Headshot of Pascal Wattiaux, expert in Olympic technology.

Olympic Technology with Pascal Wattiaux

Release Date: June 19, 2025

Category: International Olympic Committee | Olympics | Podcast | Technology

While athletes continually strive to go faster, higher and stronger at the Olympics, technology is also an area of the Games that continually pushes the envelope. On this episode, we talk Olympic technology with Pascal Wattiaux, IT Consultant and former Director of Technology at the International Olympic Committee. He got his start with Olympics technology at Albertville 1992, and most recently he consulted with Paris 2024. He’s seen massive amounts of change in technology used at the Olympics–and what it takes to deliver it. He tells us all about the tech challenges of an Olympics, particularly the important elements that the public doesn’t generally see.

We take a lot of sports technology for granted, but there was a time when there was no social media, satellite TV (heck, even color TV was an amazing breakthrough), or even sports radio.

The Olympics has long been a showcase for sports technology, starting with the very first Olympics at Athens in 1896. The technology then? Stopwatches!

Since then, advances in Olympic technology have included (but are not limited to):

  • Chronophotography (Paris 1900)
  • First instance of photo-finish cameras, timing to the tenth of a secondand electronic scoreboards (Stockholm 1912). The photo-finish system was used in the men’s 1500m final
  • Radio broadcasts (Paris 1924)
  • Timing to one-hundredth of a second (LA 1932) LA also employed a different kind of photo-finish camera system that was used in the men’s 100m sprint–to much controversy.
  • Closed-circuit television (Berlin 1936)
  • Telex transmission of results (Berlin 1936)
  • Over-the-air television (London 1948)
  • Instant replay (Winter Games 1960)
  • Worldwide television (Rome 1960)
  • Satellite television and first use of computerized statistics (Tokyo 1964)
  • Electronic timers moved from a backup system (began in 1912) to the primary timing method (Mexico City 1968)
  • Real-time electronic scoreboards (Montreal 1976)
  • First Games website (Atlanta 1996)
  • Hi-def television, streaming and Wi-Fi for journalists (Beijing 2008)
  • Social media (Vancouver 2010)
  • Live 3-D (London 2012)
  • Cloud technology, drone-supplied aerial footage (Rio 2016)
  • 5G communications (Tokyo 2020)

After working with Albertville 1992 on its technology implementations, Pascal took a role as the International Olympic Committee’s first Technology Director. He tells us where the IOC was in terms of tech before he came on board and what he did to ensure sound technology delivery going forward. Given how important technology is to the Olympic movement today, the work Pascal did was vital to creating the proper environment for future innovation.

Pascal has been part of these Olympic technology advancements, continually pushing the envelope. However, the Games are on a timeline, so there’s also a point where you can no longer implement new technology. He talks about that demarcation line and how organizing committees make their final decisions around technology innovation.

Also on this week’s episode, the big news from Milano-Cortina 2026 is that the ice hockey groups and schedules are out. Who from the NHL has already been named to the men’s teams? How tough is the women’s Group A? We have some answers!

If you want to see the US and Canadian women battle it out ahead of the Games, check out the Rivalry series this fall. The teams will face off in Cleveland and Buffalo in November 2025, and then head to Canada in December for two more games.

In World Games news, it’s only 50 days until Chengdu 2025, and the organizing committee has announced its medal design. We’ve never seen anything like them! They’re shaped like a panda, with a bamboo motif and a hibiscus motif. They’re definitely one-of-a-kind, and they make host city Chengdu instantly recognizable. What we didn’t know from the press release is that the front also opens up! Check it out:

TKFLASTAN has been busy this week! We have updates from our Team Keep the Flame Alive members:

 


Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive!

Photo: courtesy of Pascal Wattiaux

 

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.

396-Olympic Technology with Pascal Wattiaux

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. I am your host, Jill Jaracz, joined as always by my lovely co-host, Alison Brown. Alison, hello, how are you?

Alison Brown: I am in excellent health. I had my physical this week. Excellent. But more importantly, I found out that my doctor is a pretty serious veteran fencer. Oh, really?

And I told her, I, I told her I was friends with Phil Andrews, and I got such points with my doc. Oh. I was like, yeah, I have his number in my phone. So Phil Andrews, thanks for letting me impress my doctor. Very cool though. That’s, that’s always fun. You know, it’s so funny how the show kind of brings people out.

You know, they, they say things you wouldn’t expect. What, what weapon does your doctor fence? Uh, she used to do foil and now does epie.

Jill Jaracz: Okay. Very nice.

Alison Brown: Very, that was my first question to her too. And she got this look on her face like, oh, you actually do know what you’re talking about. I said, yes, I do. I interviewed the entire American Olympic team, but trust me, I am not picking up a, a foil or an epie or a saver.

I will poke your eye out.

Jill Jaracz: Because just because you are in excellent health does not mean you have excellent coordination. Uh, yeah. Correct.

Alison Brown: And we know I’ve already burnt myself making cookies. So as I said to the, uh, American team, several of them offered to let me handle their weapon.

And I said, no, you’re going to the Olympics. I don’t wanna poke you in the eye by mistake. ’cause I definitely wouldn’t defeat you. Let’s just, I’m not that. Uh, proud of myself, but I am such a klutz.

400th Show Party

Jill Jaracz: Well, what else is excellent and not klutzy is the fact that we are coming up on episode 400.

Alison Brown: I’m so excited for this live event.

Yes. And now I know I’m in excellent health so that I’ll survive until next month.

Jill Jaracz: Well, we are having a party, an online party for episode 400. It will be on Monday, July 14th at eight. PM Eastern and we’ll go for about two hours. So we’re just having it like party conversation, stop by, chat for a bit. Head on out, say hello to fellow Shuk, Ani.

And uh, we’ll celebrate being 400 episodes, regular episodes, not including Olympic episodes and Paralympic episodes. but we will be celebrating with, I don’t know, party hats.

Alison Brown: Well, I had an idea for a cocktail. Did for, for this party? Did I think it needs to involve Fireball in some way.

Well, which is the most disgusting liquor ever created. But I, I think if someone can come up with the Shuk Ani cocktail, it, it should probably involve Fireball.

Jill Jaracz: Uh, you know, I can’t disagree with you. It’s either that or something flaming. I was just gonna say, we could light it on fire. Not in my house. You wanna talk about Clutz?

I’m not burning anything in my house.

Alison Brown: Well, please come up with a flaming cocktail for our 400th episode party. We’re excited to talk to you.

Jill Jaracz: Right, and And I would suggest maybe a flaming mocktail you could light some sage on fire. Smell nice. You could light lavender, a rosemary on fire.

There’s

Alison Brown: so many Get up foods that we could, that we could fondue. So you have the little fire pot. Very

Jill Jaracz: nice little s’mores action. Yes. Well, you know. It’s BYO everything, friends. So, but we do wanna see you come on out July 14th, eight to 10:00 PM You can find the uur L to link to it’s tiny url.com/ 400, the number 400 party.

That’s tiny url.com/ 400 party, and we will see you there.

