Hip hop meets the Olympic stage today, as breaking gets underway, and B-girl Talash from the Refugee Team makes a big splash in the opening battle with a field of play protest. Our TKFLASTANI Sunny pulls a tough draw in the round robin competition. Jill’s there to see how she does. Plus, Alison nerves get tested by “Moulin Rouge” during the Rhythmic Gymnastics competition, and she wonders why ball and ribbon were paired for the team competition.
Sports on today’s program:
- Artistic Swimming
- Athletics
- Basketball
- Beach Volleyball
- Boxing
- Breaking
- Canoe Sprint
- Diving
- Football
- Golf
- Handball
- Hockey
- Marathon Swimming
- Modern Pentathlon
- Rhythmic Gymnastics
- Sport Climbing
- Swimming
- Table Tennis
- Taekwondo
- Track Cycling
- Volleyball
- Water Polo
- Weightlifting
- Wrestling
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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 Do not quote from the transcript; use the audio as the record of note.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 Olympics: Day 14
Jill: Bonjour and welcome to day 14 of the Paris 2024 Olympics on Keep the Flame Alive, the podcast for fans of the Olympics and Paralympics. I’m your host, Jill Jaracz, coming to you from the main press center at Paris 2024, joined as always by my lovely co host, Alison Brown. Alison, bonjour.
Alison: Bonjour. I don’t know what day it is.
I don’t know what time. I realized today I was sitting down and I was getting a meal. I had no idea what time it was when I was sitting down to eat. Like, I didn’t know if this was a late lunch, an early dinner, a normal dinner. And it stays late here. Very late. It’s after 930 sometimes. When we first got here, it was close to 10 o’clock.
And I’m eating and I’m so happy because it was a real meal with a real knife and fork, a drink with ice. What? Yes. Where did you get this? What is this magical place you went to? I went to the place that we went with our friend, Ben Waterworth. I got some pizza again. Oh, okay. Yes. That lovely place. And I got the lemonade and it had ice.
Wow. So happy. And I realized I had no clue where in the day I was.
Jill: Yes, it is like that. It feels like the Olympics are almost over and it feels like they are never going to end as well. Do you have that feeling?
Alison: I do. I feel like we’ve been in this bubble for, for so long that I have no idea what’s happening in the rest of the world.
What’s been going on? I don’t know. Just the world doesn’t exist except our little press center and the venues. And of course it doesn’t help that we can’t just turn on the news in the hotel room. Right, for us, because we only get French TV. We only get French TV, so I can’t just have it on in the background when I’m getting ready in the morning or when we’re getting ready for bed at night to kind of get a sense.
Everything, every bit of information we get has to be actively sought out. Right. And that is very strange. Place to be for such a long period of time.
Jill: Yes. Yes. So hopefully we will reconnect with the world soon like our families Yes, hi mom. I’m still here. I’m okay All right, let’s begin the baguette
Alison: You had some fun today
Jill: Well, okay.
I did finally go to Parque de la Villa to look at the hospitality house scene Now, two main problems with my plan were, I went at the wrong time of day, when almost nothing was open. Oh, and because I went in the morning and stuff opens, some stuff was opening up. Some stuff was open. The other problem was my phone did not have internet.
I have had some weird issues with getting internet on my phone when I’m not near wifi and it’s been on and off. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. And today was one of those days where I decided not to work. And what do you need a QR code to get into a lot of places, which was An issue. And I get that you want to make it easy, that QR codes make life a lot easier for a lot of things.
But if you don’t have internet, and your phone’s not working, or your phone died, you can’t do a whole lot of stuff.
Alison: And that is surprising, because given that it’s an international audience, whose phones may or may not work overseas, you would think there would be a backup for that. You would think.
Jill: I guess not.
I don’t know. I didn’t try to get into places where you needed a QR code mostly because I only, I didn’t have time. The area is quite big and um, I saw a Canada house. I did not go in. And, uh, I walked by a whole bunch of houses. Club France is enormous. Really? Yes. It’s a huge area. It’s all fenced off. You can kind of see in places, but they have like, try out the sport kind of things and places to sit around.
Um, I went into the pin collector, Olympic collectors house, and there was some pin trading going on. Um, but not a ton. That was a small little space. Yeah. From what we’ve heard pin trading just has not taken root in these games. Not so much, but I’ve gotten a little bit more here and there. So that’s been nice.
Like I traded, it’s like some random person’s like, oh, you have pins on your lanyard. Are you trading? Yes, I am trading. What do you got? So, um, That one was okay. They had some other Olympic things in there, like they had big barbells, and they had displays from some of the members of the Collector Society.
Um, I also walked through South Africa House, because you could just walk in, and they had, um, they did have a room where a TV was on and you could sit and watch if you wanted, because this is really a place for kids. South Africans to hang out. And they had like a patio in the back and there was a barbecue.
I don’t know how much grilling they’re doing. But then they had, uh, displays of different things like, uh, handmade items like baskets and things like that. Uh, um, and then fashion displays and shoes. That was another thing. So they had a lot of mannequins and clothing and that was really pretty. I took a bunch of pictures.
Um, so that was, that was cool. It wasn’t my, you know, there wasn’t. much. There may be like some South African air giveaways here and there, but there wasn’t anything out when, when I went in. So, but I think if you had a ticket during the day and went to a house at night,
Alison: Oh my gosh, you would have a blast.
And it’ll, I know some of them are sticking around for the Paralympics. Not all of them. But that will be nice to, I think we will have a chance to get over there and see a little bit more of the evening affairs during, during Paralympics.
Jill: Right. So for those of you who have gone to hospitality houses, sounds like they’ve been fun, especially we’ve heard from Clarillo and Ben.
They had a good time exploring the area. But I think not every house is there, but I think that was a great idea to put them as many as possible into that park.
Alison: Team USA house is on a whole other section, like really far away. Right. Not even close. Right. I don’t know if that was because Team USA house is so enormous that you don’t need to be with anybody else.
Whose decision that was.
Jill: Right. Like what kind of space did they want? What kind of space could they get? And I don’t know if when they got the space, they were still going to be. not open to the public and that decision may have come after they’ve gotten, you know, started working in the house. And I know Ireland is a little bit separate as well.
It’s in a different area of town and there’s some other houses that are scattered around. But the, for the, like going and making a day of it and wandering through a couple of houses or deciding, Hey, I’m going to go here and just work down the list. That, that’s a fun place to do it. So that very cool. Um, yeah.
Volunteer. Did you do anything cultural today?
Alison: I did not. I ate my pizza. I got some ice. That’s about as much culture as I got today. I fell asleep in a lot of different places.
Jill: Oh, I’m so sorry.
Alison: I, I’m really pulling it to the end. And then tomorrow I’ve got an early, I am doing something cultural tomorrow.
Jill: Very cool. I’m excited that you’re doing this.
Alison: I’m not going to tell anybody what it is. We’ll share it tomorrow because it is, if I can get myself there in the morning. This is going to be a lot of fun.
Jill: Excellent. Uh, what
Alison: volunteer job or officiating job would you like to do? So today I was at Rhythmic Gymnastics with the same lovely volunteers from Badminton.
