It says something when a 26-sport day feels manageable. Still, there were some amazing moments in competition on Day 6 at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, including:
- 3×3 Basketball – We’ve got our first Olympic medalists!
- Archery – A cool new feature on the feed.
- Artistic Gymnastics – Men’s All Around competition, plus Simone Biles pulls out of the Women’s All Around.
- Badminton – A big upset.
- Baseball
- Canoe Slalom – TKFLASTANI Luuka Jones starts her C1 competition.
- Cycling – Road Individual Time Trials – Does NED correct the mistakes from the road race?
- Diving
- Equestrian
- Fencing
- Football – Knockout stage is set.
- Judo
- Rowing – Things we’ve never before seen in a rowing race.
- Rugby – Is it a 2nd gold for Fiji?
- Sailing – How are our TKFLASTANIS Stephanie Roble and Maggie Shea doing in the 49er FX?
- Swimming – Who could look upset about a gold medal? One swimmer can.
- Tennis – A change in start times
- Water Polo – A surprising game for Team USA’s women.
- Weightlifting
Plus:
- Weather Watch – A maranovela edition
- Where’s Marnie (McBean, our TKF Chef de Mission)?
- TKFLASTAN Watch
- What Officiating Role Would We Want?
And we sink into the backstory of Mike and Maya, of the Toyota “First Date” ad.
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 Please do not quote from the transcript; use the audio file as the record of note.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. Hello, Olympics, fans, and lovers of shook Tostan and welcome to Keep the Flame Alive, the podcast for fans with the Olympics and Paralympics. I am your host. Jill Jaris joined as always by my lovely co-host Alison Brown, Alison Konichiwa.
Alison: I realized today my sleep schedule is not. See if we had had more test events, I would have realized
Jill: this, but I think we need to test events that were all together at the same time.
Alison: Yeah, that’s the, that’s the problem. But I think even with test events and that scheduling, so now I need to swap my, I need to go to bed earlier and get up earlier and do less catching up during the day. Exactly.
Jill: We had a lot of news about swimming finals being during our prime time and what kind of a big deal that was because normally swimmers don’t swim finals in the morning and that’s what they’re doing in Japan.
But then I, I have now realized that swimming is pretty much the only thing that happened. During our prime time, it’s all catch up from other stuff. And then it’s kind of like, you get to about 10 o’clock at night and you’re like, there’s nothing else on. And then you realize, well, maybe I should just go to bed now.
And wake up early. So I’ve been trying, I got up, I’ve gotten up at like six, the last couple of days. And I’d like to get up at like four or
Alison: five. See, I was getting, I was staying up until like three or four and catching some of the 11 and one o’clock things. But those aren’t really what I want to
Jill: see. No, we need to see the end of the Japanese day because that’s when you get your medals.
Alison: Yes. So I I’m today is going to be. Swapping and confusing for myself. So if I sound a little scattered tomorrow, I’m just putting the warning out. But on the same time, I do want to see prime time because prime time was interesting last night on NBC.
Jill: We’ll get to that when we get to sports. Uh, and, uh, before we get to the action, we would like to remind you about our Kickstarter campaign.
Surprisingly, we got media accreditation to cover the winter Olympics in Beijing. Well, less than 200 days away. And while it’s super exciting to get to go, and we’re, we are thrilled to be able to bring you on the ground coverage, which would, will make a much better podcast for you. The problem is that it’s going to be expensive.
And so we’ve started a Kickstarter campaign to help funded. You can find more. Find out more about it and check out our supporter bonuses. We’re sending postcards from the Olympics. You can get, uh, our viewing guide. Your pet could be our mascot and much, much more. Find out more at kickstarter.com/profile/a flame alive pod.
We’re doing really well. I’m I’m so thrilled. Um, it’s, it’s very touching. We’ve gotten we’re about 17% of the way to our goal. So we’ve had a great start, but we need to keep up that momentum, uh, fantasy league. How is. Sure the stone is killing it.
Alison: And I found out because he joined our Facebook group, he’s around a gains fan.
So clearly he’s a very smart
Jill: person. Okay. Well, there you go. So he has a commanding lead with 324 points. Colibri is still in second with 1 43. So it’s a huge differential. I. Jumped ahead of Patrick from Dean Ray, one 10. And, but he’s still right there on my tail with 96 points. Brackets has started. The fantasy brackets competition has started filling out.
There’s not a whole lot of action so far I’m on top with 40 points. Lisa Brown’s right behind me with 30 points. And then there are five people tied at 20. So get your brackets in. You can find out how to join it. Flame of life, pod.com/. How did the weather affect today? Uh, tennis match times are now pushed back to 3:00 PM starts.
