A whopping 29 sports are on today’s Tokyo 2020 Olympics program. We’ve got the action and medal victories from:
- 3×3 Basketball
- Archery – Men’s team competition
- Artistic Gymnastics – Men’s team competition + a potential Rule 50 violation on the women’s floor exercise?
- Baseball/Softball – A thrilling game between JPN and USA.
- Beach Volleyball – TKFLASTAN WATCH
- Canoe Slalom
- Cycling – The controversy about the women’s road race and a bad crash at the men’s mountain bike venue.
- Diving
- Fencing
- Judo
- Rugby Sevens – Competition gets underway, and we note the best ball delivery system in existence.
- Shooting – Women’s and men’s skeet.
- Skateboarding – The helmets come out in the “women’s” competition.
- Surfing – Jill’s trying. Really she is.
- Swimming – Another thrilling night in the pool.
- Table Tennis
- Taekwondo
- Triathlon – Weird happenings at the start, and an unbelieveable finish.
- Volleyball
- Weightlifting – A historical competition on the women’s side.
Join in the fun – viewing guide, fantasy league, brackets and more at https://flamealivepod.com/tokyo
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Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive!
TRANSCRIPT
Note: This is an uncorrected machine-generated transcript. It contains errors. Please do not quote from the transcript; use the audio file as the record of note. If you would like to see transcripts that are more accurate, please support the show.
Jill: [00:00:00] we’ll meet you. Uh, hello, Olympic fans and lovers of and welcome to Keep the Flame Alive, the podcast for fans of the Olympics and Paralympics. I am your host Jill Jaracz joined as always by my lovely co-host Alison Brown. Alison .
Alison: It has been a day.
Jill: Gosh, that’s so exciting. We have so much action day for competition.
29 sports on the docket. So we’ve got a great show coming up with some great Olympic moments that happened today. But before we get to today’s action, we’d like to tell you about our Kickstarter campaign. We surprisingly got media accreditation for the winter Olympics in Beijing. Those are less than 200 days away.
It’s like the old days, we are really excited for this opportunity to go and bring you a podcast experience. It only comes with having an on the ground presence, but as an independent outlet, we need your support to get there. Find out more about our campaign and click check out our supporter bonuses. We are, uh, they’re pretty.
I think they’re. I’m excited
Alison: about them. I might give myself money just so I can get some of
Jill: these we’re sending postcards from Beijing. Your pet can be our mascot and much, much more. Check out kickstarter.com/profile/. Pod and look for the projects we created. We also have a link to that on our website.
Look for flame life, pod.com/tokyo, uh, fantasy league update. We are doing fantasy leagues, uh, with listeners. How is our league doing well? Uh, Sheila Istan has a commanding lead with 159 points. Uh, Colibri is in second with one 11 and I am surprised to be in third with 85. I am
Alison: not as I predicted. Well, I love, I, I want to know who Shola Liston is because that is a fantastic name.
Jill: Exactly. I also want to know what everyone’s team name is because that was part of the deal. Uh, when you put together your team and you join a league, you, you pick all your athletes, but you have to name your team and they don’t let everybody else know what your team name. And that makes me sick because I want to know what everyone’s team name is.
This is your roster of athletes. So my team name is rockin TB. That’s fantastic. I love, but there’s nowhere that that’s mentioned. So let us know what your team names are. There is still time to get in on the action for that. And for fantasy brackets, brackets are predicting who will be on the podium for the team competitions.
So check out flame of life, pod.com/tokyo for all of those details. So whether. It’s been hot. It’s been humid at some venues have been, they’ve sent the co at the beginning of competition. Oh, it’s kind of nice out here today.
Alison: And it seems to depend on whether there’s any shade or not. That seems to be the deciding factor, whether people are comfortable or they’re grabbing the ice Fest.
Jill: We do have a tropical storm coming in. It is a downgraded from a typhoon down to the weakest category of tropical storm, which is good. So archery rowing, sailing all may changes to their schedule. But that will be interesting to see as the rains come in for what happens in all of the outdoor venues, Marnie McBean watch our favorite chef dominion, Michigan, and
Alison: where and where in the world is Marnie McBean.
Uh, she was at beach volleyball, men’s rugby, softball, and judo. She now has a first nation drum that she bangs. So if you don’t see her, you may hear her. That
Jill: is fantastic. Exciting. All right. Let’s get to what happened in today’s action. If you are behind on your watching and don’t want to be spoiled, we are going to talk about results.
So, but we’ll announce each, each sport as we get to it. So you’ll have a chance to skip ahead or rewind if you need to, uh, starting with three on three basketball, every team had another two games today. For the women. USA is topping the leader board with six wins, no losses, perfect record ROC China and Japan are all at four.
And to France is three and three. Italy is two and four. Romania is one in five, and Mongolia has yet to win a game. Uh, on the men’s side. Serbia is on top undefeated six. No, uh, Netherlands is foreign to. Belgium ROC and Latvia are three and three. Poland is two and four S as is China and Japan is one in five.
