It’s Day -1 of the Paris 2024 Olympics, and one tournament is nearly over! More sports join in on the action, and we’ve got results from:
- Archery
- Football
- Handball
- Rugby Sevens
Alison went to a ton of press conferences today and has reports from:
- USA Basketball
- World Aquatics
- Word Anti-Doping Agency
- International Testing Agency
Plus, Jill covered a party for the K-9 cops and dogs here from around the world.
And we get started on toilet talk! Some of these toilettes are really small (that red bit on the left is Jill’s shirt):
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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 Do not quote from the transcript; use the audio as the record of note.
Paris 2024 Day -1
Jill: Bonjour, and welcome to Day Minus One of the Paris 2024 Olympics on Keep the Flame Alive, the podcast for fans of the Olympics and Paralympics. I am your host, Jill Jaracz, joined as always by my lovely co host, Alison Brown. Alison, bonjour! Bonjour! Comment ça
Alison: va? I’ve had a much quieter day on the one hand than you have.
And then a much wilder day
Jill: on
Alison: the other hand than you have, but we’ll get into all of that soon enough.
Jill: Yes. We’ve got some follow up file first.
Alison: the court of arbitration for sport has officially dismissed Russia’s appeals to be reinstated as the gold medalists.
When was that? That was Beijing 2022. So that means the U. S. has now officially won gold. Japan will, uh, win the silver. The bronze medal is still in limbo because it’s tied up with that issue of how the scoring was reallocated. So, was that the Russian Olympic Committee or will that be Canada? However, there’s news that, uh, the U.
- and Japan will receive their medals here in Paris.
Jill: Yes, they should be getting them week two at the special upgraded medal ceremony. With, along with many others. Uh, and uh, that should come along week two in Champions Park. So if you’re around, maybe check that out. Alright, uh, let’s begin the baguette.
How’s our safety doing?
Alison: Our safety was okay last night. We ended up taking a taxi from the Stade de France back to the hotel. We had to wait a while, but where we waited was very brightly lit, very active. Security was around. It was a very long wait, but we had a lovely driver in our hype car. That is sort of the, carbon neutral equivalent to Uber.
And he got us home safely. And very happily, I, I have to say when we got in that car with him and he, because my name was on the, the order, he was like, Oh, hello, Alison. I wanted to hug him. I just felt so safe in that car with him. I knew he was going to get us back to our hotel with no problem.
Jill: And the one nice thing is our hotel is not far from the Stade de France, but boy did we, we went through a lot of tagging.
I mean, it was, it was some impressive tagging going on. Yeah. So, so, and we stopped at the, we stopped at the stoplight and I looked at the corner and went like, Ooh. ’cause I was looking at the one direction, because I thought it was our hotel corner and there was a bakery there, and then a pizza store next door.
And I’m like, Ooh, the bakery still open.
And
Alison: then I said, we’re two or three blocks away from our hotel, you know, one bad corner looks like the next, but we did approach it from a different direction. So now we know that in at least three directions. It is really bad.
Jill: But sadly, Peggy Shin, our, our friend decided she contacted transportation.
Alison: She contacted transportation and I hope she doesn’t mind me sharing. They told her to bike share at midnight.
Jill: Cannot believe that. But I mean, like we’ve been going through accommodation because it’s the problem is that the, Hotel isn’t a bad location.
So I, I don’t know, maybe she should go to transport or accommodation as well. I’ve been meaning to talk. I know one of the favorite topics on Keep the Flame Alive’s daily podcast coverage from the games is usually toilet talk.
Alison: And I have been doing so well. Only once did I accidentally go into the men’s room or almost accidentally go into the men’s room and a man looked at me like, And he pointed to the sign and I quickly scurried away, you know, just suite de soleil and escaped.
But you seem to have had an issue.
Jill: Yes, I have. And I wanted to ask you about the toilettes here in the main press center. Um, do your toes touch the ground?
