Is the 400m hurdles the event of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, or what?!? We got to see another great day of competition, both with monumental victories and heartbreaking losses.
Today’s coverage includes:
- Artistic Swimming – TKF Jacqueline Simoneau showed how the Olympics isn’t necessarily about winning medals; it’s about doing your best.
- Athletics – Whoa. Just whoa.
- Baseball – We still don’t understand this tournament.
- Basketball
- Beach Volleyball
- Boxing
- Cycling – Track
- Diving
- Equestrian – The course that spooked the horses.
- Golf
- Handball
- Hockey
- Marathon Swimming – Where feeding is….interesting.
- Sailing
- Skateboarding
- Table Tennis
- Volleyball
- Water Polo
- Weightlifting
- Wrestling
Plus, our popular segments:
- Where’s Marnie McBean?
- What Officiating/Volunteer Roles Would We Want?
- TKFLASTAN Watch
- Fantasy League/Brackets Update
- What’s Up with Mike and Maya?
Join in the fun – viewing guide, fantasy league, brackets and more at https://flamealivepod.com/tokyo
Text us/Leave us a VM! 208-FLAME-IT (208) 352-6348.
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 Please do not quote from the transcript; use the audio file as the record of note.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]
Olympics, fans, and lovers of shook, plus Don, 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, Konnichiwa.
Alison: Konnichiwa. I heard a little, a little bit of a wall yesterday. Yes. So it seems like day 12 is my breaking point.
Took a nap, had a normal dinner with my family and I feel rejuvenated and I’m ready for the final push.
Jill: Oh, a day 12 was our breaking point because we just sorry that we lost it at the end of yesterday’s show, but I have had so many problems getting when I get to. Wrestling and weightlifting and all of the names that I cannot pronounce come roaring right back.
Cause you think you’re almost through, you’re not, but today’s going to be a good. For name pronunciation. I feel it. And I also feel that we don’t have very many medals that came up to date either. So that’s good to
Alison: have lots of team medals and we know how to pronounce
Jill: country names, right. Uh, right from the followup file.
This is what happens when we don’t pay attention because, um, I think Mo who won the women’s 800 meter. I did not really put the whole puzzle together. That’s the first time that the U S won gold in this event since 1968. And who was that? Gold medalist? Shook, flips Dani Madeline, meaning Mims. Big deal.
Exactly. It was a huge deal. There was a slight earthquake in, in Tokyo yesterday, but I guess it was pretty far off the coast. Uh, I know Lester Holt, who is a big national NBC news anchor here in America felt it, but, uh, people in floors around him in his, uh, work building did not feel it. So not a huge thing, but it did register on the.
Uh, more bad behavior from Australia. So the men’s rugby and football teams flew home. They flew on Japan airlines and Japan airlines contacted the Australian Olympic committee to complain about their behavior because according to the Sydney morning, Herald in number of players were heavily intoxicated on the flight.
They were loud and obnoxious. They left vomit in a bathroom. And it was not very kind or appreciative to the other passengers who were also on their 10 hour flight. Maybe trying to say.
Alison: Wow. So
Jill: this is not the first thing for men’s rugby. They, along with the men’s rowing team were the ones involved with making the hole in the wall at the village, which turns out to be, uh, in a room that was being used as a team in physio space.
And then they left there when, when they said, oh, they left the rooms in an unacceptable state. Well, that meant cleaners had to mop up vomit and clean some pretty filthy rooms. So not cool.
Alison: Yeah. I wonder if John coats is going to get involved in this.
Jill: I don’t know, but it is bad press. It is making them
Alison: look very bad.
Yeah. Considering how the Japanese didn’t want the games anymore anyway, to then have this sort of disrespectful behavior just looks bad.
Jill: It does. It really does. Meanwhile, Bloomberg Bloomberg reports that the badminton men’s doubles tournament. Pretty badly with a lot of upset and vitriol. What is this story?
Alison: So when chin Lin of Lee yang from Chinese Taipei beat the Chinese champions. And because there is so much political discord, obviously between Taiwan, which in the Olympics is Taipei and mainland China. It seems like on social media that the Taiwanese pare has been getting all kinds of veterans. From the Chinese.
Yes. And in fact then Lee went on his Facebook to dedicate his wind to my country. Taiwan
Jill: that’s testing. Uh, and Marin novella news, we are, we’re getting to the climax of our Marin novella because events start tomorrow. According to inside the games, the IOC insists, it has no regrets about moving the marathon in the race walk events.
It’s expected to be four degrees cooler there than Tokyo, which is probably degrees in Celsius, but, uh, they are happy with that. Um, athlete’s still not so happy with the mood move. Yes. There’s been
Alison: some reports that the athlete village in Sapporo is not up to scratch.
Jill: Which not surprising since they [00:05:00] didn’t have as much time to put something together,
Alison: though.