Um, I watched some, uh, a good chunk of the women’s China versus Japan game, who that was tight, China beat Japan 15, 12, but it wasn’t until the last maybe 20 seconds that you knew that they were going to win. And China has got some women who just tower over every. It is incredible.
Alison: So I watched the Netherlands Poland [00:05:00] game.
Great game, you know, who is terrible? Oh, no ego. And Kyle Montgomery, who are the American announcers on NBC? Oh three basketball cliche. They pulled out, they are making three on three, so boring. And that makes me mad because it is not. This is the same pair that said you put the round thing in the round thing, and that was a highlight of their announcing.
Jill: So note to fans go to the. For three X three, let’s move on to the archery pitch. That was the men’s team event, which I watched a little bit of the beginning of the day, but haven’t watched the whole, uh, metal matches yet. Goldwind to Korea. Silver went to Chinese, Taipei bronze went to Japan. So Korea had.
Taken both the men’s and the women’s team event, not a surprise. Cause they are a powerhouse country. There is a very cute clip of the women’s our tree team getting on the podium for their metals and in sync drawing back imaginary boat. It’s really cute. Artistic gymnastics. The do watch. I have
Alison: not watched it yet and here’s why I haven’t watched it yet.
Okay. Because. American streaming is terrible. So NBC promises me 7,000 hours of coverage. I do not have cable. I have YouTube. Which is similar to a satellite or a service. So if you don’t have a cable provider, you don’t get to watch the stream. You’ve got to watch it on peacock. If you don’t start the stream, when it starts, you can’t go back.
And not only can you get, you can’t go back. You can’t watch it later. They put streams up like three days later that you can’t watch unless you have. Oh, I did not realize that. So now I am stuck watching now. I don’t mind watching NBC primetime, but now I cannot watch men’s gymnastics until tonight. So NBC you’re 7,000 hours of coverage are useless because most of us can’t watch it.
Jill: Wow. So peacock, you have to have premium, but even then you don’t get to go back and, or you have to wait to go.
Alison: You do have to wait to go back even with premium. That’s interesting. And let’s say I start 10 minutes into a. Broadcast. I can’t see the first 10 minutes. Right. Unless I had turned it on at that moment.
Right. And you can’t record it from the live streaming.
Jill: Yes. Which I’ve run into that problem too. On, on a stream where I can’t record it. I am a Luddite with cable because I’m, I’m lazy and too lazy to figure out how good for you on this situation. Yeah, it’s, it’s easy because I just type in my cable provider and I don’t have to worry about anything and I can get pretty much anything I want, but some stuff has been hard to find.
And it took me a long time to go back because I wanted to see some of the women’s gymnastics qualifying. Uh, there was one routine where I had heard off of another podcast where a gymnast supposedly did a black lives matter kneeling, a Costa Rican Luciana. Alvarado. So I went back to find her division because I didn’t think she was going to get into the all around.
And her routine was, I will say that the kneel and the, the fist up, at least in a, in a quarter of my screen did not look like a protest to me. It was part of the choreography.
Alison: That’s what I thought too. Yes. Luciana Alvarado said that was the intention of the courtyard. Oh, well, she has said that in the press that the intention was to honor and mimic other physical protests, but it’s part of the choreography.
So will people catch it? Will people not catch it?
Jill: I don’t think people caught it because the music that went with the choreography did not feel like anything. Like there would be a protest at the end. Cause I was really curious. Seeing that. And would people pick up on that and would that be a rule 50 violation?
And you get into a conversation of you can’t have a protest on the field of play, but if it is part of your routine, is that acceptable, but I don’t think that’s going to be noticed enough. We’ll have to look for that.
Alison: I mean, if she hadn’t said anything in the press, nobody would have
Jill: caught it. No, no.
Which is, which is interesting. I also think, I don’t remember what is in her music like rock and roll. Like fifties rock and rolling was a
Alison: very odd to throw a protest and it was not Eastern European folk.
Jill: No, it was not. So I will take that, you know, who also didn’t have Eastern European folk music, the Spanish women have you, did you go, if you can go back and watch their floor exercises cause they’re, uh, they didn’t make the team finals.
So this is your one shot to see it. Their [00:10:00] musicality is really, really good
Alison: Georgia. when we spoke to her and talking about her favorite routines, I think both of her favorite routines or Spanish. Uh, women’s floor because I think that’s historically something they do. Yeah.
Jill: Um, they were very fun and beautiful to watch the women’s German team wearing unitards in competition.
Getting a lot of news for that because they did not. Uh, that was a, an answer back to the sexualization of some women’s uniforms. Uh, but the men did compete. So spoiler alert. ROC won the gold. Japan won the silver and China won the bronze. So I have not seen this yet. I’m very curious to know what happened to the U S men’s team.