They had been kind of right in the middle of the day. Tennis players were really complaining about the conditions and the heat and the humidity. So those, uh, tennis matches aren’t all tennis matches are now starting at 3:00 PM. You know, I love a good Marin novella story.
Alison: I can’t believe the merit novellas still goes on.
Jill: It will still go on until the marathon is over. So, uh, the soap opera that is the marathon and race walking events, uh, continues in terms of the weather, uh, daily temperatures on Hokkaido, where those competitions have been moved. They are unseasonably. And Sapporo is forecast to see days of 32 degrees Celsius or more almost all of the next seven days.
It’s cooler up in Hokkaido. Can’t guarantee it. Should we have moved the marathon coats? I don’t know. Anyway, moving on. Where is Marnie McBean? Marnie.
Alison: McBean had a beautiful tribute on [00:05:00] Instagram, uh, when she attended the rowing events for her gold medal partner, Kathleen huddle, who died this year. So she had fun at rowing.
She was also on the fan cam at rugby and soccer in Kashima. Ooh, very nice. So her volunteer driver, she has a different one each day. They got some mileage.
Jill: Oh, it’s Kashima far out. I think
Alison: it is. I think from RO she said that two of her, uh, of EDS yesterday were two hours apart. Mm I’m not sure which ones, but she had some time in the car, the
Jill: officiating job I would like to have.
I know the TaeKwonDo competition is over, but I’m still thinking about Taiwan. Officials because did you see any of the TaeKwonDo competition? I did not. Okay. So they are some of the officials who have very nice Tokyo, 20, 20 ties. The men have neckties, and then the women have the, the little abandoned fabric that goes kind of around the neck,
Alison: sorta like the old girl scout ties, where it would
Jill: cross in the middle.
Yes. Crossing the middle. And it’s all this red patterned, uh, Tokyo 20, 20 fabric. That’s. I really like, but what I like about the TaeKwonDo officials is that they got a strong hand signal game going on because they are, there was one female official who was just like, you stand there and you stand there and she’s pointing at the spot that they should stand.
And, and Hursley pointing at the spot. The other one should stand. And there’s a lot of like, I gotta get in here and.
Alison: You got again, another job for mothers of toddlers? No,
Jill: actually it was one where I could channel my own mother and just be like I told you to get in that
Alison: corner. So on the note of officials uniforms, I was watching swimming as, as we do every day.
And the most practical impractical uniform is. Officials who check to make sure that the swimmers touch the wall on the flip are wearing full suits. They were
Jill: not before I noticed this because I noticed their shirts because they had like the blue shirts and a blue with a white Andre kind of thing, uh, early in the competition.
And then a couple of days later, I’m like, huh, they put blazers on.
Alison: Right. And I’m thinking what an impractical outfit, when you are being splashed by pooling. Like this is the time for the ankle pants.
Jill: Good. I mean, maybe they were being confused with volunteers or the, the, the production staff, because I was really surprised that they went from kind of casual polo ish type shirt to blazer full-on
Alison: they need the Bermuda shorts.
That’s the more practical part of the.
Jill: All right. Big day today, not as big as the last couple of days, we were only down to 26 events today. So later
Alison: I have to say it did feel later. I felt like I caught my breath a little bit.
Jill: So three X, three basketball tournament ended today. So
Alison: good. I saw the women, I saw some of the women’s game.
I saw the important part of the women, the
Jill: women’s game. Okay, good. I will say. Okay. So I had on both the women’s and the men’s. Victory games. And I did hear the announcer who said you put the round thing in the round thing. And even Ben was like, what did he just say? But he also said stuff like, you know, they’re taking more shots, more shots than paparazzi.
So, I mean, I think that’s part of his shtick, but that’s not a good part of his patter anymore. Uh, but the women USA beat ROC 1815 for the gold. China beat France 16, 14 for the bronze, uh, that, that, uh, women’s game was scrappy. I mean, ROC was really following,
Alison: well, it seemed like the USA was dominating from the beginning.
They got ahead. Stayed ahead. So ROC got a little desperate is not the right word here in the gold medal match, but they were going for that style of, we got to get in the, in the weeds.
Jill: Uh, and then on the men side, Latvia B ROC at the end with, with just like 26 seconds left on the clock, uh, they 1 21 18 and then Serbia beat Belgium for the bronze 2110, my Serbia.
