Movie Club returns to look at the 2024 biopic “The Fire Inside,” which tells the story of Olympic boxer Claressa Shields and her journey to winning her first Olympic gold medal at London 2012. The movie also goes beyond her first victory to show what happens when the Games are over–and unfortunately, Claressa is one of the many Olympic athletes who do not see a financial windfall after the Games.
This article does contain spoilers.
“The Fire Inside” – The Claressa Shields biopic
“The Fire Inside” is based on the documentary “T-Rex: Her Fight for Gold.” Barry Jenkins, who wrote and directed 2016’s Oscar-winning Moonlight, wrote the script, and noted cinematographer Rachel Morrison made her directorial debut with this film. Destiny Ryan stars as Claressa, and Bryan Tyree Henry plays her long-time coach Jason Crutchfield.
The movie covers Shields’ early life in Flint, Michigan, an incredibly poor city that fell on hard times when General Motors left town. In 2012–when a good chunk of the movie takes place–the child poverty rate in Flint was 57.6%, second-highest in the state.
Claressa and her family were caught in this cycle of poverty; however, Claressa showed talent as a boxer. Her struggles at home caused her to live with her coach for some time, but her life difficulties stoked the fire inside her to become a better boxer.
As she rose in the boxing world, women’s boxing was added to the Olympic program for London 2012. The movie shows her struggles at the Olympic qualifiers in China, and her unlikely victory in London at age 17.
For USA Boxing, Claressa Shields was one of the highlights in a disappointing Games. The team won just two medals at London 2012, and Claressa’s was their only gold.
Disappointment also followed when Claressa got home. Although she was celebrated in Flint, her gold medal did not open the door to big sports money. She was unable to garner some of the sponsorship deals other athletes got, and it looked like she wasn’t going to be able to help her family get out of poverty.
“The Fire Inside” ends with Claressa’s decision to go for a second Olympics. She takes up an offer to move to Colorado Springs to train at the US Olympic Training Center to prepare her for Rio.
In this episode of the podcast, we delve into “The Fire Inside,” and rate it as an Olympic biopic. How does it rank? Is it worthy of being atop the podium?
News from Paris 2024 and Milano Cortina 2026
Also on this episode, we have a report on Paris 2024 and how well the reusable cups worked at the venues. We also have an update on the the financial situation from Paris 2024 (spoiler alert: It’s good news).
Tickets for Milan-Cortina 2026 will go on sale later this January through a lottery process. Register now for your chance to buy tickets!
If you aren’t planning to go to Milano Cortina 2026, you could hold out hope that some of the events will be in the US. Lake Placid has moved into targeted dialogue for being the Plan B, should construction and testing of the new track at Cortina not be completed in time.
News from TKFLASTAN
In our visit to TKFLASTAN, we hear from the following Team Keep the Flame Alive members:
- Bobsledder Bree Walker
- Wheelchair fencer Ellen Geddes
- Para powerlifter Louise Sugden
- Table tennis player Millie Tapper
- Former biathlete Clare Egan
Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive!
Photo credit: Amazon MGM Studios
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.
Movie Club: The Fire Inside
Jill Jaracz: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keep the Flame Alive, the podcast for fans of the Olympics and Paralympics. If you love the games, we are the show for you. Each week, we share stories from athletes and people behind the scenes to help you have fun watching the games. I am your host, Jill Jaracz, joined as always by my lovely co host, Alison Brown.
Alison, hello. How are you?
Alison Brown: Hello. Happy New Year.
Jill Jaracz: Happy New Year, indeed.
Alison Brown: We are moving on. Now we’re, we’re about 390 days from Milan.
Jill Jaracz: Oh, you’re kidding. I’m not kidding. Oh, I need that three to be a five, please.
So close. So,
Alison Brown: so close. Well, we’ll have Milan news later. We got some updates while we were away.
Jill Jaracz: Excellent, excellent. Uh,
Patron of the Week
Jill Jaracz: we want to give a shout out to our patrons and say thank you so much for your support. This is the time of the year when we give a shout out to our Golden Committee member level patrons, and we’ll be celebrating a patron every week for a while.
Thank you to listener J. Brian Carberry for
Alison Brown: One of our favorites. I
Jill Jaracz: know, I love getting messages from Brian because he’s always got he always has really interesting thoughts and takes on the games. And he loves tracking three Pete’s and four Pete’s and things like that. So it is fun to see that little, slice of Olympic history being taken care of.
And it’s fun to have you as part of the show, Brian. and we do appreciate all of our patrons. They really do keep our flame alive. If you are interested Patreon membership, check out patreon. com slash flame alive pot for more information this year. Patreon is going to be fun for our bonus content. I’m excited.
I’m having fun reading my books. We are exploring Olympic memoirs to see if we too can learn how to become Olympic in whatever endeavor we choose. Our first episode is going to look at Lindsey Vonn’s Rise, and that is coming up soon. You will not want to miss it because it’s starting off, the year’s starting off with a bang.
Alison Brown: I know. We don’t pull punches. Let me. Oh, here’s a little boxing joke.