Oh, right. And um, there is a volunteer whose job it is to fill the water pitchers in the media room because the, the water fountain is actually quite far on the other end. And so he goes and he fills up two pitchers and everyone is so happy to see him when he comes in because there’s no water in any other media rooms if it’s not, if you don’t have a fountain there.
Jill: Okay.
Alison: So when he shows up with those pitchers, everybody gives him a little cheer like, Oh, you brought pictures of water and you know what? I need that love. And, and, and. Validation.
Jill: Excellent. Well, I went to breaking today and I got to tell you, those volunteers around the field of play were wily because I would see one with a box kneeling down and be like, Oh, what’s going to go in the box?
And then I’d be watching the competition, all of a sudden there would be no volunteer. And then I’d see a volunteer with a towel and be like, Oh, what’s going to happen with the towel? And then again. volunteer disappears. So I don’t know what happens with boxes. I don’t know what happens with towels. I don’t know.
The volunteers and the towels go in the box and go poof! Maybe. But there was a volunteer in the mixed zone, because I did go back to talk to, uh, Sunny. And she had a tray. A tray? Yes. A tray for reporters to put their phones and recorders on.
Alison: Oh, to bring it closer to the athlete. Yeah, we saw that in Beijing because we were only allowed to get so close, but we haven’t seen that, uh, here at all.
Jill: No, and they needed it. And she was not really Johnny on the spot. So we’d stand there like some of us on the outer skirts and then she’d be like, Oh, Tray, you know, a couple minutes into it. Wasn’t it LVMH
Alison: tray? Or was it just a
Jill: plastic? No, it was a plastic tray. Like they lifted one from the media set from the media dining thing, the venue dining.
So that I thought I could do better. All right. Time for everyone’s favorite segment. Toilet talk.
Alison: I got to use your favorite toilets today at La Chapelle.
Jill: That’s about, wait, wait, wait. Hold on. Which twins are those?
Alison: Those are the very low metal ones.
Jill: Oh, yes. Yes. Those are refreshing.
Alison: And it was kind of warm today too.
I know. And I have to say at. Rhythmic, it was not nearly as cool in that venue. So I think they were not blowing the air conditioning as high because of the apparatus. So that, you know, you don’t want to throw off the ribbon with too much air conditioning. And it’s always refreshing for me when my feet touch.
Jill: I will say that. That is a nice thing. Um, at Lavalette, I did see one of those. Uh, trailer toilet things with the urinal on the outside, like you saw. Was that horrifying? It was horrifying, and as I’m trying to take a picture I cannot be noticed. I see a mother telling her son to go use that and I see him looking and he, he walked kind of over towards it and looked around the wall and was, you could tell he’s like, he’s like, no,
Alison: no mom, I’m not being in public.
What is wrong with this? Game’s not wide open. What is happening?
Jill: That’s right. So that, that’s today. I have one story in reserve just in case tomorrow doesn’t, doesn’t, uh, bring any new toilet. Because I didn’t go to a new venue today. And I also apparently didn’t drink enough. Because I didn’t need to use the toilet many times.
Alison: Refill that water bottle that I lost. So we got one thing from the Paris Media Center. One thing. We didn’t get a bag, we didn’t get a pen, we didn’t get a guidebook, we didn’t get anything. We got a red water bottle and we were supposed to write our names at the bottom because everybody was getting the same red water bottle.
And somewhere along the line, I lost mine. And my name, also I had noticed yesterday, had gotten worn off. And I was going to ask you last night to borrow the Sharpie again. So I am never going to be reunited. with my media only red water bottle. It is lost forever. I hope some nice person, probably at Stade de France, that’s probably where I lost it, takes it home and is happy and they have a nice life with my water bottle.
Jill: Well wait, if you go to closing ceremonies You can see that there’s a lost and found. Yes, but I’m sure I’m not the
Alison: only stupid media person who lost their red water bottle. Just take one and wash it. No, I want mine. We were bonded. We’ve had two weeks together. We’ve shared moments. You can’t just replace that with some generic red water bottle.
Jill: That red water bottle will come with its own moments. And involving toilet time, so there you go. Alright, um, well, our investigative coverage of the toilets of Paris and the coverage of the Olympics is only, uh, we can only bring this to you because listeners like you support us. We are an independent media outlet, which means we need independent financing to get, not just get to the Olympics, but pay for the operational costs that are involved with running this podcast.
So we ask for your support as always to keep our flame alive and keep this show going after Paris 2024. You can look at our support page, that’s flamealivepod. com slash support for a number of ways to give back. We have PayPal. We have Venmo. We have, uh, uh, some other options for one time donations. If you would like to be an ongoing patron, you can join us at patreon.
com slash flamealivepod. And patrons during Paris 2024, all paid patrons get a bonus pick of the day and then patrons at the 5 a month and up level will get bonus videos. Uh, I know I did post one today, not one that’s in my hopper that I still have to edit. Uh, Snoop did the three coops. break in. It was a twa snoop.
So that, and all that bonus
Alison: material will continue during the Paralympics as well.
Jill: Exactly, exactly. So you’re getting some bang for your buck there. So that’s again, that’s flame live pod. com slash support. And thank you to everybody who’s donated so far. We’ve made a lot of headway in being able to cover some operational costs until we have to.
worry about raising money for Milan Cortina, which is in like a year and a half. Shushy, just shushy right now. Okay, let’s look at some daily results. Starting off with artistic swimming. This is a shocker.
Alison: We had the second portion of the duet, uh, competition, the technical routine, uh, Jacqueline Simoneau and her partner, Audrey Lamont, had a serious problem at the end of their routine with synchronization.
They had a planned difficulty score of about 41. The actual difficulty score they received was in the neighborhood of 29, which is huge. It is still under review. They still have an appeal open. uh, regarding that score, but they ended up in 15th place.
Jill: Yeah. And poor Audrey looked pretty crushed with how that went.
Cause it was a really beautiful routine until the last little section. And then they just got off. You know, when I was at Rhythmic the other day, I’m pretty sure it was at Rhythmic, but it was yesterday and I was around and somehow we were talking artistic swimming and There was a woman there who was a judge, not, not this level, but like a local level.
And she’s like, Oh no, you know what? I bet this was at the collector house. Was a judge at the local level. And she’s like, I don’t like it. That is called artistic swimming now. No focus on synchronization. Or no, she didn’t like the change code of points. The new code of points down, down plays the synchronization part of swimming.
And now everybody’s just putting all this difficulty into their routines. Because that’s what’s being rewarded now. That I thought was a very interesting take.
Alison: And our Megumi Fields and her partner Jamie Sarkowski are in 11th place.
Jill: In athletics it was another big night on the track. Another wild night!
And it rained. So that added
Alison: to the,
Jill: to the chaos. Right. So we first had the women’s 4×100 meter relays. Gold went to USA, silver to Great Britain, and bronze to Germany. That is on my list to re watch.
Alison: It’s a nice race. Is it? It’s a nice little race there. Sha’Carri Richard at the, uh, anchor leg was just not going to lose.
