It’s Day 3 of the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, and the excitement is everywhere–except on the tram that Alison was stuck on. We talk transportation, venue commutes, as well as more about daily life here in France. Plus, Jill got a tour of Champions Park and has the lowdown on this new addition to the Games.
The sports on today’s program are:
- Archery
- Artistic Gymnastics
- Badminton
- Basketball
- Beach Volleyball
- Boxing
- Canoe Slalom
- Diving
- Equestrian
- Fencing
- Handball
- Hockey
- Judo
- Mountain Biking
- Rowing
- Rugby Sevens
- Sailing
- Shooting
- Surfing
- Swimming
- Table Tennis
- Tennis
- Volleyball
- Water Polo
Don’t forget – the only way that we’re able to bring you this unique look at the Games is thanks to donations from listeners like you. Please support us financially so that we can continue to keep our flame alive. We have many ways to support us — and if you sign up as a paid Patreon member, you’ll get exclusive content!
Our researcher for the Olympics is Annalee Deabel.
Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive!
Photo: Jill Jaracz
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 Do not quote from the transcript; use the audio as the record of note.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 3
Jill: Bonjour and welcome to day three 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 coming to you from the Maine Press Center here in Paris, joined as always by my lovely co host, Alison Brown.
Alison, hello. Bonjour. How are you?
Alison: Bonjour.
Jill: Bonjour. Bonjour.
Alison: I sustained an injury today. What? Manon! Manon! And I had to go to the medical tent. You did? What happened? Wait, wait, let’s just begin the baguette here.
So I went to swimming, that’s going to be, I’ll tell the whole story when I, when we get to swimming. Okay. But the short version is, as I was leaving swimming, I caught my finger on the metal railing of the staircase and I thought it was fine. And it wasn’t fine. And by the time I got to gymnastics, it was just, it kept bleeding.
So I just stopped in the medical tent for un place de, I found out that’s the word. And, um, they were so lovely. So very special shout out to the medical staff at the Bercy arena. They were lovely. And they took a look at my finger and they said, Oh, Oh no. So they made me sit down and they cleaned it.
And then. She didn’t like that my finger looked puffy, and then I just said to her, She’s three’s American, I have fat fingers.
And they laughed as well, but I also know that she wasn’t worried after that, once I told her I was American. And yes, so they took very good care of it, and I gave them all pins to thank them. Well, first I just gave it to my two people, and then the other people got jealous.
Jill: Oh, well, yeah, you can’t have that.
that.
And
Alison: they were like, oh, may, may I have a pin? So they got pins as well, so. If you need to go to the medical tents while you’re here, they’re really well staffed, very well stocked, and the people are lovely. So even if you just need un plaster. They, they take good care of you.
Jill: Excellent. Well, I’m glad you are okay.
Cause that, you know, stuff doesn’t stop bleeding. That’s not good. Especially when you’re ripping it on metal. Uh, I do want to say, I know that yesterday’s show was really short because, uh, we had a low battery issue on my recorder and I didn’t know how to make it work. So I was really trying to move it along.
And now we are punchy as all get out today, buckle up friends, you’re in for a show. So I want to say. Uh, first off, in, uh, I think many venues, I don’t know if it’s all of them, have you been doing karaoke? Yes. With the old Champs Élysées song?
Alison: Yes.
Jill: Which is kind of fun because everybody knows
Alison: it. And then there’s like Sweet Caroline.
I haven’t gotten Sweet Caroline. I’ve gotten some other, a lot of TikTok songs.
Jill: Oh, okay. That’s interesting. but no, if you’re coming, you will probably be asked to sing some karaoke. And some of it is French, which is kind of fun to do. Um, I delayed a toilet time story because I didn’t, I didn’t want to annoy people, but then I got some feedback that they laughed.
So, thanks Ryan. Um, I have taken to using the toilet on floor 1. 5 here.
Alison: That’s a main press center.
Jill: Yes.
Alison: Okay.
I did not know that that existed.
Jill: Yeah. So if you go, we had to go out into a stairwell where the toilets are and, uh, there’s only two stalls in the toilet first off. So I thought, Oh. If there’s a toilet here, there’s probably one downstairs, and yes, there is a floor 1.
- So I’ve taken to using the toilet there, except for the fact that all of the bathrooms are on automatic lights, motion sensor lights. And, even in the stall. So you can go into the bathroom, but then when you go into the stall, that light turns on too. And it will stay on for approximately ten seconds.
So, I’ll be sitting there, and it’ll turn off, and I start waving my There’s a lot of waving of the arms! Okay, part of the reason I’m laughing is how I do this! It’s like we have
invisibility cloaks on! I’ve never felt so thin!
Anyway. stop Okay, so today I got up early and went on a little tour of Champions Park. Not just a little tour. A tour with Martin Foucault, who is a French biathlete, was, he’s retired now, but was an Olympian extraordinaire, and he is now on the IOC Athletes Commission. But Champions Park is a new concept for the Olympics, and it’s not exactly like the metal Plaza?
Because I thought it was kind of metal plaza. No, the medals get awarded at the venue and then the next day they let 24 hours go by so that they have, the athletes have time to process what’s going on. And so the next day they can do their walk in Champions Park and be celebrated. If you are around here in Paris, there are 13, 000 seats.
This is a free event. There’s no ticket needed, no QR code needed, nothing. You show up and get in line and maybe you will be one of the lucky 13, 000. Doors open at 4 p. m. and the show starts at 5. 30. My guess is that this is going to get out. And you might need to be here a little earlier, but I don’t know what they’re going to be like.
This takes place at the Trocadero. And so when it’s a big catwalk that the athletes go down.
Alison: And it’s really funny because on our TV right now we have the evening view of the Trocadero. That’s just what the volunteer happened to put on for us. So are the stands going to be where people are sitting?