Interview: Pascal Wattiaux on Olympic Technology

Jill Jaracz: Today, I’m excited about today’s conversation.

Alison Brown: You were so excited about this interview. You were excited when we booked it. You were excited when you told me about it.

Jill Jaracz: Well, we are talking technology at the Olympics and I, it did a a little bit of research to see how long sport technology has been part of the games ever since Athens 1896, because that was when they used the newly invented stopwatch.

Two time athletes automatically. Uh, since then, technology has obviously become more important to the Olympics, both on the competition side and in the delivery of the games, but there’s gotta be a team behind that to make it all happen. Our guest this week, is it consultant Pascal EO, who worked on.

Olympic technology starting at Albertville 1992. He was the IOCs Director of technology for a few years, and he also consulted on London 2012 and Paris 2024. He tells us all about the tech challenges of an Olympics, and there is so much more than you may have ever, ever realized. Take a listen.

Pascal, can you introduce yourself, please?

Pascal Wattiaux: Yeah, so I’m, Pascal Wattieu. I mean, obviously from my accent, you can guess I’m French. I’ve worked on the games now since, uh, 1988 that was at the time of the preparation of the Winter Olympics 92 in France.

Uh, since then I’ve been working with organizing committees, with suppliers, at the IUC for a little while, on the media side as well. And most lately, I was working on Paris 24.

How Pascal got involved with sports technology

Jill Jaracz: So technology, when and how did you get involved with IT for sporting events?

Pascal Wattiaux: that was in, uh, 1988, I’m an IT and telecom engineer by trade. I was then working with, a service company in I. T. And, back in January 88. I was a manager there. I was asked to work on, uh, the response to a tender published by the organizing committee off. I’ll be happy in 92.

and in the end, we we won the tender with almost everything we wanted to have. And, uh, I started to work, in Albertville from, uh, June 88, basically, at the time it was very focused on IT, meaning we won a tender, which was essentially focused on various information system required for the games.

and then from there later on, I worked in Lillehammer, you may remember that 92 was the last time that the winter games and the summer games were on the same year. And because the winter games are, I wouldn’t say they are easier, but they are smaller, so the, the, it’s the winter games, which had to, engage into a shorter time to deliver.

The next game. And so we had the winter games in 92. And then again, the winter games 94 at the time, there was not yet any, multi edition of the game sponsors, you know, that’s that started with Atlanta 96. There was not yet any, formal, transfer of knowledge process handled by the IUC.

But, the organizing committee of Lillehammer approached The organizing committee of Albertville, and they had a deal, which meant that on my side, being on the supplier side, they asked me to include some people from Norway in my team in Albertville for the last, I think it was about the last five, six months.

Including the games, and then with some of the core members of my team, we went to Norway to do the initial installation and training of the people who were going to use the systems required from the organizing committee of Algarve, and then I went back again a few months later to verify the installation to answer to the last two questions and then let them work.

So that was that was really the beginning for me. then later on, I mean, in, uh, in 96, basically. little piece of work for a consulting company at the IUC, I was approached by the IUC to be the, at the time, first director of technology, in a sense, first, in a sense that before they had a manager of IT for the IUC, for the internal needs of the IUC and of the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, but they had nobody, the IUC was not really looking, if you want, at the technology delivery on the games.

they thought they needed to change that. And I was approached, to do that. I was in Atlanta as an observer. as you know, the, at the time of the games. It’s also a good time to meet everybody because all the IOC members are there, all the team of the IOC are there, the Federation are there, the next organizing committees are there. So that’s when I first met the people from Sydney, and also from Nagano because there was Nagano 98 in Japan. well, Atlanta was a bit difficult from a technology perspective. I mean, there was no, there was nothing catastrophic, but there was, there was some very serious difficulty. And so very quickly, I went back, finished my, very short vacation, moved to Lausanne with, with my family, and then very quickly entered, uh, basically a deep debrief.

Of Atlanta, discussion, including with the Earth broadcaster, with the media, the media were quite impacted, uh, in Atlanta in a, in a, in a negative way, and, uh, and discussion with, with Nagano and Sydney about how to, uh, basically, uh, reorganize the, the process and make sure that We’re not going to face the same type of changes that they had seen because they were there as an observer as well as they had seen in Atlanta.

So that was quite intense. It was also the opening of that, position at the IUC, so quickly I, I, I had somebody to take care of the IUC internal IT needs, but I had to create and, and, uh, start stuffing a little bit what we, the IUC wanted to do to help on the games, starting also some processes, which some of them did.

Technology processes at the Olympics

Pascal Wattiaux: The technology has changed dramatically, of course, since then. Nobody wants to use the technology from that time. But some processes are still there. You know, one well known process is called ORIS, which is There’s nothing magic about ORIS. It stands for Olympic Results and Information Systems. It’s not a system per se, it’s, it’s basically the gathering with the, what I would call the permanent member of the, Olympic family on the games, the gathering of their requirements for the games.

So it means having the IUC there, the representative of the key representative of the media and discipline by discipline, sport by sport, the representative of the sport of the International Federation. In order to put on paper, what is it that they would like to do at a macro level process, not, not, not with any, direction in terms of the detailed technology, but their requirements, what it is that they want, what is the response time they want, the, know, how fast the results come, should come out and all that.

It’s absolutely normal, anybody doing any sort of IT in any sort of company, you are asking for the requirements. But there was nothing like that on the games and before that, it was left to the organizing committee. To find out progressively how to do that. And it was, it was sort of almost weird in a sense that the organizing committee was the only new and temporary actor in delivering the games.

While the IUC is permanent, the IEF are basically permanent and the media are almost permanent. But they were not saying anything. Nothing was written in paper. You couldn’t have a book of requirements saying, Oh, if there is a hundred meter, I want to see this, this and that. And I want the results to be distributed to the press agencies in that form.

And within X number of seconds or minutes or and on and on. There was nothing like that. And, and, and I was not the owner of that. There was the, the IUC at the views that they needed to do that in Atlanta. They did what I would call the, proof of concept o of the value of that with one federation, but not with any of the other ones.

And when I came and I said, and the effect is there were a number of problems with, some of the systems around results in, in Atlanta. Again, no. no major issue in the sense that there’s no competition that to be rerun or postponed because of that. But there were some serious problems, especially for, for, for the media.

basically I said at the time you, you, you started that. let’s do that systematically for each discipline. I got initially the approval from the executive board of the IUC, the president of the executive board of the IUC to do that for the winter games in Nagano. That was quite urgent because Atlanta to Nagano, there’s only 18 months.

that’s fast. And, uh, and then based on the fact that the, uh, including during the test events in Nagano, which were, well, basically the winter, following Atlanta, a lot of people saw the value of that. So the, then I got also the okay to start that for Sydney and for, for all the summer Federation, which obviously is a, is a lot more work, more difficult because there are.

Many more federation on the, on the summer games and on the winter games, uh, and many more disciplines. And then you need, you need a document, for each discipline of a federation. It’s very obvious if I take swimming, you obviously don’t do exactly the same thing for water polo or swimming or open water swimming or synchronized swimming or diving.