Jill: Nice, nice. We also had women’s shot put final. Gold went to Yemisi Ogaleni from Germany. Uh, silver went to Madison Lee Wesh from New Zealand.
Alison: Go silver ferns!
Jill: And bronze went to Song Jia Yung from China. And, uh, Ogunleleya scored 20 meters in the shot put final. Oh, she got it on the last throw. Wow! That’s a, that’s a humdinger of a, of an event.
Then we have the men’s 4×100 meter relay. What, what? What happened here? This was really unsettling, I will say, for the U. S.
Alison: So for the U. S., so first, Noel Isle did not run. There was a lot of controversy, obviously, about his COVID testing and whether he would run or not. He did not.
Jill: No, but he did show up for the medal ceremony for the 200 meter.
He was masked.
Alison: I will say that. So we had Christian Coleman, our own Kenny Bednarik, Kyrie King, and Fred Curley on the first handoff between Christian Coleman and Kenny Bednarik. It just didn’t work. They just couldn’t hand the baton to one another. And the U. S. ended up finishing way down the list, but more importantly were DQ’d because that handoff happened outside the zone.
Jill: Oh, that’s just tough. That is a tough, tough night when that happens. And they’ve been, that team had been practicing together a lot. So I don’t know if the last minute swap messed things up or just unsettled things a little bit, but, or nerves are wanting to do really well. Or the rain. Yes. Many, many factors here, but a tough night for the U.
- Goldwyn to Canada. So, Andre de Grasse did get a medal. Silver went to South Africa and bronze went to Great Britain.
Alison: Great Britain was thrilled.
Jill: Oh, I’m sure. In the women’s 400 meter final, gold went to Marylady Paulino from Dominican Republic who got an Olympic record. Silver went to Sawal E Nasser from Bahrain. And bronze went to Natalia Kazmarek from Poland. Bahrain’s got another medal. We’ve been saying this all along. Countries you do not expect. Right? In men’s triple jump.
Gold went to Jordan Alejandro Diaz Fortún from Spain. Silver went to Pedro Pichardo from Portugal. And bronze went to Andy Diaz Hernández from Italy. In the women’s hetathlon,
gold went to Naf uh, Nafisa too. TM from Belgium. Silver went to Katerina Johnson Thompson from Great Britain, and bronze went to Noor Veet from
Alison: Belgium. TM is a three time, a three peat on gold medal and heptathlon. And heptathlon is not an easy event to, to stay good for that long. I know. So 16, 20, and now 24.
And a Belgian as well. Just not. What you expect the heptathlon dynasty to be.
Jill: In the women’s 10 meter, 10, 000 meter final, gold went to Beatrice Chibit from Kenya. Silver went to Nadia Battocletti from Italy and Netherlands. Sifan Hassan won the bronze. That was kind of a wild race because Hassan was in the back for a long, long time and worked her way up and just, she couldn’t get all the way there.
And you could see her trying and trying and trying. Um, that was tough. That was a
Alison: tough race. And then probably the wildest race of the night, the men falling all over the place, the men’s 400 meter hurdles. Gold went to, uh, Rye Benjamin from the United States. Silver went to Karsten Varholm from Norway and bronze went to Alison DeSantos from Brazil and his purple hair.
Jill: Yes. That was, that was interesting. But Karsten Varholm, Trying to become a repeat champ, which is very hard to do in this event. Just couldn’t make it happen.
Alison: Rai Benjamin just You know, sometimes you watch a race and you say, that person is not, cannot be denied this race. Yeah. That was Rye Benjamin in this, in this race.
There
Jill: was a point in that final turn where he’s like, I’m just putting the speed on. We’re getting this done. This is getting done this year. So congratulations. Rye. He looked
Alison: a little stunned. Like, it took him a while to start celebrating, like he was smiling, but I don’t think it
I’d love to see his time at Champions Park because I think it will have sunk in by then and he’ll be really excited that he did this.
Jill: We’ve heard that Champions Park has been a really big hit with the athletes and that more and more, more of them keep adding their names to the list to go and be part of the celebration.
I don’t think we’re going to get there. I’m not sure. Maybe you
Alison: can. Maybe tomorrow. I mean, the problem is that it gets full. And that includes press slots, like there’s not a lot of slots for press because there shouldn’t be, you know, it’s for the athletes and it’s for the crowds who didn’t get to see the events really because it’s free and it’s not ticketed.
So there’s not a lot of press slots for us to just sneak in there.
Jill: But, you know, we’ll try. We’ll try. In basketball, we had the women’s semifinals tonight. USA beat Austria pretty handily, 85 64. And then, uh, France beat Belgium 81 75. So we will have a France US matchup for the finals. That is going to be intense.
Alison: So all basketball, France US, France US. Wow. Can we just talk for a second about the basketball court? We haven’t mentioned this. No, but it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful. So they have on the basketball court, the pictogram, but it’s done in these colors where it almost look like, looks like a burnout on wood.
Yes, and I we didn’t get just get up there right to see it in person, but it looks fantastic on television I hope it looks that good in person.
Jill: Yes, and it’s it’s really noticeable in the center of the court with The big design but then in the the three point arc Basically, is where you really have it in the wood and it is gorgeous.
It’s really beautiful.
Alison: And we haven’t seen a lot of the pictograms being integrated into design throughout the venues. So this is a nice touch for that to really be front and center. Yes.
Jill: In beach volleyball, we had the women’s gold medal finals tonight. Gold went to Ana Patricia Silva Ramos. And Lisboa Duda from Brazil.
Silver went to Melissa Humanaparities and Brandi Wilkerson from Canada. And bronze went to Tanya Huberly and Nina Brunner from Switzerland. So the bronze medal match was a 2 0 defeat. They beat, uh, the Swiss beat Australians Marifa and Clancy. And then the gold medal match was 2 1. It was a typhoon. Got your money’s worth on that for your gold medal match.
And these ended late. Yes. These are some late matches that are going at beach volleyball. In boxing, we had the women’s 50 kilogram finals. Gold went to China’s Wu Yu. Silver went to, uh, Buzna’s, uh, Kaki Roglu from Turkeya. And bronzes went to Nazim Kizabai from Kazakhstan and Ira Villegas from Philippines, which we mentioned the other night.
In the women’s 66 kilogram finals, gold went to Imani Califf from Algeria. Silver went to Yang Li from China, and the bronzes went to Jianjian Suwannafang from Thailand and Chen Nianqin from Chinese Taipei. In the men’s 71kg final, gold went to Asahua Mwedinkave from Uzbekistan. And silver went to Marco Alonso Verde Alvarez from Mexico.
Bronze was, went to Omari Jones from U. S. and Louis Richardson from Great Britain. And in the men’s 92 kilogram final, gold went to Lazibek Mulyanov from Uzbekistan. Uh, silver went to Loren Berto Alfonso Dominguez from Azerbaijan. And bronzes went to Emmanuel Reyes Pla and Davlat Boltayev from Tajikistan.
Breakin You were there. The debut of Breakin I went to the qualifiers. Um, because that was the big play in to the medal rounds and I wanted to make sure I saw Sonny. So how this worked was, there were um, a lot of round robin matches. So we had four different groups per se, and they went and did three battles each.
