shirts.
They have pictogram t-shirts here, but the pictogram is on the back and that’s kind of cool as well.
Alison Brown: And they have one that I also liked that was a long sleeve version with all the pictograms. They did have a version of that at Paris in a short sleeve, but obviously for winter it made more sense to make it a long sleeve [00:11:00] t-shirt.
So that also might come home with me.
How we’re faring with the transportation systems
Jill Jaracz: Transport.
Alison Brown: Pretty good, except when I listen to you about which direction I should go on the tram.
Jill Jaracz: Okay, so we have metros, uh subways. We have tram options, and we have buses. We haven’t been on a bus yet. We’ve been on the metro and we have been on trams and I love a good tram. And there are futuristic trams.
Modern trams, and then there are wooden trams. That are throwback old school. They’re fantastic. I love them.
Alison Brown: You never know what kind of tram is gonna show up. But the problem with that is in the old trams there’s no announcing, there’s no visual display. You just gotta hope you can find your stop.
Jill Jaracz: And I have had to get on and off many a tram.
Because I went the wrong direction.
Alison Brown: But that’s okay. I can’t say anything ’cause I have just been head empty allowing you to figure out where we have to [00:12:00] go. So I can’t complain. So last night we were coming home from dinner. We got on the tram, realized we were going the wrong way, and then realized we were on an express.
But the express went so far, it basically turned around to going the right way.
Jill Jaracz: Yes.
Alison Brown: So it all worked out. You took us on a new adventure. And we ended up getting home, so it was fine.
Jill Jaracz: It’s kind of like when we were in Beijing and you saw a new half a block in the closed loop and you were like, what? This is new.
It’s fantastic.
Alison Brown: Well, this was a lot more than a half a block though.
Jill Jaracz: Yes, yes. Um, so, and, and one of the things we saw, and, and this is kind of in the big Duomo Plaza area as well, uh, there’s a lot of stuff around here. For the games, a lot of signage, a lot of ads, a lot of stores that have displays, which are really cool.
And um, uh, Eli Lilly has sponsored this and also Prosecco has sponsored one that are on different streets. They are, uh. [00:13:00] LED rope light versions of the pictograms hung up, kind of like Christmas lights and they’re just, it’s, I mean, you walk down a long street and you go through all of the pictograms for both Olympics and Paralympics,
Alison Brown: so it’s just hanging above the street, suspended in the air.
So it just looks like these lights are floating. And they’re all white, so they’re very striking and quite bright and really beautiful and just there’s more than one set of them. We’ve discovered in our adventures that we’ve at least found three different sets of these lights, so it’s not just a one and done.
Jill Jaracz: It throws me off directionally.
Alison Brown: Because the first, right, you didn’t realize there was more than one. So the first time you saw it again, you said, wait, this is our stop, but it’s not our stop, but the lights are here. So now we know the lights are not a guidance. Do not follow the light dear.
Jill Jaracz: The other transportation stuff that we have spent hours already working on is figuring out.
Where we can [00:14:00] go be beyond Milano.
Alison Brown: Can we get to the mountain and then, and the will, the mountain win. And the answer is part of a mountain has won.
Jill Jaracz: Yes. So we have found out that we or we have figured out that we can go to Bo.
Alison Brown: Yes.
Jill Jaracz: We can go to Lavino.
Alison Brown: Yes.
Jill Jaracz: Not on the same day. Everything is a one day trip.
Alison Brown: Yes.
Jill Jaracz: Um, oh. I will get to Tesero on the like one day where you can go to Tesero and get there. Oh my gosh. You know, I really wanna know what happened in the planning meetings with the trained companies and the transportation people here with Milano Corina. Because to get to Tesero, to see cross country, I have to take a train.
I forget, maybe to Verona, and then you take a bus or trains up north to the mountains. Well, you arrive in [00:15:00] Tesero at one 20 in the afternoon. The cross country competition starts at one o’clock and it’s like, how did you, how is this okay? Because that’s when you get there. But it’s, it’s a 10 k. I’m hoping to see Bruno Mora, our Brazilian Shuk, Lesi, and um.