Alison: They must because I haven’t noticed but probably barely because that’s typical in my world.
Jill: So yeah, it wasn’t, it might have been one of the first.
Day or two, we were here. I’m like, feet barely touched the ground here. And these are like wall-mounted toilets, so they’re, they’re placed. And, and I was like, I don’t know what Alison is doing with these. I also have to say, I like the fact that in Europe you get like a closet. Yes. But, but you also get no ventilation.
Yes. And I have gone in one time and a woman was coming out and she gave me a look like, oh, don’t go in there
She was right.
But today I was at Archery.
The closet was so small. The closet was, I have a picture of it. It was so small. I could barely set my bag down and move. Like, I had to be sideways on the toilet to accommodate my bag on the floor. It was, it was really bad. It was bad.
Alison: Jill, it is way too early in this
Jill: process
Alison: for us to be losing it this much.
Jill: No, it’s not even open to experiments. Oh my
Alison: god. Okay, seriously, seriously. Get it together. We’re professionals. I
Jill: know, I know, but it’s, uh, Oh, we got another toilet situation. If you’re going to handball, be aware that there might be a port a potty situation in your venue. Oh, man. So, good luck on that. All right.
Uh, one other thing in the cultural segment I went to today because we got this random email, maybe about 2. in the afternoon saying that the minister, Ministry of the Interior was going to have a party for the cops who are bringing canine dogs from around the world to help out with this thing. And I’m like, Is this another fancy party?
I don’t know. But it turned out to be, please come and cover the event for us. So they paraded a bunch of dogs up there. They had, um, uh, 27 dogs at the party. From, just seriously, all over the world. 44 countries have sent 1, 800 officers to help support the security efforts here. Uh, there was going to be, uh, 45, 000 officers at the opening ceremonies tomorrow night.
Alison: Wow.
Jill: And they anticipate that 100 heads of state will be there as well. I know. And, uh, so I did talk with some cops from New York because, uh, in the canines in my country area, the canines in my city, they speak Dutch because that’s how they were trained. So they just speak Dutch to them. And the other reason they like having a foreign language is so that.
People who, uh, you know, Americans, they don’t speak Dutch, you know, most criminals in Cleveland don’t speak Dutch. So, you know, the dogs were, they were yelling at the dogs in English and the dogs knew English, they might lay off. But, so I started asking a lot of canine cops what language their dog speaks.
That wasn’t fun. But I did talk to some New York cops who, they have a dog that speaks Czech.
Alison: I’m not surprised. Yeah,
Jill: and one of the German dogs understood English. That was the other thing that I learned. But, uh, the cops from New York City have been assigned to train stations, so they’re doing a lot of sweeping.
They have bomb detection dogs. And, uh, One of the other things they’ve done has been sweeping venues and then locking them down and then the, the bosses have to plant a fake bomb somewhere so that the dogs can find it and think that they’ve done their job and then they get their reward, which is usually like playing with a ball or a special toy that they only get one in the reward.
It’s really cute. Oh, if
Alison: they find a fake bomb at Stade de France, do they get to play on the field?
Jill: I don’t know.
Alison: I certainly hope so. They deserve it.
Jill: All right. Uh, news from the games. You went to a million press conferences. So, yeah,
Alison: today was press conference day for me, and I want to point out that I have now started Water Watch.
Remember yesterday I said nobody touches the bottles? Yes. Well, nobody does touch the bottles of Coca Cola and Coca Cola Sans Sucre, but people were taking the water bottles. So I went to USA basketball, which was Steph Curry and Kevin Durant. KD took some water. All right. You will see that press conference.
It was lovely. They were charming. It was what you, they’re very practiced at this. So it was, it was pretty, pretty fun and relaxed. Also went to World Aquatics. And this was not what I expected. I thought it was just going to be the, um, the leadership. No, we had some friends up there. So it was Chad Laclose, Florian Wellbrock.