Jill Jaracz: Ah, nice. Nice. Nice.
Movie Club: The Fire Inside
Jill Jaracz: What a good segue into today’s show it’s movie club and sadly Fran could not join us this time. We are looking at The Fire Inside a another in movie theaters now.
Alison Brown: It was a little tricky finding it at first.
The Fire Inside: Background
Jill Jaracz: I know. I know. It’s a very tiny movie. This is a biopic based on the life of boxer Claressa T. Rex Shields, who is the first U. S. boxer, male or female, to win two consecutive Olympic gold medals in boxing. It is based on the documentary T Rex, Her Fight for Gold, and is written by Barry Jenkins, who wrote and directed 2016’s Oscar winning episode.
movie Moonlight and it’s also directed by Rachel Morrison in her directorial debut. The movie covers, Claressa’s early life in Flint, Michigan. Flint is an incredibly poor city. If you are not familiar with it, it’s, it’s really sad what has happened to Flint. Uh, Flint used to be one, have, uh, one of the highest median incomes in the state of Michigan, thanks to General Motors, but that was the main employer, and GM left, and the city fell on hard times, and that also included a bunch of white flight, so, it’s pretty dismal there now.
Is it getting better? I don’t know. I was there the other year when Claire and I saw the, Magnificent Seven musical. And the little museum area I was in, the theater area, was cool, but you could tell around it, it’s been a tough road for Flint.
Alison Brown: And let’s not forget the Flint water crisis.
Jill Jaracz: Oh, the Flint water crisis, which, you know, takes place after this movie, but I tell you, every time I saw a water tower in that, That movie.
I just thought of the water crisis. Indeed. in 2015, like 42 percent of the residents were below the poverty line. That gives you a sense of how dire the situation is there. the water crisis happened in 2014 when Flint decided to switch its, water usage from I think Lake Huron to the Flint River and did not do appropriate water cleaning and it’s just devastation occurred with a lot of lead poisoning and things like that.
yeah, Flint’s had a pretty tough road. I would say the last. 50 years.
Alison Brown: Yeah,
The Fire Inside: Synopsis
Jill Jaracz: so this movie starts with Claressa as a little girl wandering into coach Jason Crutchfield’s gym. She wants to box. Coach, who is played by Brian Tyree Henry, doesn’t take girls. But Claressa is pretty insistent.
He takes her under his wing and develops her as a boxer. The teenage Claressa, who was played by Ryan Destiny, blossoms as a boxer in the movie, tells her journey to her first gold medal at London 2012, the first year that women’s boxing was included in the Olympics. When she won, she was 17 years old. and then In something different from a lot of Olympic movies, the film goes into what happens next and looks at the post Olympic struggles that many athletes have when a gold medal doesn’t spell instant fame and fortune.
Movie also touches on how women had to look a certain way and didn’t earn as much as male athletes, uh, and that, The pay equity, cause is something that Claressa Shields championed, to note Shields is currently 29 years old and she is a pro boxer and MMA artist and has held multiple world championships in five weight classes.
The Fire Inside: Review
Alison Brown: What do you think? My favorite part of this movie is that the actress who played Claressa Shields looks 17 when she’s supposed to be 17. She does, she does. And she’s not. I think she’s well into her 20s. But they did such an excellent job with the prom scene and the scenes in school and the scenes with, other people, Claressa’s age make, making you realize how young she was in 2012.
Jill Jaracz: Right. And, it’s interesting how the Olympics and a lot of media people champion youth in sports and the difficulty. It’s exciting when somebody excels at a young age, but there’s also difficulties in that your brain doesn’t develop. As fast as your athletic talent might. And there’s a lot of stuff to rectify and a lot of things you want to go through, like prom, like hanging out with friends, that you gotta say no to if you want that Olympic drive.
Alison Brown: You know, it’s funny because we’re reading Lindsay Vonn’s book as I’m seeing this movie and there’s a whole section of her book that is about how she had to give up so much of her teenage years for the sport. And we hear that over and over and over again, where these kids. You have to make a choice. Are you going to have a normal teenage life or are you going to be a champion?
And they’re making this choice before they understand what that choice is.
Jill Jaracz: Right. And in Claressa’s case, the normal teenage life is not pretty, not not pretty at all. She has a mom who is kind of in and out of her life. She’s been abused as a young girl and, She lives with her coach for quite some time in the movie because her mom did kick her out.
There’s struggles with food, security. There’s struggles with money. it’s a really rough situation when you see, kids. Trying to get by and you’ve got a mom that kind of flakes out on them and we’ll go in by one of the scenes that was kind of touching was Mom was actually cleaning up the kitchen and the kids come in and they’re like, what are you doing?
And she’s like, yeah, I can clean up the kitchen too, you know And I bought you cereal and she bought Captain Crunch the good stuff forgot to buy milk So they’re eating their cereal with water instead
Alison Brown: I thought the movie did an excellent job of that Um, what life was like for Claressa as, and then she goes to the Olympics and then it’s after the Olympics and all this just fish out of water isn’t quite strong enough for what she was experiencing because she had no context for any of this.
Right. Right.