Jill: Yes. they will be on. Both sides of this catwalk. It’s a very long catwalk and, uh, athletes will come from a back. There’s a stage kind of in the back area where they can come down. Their families will be invited if their families are here and then they’ll be celebrated in some way. So today, and there’s going to be, I believe every night it’s going to have a host tonight with Dan Carter, who is a legendary rugby player.
And that is because, men’s rugby was being one of the many medalists was petted. it was funny because Dan Carter was there too and he was talking about, How brave Antoine Dupont was for making the saying, I’m going to be in rugby sevens because he says they’re two very different sports right now.
And for him to do that and help lead that team to gold was just phenomenal athleticism on his part. So I’m, I’m very curious as to what this looks like. If you were listening and you’re not here, there’s supposed to be a feed of it. So OVS. Bonsoir. Au revoir. There’s supposed to be a feed of it. OBS has a feed and it’s being given to all of the rights holding broadcasters, so it depends.
I did go on Max tonight to try to find it. Couldn’t find it, so that your mileage may vary. This does feel like something, though, that
Alison: Peacock and NBC would love.
Jill: Mm
Alison: hmm. So I would hope, so please, American, We’d listeners, let us know if this is, if this is showing up on that Peacock feed.
Jill: Right. And I, I wouldn’t be surprised if NBC took like 10 seconds of a night, if then an American was there and had it out.
So the, it starts at five 30 with a dance show that lasts about 15 minutes. And the dance troupe is, perilous.
Alison: Is this the same dance troupe every night that’s going to do this? I believe so, yeah. So it’s going to be like the solid gold dancers. They’ll appear on every show. Yeah,
Jill: yeah. And we saw them do their thing.
It’s not a bad dance and there’s chairs involved. Wow. Mostly I say this because they had chairs spaced out on the ground there and they were like, please don’t mess with the chairs. Kind of thing when we were walking around. there’ll be food stands there. There’s a boutique there as well. We did get to walk the catwalk while the music was playing and it was really really cool.
I think the athletes are really gonna like this. This is one of the things Martin Foucault said. They wanted to do something more for the athletes. I think the athletes wanted to feel more appreciated and they really talked to them and tried to figure out how do we do things that are,make the Olympics a little bit more special for you, especially, I mean, some of these events are just, you train for four years and they’re over in the blink of an eye.
And what do you do with that? And the medal ceremonies
Alison: are very quick, you know, even at swimming where they do a whole lap of honor sort of thing, five minutes and you’re done. And it’s all a blur and, you know, at swimming, their hair is still wet. It’s just, there’s so much still going on that I can understand where an athlete would say, Give me a day to absorb what just happened.
And then I can actually celebrate my moment.
Jill: Yeah. So this is good. I think it’s going to be pretty cool. Um, it’s a beautiful venue. When you walk down the runway, you’re looking at the Eiffel tower and it’s pretty stunning and you can just take it all in. And there’s a lot of magnitude that goes with that.
So I’m betcha this is going to get added to every Olympics beyond this. So after this, I wanted to go to beach volleyball. I don’t know if I put this on the Facebook group or not, but I was like, from here you had to cross the river and it’s right there, but I can see the Eiffel Tower. And I said, that’s probably taken me two hours to get to find where I need to go.
Did take one hour, but that’s because I found the countdown clocks.
Alison: Oh, but they’re not counting down. Oh no, the Paralympics. Counting
Jill: down. It’s one month to go to the Paralympics today. Does the
Alison: countdown clock then count up?
Jill: No, it was at zero. It was at zero. Oh, that’s disappointing. And then also in this area of the river was a memorial to the French Algerian Moroccan War.
it was, there was some war monument there too that was kind of interesting. And it made me think, oh yeah, other countries all have conflicts that, you know, are important in their history that we wouldn’t know about. So that’s kind of an interesting cultural moment to have. I did find eventually. I had to stop for ice cream on the way.
Alison: Okay, so we have returned. And I’m sure people are talking about this on the news. We have returned to the heat. Today was well into the 80s, hot and sticky. Tomorrow’s going to be even worse. So, le glace.
Jill: Sounds quite tasty. And we got a press release on heat safety that came in and it said, shaded areas are indicated on all sites.
You know what would be nice to have shaded the field of play bleachers. I’m still kind of amazed that nobody makes shades for temporary venues. They don’t have shades in a lot of permanent venues. Yeah, that’s true, too. Um, but I got to beach volleyball right as the last match of the session was partway done.
And I missed, listener Mark and listener Don. They ran into each other there. That was cool, but I missed them. Um, and the beach volleyball was interesting. We’ll get to that when we get to the results, but it was like the beginning of then, then there was nothing until like four o’clock. So I thought I’ll stay till the next session.
Like, no, they shut it down for the heat. And then I wandered around the area trying to find the venue media center. pro tip, the Beach Volleyball Arena and the Champs de Mars use the same big complex. So you don’t have to,if you enter one, you’ve entered both.
Alison: Okay, good to know. good to know. That
Jill: is very good to know. Also, I bet there’s one media center. I didn’t look at, Champs de Mars has judo and I didn’t look for a media center there. There is also a cafeteria. There’s a big outdoor tent cafeteria. I about cried when I could get a hot meal. Four course beetroot salad, watermelon.
Those were my only, you get to choose two, but they had watermelon and they had a lovely, I had lovely falafel and Chinese noodles, you know, pudding.
Alison: I had taken judo off for tomorrow. I think
Jill: judo is going back on for tomorrow. it should. You got to have one of these cafeteria experiences. And it’s only like 18 euros.
It’s a huge meal. It really gets to you. Judo has food and is indoors. Right. and the big thing about the cafeteria is we’re on day three, and the venue media snack areas, Well, hey, not the free snack areas because there are no, there are no snacks. Yeah, there’s no snacks.
Alison: All those pictures we posted from Beijing’s of all those piles of snack, there are no snacks.
Jill: Right. You’re lucky if you get some fruit because usually fruit is still around, but granola, it’s granola bars and a fruit basket. And by fruit basket, we mean basket of apples. At best. So there’ve been a lot of apple eating and you just, you take it because you never, you don’t know when you’re going to eat again.