You know, There are similarities, but it’s different. What you have to do is different. it was a time also when the, the IOC started to get involved in, uh, processes to more frequently. Review and and actively help organizing committee to pass some hurdles and understand what’s there to do.

And, uh, and how is it could resolve that with some of the partners is the mix off. So called top partners, usually sign for multiple edition and local partners. and even in, in the case of, Salt Lake City, for example, and, and Athens, I was even involved in the, in helping them, to find.

The first, director of technology for the organizing committee in think like this.

Building a technology department at the International Olympic Committee

Alison Brown: So when you became Director of technology, what was your staff and budget like

Pascal Wattiaux: At the IUC? Yes, at the, at the IUC, there was nobody within the IT staff of the IUC, with an experience of the games. I mean, they, they had, they had been to the games, but.

As a spectator that had not been working on the games, there was one exception of one person who had been working also, and he was there a long time before I was at the AUC, who had been working in Albertville, but in Albertville, he was working on the corporate systems of the organizing committee of Albertville, so not Not anything related to the event itself, but their financial system, their HR system, and all things which are very, very important, of course, also for, for NOCOG and of course for the IUC.

So the team had to be built from scratch on that side and with, I would say usual approach of the IUC. They said, well, basically they, they hired me initially because they, I think they were already, thinking that there was going to be some problems. In Atlanta, and that they should change, after a little bit of a model.

then effectively, there were some problems, like I said, no major disruption, but some significant changes in Atlanta. And so they continued there, but the, the IUC model, including now, with the exception of Ausbroadcast, which, which now is included within the IUC, because OBS now is a subsidiary of the IUC, which was not the case in the past, it was not the case in Sydney and Salt Lake and all that.

It started a little bit, they acquired basically the company, uh, which was owned by somebody who was systematically winning the tender for the games. He was already there for me in, uh, Alberville and on and on. So he was systematically winning. And, uh, I think basically it was a point of time where on his side, he was, he wanted to look at, uh, What’s next and good and retire and all that.

and he sold his company to the IOC. it was 11 less step for the organizing committee because at the end, he was always coming with the best, uh, proposal for the organizing committee. And so the, the IOC took that step, which was a significant step for them to engage that and therefore to have the responsibility through OBS of the host broadcasting.

But generally speaking, the, the IUC is still on the games is still more, a franchisor a strong franchisor strong because they are bringing some of the partners, including partners with operational responsibilities. And they’re bringing, part of the budget as well, you know, with the, the, percentage of coming from both the sponsor, but also from, from the TV rights.

So they are strong sponsors, but they don’t take the responsibility to deliver. They leave it to, I mean, leave it between quote, they leave it to the organizing committee and have a program, which is every, at every edition, a bit stronger and deeper and all that, but a program to, you know, Initially to supervise, make sure that the it’s going the right way and now more and more often to help a bit more, you know, on the other side on those big events in at least in Europe, you have your own big events in the U. S. And all that. But in Europe, we’re always comparing that to the euro of U. F. A. And U. F. A. For a very long time now, They are the producer of the euro. They also have a local organizing committee, but the local organizing committee is almost only there to first liaise with the local government for security and all that, then to be a channel for, all the things related to tax and the.

that they want to facilitate and so to get the volunteers, but the local organizing committee for U. F. A. Doesn’t have any rise to put to sign any marketing contracts. They’re using the I. T. Of the of the U. F. A. And on and on. And FIFA has always been a little bit in between currently going a bit more toward which is not a surprise considering where the president, the current president of FIFA is coming from, and it’s moving that way.

You know, they, they made the change. Now they, since the second part of the preparation of the, of, the Qatar FIFA World Cup, they have now the majority of, the local organizing committee in terms of vote and all that. Well, for UFA, it’s usually at least they have at least 90%. FIFA is a bit less, but they are more, more, more present.

And the IUC is looking at whether they change a little bit the balance there. In the past, without, without any exaggeration, I would say, you know, at the time of Falderville, the IUC when first was, was a lot smaller than it is now. They almost didn’t have anybody who had delivered the games within the IUC itself.

And when they were visiting an organizing committee I mean, it was almost a, a very light. Observation. There was no, no work on, problems which the organizing committee may face and all that. Now it’s a, it’s a lot more cooperative, but they, the IOC has always been to be, has always been in a position where they Yeah, they want to be the franchisor and they want the organizing committee, local organizing committee to be the producer.

That comes also with some, uh, I would say, more positive characteristic in the concept of the games in the sense that the IUC is, and of course the hundred meter is always a hundred meter and the 10, 000 is a 10, 000 and all that, but the IUC is insisting a lot more on making sure that the games have a local flavor.

than the UEFA with Euro or FIFA with the World Cup. From my perspective, there’s always, really a sense that the, games are there. So the, the, the country is not just hosting the games. They give to the games a sense of the, the, the local culture, the, the local way of doing things and all that.

In a much stronger way than, than still exist in the, in the FIFA World Cup or the UFO, you know, just two different way. I mean, you, you know, you, you also have that with smaller events. I don’t know if you take, , formula one, you have the nature of the local track, which is shape.

But as it was in terms of organization, it’s the same organization everywhere when they come with their, with their trucks and their containers and they, when they do what they have to do, same thing with, uh, an event that I like very much that said, said GP, they, they go back and forth with their containers to do everything.

of course, the, the, there’s the local flavor related to the geography and the, and the view you can have and all that. But the. The organization is exactly the same. It’s, more like Cirque du Soleil going from one country to another to provide the same show than with the games where there’s, from a sport perspective, it is the same show.

but the, the AOC is leading a lot more to the organizing committee to do and decide.

Technology challenges at the Atlanta 1996 Olympics

Jill Jaracz: Can you talk about some of the challenges and issues that Atlanta had we know that Atlanta is a conflicting games. There were some elements that were nice, but a lot of stuff that wasn’t great with those games and organizationally. what kind of things happened in the background from an IT perspective that made it tough for the stakeholders in putting them on?

Pascal Wattiaux: I can give you one example. there, there was a promise made that, the press agencies in particular, but also the other, uh, media would get a feed. they would get all the results kind of automatically, and they should focus on the.

Editorial content. They wanted to build around now very, very quickly. It appears that the feed was not working, so all the big press agencies are to switch to say, Oh, I have a lot of editors and all that. But in fact, I need to go and get the results here and there because you know, I first of all, I need I need those results in order to build the right content and that to change quite drastically.

The organization on the fly and change the people and Completely change how they, they were planning to work because the feed was not working the feed in the same way, for a long time, the host broadcaster was at the time, not yet part of the IUC, but to let you know, it was difficult enough in the same way in terms of feed that initially the host broadcaster was refusing to work again with the same provider.

Which was impossible for the IUC because that provider had a contract until and including Sydney. So there were still two games to go, and the Earth Broadcaster was refusing to do anything with that company. Who, within their scope of work, had to deliver that. So it was, that difficult.