Jill Jaracz: And. I think some of the movie where it, where I thought it, doesn’t succeed as well is seeing Claressa’s success as a boxer over time and not an overtime within the period of the movie, because basically the fight, we see her. Uh, first time we really see her box outside of the gym and in a tournament is the Olympic trials.
And it made me wonder, and it’s in China, first off, all the qualification for that was in China and everyone kind of qualified at once. And that’s her first time on a plane. That’s her first, her coach could not go, cause he’s not sanctioned by USA boxing, but there’s also obviously an issue with money because Getting to China is going to be really expensive and I think that kind of confused me where you got the journey and then all of a sudden oh we’re at the trials and it felt like women’s boxing which may have not been as developed as that because it was pretty small but It made it seem like there was no women’s boxing, and then all of a sudden it was in the Olympics.
Alison Brown: Well, I think that was actually the case. That women’s boxing was kind of thrown into the Olympics with this whole idea of I mean, it was happening, but it It probably wasn’t ready to be in the Olympics, but you needed it in the Olympics because they were pushing so hard for, gender equity. And we’ve talked about a lot of sports where the male.
is much more developed than the female version. And they push them both in and the women haven’t been given the money or the resources to develop the sport enough. So they say, okay, let’s just put it in the Olympics, even though it’s not ready. Instead of saying, you know what? The men’s sport can’t go in until you get both ready.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. And I, and I, I get that perspective, but I, Do you think there had to her for it looked like her first fight was, was the trials, right? It wasn’t obviously wasn’t the trials. We didn’t get a whole lot of that, that step by step journey of what it took for her to get there. We got a lot of montages training
Alison Brown: montage.
Jill Jaracz: Multiple training montages.
Alison Brown: Yeah. With some funky music. And a problem montage. It was good music with the montages. Yeah.
Jill Jaracz: I’ll give you that. I did see this with Producer Ben, so we’ll have, uh, some tape from him in a bit. And I noted that I do listen to On Fire, the official Survivor podcast, and Jeff Probst is on there and he talks a lot about the time you have.
And what you use that time for. And he talked about a certain phrase he said during the show. He used to say it, he doesn’t say it anymore. And he’s like, yeah, because, that gives us three to five seconds more to further the story. And I kept thinking about that moment as we saw the second training montage and the, a very long prom montage.
And I thought there was more we could have done to show her work up the ranks or tell more about her story. I think there was something lacking there for me.
Alison Brown: We got to, London very, very quickly in the movie and they sort of compressed that whole section, which made sense because. I think the story they really wanted to tell was that period after London.
And how little has changed in 12 years, 12, 13 years since, you know, yes, women athletes still need to look a certain way, behave a certain way, be in certain sports, project a certain image.
And a teenage girl from Flint. Right.
Jill Jaracz: Especially with Claressa’s background and, and background by, by her life experiences too. She just wasn’t going to go there and she didn’t have that kind of training in a way. And she realized early when she tried that this was not her.
Alison Brown: Yes. you know, we talk a lot about, with certain athletes that make us angry when they’re not being genuine.
And yet so many of these female athletes can’t be genuine because it doesn’t sell and they create an image and create a character almost to, to be in the public eye. And Claressa was not doing that. She that she tried and she was a kid and you put on different masks almost as a kid and you could see her.
That’s what I, I said this one and we started, you really saw her being so young and trying to figure this all out. Never mind all the outside pressure.
Jill Jaracz: What about her relationship with her coach?
Alison Brown: Well, I mean, that actor, Brian Tyree Henry, can you get better than him? No, he was really good. He and Ryan Destiny were just so, so good. And the relationship with the coach can go so many different ways because on the one hand he played so many roles in her life and that can be a really difficult position to be in both as a coach and as a, as a young woman, he was kind of father to her.
He was protecting her and he still got to train her.
Jill Jaracz: And, and feed her.
Alison Brown: And feed her and live with her and he’s a part of her family and she’s a part of his family. And, and talk about blurry lines between coaches and athletes.
Jill Jaracz: It was interesting to see so much of the movie told through his eyes. And in a way I thought we started to fight for whose story is it? Are we talking about the coach’s story? Are we talking about Claressa’s story? And. The Claressa that we saw on screen, I have not seen the documentary that this is based off of, but the Claressa that we saw on screen was very quiet.
And did not say a whole lot and there’s a lot of I’m showing you who I am in the boxing ring and, kind of by what I do, not by talking. And so we don’t see Claressa opening up to us as much. I don’t think she does. And maybe she doesn’t do that, but it didn’t make it easy to tell a movie based on her life.
Alison Brown: You know, I read some articles afterwards, some interviews of her. And it. I think they got that right in terms of her personality that she is, I haven’t seen the documentary either, but that she does come across as very reserved and I bet, you know, 10 years ago it was even more so now she’s got the experience and the training and all these things that have happened to her and just getting older and maturing as a kid.
This must have been just So difficult. You just want to box. She just wants to, she doesn’t want to have to put on makeup and do a show and she wants to box, but her coach kind of recognizes that there’s more to it than that, as does Nicole Thompson. We see her kind of this other character come in. And yeah, I see what you’re saying, how it was her story, but not her story.