So they had to do everybody in their group. So it was groups of four and there was a play in first, and that was between a woman named India and a woman named Talish. Talish is part of the refugee team. She is originally from Afghanistan and now lives in Madrid. Uh, relatively new b girl, and you can tell, she doesn’t have a whole lot of moves, but she had one big move on the field of play during her last round, and she took off her shirt, and underneath it was A cape and she had two shirts on so she took off her top shirt.
This wasn’t a game wide open. No Oh, no No, she took off her top t shirt and underneath was a blue cape that said free afghan women on it
Alison: Yeah
Jill: This is not a good thing because it I mean I get what she’s doing because she’s using her platform to remind us that there’s a situation with afghan women right now You Uh, and them being denied a lot of basic freedoms, but it also breaks rule 50 of the IOC charter, which states you cannot protest on
Alison: the field of play.
So this has come up in the past, usually in relation to podium protests. And there was a whole controversy of whether the podium was the field of play or not. Most famously in Mexico City, 1968, with the American sprinters raising the gloved fist and paying for it very, very dearly. And we knew going into Tokyo there was a big risk of Field of play and podium protests.
And so there’s a lot of discussion before Tokyo doesn’t seem like there was a lot of discussion Prior to Paris about this issue I didn’t feel like we talked about it because we weren’t getting messages about it and maybe because Russia wasn’t here kind of the biggest issue that we were concerned about Going in was the Russia Ukraine war, and then obviously Gaza and Israel, but that didn’t seem to come up as people were going to podium protest.
And then all of a sudden, not only do you have something on the field of play, it is actually on the field of play. It is during the competition. Right. Okay. Let’s say her point is valid. She has every right to want to express that. But the problem is if it’s a, and I hate to use this phrase, slip or slope, but if you Everyone thinks their political statement is valid and worthy and needs attention.
And that’s not what the Olympic fields of play is about. It’s about the fields of play. It is about competition. And as much as I admire this woman and the incredible things that she’s been through, I mean, she has had to escape things that I cannot imagine. Not the time and place. Because if you allow her to say that, you can’t stop other people from saying things that you may not agree with.
That’s what freedom of speech is all about. It’s not just freedom of speech for things you like. It’s freedom of speech for things you don’t like. And let’s keep it off the field of play. I go back and forth on podium protests in terms of validity, but this, I have no gray area. When you are competing, you’re competing.
Right. The sport is supposed to be
Jill: the sport and we’re supposed to just do the sport and not have other things. I mean, sport is an escape from other elements of life in a way. So don’t bring that into sport. And like you said, I mean, I can’t repeat what you said eloquently. So I totally agree that if you’re allowing one, you have to allow all, and then you just get into constant protests.
Alison: And it takes, to me, that then takes away from the messages that these people are trying to express. Yes. Because if it’s just a protest central on the Olympic playing field, it becomes background noise and it says nothing.
Jill: Yes.
Alison: If she had worn that to her press conference, if she had worn that, even in her official portraits, I would have been right there cheering her on.
But on her little dance battle stage. No, absolutely not.
Jill: She has been disqualified. Didn’t really matter because she didn’t win the battle. Uh, she hasn’t been breaking that long. Uh, and that’s, you, you could tell she hadn’t been breaking very long. She got an in probably continental qualifier somehow. And, uh, she wasn’t getting into the round robin competition.
What will happen now is a good question, especially because she’s part of the refugee Olympic team. So she was specially chosen by the International Olympic Committee to be part of this team and get funding and be here. So what does that mean that she’s completely violated
Alison: of a rule? Well, I think she was, if I were in her shoes and if I can imagine sports not funding’s gone.
Yeah. She’s set up home in Madrid, so she’s got that step. This was a, this was a no lose situation for her. Which now the problem is, have you just cut off your nose to spite your face for the rest of the refugee team? Right. And for things like, I mean, break in was already out. You know, are we going to now?
think twice about these urban sports that don’t have a sporting Olympic tradition and keep that field of play pure?
Jill: Yeah, that’s a good question because ahead of time I happened to grab a press tribune seat by some people who were contracted to write for the, uh, international, uh, the World Dance Sport Federation.
And they had a lot of knowledge about the sport and one had been breaking for a long time. And they said, you know, yeah, LA chose sports, but if it does really well here, cause they chose the sports early and usually they wait until they see how a new sport has been received before they settle on the program.
So that was a little weird for LA to do that. But, there could be a possibility, if it went well here, that maybe LA would put it on the program. It’s not that huge of a sport. You know, it’s not You don’t take a lot
Alison: of slots.
Jill: You don’t take a lot of athlete slots. You’ve already exploded the athlete slot.
continuum with how many teen sports you put in, but it also doesn’t take that much of a space you use there. There are so
Alison: many spaces they could use for that.
Jill: And what they’re doing here is they’re reusing the three X three basketball venue and it’s perfect for it. So that’s, it’s, it’s an easy sport to put on.
Doesn’t take a lot of equipment, doesn’t take a lot of special stuff. Could it have gone into LA? I don’t know. Will this hurt its chances?
Alison: I don’t know. Probably. Because let’s be honest, the IOC members who are making this decision are not the most progressive. Right? I mean, they are a conservative organization and a conservative lot.
And I don’t mean that in the American political way. I mean that in the true definition of conservative. They like things the way they like things. Safe choices. And this ain’t a safe choice when you’ve got people pulling this.
Jill: Right.
Okay, so, beyond this, One of the other fun facts I found out was that the DJ has been working most of the year to get clearance on music. And they had 70 classic hip hop songs in, in, in the library to pull from. The music was really good, I will say that. once we had our play in, then we had our round robins.
Sunny got put into a really tough group, and she didn’t, and what, then what you did was your battle was two rounds and you had nine judges, and by the way, the nine judges did the warm up, warm up performance. Yes. Oh wow, really putting it out there. Who are these people? And then they went to the, like, they were doing, doing some breakdancing, other singing was going on, and then, like, They went behind and sat in the judges slots and they’re like, Holy crap, they were the judges and they’re still dancing!
And they, some of them had some moves, so that was good. So they had two battles, and the nine judges scored everyone, each, after each battle. And if you won, the number of votes, you got one point. So you were looking for points total, but you, they also tallied up how many votes you got because that was a tiebreaker as well.
You know, it’s kind of like points for points against and other team sports. So they would count how many votes you had and that would rank you in the round Robin. So unfortunately Sonny, uh, lost two of her battles. She won the third one. She was funny in the mix. A, she was funny to watch on, on the stage.
She looked like she was having fun. She was throwing up some shade because her first opponent who was a 671 from China, uh, Sonny would make this sign like, Oh, she’s doing a set routine. Her, her routine is set. She’s not improvising at all. This is set. Notice that judges notice it because you could tell sometimes when somebody had a set routine and they couldn’t break from it, especially if it no longer went to the beat, then they lost on, you know, then you lose some musicality and things like that.