I know, but they were like gold metal favorites. I know it was a thing. They had a surprise up. To, uh, get put into the bronze medal match. So this gold medal match was also super intense. Latvia was behind. Tiny compared to the ROC team really did these giant guys then stuff just started happening. Uh, one of [00:10:00] the ROC players shoe literally fell apart.
The sole came off the bottom and he sat there on the side. He taped it up. He wrapped tape all around his shoe and went back out there. Then, uh, Crummins from Latvia. He had. Like a big knee brace. And he had his ankle all taped up. He jammed his ankle again and was limping and basically kind of crawled over to the side, taped it up and went back out there.
And then near the end, he landed on it funny again. And instantly he’s like, oh, I gotta get, you know, I can’t play, but yet he grits more tape and starts taping it tighter. Like that’s going to help.
Alison: You don’t go to the Olympics to be a wimp. You don’t
Jill: go to the Olympics to be a
Alison: wuss. The Australian equestrians constantly come back.
Jill: Oh man. So it was really exciting. Came down to the wire and Latvia just pulled out the victory. A lot of fun again, as I think is going to be the common theme too bad. There were not very many fans there. Well, there are no fans there, but they, there were people in the stands, but it was a shame that there weren’t many of them,
Alison: it will be interesting to see with a new sport, like three X, three, and surfing and, and skateboarding, how that affects their longer term viable.
You know, because one of the things with three X three, and when we talked to Dominic Jones about this is the excitement is the intensity is that it’s a great sport for fans to watch. It’s easy to understand what’s happening. And there’s a lot of action. And yet if IOC members aren’t seeing that this time and Tokyo does the support for the sport drops.
Jill: That’s a good question. I wonder if they will be able to think beyond that because there were no fans there and they’re certainly trying with like lighting and music and they’re really trying to create an atmosphere and it’s just, there’s, there’s nothing I will say on the plus factor, you know, a three X three game is only 10 minutes long.
So it is perfect for an Olympics when you want to dip in and dip out of multiple sports a day. Same with rugby sevens. Those games are so short and that’s perfect. And that’s, I think that’s what the IOC really wants to have shorter competitions that are fast and have a fast pace archery on the archery range.
It was early stage rounds for the men’s. Individual competitions, two things I want to point out cause I did turn archery on and the archery feed now shows heart rate data for the archers as they shoot. It is so cool to see what their heart rates at. Oh, I hope
Alison: they carry that over to biathlon for Beijing who, if they
Jill: did.
That would be amazing if they did. Cause that would be interesting to watch. So that was one thing I really liked. I did see a check Archer and they have like baseball caps for, uh, as part of their kit. And the underside of the brim is that same fabric, the blue fabric from the opening ceremonies kit. I knew you would love that.
Alison: I do love that now I got to go watch our tree for somebody who has.
Jill: Uh, artistic gymnastics men’s all around. Final was today and gold went to, uh, Japan, Hashimoto dykey, silver went to China’s Janelle Rue, Tang, and bronze went to our OCS. Nikki didn’t. This came down to the end.
Alison: It did. And it was, it was a great competition in the sense of every rotation somebody else was in the lead, the leaderboard was swinging wildly.
You really didn’t know who was going to win until the end. It was not a great competition in a sense of there wasn’t a lot of not great performances.
Jill: How so? Because I had the feed on while I was watching others.
Alison: So even Hashimoto had a shaky vol. You know, Nagorny made mistakes. There was a lot of, and I’ll give John Rothenberger who is the commentator on the feed credit for saying there was a lot of nickel and diming though.
He did complain about the scoring. He felt like not that the results were inaccurate, but he was very unhappy with the score. And the judges were being inconsistent and harsh
Jill: and there was even an inquiry, uh, Joe Rue Tang, right at the end because they didn’t understand why he got. The score he got on high bar, right?
Alison: Because he sh his start value was one thing. His ultimate score was another, and they were wondering, you know, the two things were not matching up. They didn’t see what [00:15:00] the judges had done. So it was a lot of a step, a little bit of a bobble. I mean, there weren’t, yes, there were crashes. Of course there’s crashes, but not in the, the very top competitors, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t what you want to see in the, all around.
You know, you want to see the absolute best and it was, it was shaky. But man, that high bar at the end for Hashimoto was I’m excited. I am so excited for, um, the high bar finals and the parallel barf
Jill: finals. And it’s great. You know, again, host nation winning a gold, the ortho. Right. So on the women’s side, the all around is going to happen without Simone Biles.
She has withdrawn from competition. You have thoughts.