Hopefully I’ll get to see something of her race or
Alison Brown: get, you might meet her in the mix zone after and that’ll be it. Yeah, so we will not likely get to Cortina UN unless we make some other. Arrangements,
Jill Jaracz: right? If the, if the budget allows, that’s basically it. If the budget allows and we can get a hotel room, not necessarily in Cortina, it could be on the way, it could be in Venice.
Um, but to get to Cortina and back in one day is like a six hour multi-leg journey. There. You can stay two hours and then you have to come home. [00:16:00] So it ain’t happening unless we can get further. Towards Cortina.
Alison Brown: So that eliminates, unfortunately all our sliding friends. So we’re hoping that we’ll make that work in, in some fashion, but we won’t know that probably until towards, towards the latter half of the games.
More Olympic atmosphere in Milano
Jill Jaracz: Right. Um, we have seen the countdown clock.
Alison Brown: It’s counting down.
Jill Jaracz: When, when we saw it last night, I was like, oh wait, it’s gonna flip over to two.
Alison Brown: It wasn’t that late.
Jill Jaracz: It wasn’t, but it’s, it’s there. It’s a big two six in a snow globe type situation, but it’s a square snow globe and, uh, omega sponsors that. Um, I have seen the Omega Pavilion.
Uh, that is all these, uh, sponsor pavilions were still being built.
Alison Brown: A lot of things are still being built. So the fan zones were still being put together. Uh, the pavilions were still being put together, so one of them was [00:17:00] Alibaba that had this enormous snow globe at, we mentioned at the top of the show that they’re projecting videos on.
So far, we’ll have to see where that actually goes when they’re finished with that pavilion.
Jill Jaracz: Mm-hmm. Um. Alpha, Romeo and Fiat, that whole family of cars, they have a pavilion that we can’t figure see, we couldn’t see much of. And, uh, ilunga the grocery store chain here, uh, they have a pavilion. Both of those pavilions are within the castle walls, which is kind of cool.
And when we say pavilion, um. I, this is just gonna not help. But if you’ve ever been to, uh, Octoberfest in Munich and they build these temporary buildings we have and. When we were in Beijing, all these temporary buildings got built this. These are big, massive structures. Ilunga has a staircase [00:18:00] on the outside that you go
Alison Brown: on and metallic sheeting, covering the whole thing.
Coca-Cola also has a tremendous pavilion, larger than most of the others, so we’ll have to see what that’s gonna be like.
Jill Jaracz: So very exciting. The fan zone will do kind of that champion’s, uh, walk, well, it’s not really a walk, they have a stage, but, but in, in Paris when they had a whole, uh, celebration every night where athletes came and got.
To walk a a runway and get another round of adulation and appreciation. Uh, they’re gonna repeat that concept here just with a stage. So that’ll be kind of interesting.
Alison Brown: And it’ll be interesting because likely those would just be the Milan. I mean, all athletes will have access to it, but I don’t know how many of the mountain athletes will come down.
Jill Jaracz: Right. And there may be, they may be in the fan zone, in their,
Alison Brown: in their cluster.
What the Olympic cauldron looks like
Jill Jaracz: Yes. Um, we have seen the cauldron
Alison Brown: we have, and it’s so interesting the way that they’re [00:19:00] constructing it and, uh, it, it, it is absolutely true. Once they started constructing it, there was gonna be no hiding it unless they spent a tremendous amount of money putting up scaffolding and cheating because it, it’s a complex, large structure underneath the, the arcade Apache, but they’re also lighting it up already.
So even if you wanted to be a little shy, it is not a shy cauldron. It’s already got neon lights on it flashing at you.
Jill Jaracz: Well, they’re kind of running along like, I believe these, uh, it’s, the flame will be in the center and it’s gonna be a small flame. We’re
Alison Brown: Yes.
Jill Jaracz: Gonna, it’s not, it’s not huge. And um, around it are these concentric circles that are supposed to.
Move
Alison Brown: they’re supposed to expand and contract ’cause they’re based on these links first designed by DaVinci and turn as well. [00:20:00] So I think the idea is it will expand and rotate and contract and rotate so that the whole thing, the flame actually I think looks like the, the fixed point. Mm-hmm. So that will stay the same.