Jill Jaracz: Wow. Wow.

Olympic technology at Nagano 1998 and Sydney 2000

Jill Jaracz: So, when you inherit this situation, and also have to build in a department, what did you do and what kind of approach did you take to set technology in a better direction? Well, we, we, we, first of all,

Pascal Wattiaux: uh, yeah, we, we, we had to, to act quickly. I mean, I say we, it’s a global we, with the IUC, with the next organizing committees and all that.

First, with the Japanese in Nagano, because again, it was only 18 months away. after Atlanta and they were for the first time, you know, it was the first time there was a top sponsor involved. And part of that was that the, some of the key systems were supposed to go from Atlanta to Nagano, be adjusted to the winter disciplines.

And that’s it. But that’s exactly, well, a good part of it was exactly where it didn’t work well in Atlanta. So, we had, uh, from September, we had a very intense debriefing with, the stakeholders, a very comprehensive discussion with the related. partner supplier changes in the approach, to tackle Nagano, and to get everybody to agree on, on what to do in a matter of urgency for Nagano, so that at least already, during the winter, 26, 27, 2017, when we had a whole series of test events, well, we, we could get a sense that we.

We could trust that the changes that we were implementing were putting us in the right direction. as I said, that included for all sport going through the Oris process. in a, in a matter of urgency, because again, we, we wanted to have that including for the test event. So we had very little time.

There was a full reorganization with some good things and bad things, as, as always, when you reorganize, when, when people reorganize a team after significant incidents. but there was a significant reorganization of the team from the supplier working for Nagano, but with, with very good and solid, involvement from the senior management of, of that company.

And, uh, and the new trust was found with, with Nagano. It was difficult also with Sydney, you know, the, with any, uh, big contract like this, there’s a framework, which is imposed basically to the organizing committee by DIUC, but there’s the need to localize the contract.

For many, many months, Sydney was refusing to sign the localized contract. And so that, that meant having, literally tons of, meetings and negotiation and, uh, and all that, before finally forcing the, the localized contract of that supplier for Sydney was effectively signed and, and people were, I would say, uh, in a, in a better environment to work together, even if the, the work didn’t stop completely in between, but it was, it was very difficult.

And, um, that was it. So, you know, it’s a response of a crisis, crisis for the supplier because they, end of the day, they had to acknowledge that, I wouldn’t say they were, everything was wrong on their side, you know, when you have big, uh, IT projects like that, uh, falling apart, it’s, uh, So usually mistakes and at multiple level, but they, they had their responsibilities on that.

They reorganized and made sure to, to bring some additional people and, uh, and put some flows there. The IUC as well, to give you an example, you know, the, I mentioned Oris, but on top of Oris. Because people at the time for me for a little bit for which reason, but that that was the case at the time they, they were not sure that it was necessary to have people with practical experience of operating some of the key system like around results and all that.

So what we did, I got the IUC, and the supplier to agree and say, okay, on my side. I believe it is necessary. It would be good for the test event that, of course, it’s the local team working on that, but to have people if they don’t have people who have been working on World Championship or seasonal World Cup of those events and all that, if they are not part of that, let’s have systematically somebody who’s been doing that, including during the test events, Because you, you have a system and all that, but then you need to react to seeing, during your race and all that.

And, uh, we, we reached an agreement where the IUC agreed to make an investment. the supplier agreed to do an investment and we, we did 50, 50. And in fact, it was in the end, they, that was very good for everybody because. There was an understanding of why it was useful. and in the case of Sydney, the supplier took 100 percent of that additional cost because they understood that it was effectively helping a lot to have at least on each sport, somebody, not necessarily additional because in some sports they already had people who had been working on that sport, but to make sure that there was Every time on each spot on each discipline, somebody who had a top level international competition.

Operating experience of that sport because at the end of the day, well, sport is sport. There’s a lot of rules. There’s a lot of buy rules and all that. it’s not like a banking system. I’m just saying banking because the banking and insurance are still the, key areas of work of most IT companies, IT service companies.

And it’s not like that, it’s not as black and white as that. And there’s a lot of things which have to be done under the pressure of life. and then having people with the experiences is pretty good. So it was all basically a matter of maturing something, which. Which is normal, but I would say that the world of sport has often progressed that way.

they want to have the competition, to have the top athletes and all that, very good. and Unless they face the wall of a, of a major, mistake, and some drama on that side, they, under, underestimate a little bit the effort to be done on the, on the production itself.

So there was that, uh, big signal, very significant signal, uh, in Atlanta. And thanks to that, The IOC has reacted, the supplier have reacted, even the federation have reacted. You know, the, it’s only coming out of Atlanta that some federation which are extremely dependent on some ITs for their own events, started to get their, own IT manager inside their organization in order to be able at least to be a good person to discuss with the provider what has to be done, how it’s done, how they should react and all that.

Before Atlanta, very, very few International Federation had any, call it IT director or telecom director or technology director. They didn’t have that. Most of them were totally dependent on suppliers, and most of them were totally dependent on the choice of the organizer of their top event on that. So it was even further underlined.

They absolutely, most of them, they absolutely didn’t know how to, how their, events were produced from a technology perspective. So that all changed, which is good. It doesn’t mean that there’s forward to, keep enhancing all that, but it was a big change. and yeah, it’s, I think it’s a world where some changes happen all the time.

And some significant changes like that, uh, in the attitude, in the, almost the strategy, I would almost say, only came because there was, were some, Significant incidents. which could have had some very significant impact on their business.

Changes in Olympic Technology over time

Jill Jaracz: Speaking of change, I want to talk a little bit about the changes that happened technology wise throughout your career at the Olympics. And I’ll preface this by saying, I just saw the movie September 5th, which is about Munich 1972. And that was the first games with satellite TV. So when you look at your career, like.

The internet came into play a lot more, but, what kinds of big technology shifts did you see throughout at each game? The

Pascal Wattiaux: internet is one, you know, there was a very limited, almost essentially corporate website, not much more than that, in Atlanta. I would say Nagano 98 were the first games with an event oriented web presence.

And Sydney were the first summer games with Both the organizing committee. And the number of the rights owners who are in the US, especially NBC, starting to grow very big, having a very significant, web presence and of course now it’s, uh, it’s normal and all there’s even been some, you know, some, some technology which have been.

Appeared during that period and disappeared.

Yeah, I mean, you know, if you think about the fact that the, well, if you’ve seen some photo of, of Atlanta and all that, there was. For all the media, there were all the famous pigeonholes and all that, where they were receiving all the results and all that, and so there were some, basically there was a printing factory inside the main press center to deliver hundreds of thousands of pages of reports.

And, and, uh, some people, uh, running to deliver that in the stands and, uh, and in pigeonholes for the people staying to work at the MPC and all that. and there’s still some paper, but it’s reducing all the time. And obviously, at least for results, it’s, it’s, it’s almost completely on the side now.

Things like, uh, you know, in, in, in other field for, for ticketing at the time there was no ticketing system on in the world to deal with the various phases, the usual various phases of ticketing for the games, you know, there was already for the games. There was a phase during which, uh, they were selling packages where you were forced to say, Oh, I want have 10 events, but you, you were not choosing the events.