Uh, Thomas Verneau, Tom Daley, Reagan Smith, Caleb Dressels, and Shook Flastani’s Maggie Steffens and Jacqueline Simineau. So got to meet, got to meet up with Jacqueline very quickly in the hallway after. So I got to give her a quick hug and a quick, uh, good luck, uh, at that water watch. Kaleb Dressel and Florian Welbrock took the water, but here was the really interesting thing that came out of that.
Florian is doing both distance and open water. And he was saying he’s not, somebody asked him about the pollution in the Seine, and he said, I’m not worried about the pollution, I’m worried about the currents, because how fast the river is running right now, they cannot have the 10k in the spot where it’s supposed to be.
Jill: And we’ve seen the sun and it is fast. Like you could be taken down the river one way. And when you have to turn around swimming against that current is going to be so difficult.
Alison: You’re not coming back. So they, swimmers have been told there is a plan B in terms of not just the pollution, but also the currents.
So the open water swimming, it feels like it may not happen in the Uh, the spot predicted, but not because of the issue we thought, but because of the currents. Uh, the leadership was also of course asked about the Chinese swimmer doping situation from Tokyo. They very much deferred to WADA and ITA. And guess what?
There was a WADA and an ITA press conference today too. So I went to those. The WADA one is the one that got really, really. Interesting. So, it was Vitold Bonka, who is the president, and Olivier Nijley, who, it might be Nigley, I apologize, uh, who’s the director general. First 10 minutes, everybody was dancing around the issue.
And then, all of a sudden, Vitold Bonka decided to take the gloves off, as did the reporters. So, at one point, Bonka was sitting at the table, shaking his head. At the reporter’s questions, refusing to answer them. Just sort of looking at the other people at the table, like, I’m not gonna say anything and forgot about the hot mic, and just was saying unbelievable.
So he was not interested in, in answering. Uh, Nili also dismissed the idea that WADA does not look good. In the, in the public eye. Not because of anything they’re doing, but because here’s a quote, decisions are not easy to understand for the public.
Yes. Then we get into, um, the USADA and United States bashing. Okay. Which was interesting. Uh, there was a lot of discussion of the Rachenkov Act, how it is inappropriate, how it is an offense to WADA, how, how could one country impose its will? Um, how can,
how can, uh, the United States tell WADA what to do? Then they pointed out that the NCAA is not a signatory to the WADA code. It has its own anti doping rules. So the way he pre, pre, uh, presented this was saying 75 percent of the U. S. team competes in a system that is not WADA compliant.
Jill: Ooh, that’s fighting words.
Alison: Right. Which is implying, of course, that NCAA doesn’t have appropriate doping regulations.
There were two Chinese reporters there who asked questions and they, of course, presented the other side of the issue. They were very concerned that. that Chinese swimmers especially, but Chinese athletes in general are getting tested more than any other athletes. And that that’s unfair and that it’s infringing on their ability to prepare for the events.
And Banca just jumped on this and saying, oh yeah, everybody’s making this a political event. That’s why they’re going after China. Not the fact that you had Chinese swimmers, 23 of them who tested positive and still competed. So the reporters were not holding back. At all. Bonka was Um, taking this really personally, he, the way he behaved and the way they were behaving up there was he is taking this as you are personally attacking him.
So I don’t quite know what’s going to happen at the, at the other end of this. It was not good is the short answer. Few questions about the Salt Lake City. Uh, agreement, which we talked about yesterday, and I loved this one American reporter, and I apologize for not noting his name said, What do you expect the U.
- O. P. C. To do now? Do you expect them to go before Congress and ask for the return call back to be repealed? Did they say yes? No, they got angry. That he dared to ask this question of them, you know, their response was, well the United States did this, and I apologize not again, I’m paraphrasing, not quoting.
The United States did it to itself.
Jill: Wow.