I wonder if in the end they’ll be happier because maybe in support, you can have a few fans on the
Jill: course. Maybe they’ve been telling the public to stay away, but come on. They told them to stay away from the torch relay too. And there were still people at the torch relay until they took the torch relay behind closed doors.
In rural 50 news, uh, for now the IOC has fully suspended the investigation into Raven Saunders, podium protest, uh, after the death of Raven’s mother, which was unexpected and very sad. So that has been halted for now, at least the investigation into the Chinese cyclists about Assange, Jew, and who were pins with Mazi dong on them on the podium that one’s ongoing.
And the IOC is waiting for a report from the Chinese Olympic committee, which has told the organization that it will not happen again. I, I wonder what all the players in this are because, you know, I wonder if the cyclists were like, oh, well, we’re going to be good Chinese nationals and wear the pin. I wonder even if the Olympic charter is translated into other languages or if it’s not do, how does that messaging filter down to the athletes
Alison: and let’s be serious.
Do you honestly think most Olympic athletes have ever read the charter? I mean, who besides us has read this charter? I mean, I don’t think it has a translation issue.
Jill: I don’t think I’ve read the full charter either. But on one hand, I can see the Chinese government being happy that this happened because they’re being good nationalists.
On the other hand, you know, it’s not a good book for the next Olympic host. Oh, Gwen Berry did do a protest. She did do a
Alison: protest as part of the introductions. So when she came out, she did the Tommy Smith raised fist. And in the interviews after she said, yes, that was a protest against social and racial injustice, but that falls into the category of how the other athletes were taking ne at the beginning.
So she is not subject to sanction for it.
Jill: Uh, in COVID news, we are having a little cluster of cases in the village. The entire Greek artistic swimming team is out of competition because five members have tested positive and the other seven members of the team are deemed close context. So the duet team had to withdraw from the duet competition, which for us meant no sharks to watch.
And then the team had to withdraw from the team competition to, uh, so where is Marnie McBean today?
Alison: So Marnie is at skateboarding, athletics and golf though. A golf, the drum had to stay in her backpack though. Apparently the Canadian golfers asked her why she wasn’t beating her drum, but it was the quiet please sign.
Jill: Moving on to what officiating or volunteer job do we want? What, what would you like to do?
Alison: I got to one. I’m going to be the sweeper at the sandpit for the long jump. Oh yeah. That’s a good one. That’s got me written all over it. Cleaning though. I might delay the competition for wanting to make sure all the sand is.
And then my second job was the bell ringer for cycling sprint, which is actually the starting time. Cause they do a little sort of warmup get into it and then the bell rings. So, and the way the guy was ringing the bell, it was like, go, go time to go, time to go.
Jill: Did you see the, the closeup of the bell? I did.
It was big and it’s beautiful.
Alison: Yes. And he’s in his own little plexiglass cube, the bell ringer. So he did not have a mask on, I don’t think. Or if he did, he
Jill: had a face shield. Okay. Okay. Um, I was eyeing that job until I saw you put it down sheet. Um, yeah, that bell, if you catch track cycling this bell, and I bet it’s the same kind of bell that they have at athletics for when they have the long races and need to do a bell lab.
And it is really beautiful. It’s Tokyo Olympics decorated. And by golly, if we don’t see that thing up for auction in some of the Olympic auction sites, 20 years or so I would, I would be surprised, um, my job. Okay. So two people, two different listeners, how you coming to marathon swim and they said, Jill, you need to be the feed holder.
So, so, so I’m picturing this and went, what is this? So marathon swimming, they’re doing laps around a course, and there is a platform there where there are, there’s a slot forever. Team and the teams, [00:10:00] I think it’s a coach. I don’t think this job is a volunteer job there. They all have a long stick and on the end of the stick is a cup and they flag.
So you know which, which, and in the cup they’ll put bottles of, uh, hydration or, or, uh, liquid food that they need to use. And then they hold the sticks out. And as the swimmers go by, they have the option of taking their feed. As the announcers were saying and there, while they swim the racer doing freestyle, and when they take their feed, they’re on their backs doing backstroke, they drink their food.
And then this is what got me. They tossed their bottles. And I think there is a bottle picker up. Sitting in the water. And that would be my job because I was just horrified that you had this event that promoted ocean plastics and throwing stuff in the ocean. And it’s just a mind blowing. And, and so I would really be about making sure all of those bottles got picked up and nothing got put as trash in the ocean.
So how has our fantasy league doing fantasy league?
Alison: The brackets are unchanged. I don’t think we’ve gotten more results, but in the regular fantasy league show us, Don is in our lead with 7 53 he’s 41st in the world in this game.
Jill: That is impressive.
Alison: Colibri is at 3 21. Uh, PS goal is at 2 97 and you are still in
Jill: fit.
Okay, I’ll take that. I, again, I was too late to change my, swap out some people. So I’ve been dealing with I, which I put myself into a hole because then it was dealing with a lot of, uh, almost a full roster of athletes who are no longer participating. And I don’t have enough swaps to swap everyone out. So I made my five swaps to put in people who are now competing.
However, I still have people who are no longer competing on my roster. So next time, if you play fantasy. I learned from my mistakes. I wonder if Beijing will do fantasy league because I think it’s fun the way I do think it’s fun that the way Tokyo 2020 has done it. And I think they’ve done a really good job.
It’s a little clunky, but that’s because it’s, it’s a little clunky, but I think it works well. And it’s a lot of fun to do.
Alison: I like this better than the way they did it for P’unk Chang,
Jill: which was just a random piece. It was
Alison: random people. And also if somebody else picked that person, you couldn’t have them.
That’s right. This, you could both have the same players. So I liked that a
Jill: little better. Okay. It is time for what’s up with Mike and Maya. This is Mike and Maya of the Toyota first date commercial, where Mike asks Maya to the school dance and, uh, Mike. W no he’s he asked her out in school, but Mike isn’t physically there.
He is in the hospital, but, uh, he can be there thanks to the technology of Toyota’s life-size moving robot, digital screen. So you have a thought about Mike’s posse. So you
Alison: had thought that he was a soccer player. I disagree. I think Mike and his posse are skateboarders.
Jill: Really? Yes. If
Alison: you look at the gear, it’s very typical skateboard shirt, kind of low pants.
So I think his injury was from the skate park there. There’s also one girl in Mike’s posse who clearly is the pick me girl of the group. And everybody under 20 will know what I’m talking about. And if you don’t have somebody, if you’re not under 20, go ask someone in your life under 20. What a pick me girl is, can you
Jill: go get Sarah?
Which would be interesting because then that could be a reason why heavily. Doesn’t want Mike going out with Maya because of
Alison: those skateboarder kids. Exactly. Cause I think if he were a soccer player, he would be a little more acceptable.
Jill: Okay. Okay. And we’ll, uh, we will go with it right before we move on to today’s action.
We wanted to remind you of our Kickstarter campaign. We, uh, unexpectedly and a pleasantly surprisingly. Uh, media accreditation to cover the Olympics and Paralympics at Beijing 2022, which is a less than 200 days away. So unfortunately we operate the show on a [00:15:00] pretty shoestring budget and our shoestrings are not long enough to include covering, um, basically six week span.
In China as an independent outlet, we really want to keep producing independent coverage so we could use your support in making that possible. You can find out more at our campaign at kickstarter.com/profile/flame alive pod. We are 25% funded, which is great. It’s it means so much to us, but this is an all or nothing campaign.
So. It does go through the Paralympics, but that all or nothing milestone really needs to happen for us to be able to make our accreditation’s happen too. So please check that out. And if you are able to please donate, all right. Today’s coverage, artistic swimming,
Alison: so much fun.
Jill: Okay. So I did watch a lot of this coverage and some of it I watched on mute and some of it, I watched on two screens so that I could have two different sets of announcers, which was also fun.
I would put one on mute occasionally, but that was fun. Um, Austria’s evil dolls routine was so out there and scary. I don’t even know how those two. Manage to practice that every day for months and months,
Alison: without going a little nuts
in
Jill: quarantine. Oh my goodness. That was a freaky program. Uh, sadly, I guess the Bulgarians did not advance to the final, so no baseball and then the Greeks had to withdrew withdraw. So no sharks. So I have to go back now and watch the prelims to see these magical wonder. But there were some really, really good routines.
Uh, I got to say Japan’s evolution, robot routine. I really enjoyed it for like the first half until it suddenly the music switched to more classical or piano. And it, I get that you have to have music changes in your program, but I, I lost the robot thing, but our Jackie Seminole and, well, I guess we’re claiming Claudia Holser as a ship cluster.
They were phenomenal. They improved upon their preliminary score did better than they did in the technical routine. So they got a personal best score total, uh, and finished up in fifth overall, which was, they were so happy. Oh my goodness. They were. Uh, they couldn’t believe they got a 93 even on this routine, which was a couple points, almost a couple of points higher than they did it in the prelims.
And they sh they
Alison: just looked so good. It was very sharp, very clean and no penalties. And it was just, you know, you, it’s not even the meddling it’s that they did better than they’ve ever done before and out the Olympics. That’s what you want
Jill: to say. Exactly. So Jackie did improve upon her performance from Rio or her placement from Rio.
So then in Rio, she was seventh and now she was fits with was nice. But yeah, exactly. Like you say, you just want to do the best you can. And sometimes the best you do is not a medal, but being the best you can be. That’s what the Olympics is all about. And the routine is very, their routine is like a Japanese samurai.
Theme, which is very cool. So gold went to our OCS. They call them the spec Llanos cause both of them have the same first name, colas and Chenko and RO Machina. And they did a spider themed routine, which is also a little freaky, but I mean the dev cork ending was very cool and it, I got it. Although it was pretty much blatant because they have big spiders all over there.
Her bathing suits. There
Alison: is nothing about artistic swimming that is subtle.
Jill: We might have to put, uh, an artistic swimming choreographer on the list because where did they get these ideas? I know you should do for your routine this year. Spiders. Okay. Evolution robot sharks, Flashdance silver went to China’s Wang Shu shin, and soon when Yon and bronze went to, uh, Ukraine’s Fatina, uh, Marta and on a stage SF Chuck, but very nice way to end the duet.
Everyone’s looking strong going into the team competition. So I’m excited to watch Jackie. Over in athletics. Another great day at the track. This has been a really great competition. I think so far today was the first day of men’s decathlon and women’s heptathlon. So what, what happened? There was a little confusion going on [00:20:00]
Alison: during the long jump portion.
The athletes seem to get out of order so that the scores were being recorded for the wrong. So they stopped, right? Because everything seems to be automated. There’s no, uh, people aren’t actually recording the score as it’s happening computerized. And all of a sudden they just stopped the competition and the announcer said, oh, you never get out of order.
And then they. Oh, wait, they got out of order. So then there was this frantic frenzy at the judges table and clearly poor Chris from it had to come running in and try and fix this. And that is a job I would not want.
Jill: Women’s 400 meter hurdles. This is the race this year.
Alison: And not a race I’ve ever paid attention to before, but all of a sudden, my goodness, right?
Jill: So we have a nother world record coming from behind to pull this one out is, uh, USA’s Sydney McLaughlin. Uh, and she beat out just barely, uh, uh, Delilah Muhammad, who was the champion in Rio 2016. And who also did a personal best time who
Alison: also beat the world record again?
Jill: This is just crazy. Um, and then Netherlands femto, Qubole won the bronze.
What a great race again, go back. Oh man. Again to bed. There’s no fans. I understand why we can’t have them too bad because this 400 meter hurdle stuff. I think, I mean, it’s bringing back memories of Edward Mo. Uh, we also had the women’s 3000 meter steeplechase race, which was really interesting. Emma Coburn from the U S who was.
The U S is first medalist in this event in Rio. She dqued, she stumbled in a water jump during the final a competition. And she had a lane infraction which left her, which got her disqualified. So that was kind of sad. And then, but it was a great race. America’s Courtney Frerichs was leading for a chunk of it.
And then near the end Uganda’s Peru came. From behind and pastor, I kinda think I’m, uh, the last straightaway or so and took the gold, but, uh, Frerichs was so pumped to win the silver and she just had a great, great race. Bronze went to Kenya’s, uh, having. The men had the 800, five final. Uh, I did not see this, but, uh, gold and silver went to Kenya, uh, Emmanuel career when the gold and Ferguson rotates one silver and Poland’s Patrick Udovic won the bronze and last race of the night was also epic.
Epic, epic. You got to go back and watch this just for the feed announcer alone. Uh, this was Canada’s Andre de Grasse pulled out the win. It was a new, it was a new national record for Canada and it’s Canada’s first champion in this event in about a hundred years. And the announcer said, How this race was just absolutely phenomenal at last.
At last, it is all gold for the grass. Come with the hour, come at the Canadian, his country’s first champion in almost a century. And it kind of goes on from there. All that
Alison: glitters is gold for Canada. He just went to town and got very poetic.
Jill: Oh, that was great. So if I, to us USS Kenneth bed, neck, and USA’s Noah Lyles one, the brown.
Uh, in baseball, the USA beat Dominican Republic three to one, and Japan beat Korea five to two to pseudo Yamada had a tie-breaking three run double in the eighth inning for them to get this game. We don’t really understand which games these were cause it’s a double knockout situation. So what is the setup for who plays next?
So
Alison: Korea and the U S will play the semi-famous. And the winner of that game will play Japan for the gold medal. The loser of that game we’ll play the Dominican Republic for the bronze medal on Saturday.
Jill: Okay. So in a sense, this was a semi-final between Korea and Japan, but Korea could still go to the gold medal game.
Alison: Yes.
Jill: This is a weird tournament. I don’t like. Don’t make any sense? Well, let’s move on to basketball. So it was a women’s quarterback. Serbia, uh, beat China, 77 to 70 USA be Australia 79, 55. I [00:25:00] saw that, uh, coach Dawn Staley said they were not going home that day. They were going to give it to Australia because Australia beat us in a stunning, uh, pre term, uh, pre Olympics kind of warmup game.
And, uh, they w USA was not going. Let them win again. Uh, uh, France beat Spain, 67 64 and Japan beat Belgium 86, 85. So I saw when I turned on my TV this morning, that game was on just the channel we had had on last night and Belgium was up a little bit. And I went back later when I saw the score and said, What happened?