And then these circles will expand and contract around it. Now if each of those arms is lit with the neon light. And it’s all a reflective material that’s going to make the cauldron look much larger than that small flame that we can see. It seems to be what that bowl, right, that bowl size piece is
Jill Jaracz: right.
And, uh, so the, the circles are lined with light, that change color.
Alison Brown: Yes.
Jill Jaracz: So it’s kind of a running light look. And, and I’m gonna be curious to see what the final image is. There’s other lights set up on the ground. So far, and we know there’s gonna be a light show kind of like every hour on the hour.
Alison Brown: Yes.
And I believe music as well is planned for that. So it’s a whole thing, like when they do the twinkling lights on the Eiffel Tower.
Jill Jaracz: Mm-hmm. [00:21:00] So I am curious to see what that will be like. I think it will be a big draw because people were already just standing there watching the construction and.
The Olympic Hospitality House scene so far
Also in the ELA Apache area is Clubhouse 26
Alison Brown: in multiple buildings, it seemed like.
Jill Jaracz: Yes. The on location hospitality club is right there. You get kind of a bird’s eye view onto the torch, which is pretty cool. So we should be able to access that. At
Alison Brown: some point, yes. We’ve, we have our friends at, at on location who are gonna hook us up with a little time in there, which is pretty fantastic.
Jill Jaracz: Um, other hospitality houses, there are quite a few hospitality houses in Milano. Uh, some are free, some are paid. So we’re gonna try to hit up all the free ones, except for we already got rejected from China House.
Alison Brown: Yeah, some of the free ones ask you to register ahead of time and China House said no. We, we don’t want you people.
[00:22:00] No. They said no. We already have so many requests that we can’t accept anymore, and we may be able to try and sign up for a different time slot for China House. It may have just been that that time slot was full. So we’ll keep checking that and seeing if, if other time slots become available for them. So we stopped by Casaro
Jill Jaracz: House of Switzerland.
Alison Brown: Sits it all. That’s what it is.
Jill Jaracz: And you know this is a free house and it takes up like two buildings plus a courtyard between them and uh, you walk in and there is like a model train set up
Alison Brown: and you can drive the Swiss trains.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah,
Alison Brown: which was fun. And they have a big bowl of lint chocolates.
Jill Jaracz: Also fun,
Alison Brown: also very fun.
They also had some virtual reality train rides, which for some reason. I failed at completely. They kept trying to make it work for me until finally I had to set pasta and it was just not, she [00:23:00] must have tried, what, six times? Yeah. Tried to get that to work for me.
Jill Jaracz: She tried, yes. Tried so hard. Um, and also in the front part, the front house of the two house set up is, uh, a bar and, uh.
Dining area for paid food. And then you go out into a courtyard and they’ve got, uh, a little stage little gazebo like stage there and some seeding. Um, and uh, when we were there, we caught the very tail end of the Swiss horn blower show.
Alison Brown: Like the Rico commercial.
Jill Jaracz: Yes, yes. So we’ve, uh, got a little clip of that.
And then the, the back area was a private party. You needed a wristband for that section. They had a food truck for them back there, so I don’t know if that stays or not.
Alison Brown: Right. I don’t know if that was paid or just for special guests. That wasn’t clear as to who, who was going in, but we did not have a blue wristband.
So who was going in, not us.
Jill Jaracz: Right. And uh, they also had a little swatch. Display. [00:24:00] So that was cool. It it, I thought it was really nice for free.
Alison Brown: It, it’s nice, it’s open. They talk about, they have lots of things there. Obviously promoting Switzerland. They have a wall there that they had marked as the Swiss metal wall.
So when there are some Swiss uh metals, the athletes’ pictures will be going up on that wall and I’m sure they’ll be feted and celebrated. Um, uh, uh, there. And that’ll be, that’s what the houses are for, to celebrate the country and its athletes,
Jill Jaracz: so very cool. And we’ve got more houses to go on the list.
How well have we been eating?
Um, how has the food been so far?
Because everyone is usually Italian food. Come on.
Alison Brown: So mostly we’ve been eating from the grocery store, which has actually been quite nice.
Jill Jaracz: It has been nice.
Alison Brown: Not gonna argue with that.
Jill Jaracz: A little fresh prosciutto, fresh bread.
Alison Brown: We’ve gone out to a couple of restaurants and all, all good so far?
Jill Jaracz: Yeah, and I tried, I went out, uh, before you got here.
Uh, Nicholas Woliver and [00:25:00] I from Nicholas is from uh, Olympic Rings and other things, and he’ll show up in our Facebook group, uh, which is Keith, the Flame Alive podcast. And, uh, we went to, uh, dinner at this place called Charleston. And then when you came in, we all met at the art exhibit last night, and. Um, we went back to Charleston.
Alison Brown: It was right there
Jill Jaracz: and the mare D’s like, next time you bring four people,
Alison Brown: well just collect people along the way. So listers you can let them know you’re the fourth person coming.
Jill Jaracz: Right? So, um, I tried Turnup tops as an appetizer, which it was sauteed turnup tops. They were quite good.
Alison Brown: I didn’t even know turnips had tops
Jill Jaracz: and, and, uh.
I had the risotto ese with some sausage in it, which was quite tasty. And then also had, uh, and second time had this lasagna, which Nicholas had had the first time. And it was really, really light.
Alison Brown: I saw the man who was making the pizzas.
Jill Jaracz: Mm-hmm. [00:26:00]
Alison Brown: And I’m just gonna call him Giacomo ’cause he looked like a Giacomo to me.
And I said, that’s what I’m getting. I want that man making me a pizza. And it was. Perfection.
Jill Jaracz: So, so far, so good. I went to, and I went to an air, uh, a TiVo, which is, uh, you go get a cocktail and then they have snacks that they bring out to you too. So I had a little bowl of chips and then like some finger foods, and it was quite good.
And I also walked around Chinatown, which is not that far from our, uh, Shukla. Stonehouse. And, uh. I got a bunch of street food to eat. I had a bow, which is okay. That wasn’t great. And then they had all these, uh, skewer stores, which is like a, uh. Just a storefront. You can basically walk a couple feet into it and you face a big giant refrigerated deli case and it’s full of buckets of cures and you pick what you want, you take ’em to the counter and they fry them for you and that’s [00:27:00] it.
You’re eating on the street, it’s free. So I had a a potato tornado. Which was a, one of those spiral cut potatoes.
Alison Brown: Oh, you know, that is a perfect name for it. How have he not called it that? Be that before.
Jill Jaracz: And then, uh, some zuc uh, zucchini. Yes. It’s delicious. So that was a lot of fun too. And Lunar New Year is coming up, so I’m curious to see what they do.
They’ve got lights already. They, we’ve seen the red lanterns down the street and, uh, they’ve got some lights that, uh, look like they’re gonna be pretty sweet. But Chinatown was bumping on a Saturday night.
The Yes Milano Media Center
Let’s see. We also, uh, as in Paris, we had, uh, Paris had a city media center. Milano also has a city media center, so that, that is from the, um, uh, tourism board, which is called Yes, Milano. So just so you know, in the future, we’ll just say the Yes. Milano Media Center went there. It’s small, but it’s part of the Chamber of Commerce, I believe, and you walked up [00:28:00] the staircase and are immediately greeted by this beautiful stained glass.
Alison Brown: I don’t even know how to explain it. It’s like. A Picasso stained glass mural. It’s not Picasso, but it had that very abstract or al mm-hmm. This very abstract, modern, uh, look to it. So I’m so curious to find out more about that stained glass.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. So they’ll have press press conferences and events and they’ve got a little workroom.
Uh, so I’m really excited to see and learn more about the city
Alison Brown: and more importantly. They’re giving us a cake tomorrow they are giving us the official cake of Milan. So we’ll let you know about that.
Jill Jaracz: Exactly. So, um, that’s been pretty much it. For what we’ve done so far, it’s been a lot of logistics,
Alison Brown: a lot of, at the main media center saying, wait, is that at 11 or is that 12?