And they, they, uh, couldn’t, Couldn’t recover, didn’t look right. Sonny did have a problem in one of her battles where she lost a move and was on the floor. And the, the man next to me said, Oh, if she had popped up, they might not have known it, but she kind of stayed and scooted and then it was kind of obvious that she had a flop.
she looked like she was having fun. She also said in the mix zone that she said a lot of dancers are now like, putting a lot of stuff into their routines, like a lot of extra maybe footwork. Excuse me.
Alison: Kind of like in gymnastics where you move your arms around a lot to make it look like you’re doing something.
Yes.
Jill: Yes. And she’s like, that’s not my style. And if that’s not, I’m not going to do that just because that’s what people are doing and I’m not going to do it to make the judges happy. So if that’s the way that, you know, maybe I’m just an older generation, I’m not going to change the way I dance to curry favor.
So. And then I like, she just stayed true to herself. She looked like she had fun out there. Judging didn’t go her way. She’s like, well, you know, that’s the way it goes. In the mix zone, we also talked about her outfit, because apparently, When Australia went through. What was wrong
Alison: with her outfit? Nothing was wrong with her outfit.
Her outfit,
Jill: her outfit looked great. Whenever we’ve seen her, she always looks, she looks fantastic. She’s like, Nike made this for me. It was a little like kind of a croppy top or a skimmy top to her and then big baggy cargo pants. And she’s like, yeah, I wear this stuff all the time. It’s great. And a lot of people looked really fly.
Except for Australia’s ray gun. Poor Raygun is getting grief online because of how she looked.
Alison: By the way, I’d like to add that the grief that she’s getting is also from you. I have not posted anything about this online. I’m just telling you all. You put it out in the universe. Prior to taping, we had a whole discussion of poor Raygun.
It
Jill: happened before. So, uh, Raygun Uh, I learned that both Oceania and Africa are not really strong continents for breaking. And so when you look at those dancers, they are not quite as good as other areas of the world. And that’s, you know, in a lot of sports, that’s the way it is. Maybe over time they will work their level up.
And that, that could definitely happen, didn’t happen with the first breaking person from Australia. Yeah. And she was wearing her team kit, which was like long, straight athletic pants and, uh, like the green and gold polo. And she had a baseball cap on too. And her shirt was tucked in. And everybody else has like crop tops and baggy pants or, you know, kind of baggy top.
It looks really, you know, everything looked really fresh except for Reagan. Really fresh, really fly. Really fresh, really fly. I’m using all the lingo I know because I’m an old white woman. And Reagan looked like she was ready to pick up the kids from school and just had to pop over and do the breaking competition real quick.
The poor thing is, is taking grief because it just looks awkward and, and, and pairing that with abilities that don’t match the rest of the field, that
Alison: makes it look more awkward. She looked awkward dancing. If, if Sunny had wore that outfit, it would not quite have looked so awkward because she would have had the moves to back up whatever image she presented.
Jill: Yes. So, If you can go back and watch some break in and check out Ray Gunn in her outfit. And, and I will say this, our friend Ben Waterworth from Off the Podium has interviewed her. And said she’s a lovely person, is just awesome to talk to. He didn’t understand why I was giving her creep. Like she’s, you know, she’s tucked her shirt in, come on, it’s break dancing.
She didn’t want it to get in the way. There you go, there you go. But that, that was, that was one to note. Well, I’ll be heading over there for the men’s competition
Alison: tomorrow.
Jill: We’ll see how that goes. So, uh, Sunny did not get out of her round robin. She lost 2 from China and to India from Netherlands. And, uh, she beat Vanessa from Portugal.
But then in the individual final, the gold went to Japan’s Ami, silver went to Lithuania’s Nika, and bronze went to China 671.
Alison: And I want to mention, because we are not disrespecting these athletes by not giving their full names. This is how they are listed in our intranet database to try and find their passport name is what they included.
We had to dig and dig and dig. Yes. So they want to be known. by their break in names.
Jill: But it was really cool. And I will say Ami was amazing. She was really, really good. Had a really good musicality because they don’t know the songs until they hear the beat drop. And for them to pick it up in like eight beats and figure out what they’re going to do and what’s in their arsenal and, and then what they had to respond to.
That’s really, uh, really, really incredible work. So, I would, I’m looking forward to what your assessment of the men’s tournament is. And you gotta go sit by my friends.
Alison: I’ll do what I can, but I’ll, I’m easily intimidated if someone tells me I have to move. Oh, no, just don’t.
It’s the Catholic school girl. I see. That just comes
Jill: out and I’m like, okay, whatever you tell me. Over in Canoe Sprint. Oh, I would love to hear if, if you all have been watching Breaking, what do you think of the new sport? Really? Because it’s, it’s one and done, maybe. Um. maybe Brisbane would put it on.
Alison: And how the television coverage is, are you getting explanations as to what is going on?
Are you getting descriptors? Are you getting, because we know from flips, when we spoke to our judge flips, it isn’t so simple to explain the judging system.
Jill: It’s not because you don’t know what they’re going to do. And you have to be able to know the moves kind of intimately. And as I was watching it, the more I watched, of course, the more you pick up, but even, like, One of the French, uh, breakers did something in her first battle.
I’m pretty sure it was French break, where she did the same move from one round to the next, and it was helpful to sit next to a B boy himself to, to say like, Oh, she should not have done that because he can see the moves. I cannot see all those moves yet, but there was some stuff after a while. I started to pick up.
Are they moving upward? Are they are they doing stuff up top rock? Are they going bottom rock? And how are they moving? Are they Putting personality into it. Are they battling with each other? Because it’s that was the fun when they were giving each other shade that that was fun. You’d like that’s trash talking on it.
It’s It’s encouraged trash talking It’s very polite trash talking. No, no. But, uh, yeah, it was, it was interesting. It was a lot of fun. Canoe sprint. We had the men’s K2 500 meter finals. Gold went to Germany’s Jakob Schoff and Max Lemke. Silver went to Hungary’s Bence Narasz and Shandor Totka. And bronze went to Australia’s Jean van der Weyzen and Tom Green.
Actually it’s van der Westhuizen. And Tom Green. And the men’s C1 100 meter, 1000 meter final. Gold went to Czechia’s Martin Fucsa. Silver went to Izakias Quieros from Brazil. And bronze went to Sergey Tarnovish from Moldova. Wow. Moldova. Moldova. In the Women’s K2 500m Finals. Hey, look!
Alison: Look who the gold goes to!
Jill: Lisa Carrington! And Alicia Hodgson from New Zealand! Go, go, go,
Alison: silverest of silver ferns.
Jill: Wow, that’s another medal for Lisa Carrington. Silver went to Tamara Chipis, and, uh, Alida Dora Gasho from Hungary and bronze went to Polina Pasek and Yule Marie Haka from Germany and the other bronze went to Nomi Pupp and Sarah Foyt from Hungary.
Alison: Okay, so for women’s C2, 500 meters, gold went to Zhu Zhixiao and Sun Mengjia from China.
Silver went to Lyudmila Luzon and Anastasia Rybachev from Ukraine. And bronze went to Sloane McKenzie and Katie Vincent from Canada. Thank you.