I didn’t have dinner again tonight.
Alison: Me too.
Jill: So it’s just one of those, you have to eat when you have the food available and then every venue has a food for purchase area in the, usually in the media center. But sometimes it’s next to it. It was at the media center in it, but it’s like cold sandwiches.
It’s cold seven 11 sandwiches basically, and some chips. So it’s not great. I think it’s boring after a while. So yes, hit that cafeteria up. It’s pretty good. It’s good enough. I know I still like cafeteria food, but it’s pretty good.
All right. What volunteer job or officiating job would you
Alison: like to do? I was at diving today. There’s an attendant for the hot tub.
Jill: I know who you speak because I was late to water polo as well. And I got the start of diving practice because I said, why is somebody taking the cover off the hot tub? And then it was diving practice.
Alison: Yes. So I’ll hang out at the hot tub, make sure it works, make sure the cover’s on when it needs to be. I think that would be a great job.
Jill: We apparently either my brain is already Swiss cheese or We didn’t talk about the water polo situation enough because I have multiple jobs I want to do there.
Alison: Okay. I may not have, you know, last night got screwy because of our technical issues and we hadn’t talked about water polo until after our technical issues.
That’s true too. So maybe I left that. I buried the lead and I apologize.
Jill: That’s all right. That’s all right. So I have,I have a few jobs on hold for if there are no jobs, but right now I would like to be the ball retriever for water polo. Because if a ball goes beyond the goal into the little swimming area behind the goal, there are people at either goal end that, uh, when play moves away from the goal, they dive in and go fetch the ball.
I love that. You know a volunteer job I don’t want to do? Tell me. Being the poor sucker who has to sit at the media entrance And it’s also accredited entrance with the sign that says Olympic family so that they can shuttle them to wherever the Olympic family gets to go.
Alison: That’s all they do is they stand there.
Yeah, wait. So today when I was leaving diving, there was a poor guy who was doing that. And there was also five cars of the Toyota.
Jill: Oh, right, right,
Alison: the Olympic fleet, and people were getting escorted into their cars. But it wasn’t like a limo car. It was just like a fleet car. So this was Olympic family, but not where you get a limo car.
So we had a little bit more to do, I guess.
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Alison: It’s a big.
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And they also get, uh, sometimes if you’re at the five dollar and up level, you will get random videos. And we’re starting to get some of those out there as well. So you get some special content that other people aren’t seeing. So you can get a little bit more behind the scenes action here at the games.
So we do appreciate all of you who have sent us funds. A lot of them are going to cab rides so that we get home safely.
Alison: some of the baguette money is going to baguettes so we don’t starve.
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Okay. We got the daily results here. We have a pool play and early rounds in badminton, boxing, hockey, rowing, surfing, table tennis. I’ll do water polo and beach volleyball since I was actually there. Okay. and basketball, every team has just played one game, it’s men’s and women’s. So we’ll hold on getting into those sports deeply.
we’ll start with archery, men’s team, gold went to Korea.
Alison: Very nice. I watched some of this. Oh, did you? And at the very beginning of that gold medal round, Korea shot. Two tens in a row, just right off the bat and
Jill: never look
Alison: back.
Jill: Wow, because that’s what happened with the women’s gold medal match. And they shot a ten right away and it was just, whoo, they’re coming to play.
And then, yeah, it got us a little shaky, but I’m glad the men pulled it out as well. Silver went to France. That had to be fun. And bronze went to Turkey. Also interesting. Then, uh, Artistic Gymnastics, it was the men’s team final, you were there. This was my
Alison: big event for the day, so, uh, in the men’s team final, and I don’t remember them doing this before, two countries were put together in a rotation.
Oh, that’s it. So at, so they only had four apparatus going at once. China and Japan were together as one and two, the U. S. and Italy, then Great Britain and Ukraine, and Switzerland and Canada. Yeah. So it was just done in order. it was a great competition. Lots of clean performances, lots of really exciting performances.
the first three rotations were somewhat quiet in the arena. Not quiet. That’s undercutting it, but the energy wasn’t quite there. And then all of a sudden at that third rotation turn, something clicked on and the audience just. glommed onto the excitement. The United States basically had 18 clean performances.
Brody Malone, who had a disastrous qualifier was put on five of the six apparatus, five clean performances. The disaster that he had in the high bar the other night where he fell twice, he stuck the landing literally gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. And it was one more gorgeous. performance out of the next in men’s gymnastics and women’s gymnastics is the same thing in the team event.
The scores will swing wildly because each apparatus has a different scale.
Jill: you can
Alison: expect high scores in this or higher scores on that apparatus. So it’s hard to compare as we’re going along. But you expected Japan and China to be in the lead when we came into the final rotation. And that’s where we were And the U.
- was hanging in there nice and solid in three. And Japan and China were on high bar. The U. S. was on pommel.
Japan goes up one high bar performance, next high bar performance, just gorgeous, gorgeous stuff. China goes up. The second athlete falls twice.
The U. S. has three gorgeous pommel performances. Please let me go to the pommel horse final. Yeah,
Jill: you can.
Alison: That’s, that’s going to be an absolute winner. Last Chinese gymnast goes up, he’s clean, but it’s not enough. And Japan wins the gold. And then you find out that the U. S. Synths.2004 has not won a team men’s domestic medal.
The guys just went absolutely nuts. China was very disappointed. Japan. I want to go to the champions park party when the Japanese men show up. They were, Oh, were they thrilled? Just, just a tiny bit thrilled. Ed Sheeran and Anna Wintour were there. Ooh, wow. And the other, athlete I want to point out is from Team GB, Max Whitlock.
This is Olympics number four. He is 34 years old. And when I tell you, he is tied for second, in qualifying for pommel. Wow. And he threw down on high bar in the team event as well. So he’s not done.