Alison: So then there was more. I went to the last, The press conference of the day was the International Testing Agency, which is independent from WADA, independent from any federation. So this is a testing agency that is taking over regulating testing for a lot of federations, including World Aquatics, but it did not take over World Aquatics until 2022.
So, but they did have some interesting numbers. Um, 80 percent of summer sports federations, including aquatics, are now having their testing run by ITA. They’re considering it being more independent. World Athletics does not. They’re still running their own. Um, 88 percent of athletes competing in Paris have been tested at least once since January 2024.
There was a prioritization of high risk sports like weightlifting and swimming. Uh, 98 percent of Chinese athletes have been tested more than once. In comparison, 94 percent of U. S. athletes have been tested more than once. And if you look at the top 25 countries from the medal table from Tokyo, uh, New Zealand has the lowest rate at only 46 percent of more than one test.
But this was my favorite detail of the entire day. There are 74 Chinese swimmers. They have been given 618 doping tests. By comparison, the U. S. has the largest swimming delegation, 91 swimmers. They’ve only had 280 tests.
Jill: So, then, the question is Do we suspect China? Is that the ITA or who who did they say anything about who does the who?
Who dictates who gets tested?
Alison: Yes, there’s a couple of things that comes into it. The federations can ask
Jill: that
Alison: you focus on it. A It, ITA indicated that Chinada, the Chinese, uh, anti doping has asked that their athletes be tested aggressively.
Jill: Oh, that’s interesting.
Alison: But remember, this is only since January.
So have you been training unclean and now you want to appear very clean. So, yeah, so a, a national, uh, anti doping agency can request, a federation can request, they prioritize, prioritize high risk sports, as I said, or if they have any evidence. And in this case, there is evidence there was this, these 23 swimmers from Tokyo.
So they have the evidence and the reason to focus very much on Chinese swimmers. This is going to be a huge story. Reporters are not letting this go. Interesting. So we, I think we’re going to hear this. For the next three weeks.
Jill: Alright, good. I’m gonna be on the edge of my seat.
Alison: My jaw was on the floor in that WADA conference.
I could not believe what was happening.
Jill: Alright, time for what official or volunteer job do we want?
Alison: Well, I saw no officials today, um, but I did see a lot of volunteers. And I’ll tell you, the volunteer who has to move that mic around, you get to crawl on the floor. You get to like climb over people. Nobody stops these kids and they’re not really kids, but I’m going to call them kids.
Nobody stops these kids from getting the microphone to the right reporter in those press conferences. And I, I applaud them. They are brave, especially in that WADA conference.
Jill: So at Handball, there are a couple of things I’m curious about. And again, trying to catch up on a whole lot of stuff. So, um, one is the ball.
is on a podium in the middle of the floor. Again! Yes, but it’s on wheels, or else they put it on wheels, and two volunteers have to take the podium off, wheel the podium off, which is kind of cool. There’s also towels at every seat. And at halftime, I noticed things like rolly laundry carts. And I wondered what those were doing, but then later, and I was like oh, if they’re just carrying the laundry in those bags, that’s kind of cool.
But then later I saw people picking up towels from each bench, and I thought, gross, sweaty. So I don’t know, there might have to be more handball in my life so I can understand the towel situation.
Alison: I vaguely remember our handball, uh, Friend Sarah Gascon telling us about the sweaty floor and not getting wiped up a lot.
Jill: No, it had nothing to do. It was towels are placed at every chair on every chair back for the athletes to use their special pink purplish Paris 2024 towels.
Alison: Maybe handball players are just particularly sweaty. Yeah, I
Jill: don’t know. That’s something to investigate, but I
Alison: Don’t want to investigate sweaty handball players.
No, no,
Jill: no, but what I do want to investigate is our financial situation The only way we are able to be here at Paris is because listeners like you have supported us We are an independent media outlet which is Which, you know, that means it’s good for you because we can give you the lowdown. Like, we can tell you what’s really going on and do so in a way that no outlet can because they, a lot of outlets have to be very careful about what they say or they have to, you know, worry, not worry, but
Alison: They get editorial pushback.