They, they weren’t really, I think, expected to win a medal, but I think some performances were supposed to do well. I’m wondering, I I’m happy that Japan won the silver. They’ve had an up and down gymnastics because of a cohort, which Humira, who is. One of their best gymnast of all time was doing a stay stuck around for Tokyo to compete in his home country and fell off the high bar.
He was only in the horizontal bar event fell off, and that was a very sad end to his Olympic career, but it’s nice that the chip Japanese team did do well in the silver. I will probably have more thoughts on that.
Alison: I want to mention something about ROC, because I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, the reason that the IOC said we want to call them ROC is because in Pyeongchang it was Olympic athletes from Russia and everybody kept saying Russia and the IOC didn’t want Russia mentioned.
And yet everybody on the broadcast is saying the Russian Olympic committee, nobody’s saying ROC. So kind of still didn’t make the point that we’re trying
Jill: to make. No. Well, you know, if they made a stronger point, maybe that would make the point exactly. Like
Alison: how about we actually ban the ROC cause they’re the ones who messed this up,
Jill: moving on to baseball, softball.
Whoa, what a game between the U S and Japan. And now
Alison: it turns out that’s a preview of the gold medal game.
Jill: It was so exciting us one, two to one on a Kelsey Stewart walk-off home run in the bottom of the seventh, which is the last setting to win it. It was amazing because I really thought Japan was going to pull out this wind.
They had led it was zero, zero for quite a while. And, uh, then. Japan got a run. And I thought, okay. And the U S just couldn’t answer and couldn’t answer and couldn’t answer. But then at the very end, they pulled it out. That was incredible. The U S will have home advantage in the gold medal game, which means they will battle.
Uh, also, uh, Canada be Italy eight to one and Mexico be Australia four to one. The final standings for pool play us was the only team with the undefeated record, uh, followed by Japan at four and one Canada at three, and to Mexico at two and three Australia at one and four. Shocking. Exactly. And then Italy did not win any of their matches.
So that means Canada and Mexico will meet up in the bronze medal.
Alison: Oh,
Jill: watch them all. Let’s move on to a women’s started play in basketball. So with these team sports, they have a lot of pool coverage or pool play and, and some of the other. Badminton beach volleyball that have a lot of pools before they go to brackets.
We will have some news as we get further down the competition. Some of these sports have only played one game for everybody. And, uh, so it’s really hard to understand where everybody stands at the moment. Beach volleyball shook Fliss Donnie Kelly Clay sent her partner. Animated Sarah responsible, which what the NBC coverage said and sponsor will beat a Latvia’s Gardena and crouch of NOCCA.
Two sets to one. Uh, first game was 2113 in favor of the Latvians. Then. Clayton spousal came back for a 2116 and the second set. And the third set only placed a 15 and they won 1511
Alison: with a six and O scoring run at the end of the third sets, which
Jill: was
Alison: beautiful. So Chris Marlow, who I keep complaining about the U S announcers, but I’m going to complain about him.
He was really harsh on clays and spots. All he had, he was critical of who they have as their coach. He was critical that they didn’t go to Florida for heat training. He was critical that they’re to expressive. And then get to, like, there, they’re not even keeled enough. I know I was getting so mad. I was like, how dare you insult my baby like that [00:15:00] because yeah.
And then he was like, oh, Kelly’s not doing this. And I’m like, Kelly is perfect. All of a sudden I got so defensive of her, but yeah, I mean, clearly this is their first Olympics and their young. And some of that is going to show and it’s their first match. And Kelly said afterwards that they were both really nervous and Kelly and I, and I guess Sarah, because she was on the same flight were COVID exposed.
Oh, that’s right. I saw that. So they can still compete, but when they’re not competing, they’re pretty much isolated to their rooms.
Jill: Right. Although I heard that she was able to get her hands on a PlayStation. Yes. And
Alison: they were playing.
Jill: I am excited to see how they continue on. They’re still in all this preliminary action.
So a lot of the other favorites played and won as expected. So that’s interesting to see how this will continue to take out. Boxing had a lot of preliminary rounds and rounds of 16, so we’ll probably start getting to some metal matches. Soon canoe slalom. The men had their C1, race and finals today. Gold went to Slovakia.
Slovakia’s Benjamin subs. Sheck silver went to Lucas, Rowan of Czech Republic, and bronze went to Sadara. Subsidy is from Germany, moving on to a cycling. Okay. We have to catch up because I did put the women’s road race back on. And yesterday we talked about, uh, on a Keystone Hoffer from Austria and how she won gold.
And that was a real surprise. She came out of nowhere. She was Austria’s first cycling metal. 1896. That was amazing. And then there was a lot of controversy because, uh, and meek van gluten from Netherlands thought she won the gold. She didn’t realize that Ana Keystone offer was so far in front of her. She comes over the finish line and is raising her hand.