You, you had a package where you had, I don’t know, the, the men downhill and, and curling and, and all that. and there were a few put on the market. And so there was a lottery at the end. And then there was a second phase. More sport by sport and on and on until the last phase, which is more like a traditional, Stagium or theater type of ticketing where, where you, you want to buy one ticket.

You buy one ticket until the last minute. In the case of Albeville, at the time of Albeville, the last phase, of course, my team. That was one of the. The thing we want. So that’s why I mentioned it as well. But for the last phase of you see with the organizing committee, we said, Okay, well, there it’s no more theater type ticketing.

We can, buy or find, uh, find an agreement to rent a system for the period of the games to do that. For everything before we had to build that because there was there was nobody. Nobody was even interested it. There were already some, some big companies, uh, the, in the world of ticketing, but they, they were not interesting in doing that.

Now, nowadays you have a number of companies which have a system like that. and with, with a lot of sophistication, you know, the. in the FIFA World Cup, they had, at some point of time, you could buy tickets to follow your team, which is quite complex because obviously you don’t know until when they’re going to play, and depending on the first run and all that, you don’t know where they’re going to play and all this.

So now, now the a number, not, not a huge number, not every ticketing company, but there are at least three or four very significant big companies who, who are able to endure the lottery, the various schemes and all that. all, that was, was totally non, non-existent at the time. Both in, uh, Albertville and in Barcelona.

  1. It was the first time it looks old and, uh, I’m going to be like a dinosaur here, but it was, it was the introduction. Most of the systems were on mainframe, you know, with, uh, so called dump terminals. But it was the introduction, and I will have a second example after that, uh, even funnier, but it was the introduction of so called, client server type of architecture, 3T architecture and all that.

And so. Both Albertville separately because two, two different suppliers and all that. But Albertville and Barcelona did, an info 92 and system, the latest edition. Now it’s called my info, but two, four. Especially targeting the press plus the IUC members and all that to deliver, you know, the biographies of athletes and the results and all that at the time of David and Barcelona, it was basically considered as a nice to have pork.

so the, the pressure on the system was, was moderate in the sense that the, because it was a park, if something was not really going well, if the, if a PC, because there were PCs and all that, if the PCs was falling, of course, somebody was going there to repair it or, or exchange it and all that.

But there was very little pressure because it was, it was more like a demonstration of what the technology was able to do at the time. Very quickly after, I mean, right. The already in Lillehammer, obviously, Atlanta, I know that that became mandatory, mandatory service to the media and all that.

Well, no, if you arrive now, they get all that through the web and all this and. All those kiosk, are totally obsolete, means they, there are a few of them which are put there just in case somebody is going around without a laptop and without, or a tablet or a smartphone, but, it’s almost none.

You know, everybody is, is receiving that on, uh, on other devices. So that has disappeared even more for, if you want to, to, to look at that. in Alderville and in Barcelona. And that was a joint project because we did that. We had part of the suppliers were distinct, but there was a central supplier, which, which was common.

So we did that in a collaboration between Alderville and Barcelona. It was the first introduction of, Oh, a very sophisticated nowadays system. E mail. First time e mail was being used on the games. You’re, you’re impressed. I hope, I hope that you’re impressed.

Jill Jaracz: It is, it is impressive when, when I think about like, I first got e mail in college in early 1990s.

Yeah.

Pascal Wattiaux: Yeah, yeah. And at the time that there was a little bit of e mail there, very Quite almost difficult to use and all of that. So we had a system because it was going to be, again, in the end of the Olympic family, plus the journalists. We had to put in place a an easier front end, if you want, because, well, not everybody is a student at university in there.

And on and on. That, that was it, another change was, you know, in Sydney, if you look at pictures of Sydney, obviously you have the, the whole area of the, of the photographers. So you can discuss the photographers a lot of time, you know, Sydney was, I would say essentially the last.

Photograph games being photo on on photos. So which which means that at the time, at the MPC on top of the printing factory. We had a development factory, and on and on, and now, of course, it’s, it’s all, digital photos, but it’s digital photos with, with also totally completely different requirements. You know, if you take a magazine, like, uh, I know they had some problems in the last few years, but.

Like Sports Illustrated, at the times of Sydney, there were people from Sports Illustrated, they were going to Sydney, they were taking their photographs, And then after the game, they were, they were going back to the U. S. and print a special edition of Spot Illustrated from the us.

Now, even spot, even if the frequency of the magazine is not changed, they publish real time on their website. so nowadays, like in like in Sydney with Argentic, but even worse because. Now you have your, your cameras can take, uh, 15, 20 photos per second and all that. And most, most photographers nowadays, you have, I would say probably the, I don’t know the average.

It’s, that’s not scientific what I’m going to say, but from, what I’ve seen, they have an average. My average, your Pascal average of three cameras per person, of which at least two are robotized, and they may be robotized on the roof, may be robotized next to them, and they have one in their hand.

Now, you know, if you take the hundred meter, the final of the hundred meter, that’s a ten second event, more or less. The photographers are in the spot for photographers. Right from the beginning of the morning while all the time it’s usually at more or less at 8 or even later at night So they are there in the morning.

I think there are still photos from from from Sydney Where’s you you see them? there’s a little bit of fighting to because they want to keep their their space and all that And they take all those photos And maybe, I don’t know, I don’t want to be too pessimistic, but maybe four or five of them are going to make money.

No, it’s still the same. Only four or five of them are making money. And each photographer, and there are hundreds of photographers, they’re taking probably at least 40, 50 pictures a second of the, of the hundred meters. so they want to have a, a super duper, connection. The connection has changed, for a while, the They, they moved from the agen to say, I want to be connected.

And so they initially, they were among the first one to use wifi. Then wifi started to be used everywhere, so it was no longer possible to ensure them that they would have a. Good performance on it, so they asked to have, cable and fiber, fiber basically to the pitch for them, and now it’s a mix of fiber to the pitch and, uh, and a private 5G network.

Timelines for implementing technology innovation at an Olympics

Jill Jaracz: Wow, that, that gets involved then, like, especially from a cost perspective too. the needs of technology have so changed, when you think about IT innovation for games, when do you start talking about what you can you implement and when do you have to stop talking about it?

What new things you can implement, because the games has a deadline and it’s only a couple weeks long. So it’s not like you can try something new and fix it.

Pascal Wattiaux: Yeah. For each edition, that that’s a big challenge for each edition in terms that, uh, I always say that the date is the date, you know, there’s, there’s many things you can, uh, Negotiate and negotiate and all that and well, now we have the exception of Tokyo because of COVID, but everybody has understood that costing a ton of money and, uh, and probably Japan was one of the only country who could have accepted that because of their culture and what they want, what they wanted to do and all that.

So the date is the day. So within an organizing committee, you have a, you need to have a process in place to. Because everybody’s coming with tons of ideas and everybody, you know, everybody thinks that the Olympic Games, it’s not only the Olympics for the athletes, but it’s the Olympics for their own function.