Alison: I am very concerned about the language we are using around this because what’s happening is something that gymnastics calls the twisties. And what that means is it’s, it’s similar to vertigo slash writer’s block. Okay. If you can combine those two things.
So what happens is, for some reason, when you are tumbling spinning, you lose your place. We, when we interviewed Laura Wilkinson on diving, she talks about this, that sometimes you lose your place in the air. And if you could imagine doing a triple flip with a triple twist and not knowing where you are, the physical danger of that is very, very hot.
Now what causes it generally, it’s going to be some kind of mental block. It’s usually not a physical cause though, occasionally you can have some form of vertigo, some inner ear or some other thing going on. It seems like for Simone, there’s a mental block that is causing this. It’s not exactly a mental health issue.
Oh, she’s not having panic attacks. She’s not having a depressive episode though. That could trigger the physical symptoms that she’s having. She’s not withdrawing because like Naomi Osaka was having panic attacks at the French open she’s withdrawing because. Something’s happening mentally that is causing this physical danger.
I understand it’s a slight difference, but I feel like, you know, because this brings up what I brought up yesterday. If she’s having panic attacks, what is she still doing on the floor? Why is she still doing press conferences? That’s not what’s happening. She’s withdrawing because she can’t perform. Now, why is that happening?
I don’t know. I also have a big problem with everybody saying the world has put pressure on her to be the best. Excuse me. Simone Biles, where that goat leotard, Simone Biles arranged for a seven part. Docu-series about her journey.
Jill: Oh, did she arrange that with Facebook?
Alison: Yes, she did. That was not out of the blue.
She films, all these commercials, she went on dancing with the stars. She puts herself out there as the greatest of all time. And guess what? You put yourself out there and demand that title, which she has done. There’s going to be pressure that comes with that. And people are going to expect things of you.
Jill: I would counter somewhat with. Does she do a lot of the stuff she’s done with all the commercials, because there is pressure from an agent pressure from a manager to you better take this job because your career is almost over. What will you know? Is there a plan after gymnastics for her and she better make her her bank now?
So I think there could be that kind of external pressure and probably just tons of, she probably doesn’t even see all the requests, uh, who knows how she interacts with her social media following. I don’t follow her on social media, but you know that there’s trolls, you know, that there’s a lot of demands on everything and I see it when people write something.
They put out a tweet and they’ll tag the famous person in hopes that the famous person sees it and pays attention to them. Right. I’m sure she gets like hundreds of those a day. If not. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I think. Social media is not the healthiest thing for anybody to be quite honest. So maybe that helps as well.
It doesn’t help. I’m sure she’s gotten pressure from USAID. She’s probably gotten pressure from team USA. She probably gets pressure from NBC and all of this and NBC has done nothing, but build her up all year long. All we hear is Nastia, you know, again, we’ve talked about this before the. [00:20:00] Camera’s focused on her all the time and in a way that does kind of build the pressure.
Maybe she just hit a breaking point, maybe during cause. And during trial, she had a good day. One had a off day too, and nobody quite knew what to do with that. And, and Nastia on the NBC commentary. Again, they were still saying the goat, the goat, the goat. She did say that everybody has a bad day. And we’re just seeing someones bad day, but I wonder if that was the start of the breakdown.
Alison: Yes, I would agree. And that’s my, my biggest criticism of this whole situation is we know Simone had a very bad day. One at Olympics. Her qualification was rough. She’s had bad podium trainings. Her teammates seemed so. Caught off guard when she withdrew. And I think that was really unfair if she was really going through it, she should have shared that with them.
Jill: But yeah, and I don’t know what did the coach
Alison: should, like, they should not have been shocked that she had to pull out because that put those girls in such a difficult position. And, and we talked a little bit about yesterday and they really did when this. You know, they held it together as best that they could and put into.
I mean, Jordan chiles didn’t even know she was going to be on bars and beam. Right. I mean, grace Macallan didn’t yeah. Grace McCowen didn’t know she was going to do be doing her floor routine and they held it together.
Jill: So, yeah. I don’t know, maybe just a switch flipped and she, and when she did that vault, she, that was it.
That was the straw that broke everything. Yeah. I don’t know. It’ll be interesting to see. And I don’t know if we’ll ever find out the full story. We forget. Like she’s still young. She’s still 24. And to be that famous and be one of the faces of the Olympics. And I think that’s what she mentioned on one of the, I think she mentioned it when she talked with Hoda.
Cause I did see Hoda talks. She’s been
Alison: doing a ton of press the past 24 hours.