She’s so excited. And then she found out she wants to. And the Peloton did not realize. So the Peloton is this massive swarm of cyclists. It all kind of Reece together. And then some will kind of break off. It’s like a marathon, you know, some break off and they try to get ahead and then the Peloton will catch up and catch them at different points.
Sometimes you get somebody who breaks. And takes the victory and nobody can catch them. And that’s what Hannah, what app happened with Kevin Hoffer. So Olympic protocol dictates that the Peloton races, uh, th the Peloton can not have radio earpieces while they race. So they are dependent on. In race motorcycles and the pellets in of team cars to relay any time gaps to them.
So the system broke down for the Netherlands team on Sunday and telephone lines between staffers and sport directors went haywire according to Velo news. And so it was VIN flutent said such an important course and no communication. This is amateurish.
Alison: She’s right. I don’t understand if it’s normal protocol in road races to have the community, the radio communicate, you know, that piece in your ear.
Jill: It’s like they have something. I think that’s it. And only the Olympics turn, it takes that away.
Alison: It makes no sense because it’s not what they normally do and all the other races.
Jill: Right, which is, which is interesting. I was talking a little bit with our friend Elizabeth Emory over from here, her sports podcast.
And because she was a former road cyclist herself, and I wondered how, what went down. Oh. And she said, you know, I said, why couldn’t the Peloton? Just keep track of that. And she goes, you know, there’s really only so much you can keep track of while you’re racing and your brain. Just stops, registering some stuff at times.
Right. And if
Alison: you don’t see that person breaking away, because let’s say you’re in the middle of the Peloton and you physically can’t see it and you’re trying not to crash. Right.
Jill: Or if the people at the front of the Peloton eventually moved back because then they have to go. And they’re there. The team people who were doing some of the.
Shielding some of the other cyclists, or they have to peel off and go back and get food. It’s their turn to go get food. The food bags, maybe that’s part of the problem too. And they’re not many
Alison: times. Can you count? You know, three people broke away, did three people fall back and you’re trying not to crash and run your race.
That’s why they have the rate. Yeah, this was, I felt so bad for her, but on the flip side, She’s still got a silver medal. This is a girl who, who did a nasty crash in Rio with spine injuries and broken bones. So for her to be on the, for her to be racing, nevermind even come up with a podium finish is amazing, but stupid because it diminishes the race.
If they’re not racing how they would race, if they didn’t have information, but I’m still happy
Jill: for Carson.
Alison: Austria is thrilled chocolate for everybody.
Jill: Um, I did dip into [00:20:00] the men’s mountain bike course a little bit. Again, it is out in an area of Japan where they can have fans. So you did see some fans around the cycle.
The S the, the track, uh, mountain biking to me is interesting because there are so many areas where it’s just a single. And there are mountains that sometimes it gets so steep and so windy that they have to get off their bikes and run it up the rest of the hill. And then hop back on, saw a nasty crash involving Matthew Vanderpoel from Netherlands, who was pre-race favorite.
And this is a little controversial because apparently in training it was a, it was a. Down from a Rocky section to another kind of Rocky section do track. So you had a lot of stone to clear. Well, apparently in training, there was a ramp down from the first rock to the second rock and that ramp was removed during the race and he thought that ramp was going to be there and he ended up misjudging.
The jump and crash spectacularly. He’s getting some x-rays. Hopefully he will be okay. Great. Britain’s Thomas Pitcock won the race very nicely followed by Switzerland’s Mathias Pflueger and Spain’s David Valero, Serrano, who was so thrilled to win. And diving. It was the men’s synchronized 10 meter platform, Thomas Daly and Maddie Lee from great Britain, one gold, uh, cow one and Chen Isen from China won the silver and Alexander Bodner and Victor meaning BIA from ROC took a bronze, uh, some news from a question.
Austria’s Victoria, max cheerer withdrew from the dressage event because her horse, Abby Glen was diagnosed with an acute abscess at the root of a molar in his mouth. It was a dental issue. So you have to take care of the horse. Of course, she’s had to drop out of the competition. Austria alternates did not go to Tokyo.
So now Austria is out of the team competition. I watched massage. Did you, oh, what, what did you.
Alison: How have I not been obsessed with this before? This is the ice dancing of the summer Olympics. It is, it is. It’s the partnership. It’s the pat, you know, it’s like the old time original set pattern dance. They have the, the stirring movie music.
There was some legends of the fall music that I’ve recognized. They have clever little nicknames for the horses, the biggest horse in. Competition, you know, the physically biggest, his name is Mopsy, but that’s his stable name. Like they have official names like, um, purebred dogs, and then they have what they actually call them at Stephanie.
Right. So it’s the U S
Jill: and Peter’s Paralympian, dressage, brighter, uh, Sydney Collier where rides all in one, but they call him Ali. So he
Alison: has Mopsy uh, Charlotte do Jardin pumpkin. There are different clearly different styles. Oh, for the way the Americans ride versus how the Germans ride versus how the Brits ride.