Jill: apparatus finals are going to be interesting then. I’m ready. All right. In basketball, we did have the women’s group play, as I said, kind of as expected us beat Japan one Oh two 76.
Um, Nigeria beat Australia 75, 62. That seems like a little bit of an upset there. It does feel like an upset. So we will continue to keep an eye on that over in beach volleyball. I caught the Last match of the session. That was a women’s prelim game. Switzerland’s Huverly and Brunner beat Spain’s Alvarez and Moreno 2 0.
In a
Alison: lot of news reports that I’m seeing, people are saying the Eiffel Tower Stadium is the most magnificent facility. It’s great.
Jill: I mean, it’s,beautiful. And, I mean, it’s beautiful. If you couldn’t get a ticket, you could go up the Eiffel Tower and watch. I think people were doing that as well.
Alison: Well, the Eiffel Tower tickets may actually be cheaper than some of those beach
Jill: volleyball tickets. They might be. Um, it’s a lot of fun. The court actually looks smaller than I would think it’d be. You know, it looks bigger on TV for some reason to me. The fun part though, is being able to see how players are placing the ball.
in different areas of the court. That’s really fun that you can see that more clearly. Also, you get the feeling for how difficult beach volleyball is in moving as fast as these women do. And I’m, you know, all the athletes up and down the bracket are just so phenomenal. Cores for days, abs for days. It’s just incredible.
So yeah, definitely check that out. At some point. I mean, I want to go back and maybe watch more than one game. But not tomorrow. No, not tomorrow. Over, uh, moving over to Canoe Slalom, we had the men’s C1 finals. Uh, gold went to, uh, Nicholas Justin from France, following in Tony Estanguez’s shoes. Or paddles.
silver went to Adam Burgess from Great Britain and bronze went to Matej Benus from Slovakia. In diving, you went to this. You eventually got there.
Alison: So, when I left this morning, I checked my little travel app. It said 27 minutes to get to the diving venue. Would you like to know how long it took? Sure,
Two hours. Oh my gosh! So I missed the first round and a half. part of the problem was my tram broke down. So, I mean, that happens. You have to be realistic. But what does not happen is, I got on the bus. This is an official. Accredited person’s bus that is supposed to transport us directly to the venue.
It was the bus driver’s first day and he didn’t know where he was going. Oh no! He knew he was supposed to go to the Stade de France, so he kind of drove to the Stade de France. He didn’t know that the bus was supposed to then go to the Centre Aquatique. And he had no idea where at the centre he was supposed to be.
So we stopped and asked several transport people. Uh, volunteers where this bus was supposed to go and none of them could direct him until the very last person. And these are the transport volunteers that are supposed to be helping people get around and they did not know where the official transport bus was supposed to go.
Jill: We have had volunteer briefs. I mean, there are some that, well, I’ve got a good volunteer story for later, but we’ve had a lot of volunteers who have been, I don’t know. And that’s the end. Yeah. And there’s no, I’ll find
Alison: out for you. And honestly, it was not that this bus driver honestly was furious and upset.
And there was an IOC woman on the bus and she was trying to direct him because she had been to the facility before. It was chaos. So I missed a lot of the diving, but I got to see Tom Daley looking amazing. The one thing I will say about 10 meter diving is in TV, you do not realize how high they go above the platform and how close they are to the platform.
I think I winced or made noise every single time. The Tribune was packed, so I had to stand through the whole thing. which was fine because it’s over in like 40 seconds. Diving competitions are so quick. The whole thing was over in an hour. My other beef with volunteers, because I was standing, several volunteers kept walking in front of me.
And not just me, there was a whole slew of us, uh, press in the press box. Wild dives were happening to the point where I had to literally stick out my arm in front of a volunteer to stop her. from me missing the final dive from the Chinese divers.
Jill: Oh my goodness.
It’s not good. I mean the hard thing is like there are good volunteers. The other hard thing is that the ones who are not good are really not good. I don’t know if training wasn’t good enough, even though I guess we should have gone to all those, the watch the training happen sessions that we were invited to, but they had.
thousands and thousands of applicants more than they needed. And this is what they chose. I don’t know. It’s tough. We also, the other beef we have with volunteers because of our sustainability stuff, they don’t like printing anything here. So they’ve got cubby holes for results and, uh, start lists and a lot of stuff is, it’s helpful to have, especially, I don’t know if we’re just too old, but in print, it’s nice to have it and then have your computer open because we’re all working on laptops, so it’s really hard to have three screens open on a laptop and try to write something, try to take your notes, try to deal with our personal documents that keep us organized and have up the order of competition.
for, uh, from the download. And you’ve, got some really snotty volunteers.
Alison: So at the broadcast, at the media centers in the venues, sometimes they will have print sheets. Usually they will. Unfortunately, the venue media center at gymnastics, for example, is very far away from the Tribune. So I was concerned about getting a seat at the Tribune.
I was late because of transportation again. It took me an hour and 15 minutes when it should have taken 20 to get over to the gymnastics venue. And so I finally got a spot at the Tribune. I knew it was going to be full and I asked one of the volunteers, do you have any of the start lists? And she said, back at The Venue Media Center.
Well, the back at the Venue Media Center was like a good 10, 15 minute walk up and down these outdoor stone stairs case. And I said, could you send a volunteer to get all of the press that’s up here, some of the sheets? And they refused until I got mean. And then she brought me one. Because my thinking is, why are you making every single member of the press walk back and forth?
and possibly miss some of the competition. Just have a volunteer, have a few, you don’t need that many because most people don’t want the paper. And yes, fine, if you want to limit it, but they were printed at the venue media center, they were sitting there. I could have gone and gotten one and missed
Jill: the first
Alison: rotation.
Jill: Yeah, that would be it. You don’t want to miss it and we’re not supposed to miss this stuff. That’s what we’re here to do. Watch, not go fetch things.
Alison: But let’s do diving results first. So for the men’s synchro 10 meter platform, gold went to Li Li and Zhang Ji and Yang Hao from China.