Jill: So. Uh, maybe she’s just relieved and just like, I don’t have to do this anymore. You know, she didn’t know, wanted to come back. She took time off. She came back, she was doing harder tricks. That felt good, but maybe all of the run-up to the games and all of the commitments that she had to do, or she chose to do.
Just too much. And she didn’t know, and she’s in her twenties, early twenties. So you do stuff like that when you’re in your twenties, you don’t know your breaking point sometime, and you probably think you’re invincible and you’re the greatest of all time. So I’ll work through this at some point and that point didn’t come most
Alison: importantly.
And, and for all my criticism of her, we do not deserve to know the whole story. If she chooses to share that. That’s up to her and I do hope she’s okay. And I do hope Naomi Osaka, who also talked about the pressure is okay. And clearly we need to do a better job. And I say this so many times in so many circumstances, we are not protecting our athletes enough.
Right.
Jill: So Simone is out of the, all around. It’s a wait and see if she will do any of the apparatus finals, because she has raised in. Jake Jade, Carrie isn’t. I wouldn’t be surprised if she just dropped out of the whole
Alison: competition. I don’t see how she can continue given where she
Jill: is, but who knows, maybe she’s going to have enough days off and feel better.
Alison: Well, I hope somebody is taking very good care of her. I,
Jill: I do too. I hope she’s being, I hope she’s got people to talk to that can try to help her through this. Yeah. Moving on, uh, badminton is going on still. It’s still group play. The double mixed doubles are moving onto quarterfinals. So if you’re one of the people who like to tune in near the end, you’re starting to get to a tune in time, but this might be a go back and watch it moment.
One of the biggest upsets in Olympic history, Japanese home. Favorite Kento Mamon. Lost in the group stage. He lost two Korea’s a hail Quang. He match was over pretty quickly, uh, 21, 15 21 19. So one of the big expectations for Japan, not in the tournament anymore. Uh, baseball tournament start. And, uh, first game was Japan versus Dominican Republic in Japan.
1 43. Uh, basketball is still going on. Men played in the group last night. There’s still preliminary play for beach volleyball and boxing. Uh, and canoe slalom had, uh, some heats going on. Uh, [00:25:00] Luke Jones, uh, competed in the canoe slalom, C1, heat, and she is in 11th. The individual time trials for road cycling happened.
Netherlands finally got their gold and make them gluten one gold. A silver went to Marion. Roycer from Switzerland and ANOVA Vander. Bragan from Netherlands won the bronze that’s the
Alison: same. The Dutch writer is the same one who thought she had one goal. Yes, but actually when silver, so finally
Jill: good. Um, the men side gold went to Slovenia’s Primose rug.
Rugelach uh, Tom Mullen from Netherlands, one silver and bronze went to Australia’s Rohan, Dennis, and the diving pool. Uh, we had men synchronized, three meters springboard, uh, gold went to China. Silver went to the USA and bronze went to German. Equestrian the individual dressage, uh, finished up it’s competition.
Goldwind to Germany’s Jessica Vaughn, Brito Vandal. Silver went to Germany’s Isabel vert and Charlotte dues are Dan from great Britain, won the bronze.
Alison: So my two favorite horses got metals again. So Germany’s Isabelle birth with Bella rose and her recovery from injury and Charlotte GGR Dan’s pumpkin, who I think might be the smallest.
In the competition. It’s this cute little sort of Auburn colored sweet little horse. I did not know. I loved horses so much.
Jill: That is one. I do want to go back and watch. I tried to catch up, but the, sometimes the feed is hard to do because the feed is hard to fast forward through because you are constantly stopping for commercials.
Or I’m sorry, you’re constantly stopping for Toyota commercial breaks. And as the games get further and further, I, we are filling in more of the backstory of Mike and Maya, Mike, who is got the broken leg and asks Maya to the school dance via a robot.
Alison: No, I I’m really getting to where I just want Maya to be like, no bike, not going to the dance with someone who can’t even dance with your broken leg and it’s like middle school.
So it brings up all these awful memories and it just keeps going and they just keep showing it to me. Stop mocking me.
Jill: Toyota. Ben doesn’t think he really gets consent from her. I had wind full back and wait for another one to come up because. He asked, like, I was wondering if you wanted to go to the school dance with.
And it was kind of like, that’s a question, but the other problem is no junior high person. So school dance. I wonder if you want to go to the school dance with me, you just go to the dance, man. How many dances are in their town, which I hadn’t even thought about,
Alison: or they call it a name? Like every dance has a
Jill: name, right.