I loved it. And here’s my best story. Isabelle birth from Germany is writing Bella rose. You know, I love a good comeback story, but it’s the horse. Whew. Bella rose had a, a possibly deadly Hough disease, took three and a half years off and is now back.
Jill: And the last I saw she was very highly ranked.
Alison: Yes, she was.
I believe she’s in the lead. Well, they, so Isabella and Belrose are yes. Well, and the American announcer, Melanie Smith Taylor was fantastic explaining why people were scoring what they were scoring. Okay. So it made it very, so if you’re in the U S and I, and I hope the Brits and the Australians have similar.
Informative announcers. It was easy to watch and understand what was happening. But it’s ice dancing with horses. That’s all you need to know if there’s even an equivalent to the twizzle. There’s the peel-off.
Jill: Oh, well now we have a fan moving over to fencing in the women’s saber gold went to, uh, Sophia paused, Nick Kova from ROC gold.
Silver went to Sophia valley Kaia from. And Francis men on brunette won the bronze over on men’s foil, Junko long from Hong Kong when the gold only Hong Kong, second gold medal. And do you remember when they won their first? Yes. We
Alison: talked about that when we were doing it again at
Jill: Atlanta moment. Exactly.
Uh, they’ve won their first gold medal in 1996 and now twenty-five years later, they want another, so congratulations to them. That’s so exciting. Uh, silver [00:25:00] went to Daniella Caruso from Italy. And Alexander Tupa niche from Czech Republic won the bronze. Uh, if you are a us fencing fan, uh, Mariel’s Lagunas is very, uh, well-known name in women’s saber fencing.
She lost it. The quarter five. Moving over to some action in the Nippon Buddha con for judo, the women’s 57 kilogram and the men’s 73 kilograms all competed for the women, Nora. Yeah. Kova from Kosovo one gold. So that is a cost of, I was like second gold medal of these games. It’s incredible. Uh, Francis, Sarah Leona.
one silver. And bronze metals and went to a, to Casa. Yoshida from Japan and Jessica from Canada and in the men’s competition show. Hey, oh no. From Japan one gold. So yay. Another Japanese gold Lasha shove DAS severely from Georgia when silver. Uh, song Batar send cheer from Mongolia and John grim from Korea, one bronzes.
And yesterday I mentioned, I wondered if the were related because on the men’s side and the women’s side, uh, outta and who Fu me ABI one, the goals they are brother and sister. Yeah, your mom and dad. And there was such a nice clip on a NBC talk, uh, showing how she was rooting for her brother, because she had won gold first.
And she was so excited when he went. It was awesome. Right? Rugby seven started. I watched some, did you watch any? I did. I won. I headed on for a couple matches because I’m, I’m so excited about team Fiji, that every, every team played two games. So we had some solid wins from Fiji. They beat Japan and Canada, and at the beginning they looked like they were a little more.
But, uh, they did pull out the wind and it was funny because a book club Claire was texting me and said, oh, Hey, because we’re reading, uh, Ben Ryan’s book seventh heaven, which is about their 2016 gold medal. And some of the characters in that book are still on the roster for team Fiji. So like Jerry two, Y is still on the roster and it’s fun to be able to watch them compete.
Best part about rugby sevens. I think so. Is how they deliver the ball to the pitch. Did you see this?
Alison: I saw it cause she, but I had noticed it cause I was, I watched the great Britain Canada. Okay. Where Canada got blanked. Yeah. That was a painful. Great,
Jill: great. And Britain just smacked them 24. Nothing. Yeah.
So
Alison: please tell us about the best piece of equipment. The rugby match.
Jill: Okay. So this is the best piece of equipment, I think probably until we go to the athletics competition. Cause I bet we’re going to see it there too. It is a little autonomous robot car that has on top of it. They have a little green square of turf and the rugby goalposts, and then they put the rugby ball in the center.
The car drives out to the middle of the pitch and then. Punt the ball through the goalposts onto the ground. And that’s how they deliver the ball to the pitch. It is so much fun to watch. It’s my favorite thing. I’ll have to
Alison: find a clip of it to posted in the Facebook group. Facebook group, by the way is rockin.
Jill: Yes it’s. So
Alison: if you are on Facebook, please take a look for, keep the flame alive podcast Facebook group, because we are.
Jill: Right. And it’s fun because people are watching different things. So it, I mean, obviously 29 sports, we can’t watch everything, but it’s so much fun to get everybody’s input on what they are seeing.
Um, movie, I did watch you. Watched some skeet this morning before we taped, uh, the, uh, men’s and women’s both had their ski competitions, Amber English from the U S won gold Diana from Italy, one silver and way men from China, one bronze on the men’s side, Vincent Hancock from the USA one gold Jesper Hanson from Denmark one, silver and Abdulla off Russia, D from Kuwait, one bronze.