Silver went to Tom Daley and Noah Williams. They were thrilled. Oh, good. So excited. So pleased from Great Britain and bronze went to Ryland veins and Mer Mer. Nathan Somsberg Murray from Canada. This is why you do the results. Because I do this every time, I struggle and I trip. The Mexican pair was not happy with the scores they got on their final dive.
Neither were the Mexican fans. I’m sure and they just missed out on the bronze to the Canadians because of the scores that both teams got in that final round. And I kind of have to say I agreed with the Mexicans, not that they needed to win the bronze, but I thought they were a little underscored.
Jill: Interesting. I wouldn’t mind seeing some diving at some point. I don’t know when because the diving practice was great. You got to see everybody was going all at the same time. every board was being used. The thighs on some of these men are just enormous. And like you say, you can’t tell how high they’re going.
And it’s unbelievable how high they go and how much they can do in the air. And how fast it is. Yeah.
Alison: that’s always the case, right? On television, it seems slower. And the way the camera sort of follows them down. it, disguises how quickly it all happens and how fast the judges score it.
They’re just like, boom, they don’t need review. They don’t need to think they just hit their little buttons and they have little devices. They sit in a little box. I posted this on Instagram judges in a box and they have little handheld scoring devices. They just press the numbers.
Jill: Very cool. In Equestrian, the Eventing Jumping Team Final happened.
Gold went to Great Britain, Silver went to France, and Bronze went to Japan. And in the Eventing Jumping Individual Final, Gold went to Germany’s Michael Jung, who, this is his fourth gold medal, and he is the first rider to win three individual Olympic titles. Silver went to Christopher Burton from Australia, and bronze went to Laura Collette from Great Britain.
In fencing, we had some more, a lot, well, of course, we had Chucklist on action. You talked to the whole team.
Alison: I talked to the whole team. So, we had women’s sabre and, uh, men’s foil individual events. Unfortunately, the U. S. women, uh, sabre team didn’t have a great day. So, Elizabeth Tartakovsky, Magda Skarban Skar You do that.
Magda Skarbanikovic. Thank you. And Tatyana Nazlimov, all lost in their first round matches. On the men’s side, however, We had a little bit of a difference. So Alexander Messia. See, I’m really struggling with names today. I’m sorry. Messy Ellis. Thank you. And Garrick Meinhardt. They lost in the table of 16.
Nick Aitken stuck around until the semis lost in a wild semifinal with Italian Filippo Macchi. This Italian was all over the place. Italian. And I don’t know if that Nick looked uncomfortable. He was struggling with his weapon. He swapped it during the match and he was, there was a lot of bending. There was a lot of stepping on it.
He was really uncomfortable. It looked like, but then he turns around, comes back in the bronze medal match and just is a different fighter. So he ends up beating in Murakazuki of Japan for the bronze medal, another medal for Shikibu san and so incredibly thrilled for him that he was able after that bad semi final where he struggled to turn around and fight so hard and so well and just because they’re fast.
I mean, the fencing, it was maybe a half an hour, hour later at most that that bronze medal match was. So. Nice job. Nice job.
Jill: The rest of the men’s foil, uh, Results were gold going to, uh, Chung Kao Long from Hong Kong. Hong Kong is making a showing today. It’s really, really interesting. Silver went to Filippo Macchi from Italy and bronze went to Nick Aitken from the U S for women’s saber.
Gold went to Manon Apathy Brunet from France. Silver went to Sarah Balzer from France and bronze went to Olga Karlan from Ukraine. Honest to Pete, that. must have been a session to see.
Alison: I mean, an all French final. We’ve been talking about how loud, uh, the Grand Palais is. And some people have commented on the Facebook group that they’ve walked past it during the fencing matches and they can hear it from the outside.
So this must’ve just been absolutely deafening.
Jill: Yeah. And then having someone from Ukraine who is, there’s still so much support for that country. Wow. I’m putting it on my list to rewatch. And, uh, we still had some preliminary, preliminary handball. Handball is structured as a two group tournament. So when some teams have played one game, some teams have played two games, Germany and Denmark lead their respective groups.
In hockey, the women,U. S. women were playing. They had a tie with Spain, one and one. That’s for, uh, Shakhlistanis. Tamer and Bing. Abby Tamer and Kelsey Bing. Thank you. My brain is Swiss cheese today. In the men’s pools, Netherlands is undefeated in Pool A and in Pool B, Belgium and Australia are also undefeated.
Uh, we don’t have vacuuming here, but we do have cart rolling tonight. It’s magical. In the women’s pools, not everyone has played more than one game, but China and Netherlands are on the top of Pool A and Argentina is leading Pool B. Then we have judo. And again, I was, after I had my lovely meal, I was like, do I go to Judo?
Do I not go to Judo? Do I go? I’m like, well, you’re here. Just go in. And. I heard the crowd and I knew someone was from France was fighting because Judo is really, really big here. And yes, we had the women’s 57 kilogram weight class and the men’s 73 kilogram weight class I was in the early session, because the medals were at night.
I walked in during one of the men’s semi finals. So let’s go with the women’s. Gold went to Krista Deguchi from Canada. Silver went to He Mimi from Korea. And the two bronze medals, one went to Japan for Funakubo Haruka from Japan. And the other bronze went to Sarah Leone Sisique from France.
Alison: Let’s just apologize for names today.
we are really struggling on the names and usually you do so well. I’m glad you
Jill: apologized because in the men’s
Cold winter Diet Hadarov from Azerbaijan. Silver went to Joan Benjamin Gaba from France. And the two bronze medals, uh, one went to Adil Asmanov from Moldova and the other went to Hashimoto Soichi from Japan. I walked in during Gaba’s semifinal. And that was loud and wild. I think it went into golden score because it just was long.