Jill: Yes, exactly. That said, being here in Paris costs money, so we do ask you for your support. You can check out flamealivepod. com slash support. We also have two little baguettes.
Alison: Yes, the baguette, notre baguette is happening. So you’ll see those graphics come along and we’d love your support and we appreciate it so much.
Jill: Exactly. All right, daily results. Let’s go to archery first. I did get out to this eventually. Hopefully. So. I will say our tram to, from the hotel to here at the Maiden Press Center, fabulous. Got here, no problem. Sat and waited for a bus for a long time. It didn’t, it wasn’t coming, it wasn’t coming. And on the bus eventually that came of people who need to be there are like the media person from Tunisia trying to get to his Tunisian people.
The media person from, uh, Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico had a little delegation there and I’m like, Oh, they really need to get, and then a whole bunch of photographers. And who knows what’s on the agenda, but it took forever to get from the media center to, uh, Invalide. As I’m learning how to pronounce it correctly.
they, it, it was Monday morning rush hour traffic, part of it. And part of it was trying to get over to the Seine.
Alison: Oh, because there’s still all the closures. There’s
Jill: still so many closures and everybody is inching along and you just, you just have to sit there. There’s nothing you can do. that said, the venue is pretty cool.
Uh, the ranking round does not happen in the actual competition venue. The actual competition venue is more narrow than the ranking round needs to be because all, there’s 64, 72, uh, archers in the, the venue. No, the ra. Yeah, the qualification round. It’s something like 72 archers. ’cause it gets narrowed down to a field of 64.
Casey Ult, we just had her interview on the show. She had a plaque at her stand that said World Leader. ’cause she’s got the world number one ranking right now and that’s something that World World Archery does. It was only at the Olympics. They put plaques out for the world leader, for the Olympic champion, the Olympic record and the world record.
And neither of those are, and it might have been the reigning Olympic champion. The, none of those people were there. So, only Casey got the plaque, and I talked to her afterwards, and sadly, my recorder did not work. And She said she had forgotten that they did that. So when she came out, she’s like, oh, that was pretty cool.
So she had a pretty good day. She is qualified in fourth position. You want to be ranked pretty high so that you can get paired up in the early rounds against much lower ranked archers. So she is sitting pretty. Some of her teammates did not do so well today. They had bad days, which makes it harder for the women’s team.
Uh, event in, in qualification. Uh, she said that she likes to joke around and, and try to get them to relax and just kind of make everybody lighter because it’s a lot of stress and a lot of pressure, especially if you’re not having a good day. They do have two little stuffed fluffy eagles. They’re like little round, puffy things.
Alison: The American theme.
Jill: Yes. Because, because every, there were tents all set up and every, every few, uh, days. Every team was kind of set up where their tent was and their lane were. And, uh, so they had two little eagles on their little table in the back. And I’m like, well, what are their names? Sam and Sammy. So Absolutely appropriate.
Other big huge deal today was that, uh, we got a world record set by, uh, Lim Shi Young from Korea. She beat the world record by 2 points, so it now stands at 694. She had 48 10s in the shot, in the ranking. They had a sign for her that had just the 694. So they had the 690 all like kind of printed up, and we didn’t know what the last number was going to be, so they put it in there.
Lots and lots of pictures down by her target and all this stuff. It was a really, really big deal. That was very cool. so as I said, the venue is cool. There was a lot of walking around. The workroom is teeny tiny and of course the fruit and stuff was already gone. What was left in the, the fruit bins were a couple of banana peels because we have banana theory.
Alison: Oh, that’s awful.