And I believe he’s like 57 years old. Don’t give up on that dream. Just take up shooting. I do want to mention, because this happened, I wanted to clip of William Shaner winning the air rifle competition from yesterday. And after he won the gold, he was just like, oh, Hey, oh, you want to see my rifle? Okay.
I’m holding up my rifle. Oh, I guess I want go. And I’m walking and was just very nonchalant. And that happened with Amber English too. She wanted, she was crying a little bit, but it was just like, they’re so focused in on the sport that requires so much mental concentration, but to watch them [00:30:00] kind of.
Transition back into being a human who has emotions and feelings is that their transition is very slow for a shooter. You don’t get all that excitement right away is very interesting to watch
Alison: because unlike swimmers or tract starts, who feed off the adrenaline, they need that adrenaline to, to perform well.
The shooters need to not have any adrenaline.
Jill: I will say this dream announcers from the OBS are very. And skeet, they were really good about explaining what was happening that is hard to watch on TV because you can’t the way the backdrop is set up in the stadium, because I think they don’t want clays to go beyond a certain point.
So they have big black netting up. So it makes it very hard to see the targets until they get shot. And then there’s this bright pink puff of smoke. So then that makes it difficult to watch on TV. And I also wanted the camera to pull back a little bit because you’d see a puff of smoke or you you’d hear that.
Oh, they shot both. And you’d only see one puff of smoke because the camera was not far back enough because the clays go from different angles and how they have to shoot skateboarding. I watched it, try it again. You try
Alison: it again. I tried again with the women, couple things that I noticed. Number one under eighteens must wear a helmet.
Oh, that’s. Since the women. Tournament. And I put the word women in quotes. You had two 13 year olds and a 16 year old on the podium and they were not unique. I think the, there was one American who was 34, but pretty much everybody else in the finals was wearing a helmet, which means they’re under 18.
Jill: Wow.
So then that begs the question. If you are, if everybody in your sport. Is peaking at like 13 or 14, got a problem in your
Alison: sport. And the scores of the womens were considerably lower than the men’s don’t know. Cause the announcing was poor, whether they’re using a different scale or their difficulty level was much less.
Okay. It seemed to be, but cause they never explained when anybody was doing,
Jill: oh, I hate that because they just say, oh, they did this trick. Right.
Alison: But don’t explain. Means wipe outs. There were girls in the final who got straight zeros across the board because they did not complete a track. Wow. It w if this is the showcase for your sport, it was bad.
Wow. And the girls did not have the earbuds in the phones. So I guess that’s
Jill: an improvement. Well, I wonder if they’re all wearing helmets, if that’s also a rule that they can’t have earbuds. Possibly something to look up. They need to take a cue from the weightlifters who sometime, when we talked with, uh, Seb from weightlifting house, he told us about the whole strategy of how you have to pick your three weights.
And sometimes, and they not necessarily go low, but their first weight will be a lift that gets them into the competition. Because if you scratch out you’re you’re done. And that was noted. And some of the weightlifting commentary I heard just the announcer would just mention, oh yeah, they, they got it.
They had to get into the competition and then they would try lifts that were maybe a stretch for them and not make it, but at least they made it into the game. So maybe skateboarders do some tricks that you can manage to get a score.
I try it again with surfing. I had it on a small screen, but I tried and I still don’t understand what’s here. I’m sorry, but we’re now in head-to-head brackets in the competition. Maybe I’ll try again. And not that I expect them further down the competition. The announcers are going to do any better about explaining what we’re seeing.
Well, are you
Alison: watching it on net recovery or streaming?
Jill: I have tried both. Okay. And the network coverage was worse. Isn’t that? Usually the case? Yeah, because I just don’t think, I don’t think they get. People are tuning into their sport for the first time. And maybe that’s a, what’s a, what’s a, the co I don’t want to call the coastal elite, but where media is on the coast and they forget that you have a whole bunch of states, you fly over and I’m a Midwestern and grew up as a Midwestern.
And there is no surfing culture around where I grew up. I mean, I grew up on the east
Alison: coast. There’s no surfing.
Jill: Well, there’s some sorry, but I think they forget that there are huge swaths of the country and maybe swaps of the world where there is no surfing culture and therefore no knowledge of what is happening in surfing.
So again, if you are trying to showcase this new hip sport that all the kids are doing, and I want to see what the kids are up to these
Alison: [00:35:00] days, you know what coverage was awesome. What
Jill: swimming? Oh, cause rowdy Gaines.
Alison: Well, just in general, so much happened in swimming.
Jill: Oh, my goodness. Oh my goodness. So first off we had the fur, there were a lot of semi-finals and finals altogether in the morning session, which is.
Conveniently not by, not by happenstance, but it’s conveniently primetime for America, highly engineered to be that way. But women’s 100 meter butterfly, victory gold went to Maggie McNeil of Canada. So yay for Canada. Uh, Zhang UFA from China won silver and Emma McKeon from Australia at one.