But again, is there any 17 year olds story that’s hers?
Jill Jaracz: I don’t know, but I thought that in a movie that that took it away and Nicole Thompson is
Alison Brown: see now I didn’t take notes. You were good. You could take notes in the dark. Was she a team USA rep or USA boxing?
Jill Jaracz: She seemed to be a USA Boxing rep to me. Okay. Um,
Alison Brown: I have seen her listed as both, either Team USA or USA Boxing.
So she’s kind of a sports agent, for lack of a better word. And of course, she’s beautiful and blonde and thin and lovely and fancy dressed. And white. Very important in this situation. And kind of, you know, In her way, I think, trying to guide Claressa, but her way does not, I don’t think Claressa can even understand what this woman is saying to her.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah, they, they come from two totally different worlds, but I also think what, and obviously I think a 17 year old may not be able to recognize this, some, I think some do, because some know how to play the game, where she thinks that the achievement is going to be what gives Accolades and by accolades, I mean the Wheaties box, the other sponsorship monies, all the endorsements that one would think a gold medalist does automatically get, but there’s something about personality being part of it.
There’s a reason why some NBA stars are, you know, superstars and others aren’t the same with football. There’s a lot of great football players that just don’t have, the personality to go with it or to. Be engaging enough to, to make that connection with the fans.
Alison Brown: And with Olympic athletes, they’re not getting a salary really, you know, it’s not like with football and baseball, you can just be great and earn millions because that’s going to be your salary.
But with Olympic athletes, it’s all sponsors and endorsements, and it’s all about selling yourself. And what an awful position all these kids are in. To have to do that, along with the training, along with, now you have to, and now, Claressa Shields didn’t have to deal with the social media aspects of it, because it really didn’t exist at the time.
Jill Jaracz: No, that was really the beginning of social media coming into play, and how was this going to affect everything? We didn’t really know at the time.
Alison Brown: And how you have to be an Olympic athlete and a content creator.
Yuck! Yuck! And some people are very good at that and some people are not. And being great at what you do is not enough. But that’s nothing new. I mean, it’s not like this is coming out with They did a good job of telling us something we already knew.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. In a
Alison Brown: way.
Jill Jaracz: And, and I would say that one other element of this movie that made it tough for me to say, oh, this is an amazing movie is that it didn’t necessarily know what story to tell.
We had, here’s the story of Claressa Shields. And then we started to get the, oh, women have to look a certain way. And then we started to get the, oh, women don’t make the same money as men. Like, from USA Boxing, the stipend was not the same, and at the end, Claressa is fighting for that and gets it, but it sounds like she has been doing this all along, too, and we don’t really get that, Insert here and there of it’s not fair.
And we, I honestly didn’t know she was in the movie. Obviously I know as a podcaster, she had to be getting a stipend from USA boxing before the games because she was a USA boxer,
Alison Brown: right? She was officially on the national team. Yeah.
Jill Jaracz: When you’re officially on the national team, you do get a stipend, but we didn’t see how that affected her in any way.
And then all of a sudden there’s this, well, you know, women don’t make equal money. I got to make equal money. And it felt very forced at the end. And I think that was kind of a bigger part of Claressa’s personality more throughout that whole teenage time than we were able to see in the movie. And I think, you know, taking out a training montage or taking it and making that prom montage shorter would have helped be able to put in a second of.
Here’s your stipend from USA Boxing or now you’re on the national team. Here’s your stipend and you find out it’s not the same
Alison Brown: You know, it’s hard when we seem I think for us when we see movies like this because we fill in the blanks ourselves. Like that didn’t even strike me because I think I just, in the back of my head, my background knowledge comes into play a lot of times when we’re watching these sports movies where I say to myself, I know this piece.
No, I did not know her story. At all. I had not heard of her before. I had not seen her fight. I generally don’t watch much Olympic boxing. So certainly not back in 2012 at all. But that a teenager. Like that NBC wouldn’t have just glommed on to this.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah, and, and I remember the fact that women were boxing in the Olympics to be a bigger thing than what it felt like in the movie.
Right?
Alison Brown: Can we talk though, before we get on that, about her absolutely perfect nickname?
Because she had short arms, so they called her T Rex,
Jill Jaracz: which I loved.
Alison Brown: Like that is amazing. What’s really funny, though, is the actress, speaking of short. Because I’ve seen the pictures, obviously, of Claressa. Claressa Shields is much taller than Destiny, so their body types were, were somewhat different.
But the way they were able to make that work, and make her look like a boxer was, that actress worked incredibly hard.
Jill Jaracz: Yes.
Alison Brown: To look for real.
Jill Jaracz: And, and she did her own boxing scenes.
Alison Brown: She did.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah, so she did all the training. She, the, the started filming in, I believe, 2020. Yes. Stopped and picked up again, 2022.