And that’s the Olympic days dance because the sign is in the background. Anyway, it
Alison: would have a short catchy name. Right. Cause you always shorten it. We had, we had a dance that was like the spring Dogwood festival and everyone just called dogwoods. So this would probably just be like, you want to go to rings with me?
There you go. Toyota. You’re making me watch this commercial over and over again. We’re going to get criticism for it.
Jill: We’ll have more on Mike, the saga of Mike and Maya tomorrow. I’m sure fencing a men’s team saber happened yesterday. Korea when the gold silver went to Italy and hungry, took the bronze over to football.
The competition has moved down to the knockout stage on the men’s side. It’s Japan, Mexico, Korea, New Zealand, Spain, Egypt, Brazil, and Cote d’Ivoire. On the women’s side. It’s great Britain, Canada, Japan, Netherlands, Brazil, Sweden, USA, and Australia. A handball is still in group action. Hockey is still in pool action, and I’m really close to starting to tune into more of both of those and tune into hockey for the first time.
Uh, judo, we had the women’s 70 kill, uh, kilograms. Competition and the men’s 90 kilograms on the women’s side. Uh, Japan’s arrived to Zuru one gold Austria’s, uh, Mikayla Polaris, one silver and bronze is went to sauna van Dyke from Netherlands and Medina, Tommy Silva from ROC men, uh, uh, Georgia. Lasha Bakari one gold Edward triple from Germany, one silver Christian Toth from Hungary.
And they, uh, from Uzbekistan one bronze rowing. I watched a lot of throwing yesterday. Did you watch her away? I watched a little
Alison: rowing. I like sports. I don’t know, but are [00:30:00] simple in the sense of the one who crosses the line for.
Jill: Exactly and rowing with the S you know, it’s very methodical in a sense you have a tempo and you, you, the temple may change a little as you speed up or lose your gas, but you’ve got that temple and it’s just, it’s very, I find it fun to watch.
So we had a women’s double skulls. Romania took the gold whole commanding performance from Romania. They were phenomenal. Uh, New Zealand took silver and Netherlands got the bronze in the men’s double skulls, France won gold, just like beating Netherlands by not that much because Netherlands was in control.
Most of the. And they just lost it at the end. Uh, and then China got bronze in the women’s for Australia won gold, Netherlands, silver and Ireland got the bronze. It’s so much fun when Ireland gets a metal because they get so excited. Our
Alison: friends over at Olympic park. I’m sure. Had a little celebration
Jill: for that.
Oh, I’m sure they did. Uh, on the men’s for Australia, one gold commanding, a silver went to Romania and Italy won the bronze. Now that Australia victory is a big moment because, uh, that was the first time in 20 years that great Britain lost that race. So didn’t
Alison: even metal.
Jill: No, no. Oh, and that was the one. No, that wasn’t the one.
There was one of the races, one of the men’s four races. No, it was, it was this one because they didn’t even metal. They started going crooked and all got out of their lane. Almost hit the Italian boat and got back on course. They just fell apart in this. It was, it was inter I like stuff I had never seen before.
And, uh, in the men’s quadruple skulls, Netherlands won gold, great Britain won silver, bronze, went to Australia and I think Italy was doing well in this race and they crabbed badly, which is they caught the ore in the water wrong and just the boat to. And it was really a rough race for them, but it was like things I had never seen before.
Alison: I wonder if that’s, if the water still isn’t quite settled, it couldn’t run with a little property. Yeah. Because from, they had to postpone it. And what did the churn from the typhoon do to things?
Jill: I that’s a good question. It’d be interesting to hear. Should try to find some commentary. There’s got to be commentary somewhere.
And finally women’s to quadruple skulls. China took the gold pull and took silver and Austria took bronze. You know, did you watch any of their victory ceremonies? I did not. Okay. They don’t have the podiums. They go out onto a little floating platform, but there’s, and they all are on the same level. It’s a little strange and doesn’t feel like.
A victory ceremony. Cause they’re all standing there and he’s still
Alison: jumping in the
Jill: water after. No, they didn’t. Nobody jumped in the water. I wonder if it was too rough and they were, they were told maybe don’t jump in the water. Uh, I, cause I would think it’s warm enough where they’d want to jump in the water, but it’s also seems kind of like, they’ve got a ways to go to get the boat back and, and maybe it’s just not.
Location for water chuffing.
Alison: I’ll have to go back and look at the records, but I feel like we are talking about a lot of Dutch metals.
Jill: We, yeah, we are. But I think they’ve been a powerhouse. They’re always a powerhouse in cycling and I think they’re one of the big countries in rowing
Alison: just feels like none of the lens is cleaning up this time.