It was a long, long match. And then I also saw Osmanov’s semifinal. And that went well. And then the session was over and I went, Oh, okay, the session’s over. And then they had mat reconfiguration, which was really cool because Judo has, uh, in the early stages they have two mats going. And then the semifinals and finals have just one mat, kind of like fencing.
So you have to take the yellow, mats away and move in some red and vice versa. So there was a lot of configuration. I forgot
Alison: the most important thing from artistic gymnastics. The pieces for the metal ceremony are under the mats. Oh, you’re kidding. They’re under the podium part of it because what they do is they take a rug.
That looks like the mat, and they roll it out. So on TV, it just looks like the stand is on the mat, but there’s actually a matching carpet piece that’s underneath the podium, so as not to damage the actual competition surface. Wow. So it’s kind of like when your grandmother bought, uh, fake jewelry that looked just like her real jewelry,
because those are the ones that she wore every day and then the real ones stayed in the safety deposit box, but the carpet is under the podium.
Jill: I will look for that, man. In mountain biking, we had the men’s cross country final. Great Britain’s Tom Bidcock won the gold and he got a flat tire. Like I guess right in the beginning, it’s been wheel problem city for the mountain biking races.
Uh, silver went to Victor Koretsky from France and bronze went to Alain Hatherley from South Africa or Alan Hatherley from South Africa. Rugby sevens. We had a women’s pool rounds and then went right into some semifinals and quarterfinals.
Jill: So placing in the 9th to 12th, we have Japan versus South Africa. Japan won 15 12 and then the other. matchup there was Brazil against Fiji, Brazil winning 28 to 22. In the women’s quarterfinals, it was New Zealand beating China 55 to 5 and then US beat Great Britain 17 to 7. In the other two quarterfinals, it was Canada over France 1914 and Australia over Ireland 40 to 7.
Alison: Oh, if New Zealand plays Australia. Oh,
Jill: could be good in sailing. We have another day of racing in the regattas. There was some men’s wooden surfing and skiff races. So Stephanie Roble and Maggie Shay are in ninth place right now in shooting. We had the mixed team air pistol qualification, and then we also had the men’s 10 meter and women’s 10 meter air rifle finals for the men.
Uh, Shen Li Hao. One from China, he got the gold with an Olympic record. Silver went to Viktor Lindgren from Sweden, and bronze went to Miran Maricic from Croatia. And in the women’s event, gold went to Ban Hyo Jin from Korea, silver went to Huang Yu Qing from China, and bronze went to Audrey Goguenat from Switzerland.
Swimming. You went to some swimming today too. No. No, you didn’t. You watched some swimming on the feeds. I watched one race. Okay. Sorry. I just keep thinking you’re going to swimming every night. I was at gymnastics. You can’t do
Alison: both. You know, that’s one of the things that when you’re here, you have to accept, you know, when you’re home, you, it’s very easy to double screen.
It’s very easy to watch it after. But when you’re here, I saw it. Two events in person, one, it’s part of one event, and then one race. And that’s it. That was my day. There’s no doing six hours and cramming and speeding through the commercials and speeding through some of the early rounds of the slow moments.
And I think that’s the hardest thing to get my brain around in a way. How I think of this Olympics is going to be so completely different. And what I’m going to remember is going to be so completely different because I’m, even though I’m here, I am seeing so many fewer events.
Jill: Right. Because your day really, if you got to three things, that’s amazing.
Unless you were in the same complex and they happened to be going at the same time and you could bounce from one to the other.
Alison: But
Jill: that seems
Alison: to not be happening, I think because of crowd control. Concord, there’s one event and that everything is empty and you can’t stay there for the day and see multiple things in the same event in the same location.
Jill: Yeah. It was really bummed when I kind of figured that out. So that’s the hard part is that you spend most of your time in logistics and transportation. Like how am I getting to someplace? And how am I getting where I need to go? and then trying to navigate another new media center that has the signage here.
I mean, just like our neighborhood, it’s good until it’s not. The signage is good until it’s not. Like, you can’t find entrances. You can’t, it’ll say, this is what I had in Water Polo. Where it was, okay, go this way. Okay, go this way. I’m following everything, and then the signs just disappear. And I don’t know where to go, but we’ll get to that.
Uh, swimming, we had, uh, Heats in the morning. Our Shukla Stani Bobby Fink, did the 800 meters. We’ll see him in the semis. Excellent. and then we had a whole bunch of, different events tonight. Women’s 400 individual medley. Gold went to summer Macintosh from Canada. Silver went to Katie Grimes from the U.
- and bronze went to Emily Wyant from the U. S. In the men’s 200 meter freestyle, gold went to David Popovici from Romania, silver went to Matthew Richards from Great Britain, and bronze went to Luke Hobson from the U. S. In the men’s 100 meter backstroke, gold went to Thomas Ciccone from Italy, silver went to Zhu Yijiaou from China, and bronze went to Ryan Murphy from the U.
- In the women’s 100 meter breaststroke, here is a big shocker. Gold went to Tatiana Smith from South Africa. Silver went to Tang Chang Ting from China. And bronze went to Mona McSherry from Ireland, which is exciting.
Alison: But notice what name we didn’t say was Lily King, she ended up in fourth.
Tatiana Smith has changed her name, I assume because of getting married. So back in Tokyo, she was Tatiana Schoenmacher. So if people are confused as to how do we end up with two Tatianas? She was the silver medalist, uh, back behind Lydia Jacobi in, uh, Tokyo. So yeah, and we’re going to see all these faces again in the 200 meter breast.
Jill: It will be interesting to see how that one plays out in the Women’s 200 meter freestyle Gold went to Molly Han. Molly Ooc Callaghan from Australia. Silver went to Ariana Tuss from Australia and Bronze went to Shaban Hagley from Hong Kong.
Alison: Australia, but not the Australia you thought.
Right. So O’Callaghan got in there and beat Titmuss. She did the same thing that happened last night. I know a message from, uh, at swimming where Molly O’Callaghan pulled Ariana Titmuss up to the, uh, top step during the anthem.