So she trained twice and got into boxing shape, which is not easy because I have tried that and they had real boxers as the fighters. So, you know, she was doing, doing the work and Rachel Morrison, the director also took boxing lessons. But yeah, the, the fighting in this, The movie was really good. All, everybody looked really good. It’s a quality movie. It’s a quality movie. Like Race was a quality movie.
Alison Brown: Yes. the way they handled other than the montages, which were like, okay, can we not, but the way they filmed the sport itself felt very respectful to the sport.
Like they weren’t trying to trick me into thinking this person didn’t know what they were doing. So I didn’t realize that she had done her own. Boxing. But I’m not surprised because they didn’t do the quick cuts. They didn’t do the, Oh, I’m going to show you just the hand. I felt like I was watching an actual boxing match.
Jill Jaracz: Yes. And that made it feel more real and you could connect better. I felt more connected to her. With that, accuracy and that attention to detail and everybody’s commitment to show the sport as a real sport.
How accurate is “The Fire Inside”?
Alison Brown: So speaking of accuracy, you did some checks. And how accurate this was.
Jill Jaracz: Yes, uhClaressasa herself told ESPN it was really accurate. Another website called MovieWeb noted that there are two little bits that stray from the truth. The first one was, uh, Her supporters faith in her to win in London because in China, she did not do well. She did not do as well as she expected to, and she was the very last person to sneak into the games and her weight class.
And so, uh, even though in the movie, it’s like, we got this, we got this. People didn’t really believe in her then. The other scene that was pretty much made up for the movie was near the end She tries to pawn her gold medal to get money for her family. And then her mom comes in and says no you don’t do that That was pretty much made up.
Alison Brown: Yeah, I had read what actually happened was she was gonna throw it away She went to throw it in the river
Jill Jaracz: Oh, really?
Alison Brown: Yeah, that she was so disheartened by what happened after, which also could have worked.
Jill Jaracz: Right.
Alison Brown: As, as a scene, though, I think the pawning goes back to reminding, you know, kind of hitting that over the head a little bit.
Like she got no money from this medal. The only way she could get money is to actually sell the medal. Almost throwing it in the river felt, even though it was true, I could see that in a movie just feeling like, Oh no, no, don’t do that. Like, so cinematic that it was, it felt false.
Jill Jaracz: Right, right. And then I would have been going even more, no don’t throw it in the river, the river’s gonna get, the river’s too polluted.
Alison Brown: I know, it’s gonna corrode it like the Paris 2024 bronze medals are all falling apart. And they haven’t even hit the Flint River.
Final thoughts on “The Fire Inside”
Jill Jaracz: Oh, well, any final thoughts?
Alison Brown: Can I see, Brian Tyree Henry in everything now? Can he just be in every movie I watch?
Jill Jaracz: Really good. And, and, Destiny Ryan was really good too.
Alison Brown: So good. So good.
Jill Jaracz: So yes, acting wise, very good movie. Cinematographically,
Alison Brown: Gorgeous.
Jill Jaracz: Because Morrison is also a cinematographer, it’s her directorial debut. Really well shot, really well written, um, it’s, I don’t want to say jarring, but it’s a little
biopic of somebody who is currently 29 years old.
Alison Brown: Right. Well, when you win a gold medal at 17, you’ve done a lot.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah, yeah. So it’s interesting. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. I was just gonna
Alison Brown: say, and it’s that one little chunk of her life.
Jill Jaracz: Yes. So it’s interesting how anybody’s story could be told at any time. so we do still have the chance to follow Claressa.
She is still fighting. And I think she’s going to fight for, She plans on fighting for like eight or nine more years. She wants to, to retire in her late thirties. As long as she’s not fighting me. Well, let’s hear what producer Ben had to say. we were driving on the way home from the movie theater to do this debrief.
Producer Ben weighs in on “The Fire Inside”
Jill Jaracz: All right, producer Ben, The Fire Inside. What did you think?
Ben Jackson: So I thought it was an entertaining movie. I thought they did a decent job when you know the outcome of building some tension. so movie wise. I thought it was okay. I thought it was not a bad movie, but the thing that I, I wanted that wasn’t in the movie was I wanted to know what Claressa Shields was thinking. I felt like she was a bit of a cypher. Because I felt like she’s always there but she was kind of this mystery, like what was she thinking? How did she get through all of these things? How did she kind of manage? Because it was always just, I’m okay, right? And there had to have been something.
That’s what I kind of She had
Jill Jaracz: nobody to confide in, or they didn’t, you know, you would think that she’d be confiding in her coach, or that’s, that’s what that device would be in a storytelling sense. But yeah, you’re right. She didn’t have,
Ben Jackson: it was almost like she didn’t have feelings. It was just, she was a boxing machine and I don’t know, maybe that was how she coped with everything was she became a boxing machine, but that’s what I.
I wanted to know and I also would like to know how much truth there was to, was the USA boxing coach really that incompetent that it was just like, I’m going to give you the most bland advice. I don’t feel like that would have been the case, but I know that they had to make her coach. the other thing was there was a lot of, we’re just going to kind of talk about this, but slide past it.
Do I really think that Claressa Shields made one phone call and suddenly the women boxers got parody? What? Like, come on now, that was a little bit more complicated than that. That was a little bit harder. Like, there had to have been something more that happened.