Or, which island is that on? And
Jill Jaracz: if you’ve seen our Facebook group, [00:29:00] we’ve uh, known, we’ve run into. Uh, Tom Kelly, who we just had on the show, it was so fun to see him in person.
Alison Brown: And of course he said there’s a million things he thought of after he was on the show because the news as we’ll mention in a second has changed significantly, even just a few days ago.
Keep our flame alive!
Jill Jaracz: Right. And before we get to today’s schedule, we’d like to take a moment to thank everyone who donated to our fundraiser to get us here. And if you just found the podcast, we are doing 32 daily episodes from Milano Cortina over the course of the games, which. Frankly is expensive to produce. And, uh, we’re also one of the few podcasts to publish episodes year round.
So we need help in keeping our flame alive. Go to flame alive pod.com/support. If you appreciate this coverage, we have options for one-off donations. And if you would like to become an ongoing patron, we offer, uh, special Patron only exclusives. Throughout the games, all paid patrons, get an exclusive photo of the day, uh, the silver medal level and up.
Also get [00:30:00] video and gold members and up get extra audio content throughout the games. So if you appreciate the independent voice we bring, please consider supporting us today. That’s at flame alive pod.com/support.
Daily Results
Alright onto the schedule for today.
Alison Brown: Not a lot of sports going on. No, actually one, but we do have some other news,
Jill Jaracz: right?
Athletes suffer big injuries ahead of the Games
So alpine skiing has been big news here.
Alison Brown: So they had, uh, reigning runs today, but that even wasn’t the big news. So Lindsay Vaughn was injured in her last, uh, race, uh, before the Olympics. She ruptured her ACL but she announced she’s planning to go. And that is some wild idea. She’s basically gonna race on one leg.
Jill Jaracz: It’s amazing. Yeah. And she said she, uh, the ski us ski team had a press conference and Lindsay was up for a chunk of it and was very matter of fact and [00:31:00] very, uh, like very aware of what her body felt like. She said a lot of, well, yeah, it’s, it’s, uh, ruptured, but I’ve got a brace on and it feels pretty stable and if I can race on it.
Good. And she has said that before, she’s crashed like this and felt the Olympic dream slipping out of her fingers, and she didn’t feel that this time around
Alison Brown: she feels like she’s strong enough to go so. You know, she has been through it in terms of injuries over her career, so you’ve gotta trust that she knows what she’s doing and she, this season has already proved herself.
I mean, she’s already won two World Cup races, so we know that this is not just a pipe dream in terms of being at the top of her game for this downhill. So we are pulling for her to see her in this race. That is for sure.
Jill Jaracz: Exactly. Also, uh, a really tough injury notification that came was, uh, Canada’s Deanna Stellato Eck.
Alison Brown: We know [00:32:00] nothing other than that. She was hurt and that, uh, she and her partner, Maxim Duchamp, have pulled out of the team competition for Canada. So they’re not here, they are not practicing. We don’t know anything else.
Jill Jaracz: Right. We’re waiting for the information, so hopefully, uh, she’ll be able to be okay as well.
We don’t even know the extent of the injury or what happened, and it’s just, it was an accident that happened during training and that’s, those are the hardest ones to get.
Alison Brown: Yes. Happier note.
Alpine Skiing
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. Back to, well, uh, back one little bit on alpine skiing. If you’re watching the feeds at home, uh, the men’s Alpine training run, the downhill run was on on the feet today, which was very, very cool. It, the course looks so hard
Alison Brown: and so long. Yes. It’s, what did they say, three kilometers long?
Jill Jaracz: Yes.
Alison Brown: So it’s much longer. We’re gonna be seeing times over two minutes,
Jill Jaracz: so, um. The women’s first training run is supposed to be [00:33:00] tomorrow the fifth, and that has been canceled, so that was gonna be kind of Lindsay’s first look at how her knee is holding up, but we’re gonna have to wait another day to find out.