Jill: Maybe we’ll be seeing that. Very nice. You know what? I, Heard an anthem. Oh no, it was in water polo because they played national anthems again.
And I’m just a little thrown by this still, but I saw China play a game and I instinctively wanted to flick a flag. It’s a great spot from Beijing where you just
Alison: felt that flicking coming through your body
Jill: when they at Beijing when they did the medal ceremony the Soldiers just threw the flag at this one thing.
So it unfurled very dramatically. It was very cool Moving over to table tennis, Melissa Tapper lost her round of 64 match against Shin Yubin from Korea, 4 0. So, uh, sorry Millie, hopefully we will see you again in another part of the competition. But there’s still round 1 and some round 2 action going on.
In tennis, there’s still, I don’t know if they’ve caught up, but a lot of action going on. Some of the bigger events. Novak Djokovic beat Rafael Nadal What? Well, Rafael Nadal, this was his last year.
Alison: I know,
Jill: but And he has a lot of strapping on his thigh. I’m just surprised that they ended up meeting so early.
Everybody meets early. It’s the Olympics. Everybody is good. Uh, Carlos Alcaraz beat, uh, Griekspoor from, I believe the Netherlands, 6 1 7 6. In the women’s singles, Donna Bekic beat, uh, Bianca Andreescu from Canada, which I know Bianca Andreescu’s coming back from injury and things like that. So, um, I wasn’t sure how she’d do, but she was excited to be here.
Um, then in the mixed doubles, this was a shocker. Bori from Italy Beat Mira and Dva and Danielle Medvedev from the neutral athletes. 6 3, 6 2. And then uh, shers and Koff from Netherlands. Built beat Zachery in sits pass from Greece. 6 4, 7, 6.
Alison: I’m actually surprised in a way that the doubles are allowed to compete the a IN because for example, in artistic swimming, they can’t do duet.
So how is doubles not a team maybe tennis has said it’s okay Inconsistency I Know welcome to the Olympics.
Jill: There you go. We’ve had some women’s preliminary round action in volleyball Turkey Brazil China and Serbia 3 2 Jordan lot Larson who we talked to At the media summit, she is on Team USA in water polo.
I thought the US played at 1700 and I walk in with plenty of time, and the US is just leaving the pool.
Alison: The game ended at 1700. Yeah,
Jill: I must have read the schedule wrong. They lost to Spain. Wow. 13 to 11. That was tough. And so. My problem with the water polo venue is it’s like M. C. Escher staircases everywhere.
It is. Because you, you go upstairs to get to the seating and then when you go into the seating, that’s when like your venue tribune. the press tribune signage stops. So you’re, even though you’re looking for tables, you’re not quite sure where to go. Cause there’s a lot of stuff that’s marked video analysts, TV observers.
Alison: Right. And the other thing that you need to know is that the diving, uh, tribune and the water polo tribune are basically a continuation of one another. It’s all connected because if you stand on one end, of the facility, you can see, you know, say the north side, you, you’re in front of diving, and then in the south side is the water polo pool.
They’re right next to each other.
Jill: Right. So, but then to get across the, if you want to go horizontally, there’s no one flat surface. You have to go
Alison: up into, I’m sorry, I should have told you that because yes, you have to go up and down, maybe three or four set of three or four step little. It’s like speed bumps for press.
You don’t get to water polo quickly.
Jill: And then I was looking for the media center and I kept going in circles just within this thing because I’d see the sign that says video, but no, you have to go to the end and down. Well, okay. So I got so frustrated and I finally, I had been sitting in the diving well cause I’m like, I’ve just got to play it myself.
Cause I just didn’t know what to do. And then I was like, Oh, there’s press tribunes over there by water polo. Let me move. And I sat a couple seats down from this man from the Netherlands. And I said, where is the media center? And he looks at me and goes, Oh, you have to walk outside and go all the way around the building.
And it’s a tent. It’s not a tent. It’s a temporary building, but it’s all the way outside. and of course, and I just said, I’m not going there.
Alison: See, yesterday at water polo, I guess I never made it over there. Of course
Jill: not. It’s far away.
Alison: I had so much trouble finding the Tribune yesterday and I do apologize.
I thought it was clear, but you know what? You would have seen my friend. my volunteer friend who saved me when I was, and I walked through the training of the basket people. his stationed role is at the base of the steps to take you up to the Tribune.
Jill: Oh, I did go by him then.
Yes. He has like a red beard.
Alison: I went past so many volunteers. Now he’s my friend because today when I went to diving, I was like, Oh, and his eyes got wide. He’s like, Oh, I think he was surprised that I came back after what happened yesterday or the, yeah, that water polo that I just, I was almost in tears trying to get to the Tribune, but he was so nice and he rescued me when I went through the doors that said interdit.
He said, yeah, just go.
Jill: Um, So the U. S. game was the end of a session, and I was just kind of frazzled at that point, and I sit down, and I watch diving practice for a while, and I’m starting to sink in and be comfortable, and then I realize I should probably get some food and go to bed, because now fans are starting coming in for the second session, And I don’t know why I think I have to go to the bathroom because I have done nothing but sweat all day.
and it’s so disgusting right now, it’s so bad. And, and of course we have to hand wash our clothes, and we have a teeny tiny little sink that makes it so hard to wash. I, I had linen pants, and they aren’t, I washed them two days ago, they’re, they’re I don’t know what we’re gonna do.
Thank goodness I have some Febreze, because that’s just gonna be it. Well, I forgot to tell you. Oh no. After you left this morning,
Alison: I did some wash. Uh oh. When we go back to the room, I have clothes hanging off. the bunk bed. Oh, I have a lot of clothes hanging around Jill. I’m sorry. That’s
Jill: all right. I think some socks might be up in your bed that I cleaned yesterday.
I found
Alison: them this morning. They were everywhere. You not only had socks in my bed, you had socks stuck in your bed. I found your socks everywhere this morning. Could you please
Jill: keep your socks to yourself? I had to get clean. I’m running low. I’m running low. So I, I, Go to the bathroom, and I’m just in a spectator’s area at this point, and somebody decided to not lock their door.