Jill Jaracz: That’s where I think the movie, I don’t want to say failed, because it was kind of entertaining.
It was a biopic, and it was uplifting in a way, but I think it didn’t know what story it wanted to tell, or tried to tell. Tell too many stories. Are we telling the story of a down and out person who comes from, really hard circumstances and overcomes that to achieve Olympic glory? Are we telling the story of, uh, women don’t get equal pay?
Are we telling the story of small sports? Don’t get the same recognition as big sports? that’s where I think we, you know, there and, and her being, I, I like the cipher analogy. Her not. Letting us too much into her world meant that we didn’t know what was important to her and we just saw like, Oh, somebody else got the Wheaties box.
Somebody else got the recognition
Ben Jackson: Yeah, the one thing that I thought was really interesting was they did talk about the fact that just because you won an Olympic gold medal doesn’t mean your life is suddenly easy.
I thought that that was a good thing, but
I had a lot of questions. It’s about how her life went and how, how did she like feed herself in those early days and, and you know, they show her feeding her, her brother and sister with the snacks that she took from the boxing tournament and that kind of thing. And I just wonder, they kind of imply at some point that like her mother.
somewhat straightened out? Like how did she and her mother reconcile after, after that party for example?
Jill Jaracz: Yeah, yeah.
Ben Jackson: There were just things where we’re just gonna, we’re gonna go past that. We’re not, you know. And I realize that they’ve only got a two hour movie to do this all in, but.
Jill Jaracz: You know, I’m gonna say this.
Having listened to On Fire with Jeff Probst, the official Survivor podcast, they had a question from somebody. who talked about, Hey, you don’t say any more this certain line about how the voting works. the votes, immediate, the person will be asked to leave tribal council immediately, blah, blah, blah.
And he goes, we don’t have the time for that anymore. In the beginning, I had to tell people how the game worked, but now every second counts. And that’s like, that you could be doing something better to forward the story. And I thought there were a lot of moments in here that didn’t forward whatever story they were going to tell.
And maybe that’s why we got kind of muddled messages on things. And not complete stories or really digging into the hard stuff. The harder stuff that was in Claressa’s life.
Ben Jackson: Yeah, I guess I didn’t need a training montage. I know it’s a boxing movie. But I didn’t need a training montage. I
Jill Jaracz: didn’t need a prom montage.
Ben Jackson: Yeah, that, that was a little strange too. But I I felt like some of that was We’re a boxing movie. Okay, where’s our montage? She’s got to be running and have the kids follow her. You know, we didn’t, I don’t think I wanted that as much as I wanted to know, like you say, who she was, how she managed these things in her life. that kind of thing.
I mean, and, and I’d like to know again, right. All of a sudden she’s going to train at USA boxing. Well, why is she? A, apparently the coaches were no good, right? And B, she’s still abandoning her family, whether she got 000. So, what was her thinking behind that decision?
Jill Jaracz: Yeah, yeah, we didn’t get that insight.
It was just all of a sudden, like, oh, I woke up from prom, and I gotta go to the USA Training Center.
Ben Jackson: Yeah, yeah, that’s, you know, if anything
the movie left me wanting a lot more. That, that’s what I would say about
the movie as a whole, was I wanted to.
They also hinted that the coach somewhere along the line was a talented boxer who almost made it. And they show him wild fight. Well, okay, but what happened? Like, am I supposed to Google what happened? Like, why didn’t, was he an Olympic contender at some point? I don’t know. You have to tell me. You have to show me that.
So overall, I’d say it was a solid three star movie.
The Fire Inside: Our verdict
Jill Jaracz: So there you have it. Final thoughts.
Alison Brown: Watch it, maybe wait on video.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah, I would wait for, for streaming, video, something like that. It’s, it’s a good quality movie. If you liked Race, I think you would like this movie a lot. It’s a interesting story and a very, very different look on, an athlete’s career or an athlete’s, uh, at where an athlete comes from.
And, interesting. Not the world’s best movie, but a good movie.
Alison Brown: Sports movie makers, end the montage madness.
Jill Jaracz: Well, we will see. Hopefully, we’ll be able to see September 5th at some point.
Alison Brown: Maybe it’ll be September before we can see September 5th. So this is the movie about the, terrorist attacks in Munich 1972. It came out officially on Christmas, but on a very, very limited release. As in nothing within like a hundred miles of me.
And I think you as well had that.
Jill Jaracz: Farther.
Alison Brown: You know, it was kind of a New York, LA. So we’re hoping that as we get closer through awards season, that it will actually get a wider release and we’ll get to take a look at it. Cause I love Munich movies. I do love Munich movies. That’s interesting.
Jill Jaracz: Interesting.
And, uh, listener Jennifer has seen it mentioned in our Facebook group that, uh, she got to see it on a preview and, she said that was a movie that, uh, you did not have to pay for your entire seat. You only use the Edge. So I am excited to see that movie.
Hopefully we’ll get to see that soon. If you have seen, , the Fire Inside, let us know what you think. You can hit us up in the Facebook group. Keep The Flame Alive Podcast, or you can drop us an email at Flame Alive pod@gmail.com.