And they were pretty neck and neck in the fourth quarter, and then Belgium, uh, committed a technical fall on Japan, which brought them like within a couple of points. And then it would be Ty Belgium gets ahead, Ty bells and gets ahead then with not very much, I think it was under a minute, Japan, three. It was a good game.
It was a really good game. So, uh, the, uh, semi-finals will be us versus Serbia and Japan versus France.
Alison: And you know how those Serbians love basketball? No, that’s so good. That should have a great game
Jill: at beach. The men’s tournament had its quarterfinal stage. So Norway’s Anders mall and Christian
and Constantine seminar two to zero. But it, all of these games, it looks like they’re all, they all had a two to zero. Set different differential, but all the games within them, more really close. So these are probably really good games to watch. Uh, Latvia’s Martins, Pravin, and Edgar talks, uh, beat Brazil’s Ellison, sir, Rudy and, uh, Alvaro, Morales, filo.
I
Alison: think all the Brazilians now are out of both the men’s and the women’s I think you’re right. Can you believe it? Brazilians and the semi’s of beach volleyball. That’s going to be, when was the last time that happened? Don’t know,
Jill: maybe never.
Alison: I was going to say this is a little bit in there that
Jill: long.
And then in the last, uh, quarter final. across Neil cough and Oleg. defeated. Germany’s Yulia, Julius toll and Clemens vehicular also to zero. And then in the final quarter font, and then it guitars Sharif you news. And I’m a T John defeated Italy’s Paolo Nikolai and Daniella Lupo. And that gap, that one, the final set was 2321.
That was super cool. Over in boxing, we had some more women’s fly on welterweight semi-finals the men had a super heavy semifinals, but the light heavy finished up competition and gold went to Cuba’s Arlin Lopez who has won gold in two different weight divisions in Rio. He, one goal doesn’t mean. Which was interesting.
Silver went to a great Britain’s Benjamin Whitaker and bronzes went to Alfonzo Lauren from us or by Sean and ROC Imaan KTF psych attracts cycling. I did get to watch some track cycling. Obviously you have seen some tracks cycling. I do love
Alison: the track cycling. Isn’t it
Jill: cool. It’s just cool to watch. I think because of the bank element of the two.
It
Alison: is very soothing, even when they’re going super fast. And the bell is ringing.
Jill: One element I love is that every bike has a camera on the back of it. So you get the, you get the bike cam and it it with, with the speed and then the angles that the writers have to take and the little noise of the wooden track.
Whenever they cut to bike, cam it, remind it makes me think that I’m in a cycling horror movie, like a B level B grade for horror film.
Alison: What I have not noticed at cycling is the fans. It does not feel louder than some of the other events like swimming. Cause you had all the swimmers there. I felt more presence than I do at cycling, even though cycling has more people there.
Jill: I bet it has to do with the fact that they should not be yelling and they’re clapping and you hear the claps, but in the venues where it was just athletes, they, and, you know, boisterous American culture felt, you know, people were just yelling.
Alison: And there was horns and they had the
Jill: sticks. So they were trying to think the athletes were trying harder to make it sound more full.
And the fans at the velodrome are [00:30:00] following the guidelines and clapping.
Alison: Marnie needs to get out there with her drum.
Jill: She does because the Canadian team is, is really good. So she does. I hope she can get out there and it’s, it is a hike. Um, we had a whole bunch of different races. There was a men’s sprint and women’s Kirin and a men’s team pursuit.
The men’s team pursuit, uh, finished up and gold, went to Italy. Silver went to Denmark and bronze went to Australia, but if you haven’t checked it out, check out track cycling. Did you want to tell. And diving, we had the women’s 10 meter platform prelims. So that means that their finals are coming up. And that’s definitely always one to watch.
The 10 meter platform is just incredible to watch in equestrian. It was the jumping individual finals and victory. There was a six way tie for first place. So they had a jump-off. And, uh, gold ended up going to great Britain’s Benmar who was writing explosion w silver went to best Sweden’s Peter Fredrickson, who was writing all in and bronze, went to the Netherlands, uh, Michael Vander Pluton, who was writing Bovill.
Alison: So the course had a theme, which is typical of Olympic horses. And it went with sort of a theme of Japanese culture. So you had kimonos and cherry blossoms. There was an Imperial palace that were taiko drums, but at one jump, there was a life-size Sumo wrestler. And apparently this Sumo wrestler was spooked.
Several of the horses that in qualifying, there was at least four or five horses that pulled up at that obstacle because all of a sudden you come around the bend and there was a giant man standing there and British rider had the best explanation of this. His name is Harry Charles. And he said, as you come around, you see a big guys, but because you see the back of the statue, but he did not say.
He said something else that we can’t say on the air so that if you go back and watch some of the question, it’s at obstacle 10, the giant Sumo wrestler that scares the horses.