I didn’t want to, and I hit their back. And then I was like, I am just out of here, because I’m not dealing with small bathrooms. And I go around and find one, because, um, One side had more spectators than our side, I think, because of the press tribunes. So I go to the bathroom on our side. We had extra wide toilet paper.
I’m so sorry. The toilet paper was extra wide. Oh, I thought you said the toilet was extra wide. No, the toilet paper, you know, like, say a toilet paper roll here and here. It’s maybe three, four inches wide. This was like seven. Ha ha ha! I went, what is this? Okay, since we’re on toilet talk Again? I fell into the toilet!
Wait, what? You fell in? I fell in! Where? In gymnastics, because there’s no seat on the toilet. What? Wait, there’s no Is that in every stall? Yes! Are we in China? Why are we I don’t understand.
What is wrong with us? I don’t know. Oh my gosh, there’s no toilet.
Alison: I mean, really, what is wrong with us? That going to the bathroom, something we learned when we were, you know, one and a half. We are struggling within every country we go to. Oh
Jill: boy, jeez Louise. Okay. Well, here we go. Um, so the end of water polo. Yes. We’re back in water polo national anthems. You know how we, in the U S you hit the land of the free and everybody starts cheering and they’re still songs.
They do it in Hungary too. They do it in Italy. They did it in the Italian anthem too. Interesting. It’s not just Americans. Interesting. A lot of stuff you did not tell me, you did not tell me about the nice robes that the teams wear.
Alison: They weren’t wearing robes yesterday. They came out wearing sweatshirts.
Oh. And their, and so their legs were hanging out. Everybody today had a robe on. Every team. There were no robes yesterday. It was cool. It was like a Skims parade today. I missed out on that.
Jill: The one commentator in the venue, there was a woman commentator who would say, it was Hungary versus Canada. And she would say, Ria, Ria, Hungary, because that’s what the crowd was cheering.
There was a lot. There were Canadian fans there,
Alison: but nothing like, I mean, and there were a lot of, I know I was
Jill: excited to see Hungary play. But she did nothing to help the Canadian fans. Okay, that’s not right.
Alison: I don’t, I did not like that. I did not have that announcer yesterday. I had a man. Okay. Who was very good about saying, um, what was going on.
So I didn’t get any Hungary.
Jill: Yeah. No, it was not. That wasn’t great. So we had, um, in the prelims, France also won their first preliminary, uh, Netherlands against China, Netherlands won 15 to 11. And that was kind of a comeback because China started out really strong. Like you said, it’s really different to watch this in person.
It’s really cool. It’s really fast. And then Hungary beat Canada, 12 to seven.
Alison: And that was, you only saw women. I only saw women. Okay, so maybe that was the difference because I only saw men, so the women have fancy robes and the men just come out in their sweatshirts with their sexy legs hanging out.
Maybe. And let me tell you something. I said this to you yesterday. I do not know why water polo is not more popular in the United States. These men are smoke shows. So, if that would make you happy, get you some water polo feet.
Jill: There you go. Uh, you know what else makes me happy?
Alison: Having a mascot of our own.
Polly and Mittens. That’s right. It’s our last day with Polly and Mittens. Awww. Yes, so our favorite polydactyl cats, which is my favorite fact about them. Did you know that Ernest Hemingway had polydactyl cats?
Jill: I do not know the cats of famous people. And
Alison: that all the cats on this one part of Key West are all descended from Ernest Hemingway’s polydactyl cats.
Oh wow. I don’t know if Polly and Mittens, who get their name from the polydactyly ness and their big paws, uh, are related to Ernest Hemingway cats, but they are Arsha Klastani’s favorite cats. So thank you so much to supporter Erica for sharing your beautiful cats with us. we are incredibly grateful, uh, to finish off their time with us.
I posted some videos of the cats watching volleyball and basketball and trying to participate. And I suggested if there’s ever a cat Aghori added to the Olympics, we know who team Shukwasan is going to be.
Jill: Excellent. Well, thank you, Erica. Thank you, Polly and Mittens for being such great mascots. Chokla Stani
Alison: is on the medal board.
Yeah, so we have one gold, one silver, two bronze. It puts us nine and a half on the country medal table right now. We are, uh, after Canada and ahead of Hong Kong. Way to
Jill: go, Chokla Stani. All right, uh, tomorrow, uh, We have a whole bunch of people competing. Casey Kaufhold begins the women’s individual
Alison: archery event with elimination rounds.
Team USA begins 3×3 basketball pool play against Serbia. Hannah Roberts starts BMX freestyle with the seeding route. Evie Leapforth starts heats in C1 canoe slalom. U. S. Fencing starts team competition and first up is the women’s epee. Christy Wagner rose in the semis of the women’s double skulls. Bobby Fink swims in the men’s 800 meter free finals.
The regatta continues for Stephanie Robel and Maggie Shea in women’s skiff.
Jill: And will Morgan Pearson be swimming in the Seine? We’ll find out with the men’s triathlon starting bright and early tomorrow morning. this is never a consideration for us as we go to bed so late, but I’m very curious to see what happens.
Alison: Oh, and there
Jill: hasn’t been rain for a
Alison: couple of days, so fingers crossed, right?
Jill: And that’s going to do it for this episode. Special thank you to our Olympics researcher, Annalie
Alison: Dable. And if you want to get in touch with us, you can find us on X, YouTube and Instagram at flamealivepod. Send us an email at flamealivepod at gmail.
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Jill: Join us again tomorrow for more action from Paris and hopefully less toilet talk. I don’t know. I can’t promise anything because I’m going to gymnastics. We’re going to see about this. Please do not forget to tell a friend about the show and hang out with us in our Facebook group.
and please send us some baguette money. We would really appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening. And until tomorrow, keep the flame alive.