Alison: So close. Was that race all the way down the line?
Yeah. And Sarah, uh, so strum finished seventh.
Jill: Yes. She was the defending champion and the world record holder. Yes. Yes. She was just nowhere to be found in that pool. That was really surprising. A men’s 100 meter breaststroke. Great. Britain’s Adam PD, gold back tobacco. He’s already the second person to win back to back gold medals.
In this event, a silver went to Arnold. from Netherlands and bronze went to Nicolo Barton Geli from Italy, but that was a great race. I mean, Adam
Alison: PD. Literally head and shoulders in front of these guys.
Jill: Uh, then we had the women’s 400 meter freestyle, which of course was the big debut of Katie Ledecky from the U S and how she is expected to win very many gold medals.
She came in silver. Position, not unexpectedly though. I watched the little package they did on Arianne Titmus from Australia and how she has been up and coming in this event and actually beat Katie Ledecky. Not that long ago at the world
Alison: championships. Yes is the raining or no longer, but was the reigning Olympic champion?
Titmus was the reigning world champ. And it was close and it was exciting. And then in the post race interview, the respect that the two of them showed. Was wonderful and joyful and so much nicer than when the rivalry is bitter. This was two really great swimmers, swimming their hearts out and was like, I got beat.
She was just better than me. And it was, I think she, they said it was the Deckey’s second, fastest time ever. Wow. So it was an incredibly fast race and just Mr. Speeder and Australians rightfully so going
Jill: nuts, right? Because this, there have not won many individual gold medals
Alison: in woman and Australian woman has not won an individual gold medal in swimming since 2008.
Wow. I mean, in swimming in Australia, is it, this is, this is there. World series. This is what they
Jill: want. So congratulations to ion and the bronze metal in that race went to Lee, being G from China. Men’s 100 meter freestyle relay gold USA, silver Italy, bronze Australia. I did not see this event. Did you? I did.
All right.
Alison: Very surprised at Austria.
Jill: Oh, really? Did you think that it would be much closer and they
Alison: thought it would be much closer? They, they definitely, uh, struggled. So this is Caleb Drexel’s first metal of the, these games. Okay. And usually the U S four by 100 is kind of the brashest team on the deck.
And. I mean, they were excited to win, but there was, there are different kinds of swimmers.
Jill: Interesting. Uh, you know, a follow-up cause I forgot to look into this. A storyline, remember, uh, ricotta. We K from Japan. Coming back to swim in the Olympics, post leukemia treatments. Uh, she was only going to be swimming in the relays, Japan in the four by 100 free relay.
They did not reach the final, but she said it was really lovely to be able to swim and take part of it. Table tennis. This is on my list to go back and watch because the mixed doubles competition ended gold went to, uh, China, the team of and the view she, when Japan won the silver Mizutani June and ITO MIMA, and then bronze went to France, the pair of Emmanuel Levison and Juan Shannon, who beat our Shukla Sistani Millie, Tapper, and hemming.
And the first
Alison: round CSO, some people have two different ways ago when you’re doing plays like this. [00:40:00] Some people want the person that, to who beat them to do really well, because then like your loss meant something. And other people have the reverse where it’s like, oh, if you beat me, I want you to lose right away.
I like the, they beat our, our middle. But they got a bronze. So it was okay.
Jill: Yeah. I’m also on that boat, a TaeKwonDo, uh, the competitions were the women’s 67 kilogram and the men’s 80 kilogram. So on the women’s side, uh, gold went to Croatia. Mateah yellow. Silver went to great Britain’s Lauren Williams bronze went to Hedaya.
Malec from Egypt who beat USA’s Paige MacPherson to win that medal. And the other bronze went to Ruth Busby from. On the men’s side, Goldman to, uh, our ROC maximum Crump cough, Salai L Shara. Bazzi from Jordan when the silver and bronze went to Saif, ISA and Tony, uh, from Egypt and Tony from Croatia. In tennis, uh, Naomi Osaka won her second match.
She handily beat Switzerland’s at Victoria global, a goal, a bitch in straight sets and sad news is that team GBS two time Olympic champion, Andy Murray withdrew from the singles competition because he has a minor thigh strain. He does intend to keep it playing in the doubles competition. His partner is Joe Salisbury.
Men’s triathlon. Did you see any of this? I decided to drop in and then I had to go back and watch the beginning. Cause I dropped in at the end, near the end of the cycling leg. There were some
Alison: issues. This
Jill: was nuts. So nuts in all the amazing ways. Okay. First off, the swim course is interesting because it, they have to do two laps in open water and to get to lap, to.
They have to hop back up on the starting platform and then hop back into the water. So the commentators were saying that kind of messes with your swim stride a little bit, cause you’re in a groove. And then all of a sudden you have to change, get out of the water, hop back in and get that groove back. So that was really interesting.