So they want the best possible accommodation, the best services, the best, the best that and on and on. and you have to, to play a little bit harder and especially with, with the time because. One, it’s costing, two, there’s time, and three, there’s so much pressure on the game that, if you don’t have enough time and enough budget and all that, it probably means that you’re arriving late, it’s not tested thoroughly and all that, and the pressure on the games is such that I can tell you anything that has not been tested, you’re sure it’s going to fail.

Things which have been tested may still fail, but what has not been tested is going to fail. So if it’s core to the delivery, you have to be very, very careful. if it’s not core, it doesn’t mean that you want it to, to fail, but if it’s a service for a limited number of people, whether it’s the VIPs or this or that, you can organize, you can even communicate that, Hey, it’s a let’s do that.

And it’s not too important, but if it’s core things, which have not been tested, we’ll say, there’s just too much pressure. Too much intense intensity everywhere. And so that there’s a edition by edition. there’s always some, uh, some difficult moments where people wanted to do this and wanted to do that.

It didn’t come to fruition. It’s not finished and all that. And you have to say, no, it’s not there. The worst thing is to say, no, it’s not there. Or again, you can mitigate and say, okay, it’s going to be there, but we’re going to communicate that it’s not there as a core service. And so it’s there under lower service level.

We tell the people you can fail. They, they shouldn’t feel that they, they are sure that they’re going to have it. It may be you, we may say it’s a demonstration. I mean, we can say a number of things in a very positive way. But you know, we, you have to be very careful to say people, if they come to the games and and they are told you’re going to have that, if that is not working well enough, then you get hammered.

Literally hammered.

Attention to cybersecurity

Jill Jaracz: How much time and resources do you have to spend on cybersecurity now compared to earlier in your career?

Pascal Wattiaux: It’s, uh, it keeps growing. It keeps getting more and more expensive. It keeps getting tougher and tougher. Paris was lucky in some ways not to have to face any drastic challenge with that, but because we spend a lot in the preparation, and then there, there, there was probably some, uh, including some international context where people were doing what they wanted to do there elsewhere than, than in Paris.

So we, in some way, we, it looks like we were less of a target Then we thought we could be, it doesn’t mean that nothing has happened, but considering the amount, the tremendous amount of effort, which is for the time being, it’s, without any, and it’s growing from each edition to the next one.

So we’ve been spending a lot on that Los Angeles. We spend even more, uh, in between Milano and all that. but with that. It was basically completely contained, uh, which is good, as you know, there were some, uh, some changes in some of the previous games for it to do that, so, but it’s, it is difficult, and it is even more and more difficult in the sense that, you know, again, that’s another change from the past.

In the past on the web? No. So the web, as I said, was, uh, it only started basically a little bit in a very, very small way with, uh, with Atlanta at the time. The worst thing you could have was to have your website defaced nowadays, don’t mean that, I think the website deface is not nice, but first it was not really core in terms of service.

And second, it’s only that now it’s affecting absolutely everything, including because all the workforce, all the sprays and all that, they all want to be able to work from their smartphones, their tablets, laptop and all that. So the, the attacks, are direct. Some of the attacks and larger and larger amount of the attacks are targeted toward Creating disruption in the production of the games, not necessarily just between quote on the finished product of the games, like the website, but on the organization itself and the production of that, and that’s becoming more and more difficult because now everybody is equipped.

Now, everybody wants to access everything from everywhere. On top of that, in a very sound way, we we’re looking more and more. At using, either existing venues or temporary venues. Temporary venues, we have to, to put our infrastructure anyway, but an existing venue. So an existing venue, if you aim to use the infrastructure of an existing venue, you have to make it secure as well.

And most of the time it’s a different, different vendors in it, different organization and all that. and everything is not standardized and all that. So it’s difficult, you and it’s going down to even, things that you can think that, you know, a lot of, I’ll give you a very simple example.

A lot of cities now they have, Lighting in the streets organized with a system and all that. And as a matter of fact, a number of cities have been hacked on that. Now on the games we have. A town, you can call it a town, that’s called the Olympic Village, even if it’s not lethal, you don’t want somebody to start playing with the lights in the Olympic Village or to start playing with the sensors, which are telling you what is the, the level of, the various gas in the In the village, because you can create significant disruption with that.

I’m not even talking about the, the lifts and all this, but even with just with that, there’s no real lethal attack on anybody there, but it can be extremely disruptive. mean, it was a case in Paris, it’s a case in, in many cases.

it’s built or it’s already partially built, like it’s the case in the, in the U. S. and, and again in, uh, in Los Angeles for 28, but it’s part of something which is, which is managed in a different way. And so suddenly the security of the village organized to be a part of a city or in the case of the U.

  1. of a university and all that, we have to change that. And it’s not that easy to change. You have to change that. From the perspective of all the automation you can find, you have to change that from the perspective of the CCTV. Because maybe, you know, if it’s in a quarter of a city, like it was the case in Paris, where when it’s a quarter of the city, the CCTV is going outside to some police center thing.

During the games, no, we want that to go to the specific security area to manage the games, including because we don’t want Somebody in the local town to organize and say, Oh, you can, come at the town hall and you will see how the athletes are, are living in the village.

So we, we have to make sure that we can, direct all the video flows to the right place and not to, and that they don’t go somewhere else. So it doesn’t get any easier from that perspective. You know, it’s, it’s not visible. It’s not like somebody breaking a record on the, on the field and all that, but it doesn’t get any easier.

and it doesn’t get any easier also because the, and that’s also a big change from back in the early nineties to now. Nowadays, a lot of the technology that you’re using has been at least first introduced as a consumer product. And it’s, it’s very rare that it’s hardened even for cooperation and even less often that it’s hardened for very abrasive context like the games.

And that’s one of the problem quite often with, companies coming with, uh, with new products and all that. Yeah. I mean, the product is great. Yes. There are some nice function and all that, but no, it has not been hardened. and again, if it if it has not been hardened, there’s such a, an intense cyber war during the games that you’re sure it’s going to be destroyed.

And so people are, some people are not happy with that. And it’s a very delicate balance to find because you know, at the very same time, you want to be able to introduce that because it’s very, very difficult, even don’t even think about the spectators for the organization. People are used to work nowadays with.

The smartphone every day, everywhere, and this and that, and suddenly, you have to explain to them that, hey, in the case of the games, it’s going to be very difficult because it’s not hardened enough from a cybersecurity perspective, and you have to use this, and use that, and all that, and you, you have a lot of pushback, and so you, you have to find, I mean, you have to educate a lot of people, and you have to find solution early enough, And get them to use them and have them not to be, too difficult to use.

but sometimes people are saying, well, you’re using old things when people don’t work like that now. No, they don’t work like that when they are not under the microscope and they’re not attacked like we are attacked every day. And that’s very, very difficult. It was the same. I saw that even with something as simple as Wi Fi.