Jill: In diving, we had the women’s three meter springboard final. Gold went to China. Surprise. Chen Yuwen. Silver went to Madison Keeney from Australia. And bronze went to Cheng Yanyi from China.
Alison: China swept all their diving golds. Again. Again.
Jill: Yes.
Alison: Well, they did not do that in Tokyo because Tom Daley. Oh, that’s right. And his partner gots the one. Uh, but this is not the first time, and it probably won’t be the last. Right.
Jill: Okay. Football. We had the women’s bronze medal game. Germany beat Spain one zero, and then we had the men’s gold medal game went into extra time. Spain wins five to three over France. So our final standings are gold to Spain. Silver to France and bronze to Morocco. In golf, we had women’s golf round number three.
There are two tied at first, uh, in first so far with a score of, uh, they’re nine under par. That is Morgane Metro from Switzerland and Lydia Coe from New Zealand.
Alison: Go Silver Ferns.
Jill: And then there are two ranked, uh, with par under, uh, um, they’re. There are two more who are tied with, uh, they’re at seven under par.
And that is Rose Zhang from the USA and Yamashita Miu from Japan. In handball, we had men’s semifinals, uh, Germany beat Spain 25 24. And Denmark beat Slovenia 31 to 30. These have just packed. Tight, tight, tight matches. Unreal. Uh, in hockey we had the women’s bronze medal and gold medal games. So hockey is wrapping up today.
In the bronze medal game, uh, Argentina beat Belgium. in a penalty shootout. They tied at two at the end of the game. Uh, and then Argentina won three to one in the penalty shootout. Oh, hey, look, just repeat yourself. Another penalty shootout in the gold medal match. Netherlands, China tied at one at end of regulation.
And, uh, the penalty shootout went three to one Netherlands way. Uh, gold goes to Netherlands, silver to China and bronze to Argentina. Uh, we had men’s semi finals in modern, modern pentathlon
Alison: today. They’ve changed the format. And every time we look at the schedule for modern pentathlon, we get confused because it was supposed to be this 90 minute format where everything happens at the same time.
But there’s actually the fencing ranking round, which is still different, which is right. And then there’s a semi final round. And now the top eight go to the finals. There’s no 90 minute round except when the finals happen. So that’s why we keep getting confused looking at modern pentathlon results. So we have no medal results, we’ll have some tomorrow.
Jill: Okay, that sounds good. In rhythmic gymnastics, you went to the individual all around finals. And I also went to the team qualifying. Oh, tell me all about it. I was at You look happy too. You look much happier than I was after. I’m not. Oh, I’m
Alison: not. Do tell, let me, let me boil some tea. So start of the day, they had team qualifiers, which was a one routine is five hoops.
One routine was two balls and three ribbons. Which is, this is how they do it. So there’s always two routines. One is all the same and then one is some combination of three and two. The three and two combination of balls and ribbons was so awkward and was so difficult to choreograph around and to make it interesting
Jill: because the ball moves much faster than that ribbon handle and you’ve got the long tail on the ribbon.
Alison: It’s just, they’re so, they’re about as diverse as those four apparatus can get. Those are the two extremes and just, you can bounce the ball, you can bounce the handle of the ribbon, but it doesn’t quite work the same. So those routines were not terribly satisfying.
Jill: Wait, did they twirl the ball? I noticed that they would twirl the ball, which is basically they have it in, in, you know, they’re palming it on either side with their hands and then they’d switch their hands.
There was
Alison: some of it. I mean that more came in the individual rounds with the ball because you want the apparatus to constantly be in motion. That is more difficult. Okay. You could definitely see the top teams. and their level of choreography by how the transition of apparatus went. How are these apparatus moving between the gymnasts?
How quickly, how complex Lee, how there was the constant motion and the more experienced teams it showed. Okay. A couple of teams used the five rings to make the five rings, which I thought was such an obvious choreographical choice. And I was surprised only two of them did it. Maybe because the other teams went, well, that’s obvious.
We can’t do it. Possibly. Um, not too many flubs, some flubs as you would expect. So those finals are going to be tomorrow. So if you want to watch some of this wild ball ribbon action, go for it. Hard pass. Then we get to the women’s finals. I shouldn’t say the women’s finals. There’s only women that do this.
There’s ten women in the finals. Each has four routines. Each routine is happened individually. I sat there for three hours plus. Watching these 40 routines by the third rotation, I thought I was going to lose my mind. If I heard music from Moulin Rouge one more time, I was going to hurl myself off the bleachers.
It was cute. The first time the French team. Broke out the Moulin Rouge. I was like, Oh, that’s like when the artistic swimming team did the can can. They wanted a real French flavor. Well, everybody did. The Dominique Mochiano, devil went down to Georgia in Atlanta thinking, We’re going to Paris. Let’s do music from Moulin Rouge.
I will say I definitely saw the change in the uniform rules.
Jill: Right. And we didn’t talk about this yesterday because I didn’t notice a difference. And then you mentioned, Oh yes.
Alison: So in between Tokyo and Paris, uh, the gymnastics federation implemented new regulations for rhythmic gymnastics costumes, because as we noted during Tokyo, it was games wide open.
There was very little of these costumes and the cut of these costumes, much lower on the thigh, much more coverage on the bottom, just a lot more fabric happening. Headpieces are also gone because they changed the headpiece rule. So basically the girl said, this is too much trouble, headpieces. I don’t think anybody had a headpiece this time.
You know, I didn’t notice any. So that was many more unitards, many more leggings, loved that much more coverage in general.
Jill: Yes. And there were some in, uh, the round that I saw where there were no sequence, no sparkles, no crystals.
Alison: There, there were some, it was interesting because when you saw an old school with a lot of sheer mesh and a lot of crystals, it felt like Tokyo.
Yeah. There was a lot less, uh, sheer mesh because again, they changed the rule to what was allowed to be sheer and what was had to be more opaque. So that was interesting and noticeable. And I think a good change because you focus less on those girls with naked and they’re very young to I’m watching what they’re doing.
Yes. I would agree with you on that. I would also say, I think there were some changes to the code of points that The girls were stronger. There was one Ukrainian girl who was very young, she was 16, and she had that looking like a 12 year old pretzel kind of style to her, but she was unique. Yes. The other nine girls were older, were, um, stronger looking, not quite so waif like.
And I think that was because what’s favored in the code of points now, it requires more strength and more endurance. Not that they weren’t bending themselves in half around these. Apparatus. Don’t get me wrong. It hasn’t, it’s still rhythmic gymnastics. Um, I noticed what you saw about the holds in the kiss and cry, how they had to sit there through the next routine.
And it was because they put the kiss and cry in the wrong corner. Because if you walked from the kiss and cry to backstage, you had to walk around the whole back of the performance space. So you’d be in the performer’s line of sight and on camera. Right.
Jill: That’s very true. I didn’t, I didn’t put two and two together on that.
Alison: Spoken word music. Also a big trend.
Jill: Not
Alison: one favorite
Jill: one. We didn’t talk about yesterday. Um, and I forget her name, but I believe she was Ukrainian. Did a routine to thriller. Yes.