Jill: What was interesting to me was. Having strong boats, because I do not think of China as a rowing country, but I’m not surprised that China has put money into a rowing program, but throwing competition fun to watch, uh, we’re getting towards the eights. So that’s just, that’s so much fun to watch rugby men’s tournament is over.
And our Fijis and won again for Fiji. Second goal in the Navarro, the islands are celebrating like crazy. It was really good match. So they be a New Zealand, 27, 12, pretty handily. Although the second half the score was really pretty close for rugby and there was no score for most of that second half.
Alison: It was definitely a much closer match than what feeds.
Uh, did to great Britain in the gold medal match and Rio. So clearly the other teams are starting to figure out what Fiji is doing, but I didn’t care. Fiji one.
Jill: I know I was thrilled there and they’re under a different coach now. So w Ben, Ryan was only there for that quad for the [00:35:00] Rio quad. Okay. I don’t know what this new coach brings to the table and how, you know, his, his methods and methodology could be a little different in most of the team is new players.
So it’s that whole building, that team culture. But they had such a strong foundation that I think got laid and, and they know they know how to get gold. They just know how to, they know what it takes to win and that competitive playing for. So congratulations. One of the, the IOC mud member who gave them the metal was from Fiji.
They were prepared. Yes. Last time it was princess Anne and, and cause I think they thought great Britain was going to win. This time they knew, oh, now we’re going to start the women’s rugby tournament go. Fiji Ana. Oh. So excited to watch them play and see how they do, uh, over to the sailing venue. Our Stephanie Roble and Maggie Shea did, uh, three more races.
They placed seventh, ninth, and 16th in day two of competition. So they’re halfway through the whole tournament and, uh, with six races to go, they are in eighth place. Swimming more finals. So we had the women’s 200 free, which, uh, Ariana MIS from Australia 100. They did flash over to her coach and mentioned him briefly, but I wish NBC would stop talking about that.
Cause it does give me the creeps. Uh, but she had a really good race. Silver went to Shabbat, Bernadette Holly from Hong Kong, which was a surprise to me and congratulate Hong Kong is doing really well at these games.
Alison: Yeah, it feels like we’re talking about different countries, which has
Jill: fantastic. I know it’s so exciting.
And then CA Canada’s penny Oleksiak won the bronze penny is now the most decorated summer Olympian from Canada, which so pleased
Alison: to see her do well. These games, she, I had seen an interview where she, um, and I apologize. I don’t remember the reference, uh, talks about her struggles during COVID and it sounded like she had a little bit of a rough.
Mental road. So it’s nice to see her succeeding and getting that because man, is she got,
Jill: yes. Good. Men’s 200 meter butterfly gold went to Christophe. Michalak from hungry. Silver went to Honda tomorrow from Japan and bronze went to Frederico, Federico a burdizzo from Italy. I have thoughts on this. Did you see this?
I did see this cause uh, did you see the end after. Uh, Christophe touched the wall and he turned around and stared blankly. Like I just had the worst race of my life. And over in the, one of the foreign lanes tomorrow Honda is so excited to win the silver he’s, you know, bouncing up and down in the water and cheering for himself.
And then you go back to Christophe and he is just stoned. I have a feeling he was going for a world record and didn’t get that. And maybe that was it. I think that’s what they said, that he was hoping for a world record because they didn’t want to keep going back and see watching it. But it, it was disappointing.
I don’t know what the victory ceremony was like, should I should go back and find that and see if he got a better attitude, but that just made me a little late. Angry wrong word, but miffed off a little bit. Like how, how dare you, you have so much, you were born with incredible talent. You had the ability to, and the means to go to swim lessons and find that talent and be able to travel around the world for it.
And you won the pinnacle race of your sport and to look like you’re pissed off about it. Isn’t it. But happier news. Women’s 200. I am. That
Alison: was a fun race.
Jill: That one I did not see, but Japan’s Ohashi Youi. Gold. And she is now the first Japanese woman in history to win two goals at the same summer Olympics, which is so exciting for her Alex Walsh from the U S won silver and Kate Douglas from the U S one bronze.
Now
Alison: both Kate and Alex are from my neck of the woods. Oh, okay. And surprisingly not getting as much press local. Hm, which surprised me as Karen Smith. And, and I’m not going to call it misogyny on this one. I’m just going to call stupidity. Okay. Because both girls are students at the university of Virginia, and it seems like UVA has claimed that.
Oh, that makes sense. So I think they’re getting a lot of Virginia press, but what was really cute was [00:40:00] just like for Lydia Jakoby the other day, where they showed her high school team and our high school student, they showed the UVA team all nice and their watch party and they just, they were all decked out.