Jill: And, we had for the qualifying, I’m very curious how it’s going to work in the actual venue venue. Um, they had all these tents set up and tables set up. So it was a long, long row of, or long line of targets. And we, the media, The press media could stand behind the tent setup, so we could watch the targets while, while, uh, shooting was going on. We were kind of way far back, so thank goodness I have binoculars, and I could kind of see stuff and kind of figure it out. Uh, the broadcast press was on the side, in a different kind of mix zone, and the mix zone got kind of chaotic.
World Archery was not happy. And I went to go talk to them because I had asked the, one of the volunteers and the managers, Hey, can I talk to Hannah Brown?
Alison: The artificial? Yes. Was she there today?
Jill: I don’t know because she came back. She found out that she’s like, they can’t do interviews. I’m like, I just want to say hi.
And I don’t need to do an interview. She’s like, you got to ask somebody from World Archery. And I went over to the guy that I had seen from World Archery and he was busy chewing out the manager of the venue like nobody’s business because it wasn’t set up according to the plan and it had to be set up according to the plan and he would not have because the plan went out the window and the French person was trying to explain or you know it it wasn’t a good explanation because it whatever he decided to do did not work and it was not great.
Wow. So. Um, we also had the men’s individual ranking record, ranking round, and uh, now we move on to competition. We’re going to be in the main venue. If you are going, bring a hat. It is all in the sun, so if it’s a hot day or a sunny day, you will definitely feel it for sure.
Alison: Have I mentioned bring, bringing bug spray on the show yet?
Jill: No.
Alison: People, we talked about mosquitoes. They have found me. And if you are like me and a mosquito magnet, bring bug spray. It’s not good. And, and Chris O’Reilly, our friend from Olympopod, when we ran into him, very helpfully said to me, Don’t scratch. Well, it is too late. I have scratched so much on one leg, I have a bruise, because I scratch in my sleep.
So yeah, if you see me, if you come and you see me and I look like somebody has beaten me about the legs, it is the French mosquitoes.
Jill: Wow, wow. Um, the venue at Invalide faces The two stands don’t face it, but the end of the venue faces the, uh, Army Museum or something. It faces a big, important thing with a lot of cannons, and that’s cool.
They’ve got an exhibit about duels that I can tell you. So, then I went to handball. Getting from archery to handball was quite easy. I think I did have to make a train, I did have to do a transfer, which I didn’t necessarily have to do, but um, it was a pretty quick train ride. And then I transferred to a tram.
And as I’m on the tram, I’m going past Paris Sud, this big complex. It’s a big complex.
Alison: There are six buildings that they’re using. They’re big for the Olympics.
Jill: So as I’m going past them and I see a big handball, graphic on one of the buildings. I went, oh, I’m going too far. And then I got off, and I actually needed to go into the farthest away entrance.
So I was right where I needed to be. But then, we had problems. I go into the first building, and it happens to be handball. So I’m like, okay, here I am. I can’t find the media set. I can’t find the workroom. There’s no signs for that. There’s no signs for that. Eventually I got to table seating. I just finally went into, because the game is about to start.
It’s Spain versus Brazil, women’s. Crowd is already pumping. And I finally just go in and try to get across because I see, if I go into the arena, I see where you’re supposed to sit. But I can’t get there and people are telling me go here. No, that’s the toilets go here And I keep just wandering back and forth and some guy goes you have to go over a bridge And i’m looking for a bridge and it’s just kind of like an up and over staircase and I finally get in and sit in a seat and we have uh, I have to make some calls and I still want to find the workroom And I take my phone with me Eventually because I had to make a phone call And I am trying to wander all over the building and find the media room.
Well, somebody at, uh, Olympic Broadcasting Services finally said, Oh, I’m leaving. I’ll take you there. It’s outside. And in a completely different building and it is a hike away and I think there is one work room. It’s a big work room. For the entire
Alison: complex?
Jill: That is my impression because they had volleyball and table tennis and handball stuff scheduled up in there.
Alison: There is a lot up there.
Jill: Yes.
Alison: Okay, good to know. Thanks. I’m glad you had that experience before me. But wait.
