It’s the penultimate day of competition, which means many sports are wrapping up their tournaments and crowning Olympic champions. Or, in some sports, they’re protesting their scores and making commentators work overtime. Plus, it’s a hot morning up in Sapporo (surprise!), which means a tough episode of our maranovela.
Today’s competition includes:
- Artistic Swimming – With TKFLASTANI Jacqueline Simoneau and Team Canada
- Athletics
- Baseball – We think this tournament is over.
- Basketball
- Beach Volleyball
- Boxing
- Canoe Sprint
- Cycling Track
- Diving
- Equestrian
- Football
- Golf
- Handball
- Karate
- Modern Pentathlon
- Rhythmic Gymnastics
- Volleyball
- Water Polo
- 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 Please do not quote from the transcript; use the audio file as the record of note.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] Konnichiwa Olympics, fans and lovers have shut this down and welcome to Keep the Flame Alive, they podcast for fans of the Olympics and Paralympics. I am your host. Jill Jaris joined as always by my lovely co-host Alison Brown. Alison, Konnichiwa
Alison: Konnichiwa. I have my sparkly unitards
Jill: I am ready to go. Do you have your ribbon?
Do you have your clubs?
Alison: I do. I have my ribbon, my bow and my hoop. I am ready.
Jill: Oh, we will talk rhythmic gymnastics with a bit later on what it is. Who knew, who knew. All right, we have a little followup file for you. Connor fields is home. He made it home. According to Instagram, he has no memory from the accident and, uh, several days after the accident.
So he’s going to get healthy, rest up a bit and appreciate the people around me. So that is, sounds very scary.
Alison: The picture he posted was of himself and his fiance and his two dogs and he looks good. He looks better than he looked with. The first picture he posted of himself in the airport. So I think being home is going to be the best medicine.
Jill: Good. All right. Where is Marnie McBean today?
Alison: Marnie was at karate. She was back in the recording closet and she went out to canoe sprint,
Jill: which is, I think, uh, some Canadians did very well at canoe sprint today. So we’re getting close to the end to day 16. What officiating job or volunteer job would you like to do today?
Alison: Well, I was back out at. Uh, cycling and watching the Madison again. And I definitely want to be the people who like help the rider get back onto the course. This is clearly a coaching job, but there’s the guy who pushes them, like get back out there, go back in the demolition Derby, you can do it.
Jill: So my job would also be at the Madison.
I did watch the women’s race yesterday afternoon. I headed on and fastening. What I want to know is how they officiate that race because it is pure chaos. You have to know which rider is riding the lap. That’s counting. You have to know who’s not writing the lap and you have to watch when they change out.
So I’m sure it’s very, very complex. And I think that would be a lot of fun to officiate and get right home, man. How has our fantasy league doing
Alison: well? So Liz Liston is at nine 15. He may break the thousand dollars at the thousand point barrier here.
Jill: Wow. That is impressive.
Alison: Colibri jumped into second with 4 0 3.
NPS Cola is at 3 87. Lots of movement on the brackets. Williston is at 300. You and Olympic fan. Dan are tied at two 30. I have slipped a fourth at one 90.
Jill: Oh, nice. Okay. Now it’s time to talk about what is up with Mike and Maya, Mike and bio of the Toyota first date commercial, where Mike asks Maya to the school dance and he does it from his hospital room, but is magically in the school hallway to do this act because of the wonder of the Toyota robot.
That’s like a life-size digital screen and they can roll through the hallways. And Mike can be at school with all his friends and ask Maya to the school. So we heard from listener Rosie who said what it’s really been bugging me about the commercial is why is Mike in the hospital in the first place?
Because he has a broken leg. So why is he in the hospital for a day? And why does he, why would they keep him in the hospital? And then why does he get to use the robot? What, what, uh, you know, would Toyota lend their fancy? I just don’t. I also don’t think Toyota would be lending out their fancy robot for some kid who was just in the hospital for a day after a bad skateboarding fall.
What’s going on? Does he have chronic illness? Does he have something that makes us bones more brittle and keeps him in the hospital? Long-term. And because of that, did Maya say yes out of pity now I love this, but this instantly caused a lot of consternation in my household because contributor Ben thinks he does not like the skateboarding element that’s been broadened because he was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
I thought that Mike and Maya played soccer and they still play soccer.
Alison: See, my concern with Mike’s use of the screen was, was he going to get in trouble for misusing the screen to ask my out, like, he’s only supposed to use it for class wandering the hallways, hanging with his friends, hitting on girls, but you have
Jill: to wander the hallways in between classes. That’s part of the deal.
I don’t know. Ben Ben also thinks that Mike’s father has the hookup for the robot [00:05:00] because they all go to a fancy private school that definitely has the words country day in the name. And if you’re on the east coast, you know what we’re talking about? But it is very, very, very good question. Is something going on that is deeper here because why is Mike in the hospital?
And then I said, well, if he’s in the hospital a lot, why does he just have a couple of anemic balloons in the corner? Shouldn’t he have his room plastered with everything and it looks like his bed is kind of newly made it. It’s almost like he just got put into the room for some reason.
Alison: Maybe that’s the privacy room, so he can roll the hallways and focus.
That’s like the classroom room. But what bothers me is he’s sitting on the edge of the bed and his broken leg is not elevated.
Jill: Should not. He, yeah. Shouldn’t he be in bed? What is up with that? This is more questions than answers are coming from this. We’re almost to the end of the Olympics. And you know what? I only literally only saw that commercial. I don’t even know if I saw it. Yeah. And today I saw it twice yesterday because it’s really gone down to my feet and that’s a bummer, you know, I’m seeing a lot more of Maya’s dad.
I could see in the Chevy Silverado commercial a lot
Alison: that was Walter doing. Is he enjoying collecting the
Jill: firewood? I don’t think so. I mean, her dad just wants a fire cause the kids are coming over that night and they’re going to have a fire in the backyard and make smores
Alison: and use the back of the Chevy Silverado as a desk or
Jill: table a table for the smores.
Fixins there you go. Okay. Right. If you have theories about Mike and Maya, thank you, Rosie. Your, your questions are very excellent. Before we get to today’s action. We’d like to remind you about our Kickstarter campaign. If you’ve been listening for the last 15 days, you know that we’ve gotten accreditations for the winter Olympics in Beijing, very surprised and very happy to get.
It’s a very expensive trip and that wasn’t in our budget because we were not planning on going to Beijing. We just applied to kind of get into the mix for future gains because accreditations are a very competitive process. So we’re going, but we need your help to get there. Uh, we’re excited to bring you in on the ground presence for the PI, for the podcast to find out all the answers, to all the burning questions that you have about why things are that way on that you’re watching on TV, but, uh, But in order to get there, we need your help.
Find out more about our Kickstarter campaign and check out our supporter bonuses. We’re sending postcards from the Olympics and also, and you could be a producer for a day and tell us what sports we’re going to cover. So check it out at kickstarter.com/profile/a flame alive pod. Thank you to everyone.
Who’s already donated we’re up a little bit today and it’s looking real good for the Olympics part of the Kickstarter campaign. So thank you so much for everyone who’s given so far. Whoa today’s action. Artistic swimming. What did you think? I
Alison: was confused. How so scoring. Oh, okay. It felt like, you know, I talked about this yesterday with rhythmic gymnastics.
It felt a little predetermined. Oh it, yeah. You know, like there were certain synchronicity hours that I saw that didn’t seem to be reflected in the scores and,
Jill: mm, okay. So, uh, examples did, did Ukraine have a little Bible at the end?
Alison: Ukraine had a Bible in Japan, didn’t have a Bible and then got kind of a crummy
Jill: score.
Interesting. I had pretty much all of it on because I wanted to know the themes for every, every, every performance. So we start cause we start already, when I turned it on, it was already into the competition and Spain was in the water and I said, what is that thing on their head? It turns out their theme was Darwin’s theory of evolution.
And I said, this is going to be
Alison: good. So yes, some of the swimmers will come out of the primordial soup and emerge and suddenly have legs. As opposed to, to being fish. That was about as weird as it got it started in extreme awareness and sort of came back from
Jill: right. And, uh, I will say, cause I went back and every wound, because I did like the deck work on the evolution because they did that whole Tableau of man going from, from the ground to learning how to stand up.
Right. And that I thought was pretty clever. But again, wacky wacky theme Australia had avatar fire and water. Italy had the warriors, the final fight. Egypt had [00:10:00] perseverance Ukraine, which they couldn’t stop talking about the 12 pieces of music they put together for the routine. Uh, it was team of brave. Uh, Japan was some sort of, uh, Festa spirit from a festival that was in Tokushima.
Canada was triumph. And then how the Canadians connected to the further to honey, this was really, and this is where it got bizarre for me. I’m Canada. Sorry, Jackie. The theme was triumph. How the Canadians connected for the 2010 games reaching for the stars and up for people’s dreams.
Alison: I didn’t get that either.
Other than the first stance, like they’re talking about their deck work, they had that pose at the end where they’re all sort of rising up and the girl at the end was reaching out and they had the red, very Canadian red swimsuits.
Jill: Yeah. And, uh, ROC did parade of planets, which when I saw their suits, I got really excited because the suits have planets on them.
They are something. And, but I didn’t get much planetary action off of their routine sadly. And then China was owed to the heroines. So yeah, the really wacky came with. And that was absolutely fantastic.
Alison: So the key seems to be the wackier, the headgear, the wackier, the theme. So always just look at the head gear.
Jill: You got a shark on your head,
Alison: you have some primordial creature,
Jill: you know, it’s going to be interesting. What I will say. What I did like about the whole competition was if you don’t know much about artistic swimming, if, well, if you don’t know much about a sport in general, that is a performance-based sport.
It’s really hard to watch Olympic competition and understand how good and how complex everything is. But in this one, you can go and look at like Spain and Australia, specifically Australia, because, uh, they are nowhere near as good as ROC. And you can really tell how the movements are slower. Maybe they’re going to have some bobbles in synchronization.
They can’t do. They don’t have the ability to get as high out of the water on their throws that some of the other countries have. So I thought that was a really good thing about this guy. Well, an educational thing about this competition. Well, let’s get to the, the winners here. Gold went to ROC China, got the silver and Ukraine got the bronze Canada and Seminole.
Jackie again, looked so happy out there and just projecting radiants. They finished sixth, they were in the prelims. They were one 10th of a point ahead of Italy. And this now they were one 10th of a point behind Italy. They were not happy with their score. No, you could totally tell. And I did not understand why they got the score they did.
And it was a sad thing because it had such a good competition up to that point. And Jackie had had a good competition up until that point. And they’ve just not a lot of people are happy with it.
Alison: Right. That’s what my confusion was because they a score what came up and I’m like, I thought they were better.
Not that I’m so educated on, uh, artistic swimming, but it just, it felt a little off. I mean, clearly ROC one. I mean, that was beyond a doubt, but the rest of the, the rest of the top five, I could have swapped a
Jill: lot of people around. Interesting. Alright.
Alison: They needs to evolve more
Jill: apparently moving on to athletics.
Whoa. Oh, what a day at the track and who, well, who got embargoed? This girl did. Oh, again, I got in burger this morning because I was watching the end of the men’s hand ball game and I had it on pause and I went back cause I saw the results and like what happened here and right in the middle of the competition of.
I did not catch up in time.
Alison: See, that’s ridiculous if you have it on, I mean, it’s one thing to embargo. You can’t start it, but if you’re watching it seriously,
Jill: I think it’s just one switch you can flip. I don’t think that selective switches.
Alison: Heck we can have Mike rolling down the hallways of the middle school.
I think we can figure out how to semi embargo. Well, the embargo is stupid to begin with, so yes.
Jill: Anyway, women’s marathon started off the morning. Did you watch any of that? I did watch it. Okay,
Alison: good. I watched it too. Those poor women. I mean, if we thought the race walkers were struggling. Oh, it’s even hotter. Yes. On this day
Jill: and I weren’t humid and they believe they moved the time up again with almost no notice.
Alison: Yeah. So the [00:15:00] day before they said, oh, guess what, ladies, you’re going to start an hour early. With maybe I want to say 12 hours notice to them maybe 18, but that’s.
Jill: Yeah. Which is not cool when they’re trying to figure out, I’m sure everyone is on a fueling schedule and they sleeping schedule. And when they have to get up, Evan dumpy was saying on Twitter, just cause he was obviously upset about this.
Um, also you have to think about the volunteers. How do you get everybody in place and stage everything you need to do when you give everyone almost no notice. It just was crazy. I, I didn’t look at what the temperature was in, in, uh, Tokyo, but I do wonder if they had that road, the heat reflecting road. I wonder if it would have been cooler.
Alison: One of the things they talked about during the marathon was very few spots had. Um, on the course. So there was this one area toward the end. I want to say maybe two kilometers out, two miles out or something, somewhere in that range where they were going through a park. So there was a lot of shade and you could almost see the women physically react to the shade.
Like everybody just took a breath as they went under the trees. And there was probably a little part of their brain that said, can I just stay here? Can I just stand in the shade? I, if I slow down, will this be a problem? So I can stay in the shade longer. But yeah, so I feel like our Mara novella has come to a ridiculous climax, but that it was ultimately a disaster, which makes me say, oh God, what’s going to happen in the men’s marathon.
Is anyone going to die? And I don’t say that flippantly. I say that quite seriously. Like this is not good.
Jill: No, it really isn’t. Okay. It’s disturbing their stunt to move this up to Sapporo did not work. I don’t think, I don’t think it was any better than what you could have had in Tokyo. It might’ve even been worse depending on the Tokyo marathon route, because the who knows how shady the route in Tokyo would have been.
I mean, they thought about this stuff, except for when you suddenly move a, an event up to, to a totally different city. Who’s not expecting it. There’s only so much they can do. So I don’t know. I mean, every water stop, every, they had a lot of water stations and feed stations, and there was a lot of running with ice in your uniform, dumping water all over yourself.
It was, it was really rough and they had, uh, 15 of the 88 runners did not finish. And overall, this was the second slowest women’s Olympic marathon. Not surprisingly. But hopefully everyone is okay in the did not finish category. So gold went to Kenya’s Perez to cheer. Silver went to Bridget Carnegie from Kenya and bronze went to the USA’s Molly Sydell.
Okay. So those three were running together for a long time. The pack, I was wondering when the pack was going to start separating and it took a long time for this lead pack to just start dropping runners. It was probably about eight strong for many kilometers, and then people started dropping off and the announcers on the feed were not impressed with Molly.
Sydell, I guess is the way to put it cause they kept talking. And this is only her third marathon, I believe. And I obviously, she doesn’t have a whole lot of marathon experience, but she figured out how to tell it. And then eventually jumped to cheer. Pulled out ahead and Kosaii and Sydell ran together for awhile.
And then, uh, those two separated as well. So it was a pretty clear finish once we got to the end, but it was impressive for Molly. She was funny. She said, did you see her at the end? When she told her family, please, I’m so tired. I’m so tired. Please drink a beer for me. I
Alison: see that she’s from Wisconsin. And they kept showing her family.
And clearly her family was sort of thrilled, but I think the way they reacted, it was almost like, oh, this is as good as she’s going to do. Like, they didn’t expect her to actually metal in a way, because it would be like mile 10 and they’re screaming like crazy. Like we may never get back on the TV again.
And I don’t want to say like, they didn’t believe in her. They absolutely believed in her, but her results in, in previous races did not show this right. So, yeah, she was so exciting and, and unexpected, which
Jill: was wonderful. Then we moved into the stadium in the evening for, uh, many, uh, last day of track and field kind of snuck up on us.
I know I really did, [00:20:00] but first things were the race walk ceremony. So what do they do? They, they shuttle the race walkers from Sapporo down to Tokyo. Don’t know how to do that. Like, I’m going to assume they flew because how else are you going to get there that quickly? I can’t imagine flying so quickly after such a long race.
Alison: And then all the COVID issues of transporting all these people from one city to another. Right, right. This was
Jill: just not good. Right. Evan was so thrilled. It was so much, but it was so nice to see him on the podium.
Alison: Apparently he. Uh, said something to the effect of, he was thinking a lot about his fourth place finish and Rio, as he was finishing up the race.
And as he said in our interview, he talks to his legs. Like they’re not part of his body. And he was saying legs, keep going, legs, keep going. And he said, he felt all the people cheering from, for him from home. So he knew he knew we were pulling
Jill: for him. Huh? Uh, apparently he got to tell an IOC executive board member and a, uh, an IOC slash world athletics board member that they’re making a terrible mistake by removing this event from the program.
So it was, you know, he felt satisfied that he got that opportunity to make that connection because I’m sure it’s very hard. Cause you can argue, uh, you know, shout all you want from whatever social media, but not getting access to the right people. You can’t make a difference.
Alison: And we know Eben will call.
Jill: Yeah, exactly. For competition. We had the, uh, women’s 10,000 meters and, uh, sifan Hassan from Netherlands won gold. She, that was her third medal of the games. Second gold. She was apparently very tired, but looked very strong in this race. Bronze, silver went to Bahrain’s Kaka. Don gives a Hackney and then bronze went to Ethiopia’s.
Let Tessa bet giddy in the men’s 1500 and gold went to Norway’s Yakob, Inca, Brixton, which you know, I don’t know my European athletics as much. So, uh, Claire, you may have to give us a little schooling on that because Norway seemed to come out of the blue for me, but I have to agree. But maybe, maybe they’ve been making inroads at least in the European scene.
And we haven’t had that whole, you know, a year off of competition. We haven’t seen all the, all the talent that’s been rising up. Silver went to Kenya’s Timothy chariot and bronze went to great Britain. Josh Kerr in the men’s javelin. Oh, oh, this is where I got embargoed. Cause I saw, I did see the throw that won it, but I didn’t see the end when he knew he won the competition.
Niraj Chopra from India wins gold. It’s amazing. India’s got it. Second individual gold medalist to go along with Bindra. It’s the first EV Indian and over 120 years and the first athlete from independent India to win an Olympic medal in athletics. And the only other metals that India won in athletics were in 1,902, a British Indian named Norman Pitt Prichard who won two silvers.
The IOC credit said to India, put other research, credits that to great Britain. And that was from those facts are from the Hindustan times. But this was so exciting. And I’m the feed the commentators like, cause when, uh, Niraj would throw he’d throw. Kind of turned his back and I guess you have to, you might have to wait before you walk away from the company.
I don’t know those, you know how we were talking with a shot and hammer. There are certain rules about where you can walk into the circle and how you walk out of the circle. And I think the commentator was worried that he was showing his back too early and could have gotten red flags, but he didn’t get red flags, which was good.
And just so exciting. What, I mean, India has gotta be celebrating like crazy. Oh, that’s fantastic. Uh, bronze, silver went to, uh, Czech republics, Yacob and bronze went to Czech. Republics of Vieta Slav Wassily in the women’s high jump gold went to ROC Maria, lots of skinny. Silver went to Australia. Niccolo McDermott bronze went to Ukraine’s at jaroslava boutique in the women’s four by 400 relay gold went to USA.
Silver went to Poland and bronze went to. And Alison Felix was part of this relay for the U S and now she is the most decorated Olympian in athletics with 11 metals. So excellent job for her Olympic career. This is, she said, this is her final games. So she gets to it’s nice way to leave. And then in the men’s 400 relay [00:25:00] gold went to U S silver, went to Netherlands and bronze went to Botswana.
So I’m looking for, I know I’m looking forward to seeing all of these races that I could not see. So
Alison: frustrated with the
Jill: embargo in baseball action. Uh, we had the metal games and, uh, Dominican Republic defeated. Korea tend to six to win the bronze, uh, Japan defeated USA two to zero to win the gold. So us takes a silver, although, you know, this is double elimination.
Don’t we have another gold medal game, bronze bowl game to play. I was just going to say, are we sure
Alison: these are the metal final. ’cause every time we think somebody is defeated, they just come back. It’s like a Phoenix.
Jill: No, but that’s the standing so gold to Japan, silver to the S bronze to the Dominican Republic.
This is Japan’s first gold medal in baseball. They’ve always gotten silver bronze, but this time they finally pulled the doubt in the host nation. Everyone’s so excited. This was a pitcher’s duel game. And, um, when attack a mark, homie got a solo home run in the middle of the game. And then the team added another run in the eighth on a wild throw from the, from center field to home plate.
And then they managed to hold off the U S for another inning and take it all so good for them. But
Alison: Eddie Alvarez has a metal in both the summer and winter Olympics on the U S team. And I think he’s the first American to do this in like. 80 years or some ridiculous length of time. So that’s exciting. I love those dual
Jill: athletes.
Exactly. That is very exciting. In basketball. The men wrapped up their tournament. Gold went to us who beat France, 87 to 82. I heard that the score looks close, but I heard it was a pretty comfortable win for a USA. And then Australia defeated Slovenia 1 0 7 93 to get the bronze. And then the women had their bronze medal game.
Uh, France defeated Serbia, 91, 76 in beach volleyball. The men’s tournament wrapped up gold, went to noise mall, Anders mall and Christian Soram who B ROC Vacia Slav, cross crossing the cough and Oleg story. Naski uh, to zero, but it was pretty close to all those. The games were pretty close. Bronze, went to Qatar’s sheriff and I’m a Tyshaun who defeated a Latvia’s Plavix and talks to zero.
Alison: So again, with normal.
Jill: Yeah. Interesting.
Alison: Yeah. What is happening in
Jill: Norway? I don’t know. They’re eating right.
Alison: Is Norway the one with the pickled shark? Oh no. That’s Iceland. Yeah.
Jill: Yeah. And boxing, the, uh, we had metal rounds for the men’s flyweight. Gold went to great Britain’s uh, Goliath EFI. Silver went to Philippines, Carlo Pelham, and bronzes went to Kazakhstan second, but Bolson off.
And Japan’s Tanaka. Rio may in the women’s flyweight gold went to Bulgaria’s Stoica cross diva. Silver went to Turkey’s booza co uh, cocky, real glue. And, uh, bronzes went to Japan’s Namiki Takumi and Taipei’s Quang. How, when in the men’s middleweight. Gold went to Brazil’s. Hey vert, Susa silver went to Ukraine’s Aleksander uh, kid’s neck and bronzes went to and Philippines, you Merritt Marcell in the women’s welterweight gold went to Turkey’s Busan as a sermon.
Ellie China won the silver goo Hong bronze went to India’s loveliness, Borgo, Hahn, and USA’s O’Shea Jones. So nice way to ramp up the boxing tournament. I never really got back into the boxing tournament after Jenny got knocked out.
Alison: Well, the good news is we haven’t heard much from the boxing tournament in terms of bad judging or controversies.
So that was. A pleasant surprise. Yes.
Jill: This is a tournament. The, usually the international Federation is responsible for running the tournament. And the IOC said that the boxing international Federation was not allowed to run this one. The organizing committee had to run it and well, Japan does a good job organizing things.
So hopefully that is a sign. That’s good for boxing. I don’t know how I IBA is doing in terms of writing itself and fixing the problems within their system to be able to do, take it back over for Paris, but we’ll see what the we’ll see what happens with that. I think also not having fans there meant there was fewer eyes on this action because it was, so if everybody’s watching, you know, everybody’s watching the sports on the feed, so you get to pick and choose what you want to watch.
And there for me, just a lot of sports fell by the way.
Alison: Oh, so you’re thinking there were problems. We just don’t know
Jill: [00:30:00] about the man maybe, or we haven’t read because we’ve also been watching a lot of action and not consuming a lot of news. And also, I know you’ve watched prime time a lot more than I have, and there’s just not been as much recap as I would think.
And I understand like the Olympic channel has a whole new segment and there’s other shows on the feed that are recaps. But if I have the choice between watching a sport or watching somebody’s packaged show or watching Kevin Hart and Snoop Dogg make jokes, I’m going to watch the sports, uh, over in canoe sprint, we had a more metal round to action.
The women’s canoe doubles, 500 meters gold went to China. Silver went to Ukraine and bronze went to Canada. So Marnie, McBean got to beat her drum in the men’s canoe. Single 1000 meters. Uh, gold went to Brazil’s. Uh, Skelos Kira is still Santos. China’s Leo, how won the silver and Moldova’s, uh, surrogate turnover won the bronze.
I did see a little bit of this race and it was interesting to watch because I’m still kind of amazed. Isn’t the word, but the way they have to paddle these canoes, it is not the canoeing that I do when I rent a canoe and paddle down the river, you know, and have a nice afternoon. This is, you know, they’re kneeling, which has to hurt.
And I we’ve talked with, uh, with Andreas who does a canoe, but just the kneeling and the stretching of those muscles in your legs. How you build that up? I don’t understand. And have the core position. Yeah. It just seems a natural, but it was interesting to watch the Brazilian and the Chinese basically were neck and neck.
And you just saw how the paddling, the strength of the panel took one a little faster than a little ahead. And then the other got a little head and it was just unbelievable. So the, the rate of paddling, I it’s just one of those, like if you know, what’s, if you see your competitor right next to you and your neck and neck, how do you make your body paddle faster or peddle harder to get that victory.
But, uh, he was thrilled when he got out. So was a lot of tears, uh, in the women’s kayak. Four’s hungry, took the gold Belarus, took silver and Poland took bronze. And then the men’s kayak for Germany took gold. Spain took silver and Slovakia took bronze, uh, moving over to track cycling. We’re still doing sprint for the women we’re doing men’s Kiran and then men had their Madison run.
So this is on my afternoon viewing for today for so much
Alison: fun. You must, you must watch Madison. If you watch nothing else attracts cycling, you’ve got to watch these Madison races. It’s it’s insanity. And I love it.
Jill: Um, did you see this one? I did. And well, besides insanity, how was it? There
Alison: were crashes.
There were people slingshotting. I didn’t know what the heck was going on. The announcers do a pretty good job trying to explain the chaos and what is happening, but it’s all happening so incredibly quickly that it’s hard for them to keep up. Right, but then you hear the bell and this the, oh, there’s a sprint and here’s how many points.
So the announcer actually did a good job, but I didn’t care. I didn’t want to hear what he had to say. I just wanted to watch people slingshotting one another and avoiding other racers who were like you were saying before, who were not being counted for that round. It’s great.
Jill: Um, I am looking forward to seeing that Denmark took the gold.
Silver, went to great Britain and France took the bronze over in the aquatic center was the men’s 10 meter platform competition. Did you watch this?
Alison: I did watch this this morning. That was my first thing that I, I tuned into. It’s a good competition. Really beautiful diving.
Jill: Okay. Because I saw some of the semi-finals, but I didn’t, I haven’t had a chance to watch the finals yet.
So tell me about it.
Alison: So the Chinese again were just gorgeous and. The early rounds actually are better than the middle rounds. Like everyone had a little bit of a dip. Okay. But so Tom Daley was beautiful. Again, just one gorgeous dive after the nother, but the Chinese level of difficulty is insane. They were getting single dives valued over a hundred points.
What
Jill: I thought they, I thought they pumped out points at 10 points.
Alison: Yes. But when you have a degree of difficulty at 4.1,
Jill: are they just making up all of these dives? Now
Alison: dives that used to be done in talk [00:35:00] are now being done and pike, they’re adding an additional twist. They’re adding their SU sort of joining the Simone Biles and the diving.
So that, but the difference is that they turn around and. You know, eights and nines on their execution for these 3.8 3.9 4.1 dies. But we did complain yesterday about the women divers and I was surprised there were two teenagers, uh, Alexa and from Ukraine was 15. And, uh, to my recoup tow from Japan was 14.
I
Jill: saw him dive in the, in the prelims or in the semis. And I was surprised that there were teenagers in this kind of middle teens and pre you know, just early teenagers in this competition because on the men’s side, diving takes so much strength. I would, I’m surprised that that strength has developed so much to get to this level.
Alison: Right. I mean, the boys did. Like older teenagers, like the 14 year old to me didn’t look 14. Okay. In his body he looked 16 or 17. Okay. So there was that, but yeah, usually in men’s diving it’s in their twenties. So this was unusual. What was interesting was the coaches of the Ukrainian diver were thrilled with everything he did.
It seemed like it was a surprise that he made it into the finals and then he did as well as he did. So it was like, we kind of were planning on Paris. Oh. But here we are. Nice. So that was fun. But if you do watch this Cassie El Russo from Australia, it’s like Tarzan is diving
Jill: to do wish just a jungle vine would drop down to, instead of going
Alison: off the platform that he would just swing across.
And then do the flip from there. Now that I’ve said that you will not be able to unsee it. Cause once I had that in my head, every time he got up there, I was like, oh,
Jill: all right. So what was the podium like?
Alison: Uh, gold went to China’s Cal U on silver to yang, Jang from China and Tom Daley from great Britain brought home the brands.
Jill: Very nice. Any question we had the team jumping final gold went to Sweden. Silver, went to the USA and bronze went to Belgium. So Sweden and the U S were tied after the final and they had to go to a jump off and, and they matched on points, but Sweden was like two seconds faster. So they took home the.
Team USA. And this is Jessica Jessica Springsteen’s event. Uh, one silver and Belgium, one bronze. I tried to w I tried to pull this up and didn’t have time to watch it. So this is on my list to watch again,
Alison: you know, who really won the gold medal at the equestrian event, who the Sumo wrestler
they did take, as you met. I think you mentioned yesterday that they did take the Sumo wrestler off the course, but now I
Jill: wonder where they put him,
Alison: like, as he is out front in front of the venue, where, where is that Sumo wrestler talk about things that are going to go up for auction. They should put that up for auction right now.
Maybe Tokyo could get back some of the money they lost on these games
Jill: in football. We had the men’s gold medal match, Brazil beat Spain, two to one in extra. Which had to be a thrilling match to watch. And that means the podium rounds out with, uh, Brazil winning gold, Spain got the silver and Mexico took the bronze in golf.
The women finished up their tournament. They were able to get in round four. USA’s Nellie Corta won gold and Japan’s ammonia economy, one silver, uh, New Zealand, Lydia Ko, one bronze and silver and bronze, I believe were decided in a playoff which only lasted one hole. So that was interesting for golf fans in handball, the men ramped up their tournament.
The bronze medal match happened first. It was Spain versus Egypt and Spain eked it out 33 to 31. Then the gold medal match. All I watched the last half of this and it was surprising. Cause when I tuned in Denmark was down, it was France and Denmark and Denmark was down six or seven points. And I thought, Ooh, this is not supposed to be happening.
Cause Denmark’s the heavy favorite. And they crawled their way back. But with about a minute left, it was France 24 Denmark, 23 Denmark at the ball. So they’re trying to eat down the clock. They have an empty goal. So [00:40:00] they have a, an extra player on the field and tried to shoot that France got the ball back.
They, they stole it and put the extra goal. You know, Stuart scored an easy goal and right at the end of play and it was 25, 23, it was something cause I’m really thought Denmark was gonna make the goal with like 15 seconds left and w it would go into overtime. But no, it just didn’t work out. So France, uh, Denmark fails to go back to back for gold medals, but we have the first Pharaoh Louise medalist who played in Denmark’s team.
So someone from the Faroe islands and
Alison: the Faroe islands have for years been trying to establish their own Olympic team. Yes.
Jill: And they have
Alison: always been rejected and said, no, you’re part of Denmark. So that’s nice to see. I wonder, I wonder if they’ll do a whole celebration on the Faroe islands. That’s a good question.
Jill: That would be nice. In karate. We had the women’s 61 kilos, uh, competition finish up gold, went to Egypt for all Abdulaziz. Silver went to Azerbaijan’s Irina’s Zaretsky and bronzes went to Kazakhstan, Sophia, Sophia Bera, loot Seva, and China’s gong Lee in men’s, uh, plus 75 kilos Goldwind to Iran, Saad a gunshot.
Silver went to Saudi Arabia’s Tarek, Hamidi, and bronzes went to turkeys, Uber octopus, and Japan’s R R guy . I didn’t get to watch much of this. Did you end up watching any karate? I
Alison: watched a little, but it was all . I didn’t get to the
Jill: CATIA yet. Oh, let me know. I won’t. I really want to hear what you think of kata.
Okay. Try to watch them today. If you can. In men’s modern pentathlon, uh, Joseph Chung from great Britain won gold, so great Britain won gold and both the men’s and the women’s. Uh, silver went to Ahmed. Uh, Elegante from Egypt and Korea’s at Chung wound. bronze. The. The ponder and pentathlon Federation is apparently taking eight, a lot of heat, especially from Germany, because their favorite, uh, their potential medalist on a Cola was just had a horrible equestrian run yesterday.
So they are the, Federation’s taking a lot of heat for the horse jumping portion of the race about animal welfare and fair competition conditions, which as you said yesterday, it’s not fair that horses have to go twice and athletes go once ‘
Alison: cause we talked about this yesterday, it was insanely hot.
We’ve been talking about this all along. We were talking about it in the eventing where they were dumping ice on the horses and they would, you know, the, the riders were wearing ice vests and then you turn around and make the horses go twice. So the second time they’re tired, they’re cranky and it’s hotter.
So how has. Fair. And how is that safe for the horse or say for the rider? Because that horse just decides no, I mean, we’ve seen Samantha get thrown more than once under ideal conditions. That’s
Jill: right. And this is a horse. They get about 30 minutes to get to know their horse before they take them in the ring and try to get them to jump.
The point is this as part of the whole story of modern pentathlon, where if you’re a messenger and you need to take a strange horse to deliver a message during war time. So I think the story is better. We’re starting to get the story is, is a nice idea. And this competition is a nice idea, but the execution of it, especially in places where it is very hot and you know, we’re getting warmer.
Is this a great idea for people to take horses? They don’t know in conditions that are harsh and try to compete.
Alison: You know, Pierre Cooper, Dick Cooper, Taiwan was not concerned about animal welfare when he came up with this idea and it is not fair to the horses to throw it into a jumping ring with a strange rider that is extraordinarily stressful to the horse.
Horses are more likely to be injured. And how is I love the story, but it is a, we can keep modern pentathlon and just like you have fencing ranking rounds. Why can’t you have training time with the horse you’re going to compete with? Right. I mean, it doesn’t have to be your personal horse. Like in a question, you can have a stable, but they should have at least a few training rounds for the stress level of the horses for the safety of the riders and the welfare of the horses.
It’s not where our thinking is now on
Jill: animal welfare. Well, and maybe we [00:45:00] should just evolve this competition because they evolve the gun to be a laser gun. Why can’t we start riding bicycles, take the horse element out because a horse element is very difficult, a to train, I mean, and be to put on in competition because whoever hosts something has to go and get X number of horses that people who are going to be okay with having strangers write on them and jump over jumps.
And these jumps are not the same jumps that you see in the equestrian show. Jumping competition. There are a lot lower, but they’re still pretty difficult jumps. So I don’t know. I think that I think they need to evolve their they’re trying very hard to evolve the sport, to fit with what the, the IOC wants to see, which is more modern.
Uh, and faster competition. So this was the first time that the modern pentathlon was contained in a single stadium. They used to go to a pool to do the swimming portion and the fencing portion might’ve been someplace else. And, and I think even the, the ranking rounds that was in an arena, but that’s a different day.
The big day is the five events all at once. And they manned managed to be able to do it in one stadium, in one place to make it more audience friendly, prepare us. They’re going to do a shorter kind of elimination version of this at the youth Olympic games in the car, if they ever have them, because those got postponed because of the pandemic.
And I think they won’t have them until 2026. They’re doing a triathlon, I believe, which is four of the five elements. They’re not doing the horse.
Alison: Right. We’ve spoken to two questions. Went on and on and on about the relationship with the horse and how crucial that was. So, yeah, I would have to agree with you that just like we have evolved the sport, it needs to go in a different direction if it’s going to survive.
Jill: And if you did something like bicycles, athletes could compete with their own and you can just have him ride around the stadium, you know, I have to be, it doesn’t have to be fancy. Maybe they go over ramps and things like that. You could do something, but I think boards,
I just think that the, you know, the whole story of delivering a message, it shouldn’t we’re, we’re in the 21st century, we shouldn’t need horses to deliver messages.
Alison: We’re swords.
Jill: Yeah. Okay. It’s back-to-back problematic sports here. Rhythmic gymnastics. I well,
Alison: a shock in the rhythmic gymnastics
Jill: competition.
No, they must have heard you.
Alison: I know. So yesterday I was complaining how it’s like old school ice dancing, where the podium is predetermined and lo and behold Israel Lenoi, Astram pulls out the gold, shocking Dina as marina gets the silver Alena. Her NASCO gets the bronze, which means that Alita every Rina is not on the
Jill: podium, which was very shocking.
And we have to mention that a DNA of arena and, uh, Elena arena or from ROC and Alina harness ESCO is from Bella.
Alison: So I know you complain about the costumes. I had some complaints. I take back everything I said yesterday, but here’s the thing rhythmic gymnastics, unfortunately, is, you know, like we were talking about the predetermined scoring, which shouldn’t happen this time.
It’s ridiculous. So much about this board is ridiculous. So I was admiring the costumes as couture elements rather than, you know, cause I do complain about the artistic gymnast and too many crystals. And then I was defending these, but I think I was defending these because I don’t take this work seriously to
Jill: begin with.
Oh
Alison: man. Some of these costumes you have to admit there was 3d elements. There was raised, uh, cherry blossoms. There was a woman who was dressed like a butterfly.
Jill: You know, I turned on my TV and this was on. Uh, this was on. So it was on a regular station and Nastia Liukin was one of the commentators and I lasted maybe one performance.
And I said, I can’t, I just cannot do this. Not this morning. I have, I have artistic swimming to go find
Alison: there’s only so many crystals and outrageousness, you
Jill: can handle them. And I needed to find Evan Dunphy’s. It was a battle of artistic swimming versus Evan Dunphy’s podium. And I wanted to see Evan, get the podium, uh, get him.
I [00:50:00] wanted to see if I can give this metal, but I did see a little bit of the ribbon competition and Dina ever Rena was competing and she got a knot in the end of her ribbon, which I could not see where the knot was, but Nastia Liukin commentating was like, oh, she’s got to not because she had to go to the backup ribbon on the side of the, uh, mat where if something happens with your apparatus, you’ve got a backup to use.
And of course that is. Big deduction. I don’t know. Huge deduction.
Alison: Yes. It’s a significant deduction because the idea is that, for example, if you drop the ball and it rolls away and it’s halfway across the stadium, you’re not running after it. You just go grab the one that’s on the side.
And I have seen that happen where the hoop just goes rolling down the street and you don’t want to run out in front of the trucks. You just grabbed the hoop. That’s next to you.
Jill: Well, you could tell the other thing I had the question on was what is up with the score challenges? Because it seems like you’re allowed to challenge a score and it seemed like everyone was doing it because Nastia basically said it was like, oh, we’re having another score challenge.
This competition has gone on really long. And I looked at the schedule and it looks like it went on an hour beyond what it was scheduled for because of all of the score challenge. What is
Alison: the. So this is, this is allowed in artistic gymnastics and trampoline as well. The score is made up of two elements, difficulty and execution.
And just like in artistic gym, gymnastics, each move has a value. So each thing the rhythmic gymnast does has a value. You get bonus if it’s connected with other things. Okay. So you can’t challenge the execution score. You can challenge a deduction for say, stepping out of bounds or dropping the ribbons.
No, I didn’t drop the ribbon. You can also challenge your difficulty score to say, for example, I did that kick into a spin, but you didn’t give me the connection bonus. You just gave me the value of the kick and the spin. And that’s the big thing that happens in artistic gymnastics. Because for example, if you wait a beat between moves, you don’t get the connection bonus.
So what they were challenging was the difficulty scores, because they weren’t getting the difficulty scores that they had worked out on paper that they thought their routine was worth. Okay. But to say, if you only did three turns and appear wet, instead of four turns, you would get less difficulty. But no, I did four turns, so I should get that
Jill: bonus.
So it seemed like they were challenging an awful lot comparatively. It could because when we did see challenges in artistic gymnastics, but not that well
Alison: that’s because moves have names and moves have very specific points. So if you do a double talk, here’s your points rhythmic doesn’t have these specific names.
I mean, they have a few, but most of the moves is choreography. It’s made up stuff. And so how much is it worth is more subjective.
Jill: They were really scraping for there. They’re really scraping for legitimacy in a way, in a way. I mean, because if you have to argue with every score because my dance move didn’t work.
What I mean, I’m looking forward to breaking in 20, 24. Well,
Alison: the other thing to keep in mind is that the average , both of them expected to win. They expected to be gold and silver, and they were not getting the scores that they expected and not the scores that they have gotten in the past.
Jill: Were they getting the scores they earned?
Alison: I don’t know enough about the scoring in terms of how they rank it. From what the commentators were saying, they were not complaining and saying, oh, I don’t know where that score came from. Or, oh, they were saying, okay, that makes sense. But it seems like the Aberdeen is we’re not going to go down without an absolute, crazy fight, but on a happier note, the Israeli gymnast did her ribbon routine to how they Nikila.
Jill: Um, I don’t even know what to say. Congratulations to her. Obviously she is thrilled because the evergreens have had a lock on rhythmic gymnastics for a long time. Yeah. Oh yeah.
Alison: So we can go back to, you know, unified team days and Russia and ROC, they have just dominated this event for decades. So this is, this is huge.
Okay. [00:55:00] First gold metal for an Israeli woman.
Jill: Congratulations. That’s nice. I’m going to check out the, the news over there and see what the reaction is. I’m sure they are a little
Alison: excited. She’s on the cover of, you know, the, if you pull up, you know, the Jerusalem post
Jill: there’s her face. Nice. Nice, good, good.
That’s so nice. And volleyball. The men wrapped up their tournament in the bronze medal match. Argentina defeated Brazil three, two, whole. This looked like it was tough. I didn’t see it, but on paper, the points are, you know, they went full five sets. Everything was pretty close. If you total that the points across the five sets, it was Argentina 1 0 5 to Brazil, 1 0 3.
Oh wow. It was tough. And then the gold medal match, France beat ROC three to. And this is a
Alison: tough tournament, man.
Jill: That game also went five sets and France scored a total of 1 0 7 points to, to RFCs 1 0 2, 2 hours and 15 minute game. That was tough. Really, really tough. I’m I’m sorry. I didn’t see volleyball.
There’s so much on the Olympic program now that we knew going in that we couldn’t see everything, but I hoped to dip into everything. And I know some of our listeners have been able to cry. That was a goal to see every sport and they have crossed off that, uh, bingo card, so to speak. But this is a tournament I kind of want to, well, the women’s still have to play, I believe.
Alison: Yes. And you would see your beloved cards cry.
Jill: Moving up to the top of my list. Water polo, the women’s ramp or the women wrapped up their tournament. The classification mass matches for fifth through eighth places. Canada defeated China 16 to seven for seventh and eighth Australia defeated Netherlands 14, seven for fifth and sixth.
And then in the bronze medal match, hungry, defeated ROC 11, nine. So hungry gets the bronze and then us beat Spain, 15 to four. Spain did not score at all in the third quarter of this match. And it was just pretty, pretty obvious that us was going to walk away with this game. They’ve been just dominant this term.
And wrestling that tournament ended today with the men’s freestyle 65 kilos. The gold went to Japan’s silver. One to Azerbaijan’s has Alia bronzes went to ROC Gaza, moron rushed it off. And India’s buzzer boss rang bells rang very excited. The India got another medal in the men’s freestyle. 97 kilos gold went to ROC Abdul Rashid.
So, so F silver went to USA is Kyle Snyder. Bronzes went to Cuba’s of Raniere, solace Perez, and Italy’s Abraham to . I did see the gold medal bout. It was tough. It was really tough. Kyle Snyder was down and it just looked like he was not going to be able to score. Then he started to get there and he just ran out of time, but very strong.
Very very tough match. And it was funny because if you get to see the American commentary, the NBC provided commentary, the, uh, the, the color commentator is fantastic. He is really good at explaining stuff, but he’s also coaching. He’s like, come on Kyle term, take them down, roll them over, take him down, roll over
the rowdy Gaines oppressed line. Obviously he is so much fun to watch. And so if you do go back and catch it, if you can get that coverage, it’s it’s, I would think it’s better than the feed in the women’s freestyle, 50 kilos, Japan sucky Youi won gold. Silver’s uh, silver went to sun Yunnan from China and bronzes went to Maria.
Stadnik from Azerbaijan and the USA’s Sarah Anne Hildebrand, who is from, uh, where my mom or from. She’s from Indiana around, not my, not near us, but she’s close enough that most of Northern Indiana, it’s going to take credit for this. Um, I watched her, I watched all the, the metal bouts on this and, uh, Sarah Hildabrand had been doing really well and, uh, just lost her opportunity to get into the, the gold metal about, but she made a really nice comeback here and was pretty dominant against Stadnik the cold metal about Susaki was dominant the matches over in about a minute and 36 seconds.
Yeah, she won on points. She just had total control of [01:00:00] this one. It’s so quickly for the metal ceremony, at least for the women’s event. Four time gold medalist each. Okay. Ori presented the, the, um, flower. And so she’s, she’s very well known in Japan. Very well-known in the sport. Very well-respected she wore full Komono.
Yeah, I know. Right. You
Alison: haven’t seen enough of that sort of thing. I mean, that’s one of the things that we’ve
Jill: lost. Yes. So it was just beautiful to be able to see this kimono, to see the old champion crown the new champion. But, so we had gotten a text earlier in the games from one of our listeners who asked for metal ceremonies.
What if there’s a controversial decision regarding the winner and when the metals come out, the loser of this decision tooks takes the winners. And puts it on. And would that be a rule 50 thing? I think, wow. I don’t know if that would ever happen, but what happened here was they got their metals and then, uh, eco came out with a, the flowers and Murata wise and China took the gold flower bunch and Susaki take, had to take the silver because that’s all that’s left.
And she’s like, oh, you could see it on her face. This is not supposed to be mine. And this, I immediately thought of this text and went, whoa, oh, this actually happened. They let this get away. And I’m not sure if each own knew, knew what was going on and how this would get rectified, because then you have to go the Anthem and the on the podium is so stretched out.
So it’s not like you can just elbow her and say, Hey, give me mine. And. Took me awhile to figure this out volunteer was right there after the Anthem, making sure Susaki got the right flower.
Alison: Do you think it was done on purpose? Because I saw a flower ceremony back from, uh, rowing where one of the people took the wrong flowers, but clearly did it by mistake because then she passed it to the proper person and they switched.
An innocent mistake. They couldn’t tell the, they took the bronze, they took the gold instead of the bronze flowers.
Jill: Right. And that is an anonymous, innocent mistake. I, I, I’m going to assume that this was a mistake as well, even though it’s kind of clear that it’s silver and gold are quite different than golden bronze.
I just, I don’t know if assume, well, a, the bout was just dominant. So there was no question about who was winning this battle. And I think you just kind of take your flowers, you know, you’re still, it’s not too long after your match. You’re still kind of disappointed. And you just take what’s there in front of you.
And maybe I think maybe the gold was on the, the side that was closest to her and maybe she thought that was just what, and didn’t look at it or anything, but they fixed it. But I did think about that, that text.
Alison: This subtle dig, stealing somebody else’s merit.
Jill: Maybe it was an accidental take. Before we move on, we’d like to take a w we’d like to take a quick moment to thank our Patrion patrons.
These are people who make ongoing donations that help finance this show and make our shoestring budget just a little bit longer to get into a bigger pair of shoes. We really appreciate those of you who have jumped on board during the Olympics. We so appreciate all of you. It means the world to us. If you would like to make an ongoing contribution to the show, you can check us out at patrion.com/flame alive pod.
What is our shook on watch for tomorrow? It is our
Alison: last competitor. Uh, will be running in the men’s marathon,
Jill: looking forward to watching this and seeing what goes on. You know, I did see up at, uh, the women’s marathon. So I wonder if they will be staying there or if they have shuttled back and forth.
Cause I’m sure Sedco has to go back to the track to watch the rest of the competition. They had big, big events in the evening. Hmm. How’s that on your budget? Hmm. I’m not saying, I’m just saying if the marathons were in Tokyo would not have been that expensive. I’m I’m still angry about it. As you know, I love a good mare novella, but this was not a great decision.
No,
Alison: we’ve got the closing chapter tomorrow, the Christmas
Jill: special. And then maybe we can go focus on the hotel novella from France. I’m so excited to see how that one turns out to. Alright, as you 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 is 2 0 8. Flame it, please don’t forget our Kickstarter and help us reach our goal of bringing you on the ground coverage at Beijing. That is kickstarter.com/profile/flame alive pod. As we go out to music by mercury sunset. [01:05:00] Thank you so much for listening and until tomorrow, keep the flame alive. .