Alison: Yes. Oh, was she back with that? She was back with that today. Yes. It was very
Jill: cute, very, uh, dynamic, but I think it’s so interesting that thriller endures.
She
Alison: was born in 2008. She was 16. I’m not even sure her parents were alive when Thriller came out. Who chose this for this child? But the fun thing for me in the competition was that there was a lot of movement on the scoreboard. The top never changed. Uh, so from the, in each round, she, uh, the woman who won the gold medal, and we’ll get to results in a second, um, won three of the four rotations.
And then in the fourth rotation, she came in second. So that was pretty solid. But up and down this leaderboard, it was a lot of swapping, you know, people were third and seventh and fourth and sixth. So I remember in Tokyo, and I believe in Rio as well, it was very much. It was, it was very hard to move on the leaderboard.
You didn’t see a lot of motion. You did this time. Interesting. And you did not know who was going to end up with a medal until the absolute last routine. Wow. So that was exciting. So, gold went to, uh, Daria VA from Germany. Silver went to Ana Ian from Bulgaria and Bronze went to Italy’s, Sophia Rapha. I was near the Bulgarian.
A whole group of Bulgarians were right next to me, part of the team. Okay, so this, these were the coaches and then other gymnasts from the team event when she did that final routine. And there is no partying like Rhythmic Gymnastic Bulgarian partying. I want to go to that celebration with them.
Jill: Very nice.
Was there a lot of protesting in the team event?
Alison: Not in the team event. A little bit in the team event. There were many inquiries in the individual event, but it, I don’t know if they’ve changed the system or if this is the difference between television and it being there. The inquiries were going on subsequently.
So the next routine, the next routine was going on and you’d see on the scoreboard an inquiry has been submitted. But the competition just kept going because they had over three hours to figure out all these inquiries. The official results did come up relatively quickly, even though there were some inquiries concerning the bronze medal and the fourth place finish.
But it didn’t feel like it did when we were watching Tokyo, how these inquiries are just going on forever and on. And it wasn’t every, there was usually two or three each round out of the 10. Oh, that’s
Jill: not
Alison: bad. So it wasn’t every single score. And they seemed to diminish as the competition went along. Or maybe I just stopped paying attention because I was just leery eyed from ribbons and sequins and Moulin Rouge!
So final verdict? Don’t make me do that again.
I will watch the edited TV version. Thank you.
Jill: Okay. We had the final day of sailing today. It was the men’s kite race only did three races because four or five and six were canceled. So tough day with winds. I think again, down in Marseille, gold went to Valentin Bontas from Austria silver went to Tony Vedisek from Slovenia and bronze went to Maximilian Maeder from Singapore.
Alison: Okay, we, we know that my European geography is not good. Isn’t Austria landlocked?
Jill: They’ve got lakes. All you need is a lake. And some wind. Which we didn’t have here. Right, and a sea. In sport climbing we had the men’s boulder and lead medal finals. Serato Anranku was two holds away. From gold and fell.
Alison: Oh, no Yes, well two holds at having seen it two holds
Jill: is a lot two holds is a lot and you know That’s it’s a tough course. I will say that gold went to Toby Roberts from Great Britain. Silver went to Anraku Suratu from Japan and Jakob Schubert from Austria wins the bronze. We had some swimming today. The men’s marathon
Alison: swim. Somehow they pulled this off before the rains came and infected the water again.
So
Jill: I did see some of this on a feed and they were swimming really close to the walls. Really? Yeah, I wanted to see some more and haven’t got, but I wonder if that had to do with the current. That’s, that was my theory. So let me pull this up.
Alison: Did you know that there’s a whole thing in marathon swimming about drinking a can of Coke?
after the race to help prevent gastrointestinal distress. No, tell me all about this. So I was reading about this, I believe in the Guardian, I’ll, I’ll dig it up. And that, no, it was the Wall Street Journal. It was the Wall Street Journal online. And marathon swimmers have a myth that drinking a can of Coke will help prevent bad things when you have to swim in yucky water.
Jill: Interesting. Interesting.
Alison: I’m sure Coke, as the Olympic sponsor, loves that.
Jill: I am sure. Here we go. It looks like we have a repeat gold and silver from Tokyo.
Christoph Rezovsky from Hungary wins gold, Oliver Klement from Germany wins silver, and David Bettelheim from Hungary wins the bronze.
Alison: Who knew that Hungary was a hotbed of marathon swimming?
Jill: I know. It’s also the first time two athletes, in marathon swimming, first time went to two athletes from the same, uh, National Olympic Committee finish on the podium.
But marathon swimming has not been in the Olympics that long, so we’re going to get these fun facts like that a lot. So they managed to do swimming in the sun.
Alison: I’ll be very interested to see where L. A. is putting its swimming.
Jill: Good question.
Alison: And will there be any kind of water quality issues? Well, I’m sure they’re going to go to the ocean. I would hope so. I mean, why would you lose out on that kind of, facility. I mean, you’ve got an option of swimming in the Pacific.
You don’t have to build an ocean. You don’t have to build an ocean. You don’t have to send them to Oklahoma City for the whitewater course. You can just, Oh, let’s go down to Long Beach and hop in and hop in and we won’t have to hear about water quality.
Jill: Let’s hope not.
Alison: And more importantly, for the swimmers, they don’t have to.
Get sick to compete in the Olympics, right? I wonder how much getting sick is part of the job. I think it’s a lot of part of the job. Hence the Coke myth.
Jill: Yeah. Kind of want to Coke right now. I could go for a, you
Alison: know what I could go for an icy cold Coke. Go for a Coke float. Those things are so
Jill: good. I
Alison: think McDonald’s is open till 2.
But they put ice in it. Maybe I can ask him for, it’ll be the only time. It’ll be the only time in Paris I say, no glass, no glass.
Jill: In table tennis, we had the men’s team wrap up. The bronze, uh, gold medal went to China, they beat Sweden 3 0, silver went to Sweden, and bronze went to France, who beat Japan 3 2.
In taekwondo, we had, um, Whole bunch of qualifications and,
Alison: and, uh, medals going on. So we had two weight classes, the men’s, uh, 80 kilogram and the women’s 67 kilogram men’s 80 kilogram includes our Shukla Stani CJ Nicholas that made it to the semis and lost. And then I saw him in the bronze medal match and lost.
Jill: Yeah. And it was tough because in round one, He was doing well. He had scored some points and then all of a sudden at the end of round one, the um, Italian Simone Alessio scored and scored enough that gave him the round. So, it’s best of three rounds and you win a round by getting the most points in that round.
And then in the second round, Simone just scored and CJ couldn’t answer and he couldn’t answer and he couldn’t answer. It was just the momentum. Yeah. It just was really tough. And he just ran out of time because he, he looked good. He looked pumped. He was excited and he really looked strong in that first round.
Alison: He looked strong. I was clicking in while I was surviving my attack of the crystals to what he was doing all day. And whenever I turned it on, he looked like he was just going to march through this tournament.
Jill: Yeah, so a tough break to CJ in his weight class. Uh, Fuzzi from Tunisia one Gold, Barran B uh, Barari from Iran.