Jill: Oh no. There’s more. So as we walk and we keep walking and we keep walking and like, I have to remember how to get back because all of my stuff is in the handball venue and I don’t know where it is.
I don’t know how to get there. God. Uh, I just went to the, the Of course, there’s no bathrooms in there, because everything is kind of temporarily set up in these giant conference center buildings, convention center building type things. And, uh, luckily, there is a stand outside in the complex that does have toilets in it.
You have to go downstairs, or there’s an elevator, but there are toilets. They’re full on bathrooms because in the venue there were port a potties. And that’s a situation. Venue also had a few kiosks around for food and a little boutique store. In Paris Soud, there’s also a set of Olympic rings. Nice. So people can take their picture.
And, uh. Did you take your picture? No, cause there was a line. There was a line and I had to move and find my way back to, I finally, I just bought an ice cream. I was just like, I don’t know where I am. And I saw an ice cream stand and I’m like. Ice
Alison: cream makes everything better. It does. Un coronet.
Jill: Right. So then I have, uh.
I have to take a phone call and I was head packed up and I’m getting ready to leave because I have to go to this, uh, ministry, uh, With the dogs! With the canine cubs. And I don’t know where to go that isn’t loud because we have now moved from Spain, Brazil, to Germany, South Korea. And it is loud in the venue.
I can’t hear anything. And I’m looking for a way out and I just go out through a random door. And we know what this does and I’m outside and I’m on the back end of the venue. And if I walk in a direction, I start to get to the broadcast trucks, kind of, kind of a broadcasting setup in the back. And I went, Oh, I don’t know where to go to get back in.
I did my call. Randomly found another door that was open.
Alison: You know, that’s how people ended up in Narnia.
Jill: I know. Well, I ended up in the Athlete and Federation area.
Alison: What is with it’s it’s It’s the, the mountain all over again. You end up in the athlete area. And how does this happen? I
Jill: don’t know. And I just kept wandering until I found a sortie and I just walked through, even though there was security and they were looking at me, you just walk like you own it and I’m just going to keep walking until I find as many exits that get me eventually back into the arena.
The cheering is unbelievable at this point. There’s, I think the Koreans brought drums. It was great. And. It finally got out of there. It’s, it’s complicated, I will say. But it’s going to be exciting. The convention center ceilings are kind of low. There were, they had a lot less seating than I thought it would be.
It was packed, but the venue isn’t very tall. So, they can’t put a ton of seating in there, to be quite honest. But, great crowds. Great announcers. He was, the guy, I think his name is Max, was one of them, and he might be Danish. He sounded a little Scandinavian, and he said, Okay, everybody, it’s your Olympic experience. Clap your hands, everybody! Because he’s like, it’s your Olympics. How, you know, let’s have a good time. Yes. And they had a little game called Find Alice Milliat, who did the, who created the Women’s Olympics. That was a movement that was around for just a little while.
And, uh, she was dressed up in, in the arena. The Friege came around and it was just, it was cool. It was a lot of fun. People were excited. Uh, Spain versus Brazil. Brazil won 29 to 18. Uh, I will tell you that goalkeeper, there were a lot of goalkeepers who were their biggest hype people, because they would save a goal and they’d be like, yes.
Alison: Well, you know, if, if a ball was flying at your head and you prevented bodily injury, you’d be pretty excited too.
Jill: Well, she was also quite flexible and patrons. You will see how flexible she is. And. And, uh, she could kick, she could kick the ball away. She was amazing. And, uh, that was just so much fun. I, there was a lot of questions I had about handball, so would love to get back and see some more, but it was a, the ball was much smaller than I thought it would be, and the court felt smaller than I thought it should be too.
But maybe that it, but it’s probably a regular basketball east size court, but a lot of fun if you’re going. Have a great time.
Alison: And if you’re not, find it.
Jill: Find it on streaming. It’s worth taking a look. And I missed the listener, Nick. He was there before, had a session before I got there. So, um, hope you had a good time, Nick.