We’re nominated for a Sports Podcast Award-Vote now!
Alison Brown: And speaking of award season.
Jill Jaracz: It is sports podcast award season and we are nominated for the best Olympics and Paralympics podcast. We did a lot of work last year.
Alison Brown: We did a lot of shows last year.
Jill Jaracz: A lot of shows last year. You talk about, uh, that post Olympic depression that athletes have.
When I saw how much work we put into last year, I, I got really, really down. Got a, you had a
Alison Brown: moment?
Jill Jaracz: I, a long moment, like a multi week moment. Hopefully you enjoyed our coverage last year and we worked really hard to put together interesting shows and get a wide variety of athletes to talk to and bring you what it was like to be at Paris.
and we’re one of the few, if not only podcast who was able to podcast from Paris 2024 directly and give you that insight. Insider access, so it would be great to get that recognition. Please vote for us. Uh, the last chance to vote is Monday, January 13th. The link is at sportspodcastgroup. com and we will also have that in the show notes.
Paris 2024 News
Jill Jaracz: Bonjour! Bonjour!
Alison Brown: Speaking of Paris, we are back to Paris with some updates.
Jill Jaracz: Right. We are still getting some updates in from Paris 2024. Some good news on their plan to reduce plastic use. Maria Rachel of Packaging Dive reported that the Games cut single use plastic bottles by 70 percent versus London 2012.
Also, 79 percent of waste from operations. part of that was that water fountains helped and people could bring your own water bottle. , so there ended up being a lower volume of beverages served in Paris versus London. I guess the BYO water bottle helped and, uh, no booze that came to my mind too. I’m like, Oh yeah, they didn’t serve any booze.
so I’m guessing people didn’t buy beverages as much as they used to, uh, survey suggested that 80 percent of people brought water bottles into venues. the ocean conservation non profit Oceana said that Paris 2024 was the largest sporting event ever to use reusable cups, but notice they basically poured from plastic bottles into the cups.
I think the recycle capture just happened to work a little bit better.
Alison Brown: You really need to have fountains if you’re going to use reusable cups to make A real dent in that kind of use of plastic.
Jill Jaracz: Exactly. And Europe is not a fountain place. They just don’t have the infrastructure for that in a lot of places.
Alison Brown: And you know, there is nothing better than Diet Coke from a fountain. I know, with ice. But it’s got to have ice in a straw. Yes. Also, not happening in Paris.
Jill Jaracz: Um, will Milan Cortina do something similar? They’re not making any promises.
Alison Brown: Well, to be fair, I think there’s a lot less beverages purchased, period, because you’re not hot.
Jill Jaracz: Right. So, but you would be looking for a hot beverage, which could come in a different kind of cup than plastic.
Alison Brown: A very small espresso cup. Right. Very little cup, so not much waste.
Jill Jaracz: But they do plan to have some kind of sustainability measures at the next Winter Olympics. But also I noticed on Packaging Dive, on the reusable cup front, the Chicago Bears.
An NFL football team did a pilot this season for using reusable cups in like one of their premier hospitality venues that still had like several thousand people in it using reusable cups. So maybe this program will come to a venue near you. And America is changing. knows what a fountain drink is and has mostly fountain drinks.
Alison Brown: Love a good fountain drink.
Jill Jaracz: Also, we’ve got some initial financial reporting coming in from Paris 2024. Le Monde reports that there is a 26. 8 million euro surplus. Ding, ding, ding. I know. that’s thanks to strong ticket sales. Total revenue is coming in at 4. 48 billion euro. Costs are 4. 453 billion euro.
So, revenue was like 19 percent higher than they projected, but costs were also increased. No, it’s 16 percent higher. That was almost 18 percent higher than projections.
Alison Brown: But that 1 percent is what’s going to make the difference.
Jill Jaracz: That is and they got a surplus. The, budget projections did not include funding for state projects or it did not include state funding for the building projects.
That accounting was put under a government subsidy. They had a 3. 2 euro budget for that. That budget covered everything, so they did not need initial public support for that funding. Uh, so we’ve got a budget surplus. Hooray! That’s going to be split up with 60 percent going to sport programs in France, 20 percent to the French National Olympic Committee, and then 20 percent to the IOC.
That’s crazy. Also, we have to say, au revoir to Tony Estanguet. We will never say au revoir to Tony Estanguet. No, I, I came across some pictures of the, uh, Paralympics press conference that we went to with, where he was like three feet away from us.
Alison Brown: Where I fell in love with him. I was like, oh my God, this man is absolutely magnetic.
I understand how an entire country just went along with whatever he said.
Jill Jaracz: So he has, uh, exited the committee as operations continue to wind down.
Milano Cortina 2026 News
Alison Brown: Buongiorno!
Jill Jaracz: Buongiorno! We’ve got a little bit of news from Lake, um, I almost said Lake Placid 2026.
Alison Brown: Well, you know what? It may be Lake Placid 2026.