Jill: I do want to watch some of that because I’ve, I missed the qualifying and I do like jumping. I think it’s insane. Amazing how these horses go over.
Some of these jumps that are so tall, especially the ones that are really close together. I don’t know how they do it. We’ll
Alison: look out for the big guys, but don’t get spooked
Jill: and golf women started their individual stroke.
Over in handball, we had the women’s quarterfinals. So ROC defeated, Montenegro 32, 26, nor our way defeated, hungry. 26, 22, Sweden defeated Korea, 39, 30 and France defeated Netherlands 30 through 2032 to 22. So we will have an all European semi-final and those match-ups will be France versus Sweden and Norway versus.
In hockey, all this makes me sad. Cause I didn’t get a chance to watch hockey, but we had the women’s semi-finals Netherland defeated, great Britain, five to one and Argentina defeated India two to one. So the bronze medal match up will be great Britain versus India. Which again, even though, you know, the women weren’t playing.
Hockey back in 1948, I can still pretend to nother matchup of gold. The movie about that. We watched for movie club and break up my Bollywood numbers. That’ll be fun. And the champagne. Exactly. And then the gold medal match will be Netherlands versus Argentina marathon swimming. We talked about the feeding, but it was a pretty interesting event to watch.
More. So for me, I didn’t watch the whole thing, but it was weird to see like a Columbus swimmers and then all these boats surrounding them. So you had race boats on either side, you had like four lifeguards sitting on a inflatable boat, rafts or kayaks, or some kind of boat where they had their feet on both sides and just kind of paddled with their hands because they’re going so.
And it just, and swimmers and kind of crawling all over each other. Sometimes the strategy was, oh, when you jump in the water, you’re just going to jump in last and hope you can catch up in the water because then you’re not getting kicked by everybody. I don’t know. I don’t know about this race. It’s
Alison: definitely a hard race to watch on television or I’m sure in the stands, there’s no Stans.
It’s very hard to know what’s going on. And the announcers were telling us who was in front as best as they could tell, but it was very hard to get a handle on [00:35:00] what was happening.
Jill: Exactly. And I wonder how the swimmers even managed to know what’s happening because I did see a penalty being issued and the referee just kept blowing their whistle and they had the swimmers number up and, uh, you know, If you hear a whistle, do you think I didn’t do anything I’m not looking or do you look because if you look up you’ve interrupted your stroke pattern, so then you would have to get that back.
I don’t know. I don’t know. The men are going, maybe I’ll I’ll, uh, tune into that because it does start early. And that’s usually the first thing on, in our, in our evening time. So in the women’s 10 K gold went to Brazil’s on a Marcel Akuna silver went to Netherlands, Sharon, Ron ruin doll, and, uh, Australia’s Corina Lee won the bronze.
Alison: I just want to make a quick mention about the Brazilian swimmer because she had her hair dyed green and yellow and.
Jill: Oh, nice for the flag for the
Alison: Brazilian flag, but I was amazed at those colors, held up Vivian washed out in the, in the ocean water.
Jill: Yeah, but they have pretty heavy duty hat thing going on.
In sailing. It was the last day of competition. So we had the four seventies men’s and women’s, uh, medal races on the men’s side. Goldwind to Australia. Silver went to Sweden and bronze, went to Spain on the women’s side. Gold went to great Britain. Silver went to Poland and bronze went to France on the great Britain team was Hannah Mills, who has now the most decorated female sailor in Olympic history.
She has two gold and a silver. In skateboarding, it was the women’s park competition, uh, Goldman to Japan’s silver went to Japan’s hierarchy, Kokona and bronze went to great Britain, sky brown. They do watch, I did watch and I did watch a good chunk of this.
Alison: So Hauraki is 12 and brown is.
Jill: Yes. So I wrote down the ages of all the finalists.
So, um, the gold medalist is 15. Uh, what you’ve said then there was a 19 year old, a 17 year old, and then three writers in their early twenties with the oldest being 23.
Alison: I’ve got a real problem that if you can hit gold medal level, At 12, right? We’re still for medal level for this. She was in the running very close.
It was better than the park. It, because I think it was similar to, um, it’s very similar to half bites, so it felt more familiar. And also they were wearing helmets and protective gear. So that felt better, but you should not be 12 years old and able to, when. And the Olympic medal. What does that say about your sport?
Jill: Yeah. And it kind of hearkens back to the older days of Olympic history where you did see some young people in events. And there was another young, very young person, I guess, in the table, tennis competition, I believe 12 years old. Yes. Here. She lost in the first round in Tokyo. So yeah, I don’t, I don’t like it.
And it was weird. I know that skateboarders will talk about the culture and how it’s. There there’s a good feeling in the culture. And a lot of friendships happen in everything. And you did see that it was, it was very apparent that the competitors were hugging each other and big group hugs with everybody.
And that was that I really liked. It kind of felt like a sport with rose colored glasses, where everything is good and loving. Yes,
Alison: it makes me concerned about protecting these kids at 12 and 13, because you’re putting them in this pressure cooker environment at an extremely young age. It also makes me wonder what I said when we were watching park skateboarding that have we reached a high enough level that should be considered an Olympic sport.
You know, are we, are we seeing a level of competition? That is truly excellence
Jill: and it could very well be because I know, I mean, skateboarding of course is big in the X games and I don’t necessarily pay attention to the X games. So it could very well be that it’s very challenging and we just don’t know it.
It’s also very hard to see that it’s challenging because the feed announcer whom I watched. Quite excited about what he saw and was slightly better than the park element and slightly better than surfing because they did try, they did try. I would, [00:40:00] but I still don’t know what these people did. Most of the stuff looked like, you know how, when you have a little kid and they maybe.
Six inches off the ground. And to them, it feels like they jumped five feet off the ground. That’s what a lot of these tricks look like. Like, Hey mom, look at me, look what I did. And you’re like, oh, you went down a molehill could for you. And I don’t want to say that to slam park because I know those bowls are deep and I know they’re dangerous.
And I know that some of these tricks are good. I mean, uh, you also assume he did five forties, which actually you could tell that looked really impressed. I w I will say that. So not totally hate trying to hate on this. I just don’t, it doesn’t play well on television to me,
Alison: and I feel like it needed more time to bake at a world championship level.
We needed more, another generation of kids fighting to compete. At this kind of world championship level, before we got into the Olympics, it came in maybe one games too soon. So I’m hopeful for Paris that we’ll see a more mature competition. And I don’t mean in terms of ages, I mean, in terms of the. As a sport, right.
Jill: Because a lot of any, give it another shot. Yeah. There were a lot of wipe outs again, correct? Not, not super many clean runs, but yeah, I’m on the fence on skateboarding. I know there are people who love it, but, uh, it’s, uh, it’s not for me.
Alison: That’s good that you recognize
Jill: that it’s done. It’s not for me. I will say.
Nice story out of this event from the gold medalist doc Yossi Zumi. She did not have a full-sized skateboard park in her prefecture where she could practice. So her mother would drive her as much as like an hour and a half away to a place where she could practice. And then the local soccer brewing company, uh, you know, Schumer, Dayo, Shotton got wind of this and its owner, uh, costume, uh, cut.
Sue Hico. Yes, tomorrow. Took a storage building at his company and converted it into a skateboard park so that she could use it and practice there. It was now like five minutes from where she lived and she had 24 7 access to it. So she went to town and that’s how she could land those. We were able to work
Alison: on them and what’s nice is now you’ve got the skateboard park in this prefecture that housed the Olympic gold medalist.
And now maybe you can develop the sport. Is it going to be publicly open? I
Jill: don’t think so because it’s on there. It was a storage building on their property and it sounded they did the renovation. I think, I, I believe that there’s actual owner of the property and they had to go through real estate, real estate companies.
And then also talk to the neighbors around them to say, Hey, we’re going to have this skateboarder here and it could get loud, but do you mind? Cause he really just, he wanted a medalist to come from their prefecture. Very nice. It’s a nice little story in the SIU. Um, sport climbing head women started their competition table tennis, the women’s and men’s team had their semi-final action.
So there was the second women’s team semi-final happened and China defeated Germany three, zero, and then the men seemed competition had their semi-finals China beat Korea three, zero, and Germany upset Japan.
Alison: So the women’s team bronze medal match will be Germany and Hong Kong. The women’s team gold medal match will be China and Japan.
Very nice. That will let me see if I get them in the men’s bronze medal match will be Korea and Japan and the men’s team gold medal will be China and Germany.
Jill: Sorry. That’s going to be once to watch in the volleyball arena, women had their quarterfinal match up. Covey have defeated Turkey, a three to two USB, Dominican Republic, three to zero Serbia.
Wait, did we not say yesterday that us was out of volume? Yeah, I screwed up. Okay. Okay. Well, the us is still in the competition. USB Dominican Republic, three to zero Serbia, Italy, three to zero and Brazil, Broc three to one. So the semi-final match-ups will be Serbia and USA and Brazil versus Korea. In water polo men had their quarter tournament, uh, Spain beat U S 12 to eight Greece beat Montenegro 10 to four Serbia, beat Italy, 10 to six and hungry beat Croatia, 15 to 11.
The semi-final match-ups will be Brazil versus ROC and France. [00:45:00] Argentina in weightlifting, we had the men’s ha uh, plus 109 kilo competition. I did not get a chance to watch this, but it is on my list. Gold went to George’s Lasha Tala, the Telekom. Wait, Tala Causa. I think Lasha tele Kezia. Uh, silver went to Iran, I’ll eat the WD and bronze went to serious Mon Assad, but all the big ones there, that’s always fun to watch and see what they can lift.
And in wrestling, we had more men’s Greco-Roman action, a men’s freestyle action and women’s freestyle action. Uh, and then the. Men’s Greco-Roman 67 kilos had their medal match-ups as did the men’s Greco-Roman wrestling. Uh, wait, let me just start that a little bit again. So, but in the, uh, and the medal events that they had, it was men’s Greco-Roman 67 kilos gold went to Iran, Mohammad res uh, uh, Jerry, Gary.
I’m going to, uh, Mohammed raised like your eye silver went to Ukraine’s Parviz NAZA Boff and bronzes went to Muhammad Abraham’s from Egypt and Frank Stabler from Germany in the men’s Greco-Roman 87 kilo competition. Gold went to Ukraine’s John Bell nook Belen. Silver went to Hungary, Victor Lawrence and bronzes went to Serbia’s and Germany’s Dennis Khutba in the women’s competition.
That was the 62 kilos. Uh, freestyle event, Japan took away the gold with a beat Kyrgyzstan’s as he alluded to Nicola and bronzes went to Bulgaria’s typing Mustapha, you saying and CA uh, Ukraine’s Irina Kalia. Denko. So we watched a lot of wrestling again, because Helen Merola’s was fighting. Helen marula is in the, uh, Women’s freestyle 57 kilos competition and they had their earlier rounds and we watched in our nightmare.
So we watched the Tokyo morning session and the evening session because she was getting further in the competition in the round of eight. Oh. And Helen is the defending gold medalist and was big deal here in America because she is America’s first female wrestling, gold medalist. And. And her round of eight, she beat.
This is honestly, if you could dial up individual matches, which hello, OBS, maybe we should do that. Have the ability in our digital age to dial individual matches and, uh, watch them on replay. But maybe this’ll be on YouTube. She competed against China’s wrong. Meaning. This was about, she was so fast and wrong look like she was going to have her down or pin her and some way, like she would just get her to the side and.
Get wrong, just counter attack and get the points. It was really, really beautiful match. Amazing about to watch. We were so pumped and so excited. We woke up, went to bed, woke up. She had moved past the quarter finals. She was in the semi-finals and faced, uh, to pans Alco lost two days. And it was at St. I had that same deflated feeling as when I watched the women’s softball tournament and that gold medal match.
And you just had that whole, no, it’s not going well. And, and I don’t want to harsh grooves because I think she might still be going through the rep massage, but the, the points were all penalty points. Even the announcers were saying, I’m not sure why she was put up for penalties. Uh, because there’s a, there’s a bit, if you’re not attacking enough, they’ll put 30 seconds on the score clock or on the clock, 30 seconds on the clock.
And within that 30 seconds you have to score. And so that’s what happened for, for all of these points to earn. If you don’t score in that 30 seconds, your opponent gets a point. And on their second one, you announced the commentators were like, we don’t understand why Helen was given. Penalty because, and then ended up being the decided point.
Alison: Well, I do have a bit of the story that’s going to make you feel better. Okay. So Seiko Kauai, a rather Koa, Seiko and Kauai Kako are sisters. So the woman who won the 62 gold is the sister. Of the woman who is now competing and they had to adjust her weight classes. So they wouldn’t be in the same class and they could both make the Olympics.
Aw,
Jill: [00:50:00] okay. That’s nice. But Helen Margolis is still an amazing fighter and I’m sure everybody at the Olympics can, is an amazing fighter, but, um, man, it was tough to see, to watch that out. So, but again, I can’t necessarily. Get up to upset because host country, you know, and you could have
Alison: sisters from the host country, both winning medals.
Jill: Mm. Uh, another one to watch is, uh, in the men’s freestyle 86 kilos hall, man, we watched about between us as David Taylor and India’s Deepak Poonja and whole he David Taylor dominated this. This was a semi-final bout and just so fast and so strong. That’s a gold medal match to watch, and that is it for, to test our competition.
And I didn’t even have too many tongue twisters. All right. What is on our show on watch for tomorrow? Well, we got
Alison: new sports coming in. Evan Dunphy is doing 20 kilometer, race walk, and Samantha Schultz begins ranking rounds, a modern pentathlon
Jill: suite. When does karate start?
Alison: It starts today, but Tom is not competing today.
Okay.
Jill: Well, that means it’s time for us to say CYO Nara as always. You can email us@flamealivepodatgmail.com or text or voicemail us at 2 0 8 3 5 2 6 3 4 8. That’s 2 0 8. It don’t forget our Kickstarter and help us reach the goal of bringing you on the ground coverage at Beijing, both apparel, Olympics, and the Olympics.
That’s kickstarter.com/profile/flame alive pod. As we go out to music by mercury sunset. Thank you so much for listening and until then, Keep the flame alive.