One Silver Eddie here from Denmark. One bronze. First time, uh, Denmark. Got a medal in. Taekwondo, and Simone Alessio from Italy won the other bronze, and uh, Kutuzi becomes Tunisia’s first gold medal in Taekwondo as well. In the women’s 67 kilograms, gold went to Vivian, Viviana Martin from Hungary, silver went to Aleksandra Perisic from Serbia, bronzes went to Sarah Shari from Belgium, and Christina Tichout from USA.
I saw these two bronze medal matches. Christina Tietjau just walked all over her opponent. It was so many points, so quickly. She was just getting that medal. She looked really, really good. Uh, Sarah Shari’s bout, um, that was a little more contentious and it went down to like a replay at the end. Yeah. And, uh, she, it went in her favor and she ended up with the bronze.
Alison: In track cycling. You were not melting at the velodrome tonight.
Jill: No, I was not melting at the velodrome tonight. I was sweating to the, I was sweating to the oldies at break in. And then I went, and then I went to the Grand Palais for a few minutes to freeze. Is it? It’s cold. It’s blowing in there.
Alison: You know what?
People doubted me when I posted this little thing about the Grand Palais being so cold at, I posted it in some of the Facebook planning groups, you know, some of the active ones saying, you know, the Grand Palais was really cold. And apparently on the other side of the Grand Palais, if you are down low, you are melting.
Really? So the Press Tribune is under the blower. So if you are on the press side, You’re freezing. It’s Antarctica. And if you are on the other side, it is Africa. Wow. That’s tough. If I’d known that, I would have gone and stood on the other side every few minutes, and then come back to my seat.
Jill: You would have been stopped.
They would have gone, interdit, interdit. And I would have said, too bad. No glass. No glass.
In track cycling, we had the men’s sprint medal finals today. Gold went to Harry Leverson from Netherlands, silver went to Matthew Richardson from Australia, and bronze went to Jack Carlin from Great Britain. In the women’s Madison final, gold went to Italy’s Chiara Consoni and Vittoria Guazzini from Italy.
Silver went to Eleanor Barker and Nia Evans from Great Britain, and bronze went to Micah Van Der Doon and Lisa Van Bell from Netherlands.
Alison: We had one match in volleyball today, that was the men’s bronze medal match, and the United States beat Italy 3 0. But there were a lot of monster blocks! Monster! Ace!
Ace! Yeah, the monster block is great until the scaffolding collapse and you all end up on the floor floor. And
Jill: that’s a monster block from above. If you’re on the bottom, that’s for sure. And in water polo, we had classification matches for 5th through 8th place. In those, Spain beat Italy 11 9 and Greece beat Australia 15 9. And then in the semi finals, Croatia beat Hungary 9 8 and Serbia beat the US 10 6.
So USA will play Hungary for the bronze on Sunday.
Alison: This tournament has gone from day 1 to day 16. This tournament has gone on forever. This tournament It’s
Jill: impressive. It’s amazing, too. I mean, in a way, it’s kind of fun because there’s always water polo. You can always go to water polo. But if you’re an athlete, that’s a long, it’s a long tournament.
And you don’t get to necessarily go out and do other stuff. You get
Alison: to eat the fun things in the village.
Jill: Maybe on Monday. Before they kick you out. Right? In weightlifting, we had the men’s 89kg final. Gold went to Carlos May Nassar from Bulgaria. Silver went to Iesan Lopez from Colombia. And bronze went to Antonio Pizzolatto from Italy.
And in the women’s 71kg final, Gold went to Olivia Reeves from the USA, silver went to Marie Leavis Sanchez from Colombia, and bronze went to Angie Paola Palacios de Llomas from Ecuador. And we had some world record and Olympic records in the men’s competition
Alison: by Carlos May Nassar.
Jill: Interesting. In wrestling, we had men’s 57 kilograms.
and 86 kilograms in the freestyle and then women’s freestyle 57 kilogram finals. For the men’s 57 kilograms, gold went to uh, Higuchi Rei from Japan, silver went to Spencer Lee from USA, and bronze went to um, Aman Sarawat from India along with Gu Ab
Abdu, thank you. From Uzbekistan just lost my pronunciation. Magic.
Alison: You know what, I have no pronunciation magic, so if I can swoop in and do one. Oh, that’s
Jill: nice. I appreciate
Alison: I I’ll, I’ll do what I can.
Jill: In the men’s 86 kilograms gold went to Mamed ov, or ov.
Alison: Raman, thank you. From Bulgaria. I’m not trying the next one,
Jill: silver went to Hassan Ya ti from Iran. Bronzes went to Mark Aaron Brooks and Dorin Gurule from Greece. And in the women’s 57 kilograms, gold went to Sakurai Tsukumi from Japan. Silver went to Anastasia Nechida from Moldova. And bronzes went to Helen Maroulis from the USA. And Hong Kuixin from China.
Alison: Oh, Helen Maroulis got herself another bronze.
Jill: That’s right. So she now has a gold and two bronzes. Excellent. It’s amazing. She’s been at this for three Olympics too, and she’s had a bad concussion along the way. And, uh, just an amazing story with her. And you know what else is an amazing story?
Alison: Our official mascot, Theo. Yes. So Theo, uh, has his own social media. So you don’t just have to stop seeing pictures of him when he is no longer our mascot. You can follow him on Instagram at Theodore Patton. And there have been several additional photos of flat Theo.
Jill: Oh, yay. So at least he got to enjoy the Olympics.
Alison: No changes to the Shuklastan medal count, so we stand at six golds, eight silvers, and five bronze. And we still have Shuklastanis competing. We do. Megumi Fields of the U. S. and Jacqueline Siminoe of Canada compete in the final routine of duet artistic swimming. And Jeffrey Lewis, a. k. a. B boy Jeffro, competes in men’s break in.
Nevin Harrison, uh, finishes up at the C1 canoe sprint. Jess Davis Savner competes in modern pentathlon. And Rookpup Rabbitoe goes for a medal in the finals of the sport climbing combined event.
Jill: Excellent. And we do have shout outs.
Alison: So for our Kickstarter supporters who helped get us to Paris. A special thanks to John McLeod, Cynthia Rackall, and Donald Whalen.
Jill: And don’t forget, you can still get Jason, the dulcet tones of Jason Bryant’s wrestling guide at matttalkonline. com slash Paris. Use the discount code flame alive and you’ll get 5 off chock full of stuff if you want to keep a piece of wrestling history handy. and some name pronunciations. They are really, really helpful.
I will say that. That’s going to do it for this episode. Thank you to our
Alison: researcher, Annaleigh 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. com. Call or text us at 208 352 6348.
That’s 208 flame it. Chat with us and other fans on our Facebook group. Keep the flame alive podcast and get our special daily games time newsletter. You can sign up for that at flamealivepod. com.
Jill: Join us again tomorrow for more action from Paris. We’re in the homestretch, but we still got some big medals to be awarded.
So be Be sure to tune in for all of that. And don’t forget to tell a friend about the show and hang out with us in our Facebook group. Thank you so much for listening. And until tomorrow, keep the flame alive.