Uh, in the play, it was, uh, prelims for the women. Uh, Denmark beat Slovenia, 27 19. Netherlands beat Angola, 34 31. Ooh, close. Uh, uh, Then also we had Korea beat Germany 23 22. France beat Hungary 31 28. And France is the defending gold medalist. So that should be a team to watch. And then Sweden beat Norway 32 28.
And then we also had some more football. We went over to the women’s side of things. In group play, Spain beat Japan. Uh, Canada beat New Zealand. And this is, uh, with the drone incident stuff going on. So
Alison: Yeah. This is, we talked about this yesterday. So. A little tricky on this result.
Jill: Right. Canada 1 2 1. Uh, Brazil beat, uh, Nigeria 1 0.
Oh, and that Spain Japan game was Spain 2, Japan 1. Germany beat Australia 3 0. France beat Colombia 3 2. And the USA beat Zambia 3 0. Then we went over to more men’s rugby. Samoa beat Kenya. 26 0 in pool play. Also, uh, we had a few more pool play games. Australia beat Argentina, 22 14. Fiji beat France, 19 12.
That was really close. That was surprisingly close. And, uh, South Africa beat Japan, 49 5. And New Zealand beat Ireland, 14 12. And the last pool game was USA versus Uruguay, USA won 33 17. Perry Baker.
Alison: had the game of his life. He scored four tries. That is the most for a player in a single match ever in the Olympics.
And that win put the United States into the quarterfinals. Quarterfinals started in the next session. So you don’t wait very long for this, but before that they had some men’s placement games. So Samoa beat Japan 42 to seven. And Kenya beat Uruguay 19 to 14. Now we get into the quarterfinals. So these now become elimination sort of, because you’re eliminated then from moving on, but then you also will have a placement game after that.
So South Africa beat New Zealand 14 to 7. France beat Argentina 26 to 14. Fiji beat Ireland. in 19 to 15, and unfortunately, the United States lost to Australia, 18 to nothing. The United States will play Ireland in the placement game on Saturday.
Jill: And then the other semi final matchups are South Africa versus France and Fiji versus Australia.
All right. So
Alison: nobody’s competing tomorrow, opening ceremony day. So get excited for that. But we do have some other news. Uh, Louise Sugden has been officially named to team GB for the Paris Paralympics in para powerlifting and Abedoff Bindra. And we read his autobiography a couple of years ago now, uh, in book club.
Jill: It’s funny because I was talking, I was standing next to some Indians, uh, in, because, uh, in the archery, U. S. was against India in their pairs on the, the, the lane. And, uh, we were talking, I was telling them we’ve read Abhinav Bindra’s book. So it was interesting. And,
Alison: uh, he carried the torch in Paris yesterday.
So there’s some great shots that we shared in, uh, Insta Stories.
Jill: Excellent. So yes, no competition tomorrow. It is opening ceremonies. We have one slot. Between the two of us. So we’re figuring out who’s going
Alison: so Jill’s arm and my foot. No So one of us will be at the ceremony but none of us will be at a watch party
Jill: Yes So that will all be fun and it’ll be interesting to see what being there in person versus watching it on TV is like So we will look forward to bringing that to you and that is going to do it for this episode.
Alison: You can find us on X, YouTube and Instagram at flamealivepod. Send us an email at flamealivepod at gmail. com. Call or text us at 208 352 6348. That’s 208 352 6348. Eight. Flame It. You can chat with us and other fans on our Facebook group, which is absolutely hopping. Keep the Flame Alive podcast and get your daily newsletter, with some special information every day.
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Jill: You can join us again tomorrow for Opening Ceremonies Fun. Please don’t forget to tell your friends about the show. Thank you to those of you who have stepped up and supported us. We really appreciate the financial boost while we were here in Paris.
And thank you so much for listening until tomorrow. Keep the flame alive.