In as big of a celebration as you can have during a pandemic, the Tokyo 2020 Olympics came to a close, and the flame has been extinguished. We’ve got the details on the ceremony and the handover to Paris 2024.
Plus, our popular segments:
- Where’s Marnie McBean?
- What Volunteer Roles Would We Want?
- Fantasy League/Brackets Final Update
- The penultimate installment of “What’s Up with Mike and Maya?”
Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive!
TRANSCRIPT
Note: This is a machine-generated uncorrected transcript, and 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 Please do not quote from the transcript; use the audio file as the record of note.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] on the big fans and lovers of and welcome to Keep the Flame Alive, the podcast for fans of the Olympics and Paralympics. I am your host Jill Jaracz joined as always by my lovely co-host Alison Brown. Alison, Konichiwa. Did you get some sleep?
Alison: I did get some sleep. I did sleep in this and our night
Jill: coming down a little later with this because I was dead to the world.
Alison: I didn’t get to bed any earlier. Cause I’m still used to staying up so late, but man, 10 30 rolled around. I was knocked out of the bed.
Jill: I am looking for. A couple of weeks of really good sleep until we start doing this all over again, except for the Paralympics are, are smaller. So hopefully, hopefully it will be more contained, but I think the competition day is almost as long for some of this.
So, and
Alison: we’re still going to be back on Tokyo time. Yeah. So here’s the question. Do we go back to regular time or do we continue on Tokyo?
Jill: I’m going back to regular time because I got Ben. I don’t think that I’d like to be in
Alison: family. Maybe have a normal dinner again for a couple of weeks.
Jill: Okay. Well, I think O w today is closing ceremonies chat.
And on Thursday, we will have a regular show with, uh, our contributor round table. We’ll be back and we’ll be doing a lot of reflection on the Olympics then, and we’ll have, uh, have some time to look at news that’s been going on and any other stories we need to follow up on, but, uh, today closing ceremonies, and first we have a regular segments.
Where is Marnie McBee? So
Alison: yesterday we speculated that she was sleeping. Of course we were wrong because Marnie doesn’t sleep. She was in fact at the closing ceremonies, she marched with team Canada. And if you were watching in the United States, you did catch a several second long glimpse of her when they were doing, I believe it’s called the.
She was attempting to participate in the dancing. Oh, very nice. And then afterwards team Canada went back to their block and got about a hundred pizzas and ate them all together,
Jill: which I’m sure every athlete was excited about because half the time when we hear them in the mixed zone, after their races or after their events is over, it’s like, what are you going to do now?
Alison: I’m going to eat pizza because pizza clearly is the food that keeps you from winning. Apparently since it seems to be banned, but once you win a medal, you can return to your pizza eating ways. So maybe that’s where we’ve fallen down all these years, too much pizza. All
Jill: right. Last a day of what would your officiating or volunteer job be?
Alison: I’m dancing in the closing ceremonies. Yes. The makes saying, cause you don’t want to hear that, but I will be one of those park dancers. I am all over that. And give me one of those funky costumes. If it’s got a headpiece bonus points, I
Jill: would like to be one of the flag bearers, because I noticed that if a country’s delegation had left your flag still needed to get into the stadium to show that you had been represented on the field of play.
So they had volunteer. Bringing in the flags. And I thought that was very cool fantasy leagues.
Alison: So final standings from yesterday were correct. So Shola ston and got the gold medal. Colibri wins the silver and PS Gola on the bronze, just off the podium was India delight. Jill finished in fifth and I finished in six, which is nice, shocking, shocking results for shook flower
Jill: Allison.
It was shocking result for me too, just because. Do my league for the last few days of competition,
Alison: sort of hung on at the end. Exactly. And then in brackets, uh, show us Don one as well. Olympic fan Dan edged you out by 10 points. One place on the podium you got, uh, right. I ended up being in fifth and you know, who beat me by 10 points who my sister.
So there’s going to be some family rivalry happening at the next gathering.
Jill: But that was a lot of fun. Thank you all for playing. It was, it was a really good time. And congratulations to show us down for really cleaning up on both sides of the fantasy leagues. And hopefully we can do this again for a Beijing
Alison: and show us Don posted in our Facebook group, apologizing for doing so well.
And I said, oh no, this was fantastic.
Jill: If you can do so well that you get on the global leaderboard, we are proud of.
Alison: That’s that’s showing us off as far as I’m concerned. Exactly.
Jill: Exactly. All right. What is up with Mike and [00:05:00] Maya?
Alison: So last night we were watching the closing ceremonies with my family and my daughter is very upset that I said that Mike’s friend was a picnic girl, really?
Yes, because she said, oh no, if she was a picnic girl, she wouldn’t be so happy about Maya saying yes. Oh, because she’d be gatekeeping Mike for herself.
Jill: Okay. You don’t think she’s gatekeeping one of the other boys in the group
Alison: she could be, but, and she also thought that Maya is the it girl. So she disputes your Heather.
Because when Maya walks to her locker, all the other girls follow her, she’s standing in front. So she’s voting for Maya being the popular girl, not just in the popular crowd,
Jill: but she could be the popular girl. And Heather’s kind of running the show and trying to teach you
Alison: think generally those two tasks are not separated.
Jill: I will take your expertise in this matter, since I do never had a preteen or teenage girl. So there
Alison: are days I wish I didn’t.
Jill: Oh, oh man. No, no, I didn’t say that. No. Okay. Well, we will have a final ramp up of Mike and Maya for our contributor round table show. Don’t know what ma I’m hopeful that we will have another commercial.
Sticks in our cry as much as this one for the Paralympics, but I think Mike and Mike really have fallen off, fallen off rotation. So hopefully we’ll see what comes else. What else comes up in the mix and, uh, have another, or maybe you don’t want that? I don’t know, but I got to say Mike and Maya have gotten me through your
Alison: Sunday.
There have been some three o’clock in the morning, viewings where Mike and Maya popped up. And I instantly perked up to say, oh, wait, I got to
Jill: pay attention again. When, when Ben is sick of talking about Olympia, He can always talk about Mike and Maya. So
Alison: this has all these families together. We save marriages and we bring families together.
Jill: All right, before we get to the closing ceremonies, we’d like to remind you once more about our Kickstarter campaign. We have gotten media accreditations for the winter Olympics in Beijing. Those are in less than six months, and it’s going to be great to have some on the ground presence there because then.
W we can show you things and tell you things that you won’t get on a regular broadcast. And the issue with that is that we need money to get there. It’s going to be an inexpensive trip and we have a shoestring budget in the first place and that we didn’t plan on getting these accreditations. So our shoestring budget does not.
As far as Beijing, but your help can get us there. It’s doing well. We are doing so well so far where about a third of our way to our goal, which is great. The Kickstarter campaign will continue through the Paralympics. So please, if you haven’t donated yet, please donate. If you have donated, please share it with your friends and family and help us make this trip happen for you.
Find out more about our campaign and check out our supportive bonuses. Like we’ll send you postcards from Beijing. You can be a producer for a day and much, much more. We’re at kickstarter.com/profile/flame alive pod. And thank you again for your support closing ceremonies. What do you think?
Alison: The first thing I noticed was I realized they had to change the floor really fast.
Jill: Oh, to get rid of the track or to cover up the
Alison: track to you get rid of bright. I’m not sure which way it went, but then I realized, wow, they had more time going the other way. You know, after the opening ceremonies, they had several days to turn it into a track, but to turn it back into the projection floor and set everything up, they had less than 24 hours, which is kind of an amazing feat of logistics.
And they use the floor very nicely as well
Jill: that they did that they did. Um, this show felt short to me again, but I think a lot of it was because there were hardly any athletes there. So it took, even though they, they liked trickled in and I’m used to them kind of
Alison: bouncing it slow with the parade of
Jill: athletes.
Right. Um, but I did feel like we were missing a little celebration. I almost kind of want to go back to Rio and see how long that ceremony was versus how long the Tokyo ceremony in the handoff, where,
Alison: well, in Rio, remember the athletes stayed there for hours over the ceremony ended. So, and the field was packed.
I mean, this field looked empty. The athletes were not mixing when they came in. They were [00:10:00] generally staying with their own delegations and that’s not what we’ve seen
Jill: in the past. Right. And that, wasn’t the point of the whole closing ceremonies athletes come in together because they are United. Not doesn’t matter what country they’re from and that’s, that’s been taken away.
The other thing, I really felt the emptiness of the stadium and I really felt like, oh, these athletes are on display and we’re putting on a show for like a handful of elite. And that made me very sad and uncomfortable to be quite honest, it felt
a
Alison: little hunger
Jill: games to you. Well, you know, what else felt hunger games to me was Johnny
Alison: wears outfit.
Oh my
Jill: goodness. So here in the U S our nighttime primetime coverage was, are, the broadcasters were, are figure skating team, and that. Terry Gannon, Tara Lapinski who won gold and noggin and Johnny Weir who skated at Terino and Vancouver. And they’re known for their flamboyance and their outfits and their cutting commentary.
Might you say, all right, you’re being nice, actually. Okay. Well we’ll w we’ll leave it at night. So, uh, they, they both came in with like Olympic. But Juul old pins that were for their hair. So you had that, you had Johnny Weir’s hair and a big bouffant, a very stylish Coture outfits on both of them. And I got to say, so they did not help.
As much as I thought they would, because I had the feed on in the morning. Cause the feed would show just the closing ceremonies with no commentary. And I thought, oh, I don’t. I look and go, I don’t really know what’s going on here. I’m going to go. And I’ll, I’ll make sure I watch it tonight. And there were parts where I kept going.
It’s kind of quiet and there’s something happening on the stage, but I don’t know what it is. And they’re not bothering to tell us.
Alison: But on the flip side, they did not hurt as much as I feared. They would very, very true. You know, both of them have clearly a great love of Japan. I mean, Tara Lipinski won in Nagano so this country has some great significance to her.
And Johnny Weir clearly just loves Tokyo. You know, it’s one of his favorite cities kind of thing. So when they did see. You know, one of the things that complain about when they do the ice skating commentary is it’s very much about them, but in this case, that helped because it brought a love of the country, which is what you want to see in the closing ceremonies.
Right. And one of my compliments to this was it felt more Japanese than the opening ceremonies debt. I would
Jill: agree with. Uh, w it was all, all of the pieces that the Tokyo committee put together. Cause we also had a big piece with a handover to Paris, but the pieces that involved Tokyo were very, they were cultural, they were fun.
They showed a side of Japan that I had been wanting to see this whole Olympic.
Alison: I wonder if any of this was cut from the opening ceremonies? I don’t think so. I don’t think so. You think it was all separately denied?
Jill: I bet there were two different directors and
Alison: there was a Tyco drama in this. Yes, it was
Jill: beautiful.
Alison: I know. I’m like, why was there no whole drum ceremony in the first one? I know.
Jill: That didn’t make sense. And I wonder, because we had so many problems with the opening ceremonies and people getting shuttled by the wayside, the director leaving other people going away. And I wonder what those segments were that got just probably cut,
Alison: but can we talk about Scott in the park?
Yes,
Jill: we can.
Alison: So much fun. I had no idea what was happening. I obviously you’ve been to Japan and some of our, our listeners, um, on the Facebook page have been to Japan and said, you know, no, Tokyo, Scott is a thing. I didn’t care. I was just like, this is
Jill: fantastic. Yes. So what they did was they had this. Big sky band and they were playing and then they’d have different groups of people dancing around and doing break dancing or skateboarding or playing with balls and stuff.
And there are parks, uh, when, when we were in Tokyo a long time ago, uh, we went into Yoyogi park and you know, you get off the train in this area and there’s you go over a bridge and then you go further and then, then you pop into all of this amazingness. So when you go over to the bridge and I wonder if this guy is still there, Uh, a man who had a boombox with YouTube playing and he was singing along.
And I don’t remember if it was a karaoke, but he was just like Bano the Japanese [00:15:00] version. And he was fantastic. There were all these people and we’re in an area where people like to get dressed up and. Do cosplay kind of things. You go a little further and you run into like the big circle of rockabilly dancers.
And this is like when it’s Sunday afternoon, I’m going to go out and dance rockabilly and they’re all. Dressed to the ninth big pompadours on the men, like fun costumes on the women. Everybody is having a great time and it’s just, you keep going on. And pretty much anyone, anything you’d like to see, that’s kind of a performance you can find.
And they replicated that in this closing ceremonies, it was so much fun.
Alison: And I made a comment in the Facebook group that how they did it, the frame of the story was these two friends. Me and go to the park and it was these two lovely women. And I said it was us. Like, that was how I was imagining this, these two women going to the park in Japan and seeing all this stuff.
And I’m like, oh, I think I’m that one. But it was beautiful. And like you were saying, it really gave me Tokyo, which the opening ceremony did not. And then they did the segment with the children. Dancing and singing because of course you’ve got to have singing and dancing children. And even that felt more Japanese, even though there was nothing particularly Japanese about it.
Right. Other than the woman who performed is, you know, a star in Japan. But the sound of the music and the way they were moving and the way they did the light show, I felt like I was seeing a side of Tokyo that we haven’t seen for two weeks.
Jill: Exactly, exactly. And the, uh, Japanese singer, seeing singing Edith PF in Japanese.
Beautiful. And, and also kind of a touch of how much mute, how important music is in Japan and, and how they’ve taken music from other cultures and made it their own.
Alison: Right. And then they did. Dance. And I believe it was that I, you know, I believe that’s how it’s pronounced and it’s this dance that everybody learns as a kid.
You know, all the girls learn how to do this. And they showed at least on the American broadcast, all the Japanese girls from the Japanese team, doing this with the performers. And this is where Marnie was attempting to share this. And then various girls of, uh, Japanese descent from other teams who clearly have learned.
The idea of their Japanese American culture center or what, from whatever country and all of these girls around the field. And I say, girls they’re women, but clearly in this moment they were the 10 year old girls going to their, you know, Japanese club with their moms. And it was. What you want to see in a closing ceremony that bringing people together after they’ve been together for two and a half weeks, but they really haven’t been together for two and a half weeks.
And we haven’t seen a lot of these
Jill: moments. Exactly. I loved that dance. It was just, and you can see all of the, the Japanese delegation, all those women who were dancing with it, they, and they just, it looked like they were having fun.
Alison: Yeah. Yes. Not a lot of fun. Not enough fun in this Olympics.
Jill: No. Thanks pandemic.
Yeah. Um, we in the United States did not get to see the medal ceremonies that they had for the marathon, the men’s and the women’s marathon, which was there’s
Alison: an American medal list. It’s not like we shouldn’t have seen them.
Jill: Right. And they did the whole story of like how she got there and talking to her family.
But they didn’t show. And then they showed her on the podium at the end. This is Molly Sydell who won third place in the marathon. And it’s kind of a big story because this is only her third marathon ever. And she wins bronze, but it’s not like she just decided to run the marathon one day and showed up in the Olympics.
She has a long running career before, before this, but it’s, it was weird. And what was typical American NBC thing decision to. Show this package of stuff versus showing the actual footage or actual
Alison: speech of a Hashimoto’s Seiko. Oh, I took over as the head of the organizing committee. We got to hear Thomas Bach say a whole bunch of nothing and make hard hands, but we didn’t actually get to hear from the Tokyo organizing committee,
Jill: which I th I think that.
Alison: Thanks NBC
Jill: they’ve been received them off, right. They’ve been such gracious hosts and have had to deal with problems that nobody else has had to deal with. It’s been so much, these games have been so difficult on the organizers [00:20:00] and so stressful and it, and that’s just a regular games and the pandemic, and it’s just been.
I would say the last year has probably been a nightmare for everyone. I want to, I want to pack them all up and send them to a nice spa resort for a few, like a week,
Alison: send them to French Polynesia because then they’ll just feel the pain of the next Olympics.
Jill: But know, I really hope everybody gets like a day off because I don’t know how many of these organizers are involved on the Paralympic side too.
And they don’t get much time to breathe and then they have to do this all over. But, uh, but
Alison: have you heard about the moth?
Jill: I, I saw something about the month. What, what is this?
Alison: Okay, so during, uh, Hashimoto’s Seikos speech, there was a moth that landed on the lectern in one of the rings. I believe it was the red.
And just kind of sat there during her speech. And a lot of Americans were comparing it to the fly that landed in Mike Pence’s hair during one of the debates during our presidential campaign. So now it’s justice for Hashimoto’s moth.
Jill: Then after the speeches were over, they did the handover ceremony.
Alison: Did you know that the flag that they hand over had little balls?
No,
Jill: the tassel things all the way around. I never
Alison: noticed that no
Jill: more. No, it’s, it’s quite striking, but it’s also odd because that’s not the Olympic
Alison: flag. Why are there tassels? And then I looked back at previous ones and it’s the tassels flag
Jill: we have to look into. What is the significance of the tasseled flag?
Because that’s not the flag that they fly, unless it’s flown into a specific place and they just never show that one on.
Alison: Right. Maybe that’s the official one that only flies in the host city. There could
Jill: be, or the one, the one, the flag that has gone from host city to host city that could be
Alison: can’t have survived.
You never know.
Jill: They probably take good care of it.
Alison: Have you ever tried to do a clothing restoration? Obviously it’s a nightmare. It is a nightmare.
Jill: Uh, so now we have the French presentation because now you, you hand over the flag to the new host city and the new host city wants to show itself off. So you get excited about the next Olympics.
So Francis’ presentation was, I, I know people loved it, but I loved it.
Alison: Did you love it? I did love it. I loved the, because obviously they usually, they do a presentation in person, right. And there is one in video and in Paris. So they were hampered and helped because I think the video that they made was really beautiful.
First of all, the performance at the Marshallese was stunning
Jill: from an orchestra, starting with a flute and having orchestra joint.
Alison: Right. And then ending with the guy in space, the French astronaut, and ending with the French astronaut with a saxophone. Totally corny. I didn’t care. I love,
Jill: yeah. See, see, this is where my age shows.
Cause I thought, oh my gosh, he brought a saxophone to space. How annoying must there be for the. The other astronauts in the space station like, oh, peers practicing, I guess. But I mean, he plays the saxophone very well. So what, maybe it was a good and fun distraction for the other astronauts to have a saxophonist among them.
Alison: It’s not a harmonica.
Jill: I know. I thought like how much personal stuff they get to bring up, like what’s that do to the payload.
It was a very unique moment. I will give you that very unique moment today. Space
Alison: game. They had the in-person celebration around the Eiffel tower with this
Jill: ginormous flag of the Paris logo off of the Eiffel tower, which I did think was stunning,
Alison: but it wasn’t actually flying there on that day. Oh, because of the wet.
That was, I’m not sure if it was a practice or if it was CGI, but the flag wasn’t actually flying at the time of the performance, but that flag does exist and it will be flying. But I think that the winds were too high and they didn’t want to damage the tower.
Jill: Sure. Having a huge, huge flag that is pretty much half of the tower.
Big.
Alison: It’s like the French version of up, and all of a sudden the Eiffel tower is flying away,
Jill: but that’s cool. And [00:25:00] if they aren’t going to fly it during the games, that’s going to be really
Alison: neat. Did have a little break dancing performance
Jill: that they did. And I didn’t mind because it was French, France, and it was also going to be, it’s going to be in the Olympics.
Alison: And then they had several of the Tokyo medalists there, Whitner the French Tokyo medalist, which I thought was a. Connection.
Jill: I did too. And they had their medals on their neck and they’re hanging out among fans. I mean, you could say, Ooh, super spreader event, but it was, everybody was having a great time and it was really fun to see all these medalists because then that just inspires people.
And they’re excited about what they just experienced. They’re excited for their home country becoming the next time.
Alison: And the thing that went over biggest in my house, the jet planes, the fighter planes spewing the smoke and the French flag colors. And because obviously it’s, tri-color, it’s just stripes.
You could actually do the flag and the smoke. It was very, that was very cool. And in person that must have been amazing. So
Jill: you were not impressed. I mean, over, I think the problem was the fact that it had to be video and virtual. I mean, it is very different. And probably if I go back and I think about it, I will like it more, but it was, it was difficult to do something that would be interesting and captivating and yet be fun for the people on the ground in Tokyo.
Alison: I think I liked it because unlike the often their performances in the opening and closing ceremonies, they’re not done for television. They’re sort of done for on the ground end television, this was done for video. So it felt very complete and felt very satisfying as somebody singing at home. I didn’t feel like I was missing out on a lot because I wasn’t there.
Interesting.
Jill: That’s an excellent point.
Alison: I’ll just go back and listen to that version of the. Anthem again, come on, just have that playing from now until 20, 24 and all of a sudden you’ll be like, I love everything about the French.
Jill: So after the Paris handover, we had one more piece from Tokyo, which was a family scene and they were playing Claire. And I didn’t know what it was about. This is where I needed the commentary. Cause they’re kind of running around in places and, and looking at things. And I didn’t know what was going on with this.
Alison: I didn’t know either, but I was like, they’re kids, they’re happy. Let’s go with it. Right. Right.
Jill: And then that led to the extinguishing of the cauldron, which you called it.
Alison: It was the most beautiful extinguishing that we have ever seen.
Jill: I will give you that. I, you know, I, I still said, uh, while I was watching everything, still seeing the cauldron on the floor of the stadium.
It felt underwhelming to me, the flame shut up.
Alison: They closed those things that was stunning and so complete. And so well, they thought about when they designed that college and how they were going to open it and light it and how they were going to extinguish and enclose it. That was such a, and I don’t mean this as a pun, a full circle moment, bringing the two ceremonies together.
Visually and geometrically just absolutely stunning,
Jill: which we expected no less from the Japanese and they delivered. They did deliver that, that, that attention to detail. I give you that I still, I am still not sold on the cauldron on the floor. And somebody pointed out to me like, well, then the athletes get to be there with it and they get selfies with it and all that jazz.
And I’m like, yeah, you have a point, but. I don’t know, there’s something above the magnificence of being up in the air, but at the same time, as you say, no better extinguishing of the flame ever, because usually the flame just kind of fades away. And this, as you said, closing, closing the door on these
Alison: games.
Sad, beautiful, sad. And yeah. So a couple other notes I want to make, I had been extremely critical of the Canadian closing ceremonies outfit when it was first revealed like two years ago with the Tokyo drift denim jacket and the white denim pants. And I take it all back in action. Those things were fantastic.
Oh, it was, it [00:30:00] was one of those things where the stagnant picture. Didn’t work, but when you saw people wearing it and moving and doing things to it, like some of the people rolled the pants. Some of the people flip some collars, it was out standing in action. So I admit when I’m wrong. Okay. So you want to know one thing I wasn’t wrong about put your darn masks on it, has your name on it.
Team USA. Come on. What a month, not that hard. I did go. And of course, I’m sure other athletes were doing this as well, but on the NBC coverage, they focused almost exclusively on various team USA, uh, athletes, and so many noses out. So many people just took them off. Didn’t even pretend. And, uh, Put your mask on.
It’s not that hard. I know, I know it’s hot, but heck there was a Brazilian volleyball player who played the gold medal match with a mask on, you can wear it during closing ceremonies.
Jill: Pedro, speaking of volleyball, did you see Haley Washington from the youth volleyball team where they, they focused on her and she was just over WellMed by the emotion of being there in the stadium and at the closing ceremonies wearing her gold medal.
And she. Balling.
Alison: It was sitting on the field just sobbing and they had just played. I mean, it was only, it was, they probably hadn’t slept.
Jill: Right. Well, they only had, I mean, volleyball ended around three o’clock in the afternoon and this was at seven, so they probably didn’t have much time. They probably had enough time to change clothes and get back there because I’m sure it took a long time to stage everybody.
Alison: But. So it was a beautiful moment. And then a couple of her players came and were just sitting there hugging her and they all started crying and it was, that’s what we want. That’s what we want from the closing ceremony, because there was so few athletes, we didn’t see the athletes wearing each other’s clothes.
We didn’t see the dancing in the circle. Like we saw in Rio. Rio had such a fantastic, joyous closing ceremony as did London. I mean, there were no spice girls on buses this time. And other than the pandemic, I feel like this is going to be the black hole for us. We’re going to forget. I mean, you and I won’t forget Tokyo in many ways because of the show, but I think if we do a couple more summer Olympics on the show, we’re going to forget Tokyo.
And that makes me sad. Cause I think Tokyo should have been the one that we’ll remember for 50 years.
Jill: I agree with you, especially on the host side. I wonder if we’ll remember some of the performances yet the athleticism them a little bit more, because I think we’re going to get some of these moments in the Olympic montage.
Over and over that, you know, they’re still showing the Olympic channel still shows Michael Johnson’s 200 meters victory from Atlanta in 1996. I think we’re going to see these 400 meter hurdle performances again. I think we’re, we might see some ShotPut and, uh, They’ll show Simone Biles from this games and some other, I mean, there were a lot of very, very big moments in sporting history that happened here.
It’s just such a shame that they happened, that the whole pandemic happened and really changed how this games is going to be seen.
Alison: Uh, great. And then all the people who, you know, we have to knowledge God sick because these games. Great. There were people who got COVID because of these Olympics and we cannot ignore it.
We cannot dismiss it and we will always be questioning if they should have happened. And then we’ll be questioning. Should they have happened more? You know, the idea of should they have been more open? We will never know. And this will be one of those debates. Like the boycott. That will be a bit of a black mark on the Olympic history.
And that’s sad because two years ago, when we were gearing up for this, you know, we, when we talked to Ken has come about traveling to Tokyo and where I told him was our, about how excited are the Japanese, where this closing ceremony was. So it’s always bittersweet, but this was sad because of what could have been.
But shirtless, Don won a
Jill: medal. We did win a medal. We had so many great achievements by our so proud of the whole team. It’s been, it’s been a great games and I hope, I hope all of [00:35:00] them had a great games as well and are happy with how things went and are ready for the next step, whatever that is, whether they’re going to keep competing or whether or not they’re going on to something else in their lives.
I hope this was. And incredible moment of their personal history.
Alison: So I guess we’re not done with Tokyo. We’ve got para Olympics coming up in a couple of weeks,
Jill: so excited. Well, now that the flame is extinguished on the Olympics, I it’s time to say CYO Nara to these games.
Alison: And I already got them.
Jill: I already got, thank you so much for listening and being a part of this for tweeting at us, for interacting on Insta for being in the Facebook group.
It’s been so much for, for coming up with theories for Mike and Maya.
Alison: Who knew that was going to be like, when you start the Olympics, you never know who the star is going to be protected. Mike and Maya
and Walter, the cat.
Jill: So as we go out, you know, NBC always has a montage at the end of the
Alison: games. Did you make a montage, made a montage? Are you
Jill: serious? I am serious. I made a montage, so we will go out with our audio montage of the best moments from our podcast over the last 17 days. Thank you for listening. Stay in touch, come back for the Paralympics.
We can’t wait to celebrate those with you again, and a big thanks to mercury sunset for letting us use their music. Tokyo. It’s been so much fun to have this as our closing music and, uh, hope you enjoy this. Thank you again. So an era arigato, Konnichiwa,
Alison: Konnichiwa, I don’t even know what day I’m in and it’s only day one.
Jill: It happened. The flame is lit.
Alison: I adored tap dancing and I’m like, I didn’t know. The Japanese were into tap, dancing. So many ankle pants.
Jill: It was safe, but beautiful. And a lot of them. And then Latvia Walker. You do not see Olympic shooters hit, uh, two. Wow. Uh, it was a woman from Egypt to dish was like, and it really sounded like cats
Alison: going at it.
I’ve been watching some sports and I am confused. How so I’ve been watching skateboarding.
I do not know why skateboarding is there.
Jill: This is a weird tournament. I
Alison: don’t like it.
I don’t know. I have Olympic champion.
Jill: Uh, fantastic swim from Australia
Alison: and she blew a kiss to the camera and like the bike. That is a fun domestic podium. I have totally become a softball convert.
How dare you insult my baby? Like.
How have I not been obsessed with this before? This is the ice dancing of the summer. The
Jill: car drives out to the middle of the pitch and then kind of hunts the ball.
You need to go back and watch this
Alison: steps. I can’t believe this
Jill: is happening.
That’s my Lily king slapping.
I try it again with surfing.
It is the race of the Olympics.
Alison: I am having a fantastic time.
Jill: Gall started moving on to.
Where is Marnie nipping today?
It is San Marino first Olympic medal ever
go Shukla Stein.
Alison: I’m a little concerned about all of this park and street style.
Jill: This is the [00:40:00] first time since 2012, that the Korean national Anthem has not been played for an archery medal.
Alison: So she hung in there with the goggles in her mouth.
Jill: One good reason why there are no fans around is that Novak Djokovich might have a temper tantrum and throw his racket at you.
There
Alison: were gymnast flying all over the place. Those spotters were.
Jill: If you have not watched the men’s 400 meter hurdles, just stop the podcast right now. Go pull it up,
saw my first, but
Alison: she’s a beautiful thrower man.
Jill: One of the very few good things about having no fans in the stands is that you can hear the dulcet tones of Jason.
What is up with Mike and Maya,
Alison: those boils out wild. I am a Swedish Viking.
Jill: We don’t want to do a jump off. We will share the gold medal,
Alison: which I thought. It was a beautiful moment. They challenged the challenge. All you need to do is watch the celebration. It was fun. It’s almost like they just assume we’re going to think. It’s cool to look at. So we don’t need to understand.
Jill: Simone Biles has withdrawn. We’ve all been through a pandemic, man. Give everyone a break.
Alison: This is not going to fly. You better get your people in line. We have a playbook use it. This was not a competition you won. This was a competition. You survived.
Jill: Just had a horrible morning with trying to figure out what was on when, where was the right feed that I needed to be watching.
And I just kept missing things. And that made me
Alison: and I was having all kinds of trouble with NBC embargoing fi. In the middle of me watching things. If you watch nothing else, please go watch the Mexicans on their Flashdance. Cause they’re maniacs in the pool.
Jill: Sometimes the best you do is not a medal, but being the best you can be.
That’s what the Olympics is all about,
Alison: but you should not be 12 years old and able to win an Olympic medal. What does that say about your sport? When it’s a raise the ages and protect this? I feel like our Maira novella has come to a ridiculous climax. Plus Don
Jill: is on the
medal
Alison: stand.
Jill: Yay.
Alison: I watched the Madison.
You must watch the Madison. You will have absolutely no idea what is going on. It is the demolition Derby of cycling. It is fantastic.
Jill: Niraj Chopra from India wins gold. It’s amazing. We’re done with competition. So already got.