The Wi Fi, it came in the world of everybody. After a little while, everybody got that at home. Even when people were getting that at home, and it’s still the case now, when you go to a hotel, sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s not that good. Sometimes it’s good if you are in the hotel between 10 and 11 in the morning when everybody have left and nobody has come back.

but when everybody is there and if on top of that, the business center is working and all that, it can be pretty bad. But some hotels have fixed it. Now, if you want to fix it for everybody, it’s still extremely difficult and expensive. And on top of that, on the games, even though Wi Fi is working on non regulated frequencies, there’s so much equipment, so many possibilities of interferences and all that.

That we make them regulated during the games. So that’s an additional process that we have to have. And we get that regulated by the people. And we, we get people to police that to stop people from using it. Stop people from, you know, nowadays, everybody from a smartphone, you, you can open a hotspot. Well, depending on where you are, what is your telephone and all that, you can create interferences.

Not all the time, sometimes it goes well, sometimes it doesn’t go well. And people, it’s very difficult to get people to accept to stop their hotspot. But we have to do that. Very regularly, because there’s not, enough separated frequencies anywhere to support everything that everybody wants to do without any cable.

Again, for many people, it looks like it’s a bit anti progressive, but the reality is that the spectrum is big, but it’s finished. And there’s so many equipment. That we cannot accept all the equipment and we have to make the police including during the oppression of the games

The Y2K bug and the Olympics

Alison Brown: was Y2K and that idea of a Y2K bug, was that something that Sydney was worried about?

Pascal Wattiaux: Yes, it was. Yes, they were, and they had specific work being done on that.

they were, they were not, not really, for the game systems. But for the various systems embedded in the infrastructure on a number of stadiums and all that. So yes, they had a specific workforce was done a lot of work to get to the point where a number of things were done and they were comfortable that it was Enough.

No, no, it was, it was there. Yeah, absolutely. No, no, but Sydney was great in the sense that the, including, you know, the, well, that happened at every game, but the, if you take, uh, what I think is, is, is one of the nowadays of the beautiful competition, that everybody or a lot of people like, even if they don’t practice the sport or are not very sporty, the triathlon, Sydney was the first Olympic triathlon.

And it was tough. I mean, you know, the, it’s, it’s during the process of Sydney, being there that the, the IUC accepted the application of the ITU to be there. And of course it was a new sport, complex sport, you know, with, three disciplines, all outdoor distance and all that. it was at the point of time where even within the world of triathlon, the Olympic triathlon was not considered a real sport because they were used already to the Ironman and the reference was the Ironman and it’s still a reference, it’s still a big thing, but now the, the, the smaller distance and all that, there are even smaller distance than the Olympic distance now, but the, the, the boom of that sport based on traditional sport in some way, you know, swimming and cycling and running, but it’s tremendous.

It’s tremendous and it’s outdoor and it’s providing It’s a great support for, the part of the organizing committee and the, and the city and the country to show the outdoor, remember maybe the images, of course, of Sydney, but, even of, of London, of Paris or the trilon of, uh, Rio and the.

And all of that, it’s, it’s one of the, top summer sport now in terms of, the people looking at it and all that. and embracing it and going onsite, of course, because it’s. It’s long distance, not long distance from the first one because it’s not an Ironman, it’s not a, even though they have triple Ironman and all this, but it’s relatively long distance compared to anything else, so it means that there’s a lot of the public like for the marathon where it’s free tickets and all that.

that has been a, the start of the integration of more outdoor sport in a formula, which is, which can be felt as more accessible because the, the Ironman, it’s great. I mean, I think it’s fantastic, but a lot of people think very quickly. It’s not for me because you know, when the Ironman you finish with a marathon and most people have already a big problem doing a marathon by itself.

So thinking about swimming before and, uh, and cycling and all that still for a lot of people, it’s, beyond the horizon. The, they may be interested, but it’s not for them. That level of freedom. And of course they, they, they don’t want to do the performance and all that, but it became a little bit from that.

Cause he’d like the. athmarathon in cities and all that where there are more and more participants, and on and on, and, uh, and the production, it, it did help a lot in, in, uh, modernizing the, outdoor production to have that additional

Jill Jaracz: for taking time to talk with us and shedding light on the world of IT in, in the Olympics, because it’s something we definitely all rely on now.

And. And when you think about the amount of work it takes, it’s, it’s pretty incredible.

Pascal Wattiaux: Yeah, no, it’s, it’s a nice place to be, I mean, that’s why, I mean, the, I always liked working internationally and, uh, and having the opportunity and all that.

Jill Jaracz: Excellent. Well, thank you so much. Thank you for your time.

Pascal Wattiaux: Thank you

Jill Jaracz: thank you so much, Pascal. You can find Pascal on LinkedIn and follow him. There he is. Pascal W will have a link to that in the show notes.

Milano-Cortina 2026 News

Alison Brown: Oh, Sono Ballet.

Jill Jaracz: Oh, so nice. Um. Milan Cortina News for this week. Milo and Tina, plush toys are for sale, which is very exciting. They’re very, very cute on that. They really came out nice as a toy. Yes. uh, you can buy them online except for if you are in North America, Russia, Belarus, China, Iran, Syria, and Cuba, they will not ship to those countries.

I feel like the bad kid who got put into the court, you know, you know, gets sent to the principal’s office with a whole bunch of other bad kids. Well, considering the company that we’ve been put in, right. I wonder if tariffs have anything to do with that.

Alison Brown: Probably so. but the Canadians even got smacked into this group,

Jill Jaracz: Maybe it’s just too hard to ship here for some stuff. I don’t know.

Alison Brown: Friends elsewhere, please get me, Milo and Tina.

Jill Jaracz: Well, you, you’ll might hopefully get them in person.

Alison Brown: I’ll probably just collect them. I love these two.

Jill Jaracz: Yeah. And the flow. And the flow. Other big news this week, hockey schedules have been announced, so this is very, very exciting and everybody who has hockey tickets is now frantically trying to figure out when their teams are playing.

Uh, for the women, there are two groups of five. Group A is going to be Canada, USA, Finland, Czechia, and Switzerland. Group B is Japan, Sweden, Germany, Italy, and France. That’s a heavy hitting group. A right there. That’s all I have to say. This is gonna be a tough one to get out of. Uh, USA and Canada are doing a four game rivalry series in the lead up to the games.

They’ll be in Cleveland on November 6th, Buffalo on November eight, and then they move up to Canada for two games in December with dates to be determined. We’ll have a link to that in the show notes if you would like to try to catch them ahead of the Olympics. The men, which has been news everywhere because NHL NHL Pro players are back in the games.

Uh, they have three groups because they have, 12 teams versus the Women’s 10. Group A is Canada, Switzerland, Czechia, and France. Group B is Finland, Sweden, Slovakia, Italy, and Group C is USA Germany, Lavia, and Denmark. And the first six players for each team have been named eight teams named six current NHL players.

Two teams had five NHL players. What I don’t understand this, so

Alison Brown: what that means is that of the 12 teams. Eight of them have six NHL players on them. Oh, okay. Okay. And two more have five NHL players only France and, Italy have no NHL players so far. So far. But I’m not

Jill Jaracz: really sure they will. Well, maybe somebody is frantically trying to get citizenship.