The actual start was a weird false start because. There was kind of a, on your marks. And then half of the swimmers jumped in the water. I wasn’t sure if there was ever a go and the other half couldn’t jump into the water because there was a big boat in front of them. It was one of the boats as with the competition.
It might’ve been a boat with a camera in it, but it was blocking their way. So they’re just still standing on the starting platform going what’s going on. And it. Quite a ways. I, you know, it might’ve been like 10 meters, 20 meters to, to reign in these people who did start the race and tell them, Hey, the race was a false start and nobody was responsible for that.
But then, you know, you’re expending all that energy and you have to go back and start again. So they started. Everything looked really good and they get on the bike and then they get to the run and Christian Blumenfeld from Norway, just pours it on at the end. And this is a race that started get the star time, kept getting moved up and it started at six 30 in the morning because by the run, uh, runners had.
Ice bags and their chest they’re handling the volunteers are handing out ice bags. They’re running through MREs, they’re dumping water all over their hell heads because the humidity’s, it’s kind of hot and humid where they are. And I wondered, but haven’t been able to figure this out if, uh, because some of the roads were silver.
And I wondered if that was some of the road technology that the organizing committee was putting in for the marathon. So on my list to try to fit. But Christianne Blumenfeld who was 27th out of the water, pours it on at the end of the run, just blows past everyone and all the favorites to win. He’s getting near the end and he is, he is definitely winning, but he’s got his hands on his head.
He’s looking back. Like, I can’t believe what’s going on. I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. And he finally wins and he’s. So over the moon because of just pulling it out. He also had this ferry, he also had this white high-tech suit that they had been, he and his team had been developing for some time, which apparently helped a lot in terms of being able to handle the heat.
But that was a really fun one to watch. Also interesting was, uh, one of the U S. Competitors got a penalty after the swim leg, because he didn’t get his cap in the box. Apparently you have to, when you’re removing equipment, you have a little box and your bike is on a stand in your staging area. You all of your [00:45:00] equipment has to get into the box.
And I’m sure that’s not too, you know, cause you don’t want other racers tripping all over it
Alison: yet. Again, another time clearly a mom with a toddler was involved in
Jill: this, it goes in the box or it’s 15 seconds in the penalty box for you and yeah, he did. He had to serve out a penalty. One of the other cyclists, the first one is.
There’s a big red line that you have to stop and get off of the bike, because then you go into the transition area. You have to go the, into the transition area on your feet. And he almost couldn’t get off the bike in time, which was kind of interesting to watch. So, yes, Christian Blumenfeld from Norway when the gold Alex G from great Britain won silver and Hayden weld from New Zealand.
One. Uh, over in volleyball, it looks like everyone has played one game in their pools. In water polo. Women have played two games. Men have played one used. Did you see any of that action? I, I watched a
Alison: women’s volleyball game and I just want to mention this quickly, um, it was China versus Turkey and China is falling apart at the seams.
Very unexpectedly Turkey, upset them. It was huge. The Turkish coach is named, uh, Giovanni GoDaddy, clearly not Turkish, but clearly beloved by his players. So that was really, it was really fun to watch. So if you get to catch a match with the Turkish women, the relationship between coach and player is pretty sad.
Oh, and, and Paul Sunderland, once again, becoming my, one of my favorite guys, he just, he said to them, at what point, his advice to the players was just keeps swinging, just keep swinging. And he sang it like Dory from, from finding me.
Jill: And finally weightlifting. It was the women’s 55 kilogram competition. And, uh, he villain Diaz from the Philippines won gold, which is the first gold medal in the Philippines history.
So that’s super exciting. Listener. Patrick from green bay has been posting about it in Facebook group. Cause he’s really thrilled. Uh, and that’s really exciting to see in the bet the country’s going a little nuts. Then a silver went to Liao, uh, Cheech, Ron and bronze went to Kazakhstan’s Zofia, uh, chin Salo.
Um, I will be definitely going back to watch that. Okay. Shukla, Stonewall.
Alison: Yes. So, uh, Stephanie Roble and Maggie Shea, uh, had their, it seems like they had their preliminary race, three rescheduled, so they will be in the water. Uh, Luca Jones will be in the semifinals and I’m just going to say at the finals of the K one, uh, we’ve got the gold medal softball match with a team USA’s coach, Laura Berg and Millie Tapper is back in table tennis in the women’s company.
Jill: Excellent. Excellent. Let us know what you are watching and catching up on. You can email us@flamealivepodatgmail.com. Text or voicemail us at 2 0 8 3 5 2 6 3 4 8. That’s 2 0 8. Blame it, uh, also like we said, are facing. Group flame alive. Keep the flame alive podcast is happen. Special. Shout out to our Patrion patrons who give us ongoing financial support that keeps our flame alive.
So time to catch a nap and get back to the action. Since we got a big day on tap tomorrow. So as we go out to music by Mercury Sunset, Sayonara. Thank you so much for listening. And until tomorrow, keep the flame alive. .