Curling – The Mixed Doubles tournament kicks off
But we did have actual competition today. Curling. Curling started mixed doubles. Round robin. Session one. We had a Sweden beat. Korea 10 to three. Great Britain beat Norway, eight to six. Canada beat, Czechia 10 to five and Switzerland. Beat Estonia nine to seven. This, uh. Session was not without hiccups because the electricity went off right
Alison Brown: in the beginning.
Yeah. All of, all of a sudden we got back to the apartment and we turned on the feed and we’re like, oh, yay. We’ll we’ll have some dinner and we’ll watch the feed. And then it just went dark,
Jill Jaracz: right?
Alison Brown: And literally all the lights in the state, uh, in the arena went out and everybody sort of giggled a bit like, what, what just happened?
So hiccups all around, they got it squared away and, and continued [00:34:00] onward.
Jill Jaracz: Right. So, and it was funny because we were watching the, the Great Britain Norway feed with a Scottish commentary,
Alison Brown: and he knew just what to say.
Jill Jaracz: Well, and, and he also was a little worried that whatever the electricity problem was, if the lights were out for a while.
The same electrical system also kept the ice. Cool. What would that do to the ice? So hopefully they’ve got that worked out and figured out what was wrong. So, uh, that’s end of day minus two. We have a little bit more action tomorrow.
Alison Brown: Not much. There’ll be hockey added in, but we should be able to get out there this time.
Jill Jaracz: So that’ll be, uh, fun to see what is going on with the hockey arena. Women’s hockey starts tomorrow, so we aren’t going to be in the brand new arena that they constructed. We’re gonna be at a different one. So, uh, haven’t been to the new arena yet. I haven’t really heard, but I think [00:35:00] it’s pretty much like that story’s over.
Alison Brown: I think it’s as good as it’s gonna be. And they’re, they got it to, they got it together. That seems to be the theme of this game. Somehow. They’re getting it together at the last minute.
Show shout-outs, where to hang out, and how to get in touch
Jill Jaracz: Right? So before we go, we’ve got shout outs.
Alison Brown: Peter Lineman from Lip SG Germany. Peter, uh, Peter is a Milano and says, let’s go Germany, keeping our fingers crossed,
Jill Jaracz: right?
’cause we asked in our donation whether or not you were a Milano or a Cortina. So we have a first Milano, uh, Olympic painters look this up. There was a lineman, there was Conrad Lineman who played beach volleyball for Canada at Sydney 2000. But I’d like to keep it winter. Games and, uh, pet. I did find Pet Liebers, a figure skater who competed at Sochi 2014 in the men’s and the team competition.
Finished eight in both or finished eighth in both. And what the other detail [00:36:00] that dazzled me was he was born in April, 1988, which in East Berlin. Just before the, the wall fell down.
Alison Brown: It
Jill Jaracz: was
Alison Brown: Hi. Did he?
Jill Jaracz: It was 89 when the wall went down, so, yeah,
Alison Brown: I was gonna say, was he responsible? Was his birth responsible?
No,
Jill Jaracz: I don’t. Was
Alison Brown: he like the golden child or
Jill Jaracz: something? I don’t think so. He was the eighth child.
So Pedro, thank you so much for your donation and for keeping our flame alive. And that’s gonna do it for this episode. If you want even more of the most fun coverage of the games, we have options.
Alison Brown: Yes, you can join up on our Facebook group. Keep The Flame Alive Podcast. You can get a hold of our substack email, uh, substack newsletter, excuse me, at Flame Live Pod substack.
Dot com. We are on Insta X, Facebook and YouTube at Flame Alive Pod and for Patreons, you’ll get all that bonus good stuff that Jill mentioned earlier, and that’s flame alive pod.com/support.
Jill Jaracz: And we do love hearing from you. [00:37:00] You can hit us up on our social channels. You can email us at Flame Alive pod@gmail.com.
You can also send us a voice memo if you want, or call our voicemail line at plus 1 2 0 8 Flame it. 2 0 8 3 5 2 6 3 4 8. We may read your note or play your voicemail on the show and we will be back tomorrow with day minus one action from Milano Cortina.
Alison Brown: And until next time, chow. And keep the flame alive.