Sidney Crosby is gonna be on his third Olympic squad for Canada. I’m Soci. When I saw his name, I’m like, woo, he’s been around a long time.

Alison Brown: This is gonna be good. And on the American team, we’ve got the first set of brothers, which is very important to us because it’s the Chuuk Brothers and they are T-K-A-C-H-U-K.

Jill Jaracz: Oh, right, right, right.

Alison Brown: But they have a silent T, which is apparently the Ukrainian pronunciation.

Jill Jaracz: Oh, okay. So it’s Kach Kach. We’re shook kach. Right. Okay. Well I wonder if we will to catch them at the team USA

Alison Brown: media summit and how many times will they call them Keith by mistake, which is their father who played when I was really actively watching hockey.

Jill Jaracz: Oh, this’ll be fun. If, if, if they even get back to the podcast table, that’s, that’s gonna be the fun bit.

Alison Brown: Oh my God, if the Chek brothers show up, I will be so excited.

Jill Jaracz: Other news, uh, athlete Wise, the reigning men ski halfpipe, gold medalist has. Opted to not defend his gold medal at Milan Cortina. This is New Zealander Nico Ports. he said he is not retiring, but he intends to focus his skiing on filming and product development instead. So you will see a new gold medalist this year

Alison Brown: go silver FARs.

Jill Jaracz: I gotta put this on my list. We have no World Games. World Games stews with 50 days to go. Jill still hasn’t found music for the World Games, but they released their medals. And they look like pandas. I know this was so funky when I saw it. they are shaped like panda heads with little ears. I mean, they’re gold, silver, and bronze, but they have panda ears to them and, and look like a panda.

So it’s a, it’s a

Alison Brown: big circle with two little semi-circle on the edges.

Jill Jaracz: Yes. Yes. And uh. Bamboo motif on the front side, and the reverse features a hibiscus flower motif, which is the city flower of Chengdu host city, and the inscriptions are in English and Chinese. So we’ll put a picture of this up on the show notes and it’s really funky.

I will say that I’ve never

Alison Brown: seen a metal like this with this sort of satellite pieces, though I worry they’ll break off. But it is, I mean, immediately you look at it and you think panda.

Jill Jaracz: Yes, definitely. Which is great. Yeah.

TKFLASTAN News

Alison Brown: Welcome to Shuksan. It

Jill Jaracz: is the time of the show where we 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. Shuksan,

first up.

Alison Brown: Kar Kai Tom Scott won gold in male, ate under 75 kilogram division at the 2025 Pan-American Karate Foundation.

Senior Championships.

Jill Jaracz: Archer Casey Cuff won bronze in the individual Recurve event and gold in the team. Women’s and Gold in the Women’s Team Recurve event at the Archery World Cup in Antalia, Turkey

Alison Brown: Swimmer Bobby Fink won gold in the 400 meter individual medley and the 800 meter and 1500 meter freestyle at the USA Swimming National Championships.

Bobby has announced that he will only compete in the freestyle events at the World Championships next month in Singapore.

Jill Jaracz: He has been cleaning up lately.

Alison Brown: He is not fooling around.

Jill Jaracz: Right? There are a lot of swimmers who are not fooling around from Team USAI

Alison Brown: know. No new world record. For Katie Ledecky nine years after she set the the world record in this race.

Jill Jaracz: Incredible, incredible. Paratriathlete Grace Norman took gold at the World Triathlon Para Series event in Toronto, Toronto, Italy. Grace will also be part of the US Paralympic cycling team competing in the 2025 UCI Para Cycling Road World Championships in August and Belgium. Also on that team are Samantha Bosco and Dennis Connors.

Alison Brown: At the USA shooting nationals, Marco de la Rosa finished second in the P one 10 meter air pistol. Men’s SH one and Mary Tucker finished third in the women’s 10 meter air rifle and fifth in the women’s 50 meter three position. Tim Sherry finished fifth in men’s 10 meter air rifle. Sixth in men’s 50 meter three position, and fourth in men’s 50 meter prone.

Jill Jaracz: This is one of those sports, like we talked to Tim Sherry a long time ago now, and like, oh, he’s still competing. This is pretty good. But I mean, they keep, shooters can compete for a long, long time. I. Speaking of shooters at the ISF World Cup in Munich. Last week, Sage and Madena finished fourth in the women’s 50 meter rifle, three positions, and then she teamed up with Peter Matthew Fiore for the 10 meter air rifle mixed team.

They qualified for the bronze medal match, but took fourth

Alison Brown: At the ICF Canoe Slalom World Cup at Lasso Deel Spain, Evie Farth made it to the quarterfinals of the women’s kayak cross and did not get beyond the heats in the women’s kayak or women’s canoe events.

The tour moved on to p France last week, where once again she got into the corner finals of Kayak Cross, took sixth. Sixth in canoe and fourth in Kayak.

Jill Jaracz: Geologist, Derek Long has obtained his PhD in mineral deposits and pre-Cambrian geology for the Har Quail School of Earth Sciences at Lian University, and he has accepted the 10 year T track assistant professor position in critical min minerals at the University of Regina in Canada.

And you know, just in time so he can focus on watching curling at unk.

Alison Brown: That’s Dr. Derek to you. That’s

Jill Jaracz: right. Dr. Derek.

Alison Brown: Congratulations to Fencer Lauren Scruggs for graduating from Harvard University last month. Also, Lauren and Lee Kiefer have been named two Team USA’s World Championship Team in Women’s Foil.

Jill Jaracz: Bob Sled. Bri Walker made an appearance as a guest Quizmaster on the television show. Have you been paying attention? if

Alison Brown: you don’t get a chance to watch this, you will be sorry. She’s funny. Is she funny? Funny.

Jill Jaracz: Okay, I will, we will have a link to that in the show notes as well.

Alison Brown: Weightlifters, Jordan de La Cruz and Hampton Morris will be competing at the USA weightlifting National Championships next week. A lot on the docket. No wonder I’m tripping. I’m having trouble tripping over words. And as we said at the beginning of the show, uncoordinated even with my mouth.

Jill Jaracz: Oh, but you know.

At least excellent health, which is everything we want. And that is gonna do it for this episode. Let us know what you think about technology used at the Olympics,

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.

The voicemail and text line is always open at 2 0 8 3 5 2 6 3 4 8. That’s 2 0 8. Flame it. If you need more Olympics and Paralympics in your life and who doesn’t sign up for our newsletter@flamealivepod.com. We’ll have a link to that in the show notes.

Jill Jaracz: Oh, next week get ready for this because We’re in primetime grand slam time for tennis. So I’ve been. Binging tennis like crazy and Wimbledon is coming up. We will be having a discussion about wheelchair tennis with boys champion Charlie Cooper, who will be competing at Wimbledon. He’s gunning for LA 2028.

So let’s, get another Shak on board that hopefully we’ll be able to cheer on in a few years. Thank you so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive.