Day 17. It’s the end of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. On this episode we look at the final day of competition, including the dramatic conclusion to the maranovela.
Programming note: We’ll cover the Closing Ceremonies in a separate episode coming out tomorrow.
Today’s coverage includes:
- Athletics – men’s marathon
- Basketball
- Boxing
- Cycling – Track
- Handball
- Rhythmic Gymnastics
- Volleyball
- Water Polo
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 Please do not quote from the transcript; use the audio file as the record of note.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] Coordinates you out Olympics, 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.
Alison: I am taking my deep breath before I step on the mat for the final.
This is, this is
Jill: long it’s long, but today is the last day of competition.
Alison: Yes, it was still
Jill: pretty fun. It was full because I still haven’t seen everything I wanted to watch. I was up until three o’clock in the
Alison: morning watching last night. So somehow it just keeps
Jill: going I’m right here, you know, and, and. I had finished watching my morning watching before we taped and I handed the remote to Ben, like here, you can watch something Olympics.
And he goes, I’m tired of watching Olympics. Wait, how can you be tired of watching Olympics? I still have a list of stuff to go back to.
Alison: Yes, my family has agreed. They, my daughter said to me, I don’t want to watch any more of this. Like do a bad you’re my daughter.
Jill: Ah, but we have one more day in the U S at least because, uh, The technically the games are over in the cauldron has been extinguished and the flag has been passed it to Paris, and we are waiting for the Paralympics to start, but in the U S they showed the live feed of the closing ceremonies with no commentary.
And tonight in our prime time, we will have the full. Primetime, regular closing ceremonies that we are used to here in the United States. So today today’s show we’ll be covering the competition and tomorrow we’ll have a closing ceremonies, Roundup.
Alison: Well, we had at the beginning, you know, day minus two day minus one, this will be day 17.
Plus one. There you go. There’ll be like the where they had the plan, the, the agenda 20, 20 plus five.
Jill: All right. I like it. Okay. From the followup file we heard from Voco Claire who gave us the lowdown on Norwegian athletics. So the two runners that have won gold for them are definitely not surprises. Carson VAR, VAR home. The hurdler has been winning hurdles for years and has spent the last two years just trying to break the world record.
So. You know, you feel like at the Olympics that this comes out of nowhere, but it really hasn’t. So that’s, it’s always a long journey to these kinds of things. Um, and then Yacob Ingebretsen is part of a hurdling trio of brothers who are very popular in Norway. They have a YouTube channel, they said, um, on prime time that they there’s a reality show about them.
So I wonder if NBC primetime thought the YouTube. The same thing, but I don’t know. I’m looking into this, uh, yeah. Was the youngest, he gets more recognition than his brothers, although until he won the 1500, he had never won a major competition like world championships or Olympics. So they’re usually
Alison: Jonas brothers.
The youngest becomes the most
Jill: famous. So if you follow athletics or you’re going to start following athletics, you’ll find them on the diamond league tour. And then. Norway and Canada and Sweden, they’ve all been developing their athletics programs over the year. So we’re really starting to see the results of that.
Now you think of these countries as winter Olympic powerhouses, but not any more. Excellent. So competition has ended. A new record of 93 nations or 93 national Olympic committees winning medals. The previous high was 87 set in 2008, three nations won their first Olympic medals. So that was Burkina Faso, San Marino and Turkmenistan three nations won their first gold medals, which were a Bermuda Philippines and Qatar.
So it’s been nice to spread the wealth of the. Anyway, if you care about medal counts, because some people do the U S did squeak by China to end up the indisputable leader of the medal tallies, uh, on whole. Us had 39 gold 41 silvers 33. Bonds is for a total of one 13 people’s Republic of China had, uh, 38 golds, 32 bronze, 18 silver for a total of 88.
And then Japan was third with 27 gold, 14 silvers and 17 bronzes. That was a huge for Japan. They just had such a great. Olympics
Alison: definitely got the host boost.
Jill: Yes. Yes. So that was really, really nice. Oh yeah. [00:05:00] Uh, Japan went there 58 medals. Uh, their previous high was 37 in Athens.
Alison: Wow. That’s a big,
Jill: big, big jump.
And they had 27 golds. Their previous high gold was also an Athens with 16, so they didn’t know what they were doing this year. Great. Britain was fourth in the medal count and ROC with fifth. Hm. Um, and some other follow-up news, the, uh, modern pentathlon international Federation gave a black card to Kim.
Reisner the coach of German athlete, arnica for punching her horse in the leg during competition. Uh, the horse was St. Boy who gave a ton of trouble in the equestrian round of modern pentathlon. On yesterday’s show. We talked about the controversy that was brewing over the. Idea of the horseback riding competition in this event, in the first place.
So it’s time for that to be modernized, modernize the modern pentathlon. Um, where has Marnie McBean been, I don’t
Alison: know where Marnie has been. McBean has been, she has gone silent. I hope she’s sleeping now.
Jill: Well, yeah, I do hope she’s sleeping. Cause she worked really hard. All, all Olympics. Um, final day of competition, final officiating or volunteer job that you would like to do.
What would you like to do today?
Alison: I found a great one. For all of my little quirks at rhythmic gymnastics, there are two volunteers who come out onto the floor after each competition and collect any fallen crystals or sequence so that the subsequent athletes do not step on them. And they put the crystals in a special bag so that they can be returned.
And resewn onto the costumes. Cause these are Swarovski crystals. These are expensive and no joke. Yeah. So, yeah, so it all, my little, it needs to be perfect. And then taking care of pretty things.
Jill: This is perfect. How do they get them up with their fingers? Really? How do they
Alison: look like they were picking some up with their fingers?
Some they had like a little, I guess you call it a dust pan, but not really a dust pan. I couldn’t see it. As clearly as I like, but yeah, I think they’re, they’re handpicking these because how, cause it’s carpeting that Matt is carpeted. So there would be almost no way they’re not vacuuming these up. Okay.
See,
Jill: I, I, I, I wondered like if there was a special vacuum or something, but do they take like the thing where, you know, how the, you get bread crumbs off the table at a fancy restaurant? Oh, you
Alison: know what? I didn’t see it close up enough to see if they had something that small in their hands.
Jill: What would be fun is to take the bag of crystals at the end, all your bags of crystals together and see if you can make a whole new outfit with those crystals.
Alison: Well, they use a lot of crystals on those outfits, Bulgaria today. Well, we’ll get to this Bulgaria had full on crystals, the entire dress.
Jill: Holy cow. Um, I watched basketball yesterday and at halftime, you know how they they’re always sweeping the floor to sweep, sweat up and all that stuff. So that players don’t slip well at halftime.
They had two pairs of people with brooms and they would start on either end. And they’d meet up in the middle at half court, and then they turn around and run back with their push brooms and then they turn it. It was like a little relay of sorts almost. And it looked like. The other thing I would do that together.
We could, I mean, it wouldn’t be a good T and T good job. And that was almost like, you know, you’ve run as fast as you can. Cause they were like, they were trotting along pretty good to, to get the job done and you know, you’d meet in the middle and you say, Hey, and then you run back to the other side. The other thing I would volunteer to do is man, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this at certain, at different venues.
I haven’t noticed this be a consistent thing, but I’ve seen venues where they’ve had seats taped so that people don’t sit too close to each other. So they’ve taped the bottom of the seat to the top of the seat. I would volunteer to untape those seats because that is going to be longer.
Alison: There’s a lot of, um, satisfaction and ripping that tape off
Jill: to right.
And getting all of the sticky stuff off. You know,
Alison: you could have a giant tape blob that wouldn’t be fun. Maybe don’t put that on display at the Tokyo 2020 museum. This is the tape, Bob, from all the
Jill: venues, you get a new Olympic sport tape ball. How has our fantasy league doing?
Alison: So, I don’t know if these are final standings, we will put that in tomorrow show as well, but Shola Stan did break the thousand point, mark.
Wow. 10 63 and 24th in
Jill: the whole world. [00:10:00] Wow, congrats. This. I hope they give you a prize for that. I know they’re giving out prizes for the top people, but I hope that goes down from.
Alison: I mean, top 25 is really impressive. Uh, kolibri finished in second for, with four 60 NPS Goa was at 4 43. Brackets. I also don’t know if this is final, but we will check tomorrow.
Show Stan one that as well, uh, with 400 Olympic fan, Dan, eat you out here. Jail at three 50. I mean, at 360, you were at three 50. I felt a
Jill: theft. Ah, well, good job, everyone. That was that’s impacted. Well, I hope we can find something similar for Beijing. I hope. Well, this is nice because the Tokyo organizing committee put it together, but I really hope that Beijing 20, 22 does something as well.
All right. It’s time for what is up with Mike and Maya? This is Mike and Maya of the Toyota first date commercial, where Mike asks Maya out. He’s in the hospital with a broken leg. She is in the school hallway, but. But he can still ask her to the dance because he is on a digital screen robot moving thing that rules through the whole.
Alison: So I am confused about what time of year it is. Oh. Because you’ve got an Olympic days dance. So that suggests since we are playing this during Tokyo, that it is say a hundred days out from Tokyo, which would put them in may. But has he had a crush on her the whole school year and going back to contributors, Ben, when is soccer?
I thought soccer was a fall sport.
Jill: Oh, you have the point. So yeah, if it’s, if it is spring, because it does not make sense to have an Olympic day stance, the whole skateboarding thing could be happening.
Alison: Right. So then if it’s supposed to be before a winter Olympics, yes. It could be Southern California. And that’s why they’re dressed in these summery clothes.
But I would think it would be more wintry looking like they would make it a fake winter dance. So we would see more sort of, you know, fake snowflake hanging kind of things.
Jill: Interesting. That is an excellent point. I
Alison: had not thought about that.
Jill: I do wonder now what time of year it is, because it does look like, well, no, because Maya’s not wearing, it looks like she’s wearing what she’s wearing a short skirt.
She’s got a mini
Alison: skirt and a t-shirt on. So everybody is definitely dressed for warm
Jill: weather, but, well, you’ve got the grunge kids with their flannel shirts that are long sleeved
Alison: I’m wearing in August. Have you never done grunge?
Jill: It’s been a long time. But then they weren’t always our coats what’s up with that.
Alison: Well, it could still be California, which would go with my skateboarding. Okay. Cause we know all skateboarders come from California, as we learned in the skateboarding competition, every single one of the finalists has trained in Calabar.
Jill: Okay. All right. We’ll work with that. We’ll work with that. And we got one more to at least one more day with Mike and Maya.
I, I don’t think I saw this ad at all yesterday, except for when I looked for it myself and I found the, uh, Spanish version of it, which is the same commercial with, uh, voiceovers in Spanish. So that’s Miguel in Maya, Miguel sounds a little more competent than my.
I was talking or I was emailing with a listener Rosie. I don’t understand why he’s got a tennis shoe on, in the hospital because when the, why does the hospital let you wear shoes? Don’t they just keep you in those socks.
Alison: You know that, it’s funny that you say that maybe he was going to physical therapy, like learning how to use the correct.
And they would have put them in a ship. You know, when you have a broken, lower limb, they don’t generally keep you in the sock. If you’re going to be mobile at
Jill: all. Okay. If you have a broken limb, they don’t necessarily generally keep you in the hospital either. Well, yes, that’s problematic. When, when the rest of you looks as good as Mike does, so, all right.
Any more theories, get them in because we’ve got one more day and then we’ll see what happens with the Paralympics. We might continue this. We might not, I don’t know. Well, it, as the spirit moves us,
Alison: I’m sure there’ll be another commercial that will fill
Jill: our soul. Oh, can we start talking about how w because now I’m getting the migraine commercial with the Olympian and the Paralympian, but the Paralympian takes the migraine medicine and the Olympian does.
And why is that? And also the diabetes medicine that, [00:15:00] uh, Laurie Hernandez and her father are in the commercial for, but her father does not take the medicine at all. Even though he’s diabetic, he’s managing his diabetes and other ways, but we’ll say those.
Alison: Lilly we’re coming for you during
Jill: the Paralympics.
I don’t know if we will or not. We will see. I will. I am curious to see how much of the ad rotation shifts for the Paralympics and if advertisers have more special stuff in store for. Okay, before we get to today’s action, we want to remind you about our Kickstarter campaign. This is to help cover our costs, to travel to the winter Olympics and Paralympics in Beijing, for which we surprisingly got media accreditations for.
And those are less than 200 days. Less than six months. We are so excited for the opportunity to go and bring you a podcast experience that only comes with having on the ground cover presence. But since we are a podcast with a shoestring budget, we need your support to get there. So you can find out more about our campaign and check out our supporter bonuses.
We are out of mascots. Our mascots are. I’m so excited. I that’s the one I’m so excited about. So excited. We’re going to have four mascots during the games. And, uh, we can’t wait to share pictures and talk about them with you. And, uh, but there’s still some other great bonuses left. We’re sending postcards from the Olympics.
You could be a production. And, uh, tell us where to go during the show and much, much more. So check it out. kickstarter.com/profile/flame alive pod. We are about at 30% of our goal, which is fantastic. The campaign ends, uh, when the Paralympics end. So. Uh, if you’ve donated already. Thank you so much. If you’re on the fence, keep thinking about it.
Maybe you just keep thinking about it, just do it. Yeah. Just do it. And, uh, please share this with your friends and family and help us, uh, get the support we need to make this project happen. Okay. We finished the Marin novella ended. Oh, oh, oh, I, yeah. Or I would say I.
Alison: A lot of shows in the United States at least have this final episode pressure.
And the final episode rarely lives up to the hype. This was the most crushing blow of a final episode. Heartbreaking. It was conditions. These guys had to run in.
Jill: It was awful. It was awful to want. It was awful to see the temperature. So it was about 80 degrees Fahrenheit, which is about 26, 27 Celsius, but it was 80% humidity at the start.
And the commentators on the feed said, oh, these are about the it’s about the same in Tokyo. Right? Which was heartbreak. And then I kept wondering, I don’t know if there’s anyone who would be able to, who thought of doing this and going to whatever roads they had been working on in Tokyo, because they had worked on technology to have heat reflecting or heat, uh, dispersing roads for the marathon that would make what they ran on much cooler than regular, uh, blacktop.
So it’s something
Alison: we talked about with. A women’s marathon was would there have been more shade in the Tokyo
Jill: route because more and more buildings, more skyscraper. Yeah. Would there have been, so I really do wonder if the route that they had set in Tokyo was actually cooler than what they had in support.
I don’t think we’d ever find that out. And if the IOC knows, I don’t think they would ever, ever share it.
Alison: Someone will look into this. Some. I
Jill: journalist, I hope so. So 106 runners started 30 did not finish this race. It was that bad favorites were cramping up almost immediately that it was just so rough to watch and so difficult to look at.
I don’t know how everybody kept going, but they did. And I did wonder at the end there a clear winner, um, Kenya’s, uh, Elliot won the gold and then there was a pack of three runners. Not that far behind him, they were Netherlands opt into gear and he was waving his friend Bashir, Abdi who’s from Belgium around the other runner that they were running with.
And. You know, if that was me, I would have said. And so Bashir, Abdi got third place and the fourth place was Lauren’s Toronto also from Kenya. You know, if that had been me and we had run that far and gotten that, I would have said, Hey, [00:20:00] Lawrence, let’s hold hands and walk across this line at the same time and force them to give us dual Brontez you’ve made it this far,
Alison: you know, like what happened in the men’s HighJump
Jill: exactly.
Cause that just looked like. A killer of a race. And what else the IOC is probably going to tout is that it was a season’s best race for the majority of the runners, but they haven’t run a marathon the whole season. So of course it’s the season’s best for.
Alison: I wonder, and we won’t know this for several months, you know, once we get to New York in the fall, I don’t know when London in Chicago are
Jill: shared later, Chicago will be in October.
If, if they, if they haven’t changed the schedule because of COVID, Chicago is usually beginning of October. You know, if
Alison: a lot of these guys don’t run.
Jill: Hmm, good
Alison: question. Has they’re taking such a long time to recover from this, right?
Jill: And it just looked brutal and immediately almost everybody over the finish line needed medical attention.
And the medical people were right there with almost everyone with wheelchairs and cooling towels and ice. And please don’t sit down kind of thing. We have to keep you kind of upright and mobile and things. And that really scared me when you get to that level of exhaustion and. Heat distress and these are professionals.
Alison: So now we are roughly 12 hours from the finish a little bit more. So I think we would have heard by now, if anybody has gone to the hospital or suffered any really significant immediate. Medical condition. So, so far we haven’t heard anything. So I’m going to take that as positive, but yes, this was not, this is not a good decision on so many levels.
Jill: Yeah. It just, it was a disaster and I don’t know what it would’ve been. Well, actually, what would have made it better was the expectation that the games had to be. I don’t know if having the games in starting the game sometime in August or late August would have been more beneficial. Weather-wise not sure how that would’ve worked, or if it was just going to be more of the same that would have pushed the Paralympics back.
So who knows what that would have done for a lot of people. Um, but it also didn’t help. I th I believe that, uh, I saw on Twitter from a reputable, reputable source who has worked within the IOC for a long time. The, the bid book that Japan had said that it would, the, the weather would be good.
Alison: So the bid book always says the weather will be good that I remember this from Atlanta.
Oh, you’re right. It was a huge controversy about what the weather they put in the bid book. Does nobody else have access to the weather channel and can see the. Expected temperatures and humidity of these places. I mean, come on. That’s just irresponsible.
Jill: Well, and then you, then it makes you wonder how many IOC members actually read the bid books that at the time costs millions, it was to produce, I
Alison: mean, LA is going to be no better.
Yeah. Maybe a little better, but they’ve had this past summer, they had the hottest summer they’ve ever experienced. So we’re going to be constantly dealing with this until we get to Brisbane. Cause it’ll be winter in Brisbane. Right. And then the poor beach volleyball players will have to do what they did in Rio and wear like coats out on beach.
Jill: Um, okay. So that ended, that began the day began the last day on a, on a disturbing. But it did get better. I will say that competition-wise, uh, let’s move on to basketball. Did you watch this? I did not get to this yet. Okay. I watched most of it and the U S one beat Japan for the gold 90 to 75. And you would think that’s a pretty handy.
But boy, Japan was scrappy. They hung in there and they were close for a while. They were maybe within six points or so, but the U S kind of pulled away at the end. Uh, Japan. Excellent. With their three point shots and boy, could they bounce pass? I, I don’t know why that just surprised. They just used a lot of bounce passes and.
I always think that if we see it much
Alison: anymore and is why you were, that’s why it struck
Jill: with it struck you. It was, it was great. They had some amazing passes, some amazing three points. They were so excited. It was their first medal in women’s basketball ever. So to get the silver, they were thrilled about it.
They had volunteers in the stands [00:25:00] too, to be able to see that. And that was great. Cause they were all happy. They got into see an event and it was, it was just a great game. Uh, over in boxing, we had, uh, the, the last day of boxing competition. So that was, uh, for the last four medals were decided. I also watched this just started watching stuff.
Um, mostly because I wanted to see the women’s lightweight final bout, which was Kelly, uh, Kelly and Harrington from Ireland against Beatrice Ferrara from Brazil. And, uh, you know, During the boat, you could hear Harrington’s coach, I’ll keep your hands up, keep your hands off. And that was kind of funny, but she won her her bout.
She was just so, I mean, balling during the victory ceremony, that was just beautiful and so happy. Ireland’s going crazy. Of course, which is fantastic.
Alison: And boxing. I mean, there’s a long history of, of Irish boxers, right, right, right. That’s a good
Jill: one to get a medal in. Exactly. And bronze is went to Thailand, sued upon, say Cindy and Finland’s Finland got a medal inboxing mirror put Conan.
And when they were leaving the medal podium stand, uh, the bronze medalist has started to walk off and Kelly was like, no, come on up and be on top of the podium. And they did a big group hug. It was really.
Alison: After we beat the living daylights out of each other. Let’s
Jill: hug it out. I know. I see. You’re swinging.
Yeah, of course I might post a lot, uh, in the, oh, you know, what else was great about this, that at the beginning? So, uh, the boxing is in the Sumo arena and they had the traditional Sumo drumming to start off the session. So it’s called Tyco Uchi walkie, and it was really cool to see. You know, go back and watch the first few minutes of the session.
If you don’t want to watch the boxing, just watch the first few to get a little bit of a Japanese culture that we missed so much in these games, in the men’s lightweight. Uh, Cuba’s Andy Cruz beat, uh, USA’s Keyshawn Davis. This was a good bout to, uh, when, when Andy Cruz won, he just did all one on Michael Jackson in the middle of the ring and started dancing a little bit.
He danced on the podium. You used to just so excited to win Keyshawn Davis. He was really cool about winning silver. He’s like, I’m still a champion. Uh, this is great. I’m so happy. Bronzes in the men’s lightweight, went to Harry Garside from Australia and Havana Spock off from. And the women’s middleweight gold went to Lauren Price from great Britain.
So she beat, uh, China’s Lee Chan, uh, who it was a good, it was a good fight because the announcers were saying, look, you don’t have to throw punches to win the fight. You can control the fight and land your punches strategically. And that’s what Lauren Lauren Price was doing. And it was really. And bronze has went to Netherlands and ROC, as in FIRA Mago Medallia, Ava.
And I realized you can’t spell Mago Madell Gava without medal.
Alison: I’m just going to shake my head
Jill: in the men’s super weight, which is the last bout on the ticket. It was a gold going to Bako dear yellow law from Uzbekistan. He beat Richard Torres Jr. From the U S and bronzes went to great Britain’s Frazier Clark and Kazakhstan’s comms. Shabak Concord, BF, and, oh man, I didn’t know who was going to win the gold medal.
And I don’t think they knew because. Yellow law was so surprised. He just started balling. He balled all through the medal, Sarah. It was so he was so just so excited, but that was a good
Alison: giant mountain of a man.
Jill: I know sobbing. I know I’m a unanimous decision, but it was a tough fight. And he did, uh, give Richard Torres like a standing eight count and to have a little blood out coming out of from around his eyes.
So I think that helped seal the deal there. Moving over to track cycling. Ha
Alison: oh, I watched so much, if this, I could not go to sleep until I saw the end of this
Jill: and please, can we start having more track cycling on television or else we need to figure out what the track cycling circuit is. And maybe that’s, they’ve got races online because it’s so much fun to watch.
So we did today. We had the end of the men’s Kiran races. We had the women’s sprint races and the women’s omnium, which that is a four race. Yes, four races. We had to put track cycling to the top of our list for Paris, because if they have the omnium again, cause that’s a hard race to understand. And there’s [00:30:00] a lot of you get points throughout a race for different sprint victories.
The, some of the points you get across all four races, determines who the winner is. One of the race, one of the races I like is the elimination because you start off it’s
Alison: the musical chairs. Yeah. I’m cycling because when you do the sprint section, the last person gets eliminated. I
Jill: know it’s so fun. And it’s so easy to understand.
Person
Alison: who’s last place you roll off.
Jill: And then in the, which was the one, there was one of the races. It wasn’t the last, it was in the points race, right? No, that was a fourth. Was it the tempo race, the one that had the huge, huge crest. Cause I w when I saw your note here, I was like, oh, I have to watch the whole thing.
And then nothing happened at the end of the omnium. There was, uh, like each of them, it
Alison: must’ve been the race before, because then I got embargoed at the very
Jill: end. Oh, okay. Because I think Japan went down, I think Japan went down and she got back up and could come in. And then I had questions about
Alison: nine riders went out.
Oh yeah. Okay.
Jill: Yeah. So one of the races, and I cannot remember which one it was, but it might have been the, the, it wasn’t the points race. It might’ve been the tempo race. There was an enormous pile up crash. Even they took out one of the officials in part of this race and I take it out on a
Alison: stretcher. Yes, he
Jill: was hurt.
And that, that was just unbelievable. The big, the big pile up. And they still kept racing around this.
Alison: So the worst part of it, it, nine writers were involved, but the worst parts of me was at the very end of the crash. The Japanese rider comes in and she’s trying to avoid people. And she ends up riding over the Belgian rider who was on the ground.
You could see. And then of course she goes down because you can’t write over a person and not fall down, but you could see the horror on her face as she saw the writers. Sliding in front of her. And there was nothing she could do. There was just no way to avoid it. And that was the way this crass was. It started just, you know, two writers clipped each other as one was going up the ramp and there were, they were riding so closely together and the riders just started spilling across the whole track.
So everybody got involved except the few in the front that it happened behind
Jill: them. Yeah, that was, that was very intense. And they had to do they stop. I think they stopped the race because they had to repair the track for this, because, and that to me reminded me of short track when they bring the ice out and they fill in all the holes.
I have to fill in all the holes because the track is wooden and it just splinters when people crash into it. So now I want to know about the track repair in this Woodinville. Because it looked pristine when we got there. And now it’s just kinda messy. Let’s go through, uh, in the men’s Kiran. Great.
Britain’s Jason Kenney one gold and, uh, Malaysia’s one silver and bronze went to Netherlands. Harry Love raisin in the women’s sprint. Canada’s Kelsey Mitchell won gold, which is really good. The Knights announcers were so excited to have, uh, Canada. Uh, becoming a strong, stronger presence in track cycling Ukraine’s, uh, Alena star.
Cova when silver and, uh, Hong Kong Lee, why HSA won the bronze. They couldn’t stop talking about her pink. It’s
Alison: going to needs, they need something to talk about during those 80 relapsed races
Jill: and the women’s omnium Goldwind to us is Jennifer Valenti. Silver went to Japan’s Kaji, Hari Yumi and bronze went to Netherlands, Kirsten world.
And you know what we, I noticed early on in the track cycling and we forgot to talk about it is the man who rings the bell. To signal the last lap or a sprint lap, the lap before the sprint lap, he’s got a little mirror TWI plus Xi thing on his right shoulder as he worked the whole games.
Alison: Right. So I didn’t know if that was just sort of like a lapel pin or did he use that to silence the bell after it should be quiet?
Like was that a
Jill: month? No, don’t know we need Bellingham next time. That beautiful. It was beautiful. Um, in the handball stadium, France, both the men and the women taken golds France beat ROC 30 to 25. And for the bronze Norway defeated Sweden 36 to 19 rhythmic gymnastics. I couldn’t, I just couldn’t. I might try, I keep thinking, oh, I’ll try to go back.
Cause it sounds like it was pretty crazy, but I don’t know.
Alison: So there are two programs, one where everybody has a ball and then the [00:35:00] second program, they have both hoops and clubs involved. So that made it a little more interesting.
Jill: Sorry. Interesting. Okay. Some very
Alison: interesting musical choices. We had the orchestral mashup of Brittany Spears.
Ooh. That was kind of interesting. They use a lot more funkier music. In in the team. Okay. There was also music from the Spartacus ballet, which I didn’t even know there was a Spartacus ballet, neither die, but that was the Bulgarians and their little dresses were, as I said before, jam packed with red crystals, your bag cleaning up the mat after that month.
Would have been a disaster, but there was a huge upset in this competition. Bulgaria did win the gold first-time Russia’s last aro, sleet ROC hasn’t won in over 20 years. Wow. And Italy took the bronze. They were thrilled. They were just show excited. Yesterday. You mentioned about inquiries. Basically. Every score got an inquiry.
Jill: Really?
Alison: Yeah. Every team was heading over to that inquiries desk, not a clean competition, some balls and clubs were
Jill: flying. Let’s see, that kind of makes me want to watch it, but I just. When every score is challenged, really? Do we not trust the judges or are you just trying to wrangle? Is that just, are you trying to wrangle more points or are you trying to do something psychologically to the next team to make them wait or physically because their bodies, they have to keep their bodies warm for the routine.
Alison: So yet again, another job for mothers with toddlers.
’cause they just need to tell these coaches to sit down, shut up, take their scores. Asking 15 times is not going to get you another 10th of a point, but surprise, surprise. ROC is crying, foul and saying both the, that they were robbed of both Goldman. Interesting in the individual and the team event. So this is not, this is, you know, we said before that or other, I said before that artistic swimming had that ice dancing in the nineties feel, oh no, it’s this.
And that is not a good comparison. That is not something you want to be.
Jill: No. Well, I don’t think rhythm rhythmic gymnastics. It’s really something you want to be either. But there we are,
Alison: you know, who you want to. friends’
Jill: cars cry before the gold medal match between USA in Brazil and volleyball. NBC talked with carts cry and just, what was he thinking? And he didn’t stay on very long because he was pretty much like they’re there it’s their game, but he started tearing. And I can’t remember what he said, but, but then Ben goes, why is he crying?
And I’m like, that is Karsh cry. My 1984 boyfriend don’t do that to me,
Alison: this meant so much to him. It almost felt like this meant more to him as a coach and what he’s done with these pliers than his own victories.
Jill: I think so. And this is the first gold for us. Women’s volleyball. And that is a huge achievement as well.
Um, Brazil played well, I was surprised that it wasn’t closer. I’m surprised we didn’t go to four or five sets. And you could tell when they were down to their last time out in the third set and they were down in points, you could hear the coach just sounded a little defeated and you could start seeing it on the players’ faces that they knew they had lost everything and they still have.
Six seven points to go, but they still have a little way to play, but it just wasn’t their
Alison: night. So watching cars on the sidelines reminded me of the dad. Who’s the coach of the elementary school basketball team, because you know, he’s got that silver Fox gray hair and his little half reading glasses and his clipboard and the whistle around his neck and his polo shirt.
And I’m thinking. It, it felt like he was very paternal with his players and not in a dismissive or, or infantilizing way that he really loved these girls and wanted them to do well. Like a proud Papa.
Jill: Nice rounding out the podium for the volleyball tournament. Serbia defeated Korea three to. In water polo.
That was the last tournament on the schedule. It was the end of the men’s competition. So for the seventh and eighth place in fifth and sixth place, uh, classification matches Italy, uh, beat [00:40:00] Montenegro, 18, 17 Croatia beat us 14 to 11. And then in, uh, Serbia, beat Greece who had. I’m very strong in this tournament.
They won 13, 10, and four golden, silver and hungry defeated Spain nine to five for the bronze,
Alison: I mean, Serbia, Greece, hungry. That is a water polo podium.
Jill: Definitely. We would like to take a quick moment to thank all of our Patreon patrons whose ongoing financial contributions help keep our flame alive. If you are interested in supporting us on an ongoing basis, please check out Patreon.com/flame alive.
We’re done with competition.
Alison: I know, but we’re not saying goodbye yet. We’ve got one more day, right? Go through all the beautiful
Jill: ceremony. I hope it’s beautiful. I’m worried because we’ve been told that the commentators will be Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir and Terry. Is that who goes with them and that’s our in the U S that’s our figure skating commentators.
And, uh, they are quite the personalities, so we will see what they do. It’ll be interesting to see which of our , we’ll get to go to the closing ceremonies. So we’ll, we will be on the lookout for any on the field and, uh, hopefully it’s nice. I’m looking forward to it and we’ll see what we’ll see what, how.
Fingers crossed
Alison: exactly. But you know that when they close, when they turn off the culture and they’re probably going to close it.
Jill: Oh yeah, probably.
Alison: You can cut this out, but I want to tell the story. So when I was a kid, my favorite show is the magic garden. And at the end of the show, like at the beginning of the show, they would open these windows and the camera would come through.
And at the end of the show, the camera would pull out and they would close the windows and I would cry. So for awhile, my mother banned me from watching the show because she couldn’t handle the toddler meltdown. So I think when they close the call, I have no doubt. There’s going to be some tears,
Jill: but don’t melt down.
Please. Don’t melt down. There might be
Alison: a little bit of a toddler tantrum happening
Jill: in my house tonight. I can’t say no more Olympics for you. I just can’t wait. I need you for this.
Alison: Oh, mom, I’m sorry.
Jill: Okay. Well, as we prep for whatever will happen when they, when they extinguish the call and when we will say CYO Nara, as always, you can email us@flamealivepodatgmail.com. Text or voicemail us. Oh, Hey. We got a text from somebody who’s got DirecTV and they’ve had no problems with embargoes.
Huh? I don’t even know what to think about that. And it didn’t matter whether they were on, on the computer or on a television set. No problem with direct TV. Thanks. Thanks NBC. Uh, but you can text us to 2 0 8 3 5 2 6 3 4 8. That’s 2 0 8. It don’t forget our Kickstarter and help us reach the goal of bringing you on the ground coverage at Beijing.
That’s kickstarter.com/profile/a alive pod. So as we go out to music by mercury sunset, thank you so much for listening. And until tomorrow, keep the flame alive.