And one guy was sitting in. W before the race started and his leg was bouncing furiously, he was so nervous for them. So they had a little party and they they’ve been friends for many, many years, these two girls. So it was just really nice.
Jill: Yeah. Good race. Um, FA uh, the women’s 1500 meter freestyle made it’s Olympic debut.
Katie Ledecky from the U S won the gold Erica Sullivan from us, won the silver and Sarah Kohler from Germany. One. And that is a long race. I love
Alison: how they show commercials during the race. Like we’re just going to keep showing it, but here’s another Toyota commercial we’re checking in on my end, Mike. And they just, because it’s a 15 minute race and for a swim race, that’s an eternity.
Right. But man was Katie. Ladakhi just such a gracious winner and so much emotion and so excited for her silver medalist.
Jill: Yes. They were sharing that. Yes. And, and it was interesting because Katie also swam the 200 meter freestyle and there had been a little bit of talk over here about. The number of races she was doing and her insane schedule.
And she got a fifth, I believe in the 200 free. She just was not a factor at all in that race. And I was kind of worried and then didn’t realize, oh, her big event is coming up later. Maybe this is a warmup.
Alison: And what was really nice was this is a new distance. They’ve added this, you know, again, because there was concern.
If you let women swim too long, something may happen to them. So this is the first time that this distance has been raised. And in her interview, Katie Ledecky made nice references to a lot of great distance swimmers who didn’t get this
Jill: opportunity. Oh, that isn’t. And we closed at the swimming competition finals wise with the four by 200 meter freestyle relay for the men.
And, uh, great Britain won the gold ROC won silver and Australia won bronze. Great Britain really looked good in this relay. And if you have
Alison: thoughts, well, first of all, yet again, team GB in the pool. Where is this coming from? What did they do in this past quad?
Jill: I don’t know, but good for them. It’s nice to see another country come into the mix.
And
Alison: man, you go back and watch these four guys post race interview. These are guys I want to have a pint with. And my daughter was really funny because she was watching this race with me and she was just like, oh, I want to date them all. I mean, they were just the sweetest kids and so excited. And I’m wondering, this is kind of like kids of Adam PD, you know, like his success has spawned this second generation of, of GB swimmers.
Jill: Uh, so, and then swimming, there were more heats, so we will have more finals tomorrow, table tennis. We are getting to the quarter finals for the men’s and women’s single. So now if you want to start, it’s now time to start tuning in to the action and go to be intense. Uh, same. Standard tennis. You’re getting to the semi-finals for women’s singles and women’s doubles.
So if you’re a tennis fan, start tuning into that. Oh, and water polo hungry, surprised the U S with a 10, nine victory on the women’s side, which was interesting. I may go back and watch that. I mean, the U S is a incredibly strong team, but everybody can lose. And then finally in weightlifting, the men’s 73 kilowatt.
When off and, uh, China’s, she’s young one gold and it’s Waylon, Julio Rubin Mayer paranoia, one silver and Indonesia’s Ramana Erwin Abdulla one bronze.
Alison: So I tried to watch some weightlifting yesterday and it hurts me to watch.
Jill: Where does it hurt you? My knee. Oh, yeah. Yeah. They bend down. They get down real low.
Alison: I don’t mind the screaming. I don’t mind, but man. And then there’s that little part of me that worries when I watch weight lifting that it’s, that it’s not clean.
Jill: Oh,
Alison: that bit. Yeah. And we’re going to get this whole wiped out. But as we mentioned earlier, we have not heard any doping news so far. Now that I said it, we’re going to jinx it.
Jill: Fingers crossed. Uh, okay. Shook down. Watch show post
Alison: on watch. So Luca Jones, as we mentioned earlier, is back in the boat in the [00:45:00] canoe for C1, Connor fields will start his preliminary runs at BMX and Kelly clays and Sarah Sponsler back on the beach against Kenya’s mokoka and Katon bay. Uh that’s actually, if you’re in the east coast, it will air Wednesday evening, like eight or nine o’clock.
Oh,
Jill: okay. Because they have a morning match, correct. Early morning match. Okay. Excellent. Uh, 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 claimant. We love to hear from you, please. Don’t forget our Kickstarter and help us reach the goal of bringing.
The most fun on the ground coverage from Beijing that’s kickstarter.com/profile/flame alive pod. And as we go out to music by mercury sunset, we will say CYO Nara today. Six, thank you so much for listening. And until tomorrow, keep the flame alive.