Jill Jaracz: So, uh, for news for Milan Cortina 2026, Lake Placid is the official plan B. for the Milan Cortina sliding site. Lake Placid is in targeted dialogue with the IOC to set up plans in case the new Cortina sliding center construction is not finished and passes inspecting, passes inspections and tests in time.
And we don’t have much time. Uh, most of that work has to be done by March, I believe. And the track has to go through homogulations, which I believe is. Official testing is a big
Alison Brown: word for Elmo.
Jill Jaracz: What, what was that word? I believe it’s some kind of testing and certification process, but that’s what it sounds like to me.
Uh, according to ESPN, it is not clear if sliders will be able to test the track in March. That’s a big touch point date. Uh, it’s worth noting that the Bobsled and Skeleton World Championships are in Lake Placid this year, so the tracks are indeed ready for that kind of competition. So we shall see what happens.
We’re trying to get some, uh, word on the ground of what’s going on in Cortina. We’re hearing that construction is moving along, but, I’m not surprised that Plan B got, is forming.
Alison Brown: No lo so.
Jill Jaracz: It is also the last chance to sign up for the first ticket draw.
Alison Brown: Lottery takes place in January, and the tickets will start being available in February. Don’t ask me what day, because this website, the ticketing website doesn’t give specific dates. days. But how this draw is going to work is that you will get a 48 hour window in February to be able to purchase tickets.
Jill Jaracz: So very similar to the French process. Yes.
If you are signed up for the ticket lottery or plan to go to Milan, let us know. Cause I mean, we have not heard much buzz about people wanting to go to Milan Cortina as much as we heard about people wanting to go to Paris. it’s in the middle of winter. So if you’re in school or have a school related job, you’re in school.
I also wonder, I’m also curious if the fact that these games are so spread out is causing lack of interest or would cause lack of interest because you don’t know where the best Olympic
Alison Brown: field is going to be. And I think people had this idea of, we’ll go to Paris, even though some of the venues were very spread out and were all over the place and you couldn’t stay in one place and not have a longish ride, but it also wasn’t four hour drive up the mountain.
And you take your life in your hands. So, I mean, the Winter Olympics is always going to have less buzz, fewer people are interested, the sports are smaller, but Milan is hardly, , uh, city people don’t want to visit.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. One would think. But maybe
Alison Brown: not in winter.
Jill Jaracz: What do I think?
TKFLASTAN News
Alison Brown: Welcome to Shookfluston.
Jill Jaracz: It is the time of the show where we check in with our team, Keep the Flame Alive. These are past guests and listeners of the show who make up our citizenship of our very own country, Shookfluston. First
Alison Brown: up. Bree Walker finished fifth at the most recent Manobob World Cup race in Winterberg, Germany.
She will race in San Maritz this weekend.
Jill Jaracz: Ellen Geddes was named to the first official U. S. parafencing national team and won gold in the Women’s Wheelchair Sabre at the North American Cup event in Kansas City. I was really excited to see that USA Fencing now has a national parafencing team. Big step forward.
Alison Brown: Also means there’ll be money. Louise Sugden was elected to the Paralympics GB Athlete Commission.
Jill Jaracz: Yay. And Millie Tapper has retired from competitive table tennis, but she is not going far. Look for her in the coaches box.
Alison Brown: And Clare Egan, our absolute favorite biathlete of all time, has moved to Washington DC.
She posted a really beautiful kind of farewell to upstate New York.
Jill Jaracz: Yes. And then she got to post a video of her skiing around the monuments of Washington, D. C. in her national team uniform, which was also very, very cool.
Alison Brown: Enjoy your new home, Clare. Yes.
Get in touch and sign up for our newsletter
Jill Jaracz: And that is going to do it for this episode. Let us know your thoughts on The Fire Inside.
Alison Brown: And we do love hearing from you. You can chat with us and other listeners on our Facebook group. Keep the Flame Alive Podcast. Email us at Flame Alive pod@gmail.com. You can send us a voicemail or a text at 2 0 8 3 5 2 6 3 4 8. That’s 2 0 8. Flame it and if you need more Olympics and Paralympics in your life and who doesn’t be sure to sign up for our newsletter@flamelivepod.com.
We’ll have a link to that in the show notes
Jill Jaracz: and, and. Do get that newsletter, because every week when I get it, because I never know what you’re going to write, it’s always like the coolest story.
Alison Brown: I never know what I’m going to write,
Jill Jaracz: so it’s kind of a surprise to all of us. But it’s always cool and always a good read, so you’ll definitely want that, and it has other links to other news going on, so be sure to keep up that way as well.
Coming soon
Jill Jaracz: Next week. You know, it starts
Alison Brown: Sydney 2000. I just wrote mine yesterday. I’m so excited to share this with everybody.
Jill Jaracz: I wrote mine last night too. Oh, it’s going to be great. What a great year. our history moment shows we’ll focus on Sydney 2000 this year. It is the 25th anniversary of those games. So many stories.
It was called The Best Games Ever by then president Juan Antonio Samaranch. We are digging in to see if that is really true and what we remember from these games. So be sure to tune in for that. Thank you so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive.