With Simone Biles out of the artistic gymnastics competition, all eyes were on the women’s Olympic All-Around. What happened? What does Alison think of today’s leotards? Listen to find out!
Along with artistic gymnastics, we also have competition updates on:
- Badminton
- Baseball
- Basketball
- Beach Volleyball – TKFLASTANI Kelly Claes competed!
- Boxing – TKFLASTANI Ginny Fuchs competed!
- Canoe Slalom – TKFLASTANI Luuka Jones competed!
- Cycling – BMX Racing – TKFLASTANI Connor Fields competed!
- Fencing
- Golf
- Handball
- Hockey
- Judo
- Rowing
- Rugby
- Sailing
- Shooting
- Swimming
- Table Tennis
- Volleyball
- Water Polo
We also have a sobering Tokyo COVID-19 update, what happened to some (some? Like 4000) Opening Ceremonies volunteer bento boxes, and we find out how many baseball players it takes to break one of Athletes Village cardboard beds.
Plus our popular segments:
- Where’s Marnie McBean?
- What Officiating Role Would Jill Want?
- What Volunteer Gig Would Alison Want?
- TKFLASTAN Watch
- Fantasy League/Brackets Update
And our new segment “What’s Up with Mike and Maya?” of the Toyota “First Date” commerical.
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 Please do not quote from the transcript; use the audio file as the record of note.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] Konichiwa, Olympics, fans, and lovers of shiftless, Don. 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 wanted to make sure to thank some people, both listeners, Patrick and John reached out to me and helped me get.
Streaming squared away
Jill: or you’re all good. You can get that four screen, uh, apparatus feed. I could
Alison: get it. I don’t know if I wanted to get it, but I, my street, my streaming is, is working when it wants to, but it no longer is because I don’t
Jill: have access to it. That’s good. I know I could leave this for gymnastics, but it’s feed talk today.
Again, I had the feed with commentary on my computer and the four, four apparatus feed on my. Television. And there was an even longer. Between the two, which was even better because I could, I could watch and go, oh, watch the replay and go, huh. And then watch the full thing again.
Alison: I don’t know. Cause a lot of, uh, people in the Facebook group have been talking about the multi screening.
I can’t multi-screen one
Jill: at a time. Oh, that’s so interesting. I mean, I am finding that it’s very hard sometimes to I’ve had like three going on, but sometimes it’s the third is really something that’s on for background. Yeah,
Alison: I do not have that kind of skill
Jill: level. And I think it’s much harder when you’re thinking about many more sports.
First off that you’re thinking about in your head, plus there are for each of us two social media platforms to deal with and. Don’t even mention all of the other news that’s you should read and talking with fans and listeners and it’s, it’s just, it’s a lot to keep track of, but
Alison: honestly, it’s the best kind of chaos I’m having a great time.
I’m having a fantastic
Jill: time. I am too. And thank you to everybody. Who’s new to the Facebook group and who has been commenting a lot. There are so many great conversations there. Check it out. Keep the. Podcast group on Facebook. Uh, and before we get to today’s action, we’d like to tell you about our Kickstarter campaign.
We are going to be on the ground at the winter Olympics in Beijing. That was a big surprise to us getting media accreditation. The surprise part is that it also costs a lot of money to get there. So we are having a Kickstarter campaign and we are really excited for the opportunity to bring you. A very unique podcasting experience.
And that’s what one that only comes with having an on the ground presence as a podcast that is an independent outlet. We need your support to get there. Find out more about our campaign and check out our support or bonuses. Uh, you could tell us where to go on a given day during the Olympics or Paralympics or your pet could be our mascot.
Check it out. kickstarter.com/profile/flame alive. How’s our fantasy league doing
Alison: well. I don’t know how the whole league is doing, but I’m doing bad.
Jill: Well, it is the top three are unchanged from yesterday. We still have stuff. My, uh, you know, just miles ahead of everyone Coley breeze. And second, I am still in third, but India delight has moved up to fourth and India delight.
Thank you for playing because you are from India and I’m so excited to have, uh, an, uh, Indian fan playing along with us, Brett. I’m still leading, but the rest of the field is starting to shake out. So behind me is Olympic fan Dan, and then Cholestin and mega Beth. They all have 70. And then Lisa Brown is an extra 60.
Alison: I need to talk to Lisa about her team name. That was kind of lame.
Jill: What, what is her team name? Well, I’m just saying she for username, but even
Alison: still, she needs to do.
Jill: There’s still time to get in on the fantasy action. Check out flame alive pod.com/tokyo for the details and the pin numbers. You need to join our league. COVID watch. So this is not good news. Tokyo reported an unprecedented 3,177 cases of COVID. That is the capital’s highest ever daily count. The Olympics also had its highest daily count with 24 cases, bringing its cumulative total to 1 93.
So that’s not great news. Some of the athletes have protested about the isolation conditions they have, which is completely legitimate because they are in these tiny hotel rooms. No fresh air. They can’t open the windows and the hotel rooms, adult, and they can’t get out because they are being quarantined.
And that’s been a real frustration for some, uh, one of the athletes from Netherlands protested [00:05:00] sat outside the hotel room until she could get fresh air. And it was like, now she can get supervised fresh. For 15 minutes, the windows are bolted. Yeah. That’s really not well thought out. And it’s really tough conditions and it’s already gotta be tough to have your, if testing positive, ruined your chance of competing, that’s already something just so tough to deal with.
But then you’re put into basically a little prison room and. Told the, suck it up. So,
Alison: so speaking of ruining chances to compete, did you see Sam Kendrick’s? So the world champion rating pole vaulter, American Sam Kendrick’s tested positive. So he is out of the competition. This is so far the biggest name that has tested positive and, and been taken out of competition.
So I will be interested in the next day or two as the, uh, track and field athletes start to
Jill: arrive. Right. And you have that crossover. Going on. Uh, it’s tell me, Alison, where is Marnie McBean today? Well, Marnie
Alison: McBean has been enjoying many robots. She’s been at tennis, rugby, basketball. They took the Canadian moose outside to take pictures of it with the rings.
They sneak out to the gate of the village to give pins to the families who, who gathered there with signs. She said they were very careful everyone’s masked and her, she has discovered her favorite bathroom that has a baby holder.
Jill: Why is that her favorite?
Alison: She loves the baby holder. She thinks that’s amazing.
Need to go holding a baby, put the baby in the baby holder.
Jill: What officiating job would I like to do today? I thought long and hard because I had something planned out, but I can, I can do that another day. I was watching some canoe slalom, and I think it would be interesting to be someone who watches the gates to see if the paddlers touch
Alison: them.
See, now my volunteer job would be to help them take the boat out of the water when they’re done. I liked that job,
Jill: but I like it too. We can just hang out at canoe slalom together. It looked like such a lovely
Alison: venue.
Jill: And that’s going to be, I mean, that’s a permanent installation and before the games, they had it open for the public to be able to use it.
So I hope that the public goes to continue to use it afterwards and that, uh, paddling gains a little bit more prominence in Japan. That would be really nice. All right. Uh, okay. We have to introduce a new segment that we started yesterday, but I’m making it an official segment. What are Mike and Maya up to?
What’s the deal with them? So Mike and Maya are the two junior high kids who are in the Toyota first date ad that I see approximately 50 to 100 times a day. I am so sick of it already. I was sick of it on like day two, but I am really sick of it and they just have gotten in my brain. So I wondered today is my, I gotta go to the school dance with robot screen Mike, or is Mike going to get out of the hospital before the dance and that they can go in person?
’cause I, I didn’t quite understand. I mean, Mike was rolling down the hall and his robot screen, even though he’s physically in the hospital, but is he also just going to class to on the regular while he’s in the hospital or is the robot screen special? Just to ask my out.
Alison: Okay. I thought the robot screen robot screen Mike was attending school.
Jill: Okay. That could be, I didn’t know. I don’t
Alison: think he got issued the robot screen just to pick up
Jill: checks. You never know, but will he be out or out of the hospital in time or is Maya going to the dance with robot screen mic? And then the robot
Alison: would deliver the flowers, the little corsage. It would be like, have a little draw in the robot.
Jill: Right. And if it’s the Olympic days dance, the corsage has to have like Olympic color. Five
Alison: flowers in the shape of
Jill: rings. I would take it all right. If you have opinion, we’ll have a link to the ad in everyday show notes. In case you have not seen this 25,000 times, but if you have theories on Mike and Maya, please send them to us@flameoflifepodatgmail.com news from the village.
A viral video. That was not so good. How many Israeli baseball players does it take to break one of the cardboard beds in the village? Of course it
Alison: was the baseball players who came up with us.
Jill: It takes nine. So the Israeli baseball team basically got on the bed and jumped on it at the same time and it broke the viral, got put on Tik TOK and other social media.
It has since been deleted at the request of the Israeli national Olympic committee, [00:10:00] who is surprised at that? I mean, I can get, Y I honestly can get, you got athletes who are in their twenties, probably they’re all in their twenties and you do goofy things to try to figure out like, oh, we’ve got these cardboard beds.
We already know you can jump on them, but how can you break them? And they found out prank that got a lot of critics.
Alison: Luca Jones, uh, posted. She had torn part of her. How’d you do that? I don’t know. She just, part of it was, had a tear in it. So I don’t know if she hit it with a bet. I mean, we’ve all scratched furniture.
So I think it’s the same equivalent,
Jill: but maybe she was trying to work out her chest muscles before their competition.
Alison: She hit it with a paddle. I
Jill: don’t know. And then the Asahi Shimbun reported that a representative of the organizing committee had to apologize because they. Disposed of like 4,000 meals before their expiration dates at the venue for the opening ceremony, these were, uh, meals that were supposed to go to volunteers and they didn’t have volunteer.
They didn’t have enough volunteers and they didn’t need the food and they overestimate estimated demand as well. So the discarded food is going to be reused as animal feed and they’ve changed their procedures for ordinary ordering food. All right. Let’s get to today’s action. Um, archery continued on with early stage, uh, eliminations in the men’s and women’s individual tournament, artistic gymnastics, big day, big day.
Alison: This was not a competition you won. This was a competition. You survived, you
Jill: know, that’s a good way to put it. It was a good competition. People did well, but it also seemed like there were a lot of falls and stumbles and it was just, are we putting in too much difficulty to get the points and not being able to do that level of difficulty cleanly?
Alison: So back in 2008 and 2012 for the women’s all around, I remember the commentators at the time saying if you make a mistake, you’re. Because any fall, any stumble, any error of consequence, the competition was so tight and the competition was so clean. And in this time your silver medalist had two major out of bound steps on her floor routine, right?
People were falling off the beam, falling off the bars, which you do not see very often in all around finals, out of bounds, steps, vaults going out of the landing area. It was unreal how many mistakes were happening and how strange the lineup was? No Romanians, the Germans, not a factor, the Chinese, not a factor.
It was just such a strange competition.
Jill: Yes, but as soon as he rose to the occasion, she got so many landings. She was just solid, solid, solid. She won the gold she’s from America. Rebecca Andraza from Brazil, won the silver Brazil’s first female gymnastics. In history. So that is super exciting for her. And then, uh, Angelina Mellon Melnikow Cova went from ROC, won the bronze.
And I was really surprised when, uh, Andraza was on the floor for her final rotation. And she was out of bounds. I thought, oh, she is out of the metal race only to find that no, everybody else had made so many errors that. She stayed in silver.
Alison: The other thing I want to mention is I think we have hit maximum gaudiness on the leotards.
Jill: Who did you think was God, just all
Alison: of them. We have beaded. We have colored, we have gone to bizarre color combinations. We have hit 1987 senior.
Jill: You’re talking about Spain, Spain, head black, and like neon yellow, Spain,
Alison: Belgium, the metallic pink of ROC. Can we just go back to the days of a quiet leotard with your colored stripes?
- I don’t think so. I don’t care if I sound like get off my lawn. It was, it was too much and it was distracted.
Jill: Um, I did like the Germans unitard because one of the Germans did where there their unitards and I thought that was very nice.
Alison: It looked great on the beam. The line it gave her was really nice.
Jill: One interesting note is that a Canada’s Ellie black with drew from the competition before it started a siting, a spring to. I wondered if this was the Simone factor at play, where if [00:15:00] Simone hadn’t withdrawn from the all around would Ellie with a sprained dang. Just taped it up and sucked it up
Alison: and competed.
She needed some tape from the lad fee and basketball player.
Jill: She also needed some tape, I think from one of the ROC gymnast who just, somebody took surgical scissors and basically sliced all the way up a cat that was
Alison: angling. Mel Nicola, who was just hacking through her ankle taping.
Jill: Oh, but I did wonder what it was that a factor.
If, if somebody else withdrew for health reasons, did it make sense for somebody else to say, oh, my my ankle is really not good enough to go. And I would rather be able to walk in 10 years, then compete in this competent. Let’s move on to badminton. There is I have to go back and watch this cause there was another upset in men’s doubles this time, Malaysians Aaron Shia.
And so we’ll see defeated the dominant pair that’s been dominant for years. Uh, Indonesia’s Marcus for now, the Gideon and Kevin, Kevin Sanjaya, uh, school meal. Uh, they’re called the minions for sorry, which I also want to find out why, but I
Alison: assume it’s because they were yellow shirts.
Jill: It very well could be.
Uh, this was the first time that she and Nique beat them in eight matches. So they 1 21 14, 21 17. Huge, huge upset baseball is still underway in the opening round. Uh, Korea beat Israel, six to five
Alison: because the Israelis were so busy jumping on
Jill: the bed. Yeah. Basketball group play continues, but there are just a couple of games left.
So in the standings, on the men’s side, Slovenia and Spain have advanced to the quarterfinals. France, USA, Australia, and Italy are all sitting pretty in the standings, but have not yet moved on Germany and Argentina are on the bubble on the women’s side. Advanced to the quarterfinals yet, but Spain, Canada, USA, Japan, China, and Belgium are sitting pretty Australia, France and Serbia are on the bubble.
And you said there’s a robot
Alison: during the halftime show. Marnie McBean posted a video. There is a robot that comes out, shoots baskets, turns around lifts, its arms and celebration rolls across the. And I got to keep the crowd crowd entertained during halftime. I mean, somebody built this for the halftime show and they were going to use it.
There
Jill: you go. I will be looking that up because as you know, I like the robots, uh, beach volleyball. We are still in preliminary action, but our shift Sistani Kelly clase and her partner, the animated, Sarah responsible beat Kenya two to zero
Alison: dominated, dominated. Oh, killed.
Jill: Moving on to boxing heartbreaker.
Jenny Fu Fuchs are shuffle astonished. Last two Bulgaria’s Stoica Kristeva zero five. It was a unanimous decision, but she, I mean the first two rounds were very close. You’d have three judges for Jenny and two for Kristeva and then on one side, and then the other side would be the reverse. So I thought it was a pretty close match, but each round.
Kristeva just squeezed by Jenny. So
we’re still proud of you, Jenny.
Alison: You did a great.
Jill: Canoe slalom. Uh, it was the women’s C one semi-finals and finals. The, this is the first time that the C1 has been in the Olympics. So that was really exciting. Gold went to Australia, Jessica Fox. Great. Britain’s Mallory Franklin when the silver and Germany’s Andrea here at SIG won, the bronze are shapeless Donnie, Luke Jones finished 13th in the semi-finals.
So she did not qualify for the final. She did not look happy about that.
Alison: She got three penalties in her semifinal run,
Jill: and one was up top of the course to right first gate, I watched most of the semis and I got to say the first peddler was 10 sweet from China. And she scared me so much because she did two marrow rolls her.
She had such a hard time. This course again, looked so different. When the paddlers were on it, did the
Alison: whitewater seem more extreme to you than it did in kayak? It felt like they turned up the
Jill: jets maybe. Cause there wa when the, in that part in the top where they again had the, the gate where you go upstream, you have to go across the jets and go upstream again, and then back across the jets to go downstream.
And they’re all kind of very close together. It really did seem. A [00:20:00] lot of paddlers were struggling to get across that whitewater, but it looked, it looked tough. That whole course looked really tough. This time we will. I got to say on the list, talking to a course maker because they, and the interesting thing is they don’t get to see that course until it’s like the day of competition, so they don’t get to practice on it.
They don’t end. They just have to look at it and work out mentally how they have to paddle the course. As Luca told us, when we talked to her, it was. Moving on to cycling. BMX racing has started. I am so excited because I love you have x-rays. And our shook Listonic Connor fields qualified for the semis.
Um, he was, if not the leader, the next below, he honest to Pete, I watched several heats and they had to do three runs. And on one of his heats, he was just so fast, not, not just compared to his heat of racers, but like you could tell a huge difference from the heats before him. So I’m super clear. The women are doing well as well.
Um, so the, uh, we will see the semi-finals and finals, I believe are coming up tomorrow. I won’t be on the edge of my seat for that one. Don’t fall.
Alison: Don’t wipe out
Jill: a fencing women’s foil team action went on, ROC won the gold France, won the silver and Italy won the bronze. They beat the U S 45 to 23. For that match up golf started.
Moving on to handball preliminary, uh, Browns are still going on, but group play is about to end within the next couple of days. So again, looking at the standings on the men’s side, France, Spain, Denmark, and Sweden have an advanced to the quarterfinals. Norway, Germany, Egypt, and Portugal are all sitting.
And the standings on the women’s side, Norway and Netherlands have advanced to the quarter finals Montenegro at Japan, Sweden, Spain, Brazil, and France per city. In hockey action. And this is something I want to go and watch because India played Argentina and I want to see the Indian men play hockey before the pool play is over.
So we are, again, we are getting to the end of pool play and on the men side, Australia, India, Belgium, Netherlands, and great Britain have qualified for the quarterfinals. Spain, New Zealand, Germany are sitting pretty so far. On the women’s side, Netherlands, Germany, Australia, and Argentina have qualified for the quarterfinals.
Great Britain, Ireland, New Zealand and Spain are sitting pretty more judo, more Japanese judo action. We had the women’s 78 kilogram and the men’s 100 kilogram, uh, matches. And on the women’s side, gold went to Japan to Montessori. Silver went to Francis Malonga mandolin. Bronzes went to Brazil’s, Myra edgier and Germany’s on a Maria Vagner on the men side.
Aaron Wolf in Japan won the gold, uh, Guam chief from Korea won silver and bronze is went to Jorge, Francesca and NIAS the off from our. Rowing I watched some rowing. It was good. Did you want it all? I only watched a little bit,
Alison: um, I had it on while I was doing stats.
Jill: Okay. So we had more pairs action yesterday. So in the men’s pair Croatia one gold Romania, one silver and Denmark one, the Browns in the women’s pair. New Zealand won the gold. Yea silver ferns. ROC won the silver and Canada won the bronze you Canada in the lightweight men’s double skulls Ireland. Whoa.
Pull the head in the last quarter of the race to get the Goldman. Beat Germany for, uh, who won the silver and Italy won the bronze. I was so excited that Ireland won a gold medal.
Alison: Now half of this team was Paul O’Donovan, who with his brother, Gary won a silver medal in Rio. And if you remember them, they became the stars of the village because they did this.
What was called the most Irish interview ever, where they talked about, you know, they just pulled like a dog and they had these wonderful accents. So it was great to see Paula Donovan now have a gold medal end. They are properly celebrate.
Jill: As they should. I saw a video of them going back to the village and all of the Irish athletes were outside cheering them on as they walked into their tower.
And it was so [00:25:00] nice, super excited for Ireland. The Irish times had just a wealth of stories. It was it’s fantastic. When a country gets to celebrate something that doesn’t happen very often because I think they, they only have that. That’s like their 33rd or 34 metal in their Olympic history
Alison: and only theirs.
I think the only their second metal in rowing.
Jill: Congratulations. And then finally we had the lightweight, women’s double skulls, Goldman to Italy, silver, to France and bronze to the Netherlands
Alison: and in the rowing, uh, metal ceremonies, appearance of prince Albert of Monaco. Oh, really? He was the IOC member giving the metals.
Jill: Very nice. What I like about these metal ceremonies, like in the, in the pairs, the pairs give each other the metals and that’s nice. And the Irish pair, you know, the hand of the metal, you have shook hands. And it was very, very, very nice.
Alison: So in the men’s pairs, the sink of each brothers from Croatia, uh, won the gold medal.
And it was really sweet because as they gave each other, the metal. So one gave one the metal and then they hugged and then the other gave the other metal and they hugged. Ah, and it was such a, such a beautiful moment to see them get that connection that obviously they can’t hug other people and that they were together like.
Jill: Very nice. Very nice. Um, rugby women’s pool play has started, so everybody’s played two games. The ones with perfect records are France, U S Australia and New Zealand. Uh, Fiji, Canada, great Britain and ROC are one-on-one and Brazil and Kenya are oh, and two, so far sailing. Some action happened. I am going to go back and I want to check out some wind surf.
And look at the, actually what happened today was the foiling Nacra 17 mixed and foil racing. Boats are just an other worldly to me because they put that foil in the water. And I am not sure exactly how this boat works, but the foil helps lift the boat up a little bit. So it kind of glides over the water better and goes much faster.
So I want to watch that. Shooting. Um, I did want some tramp today. It was the men’s and women’s trap contest. And on the women’s side, which that’s what I watch. It was really good. Slovakia’s Susanna racks. Uh, Stephanie Kova, one gold Kaylee Browning from the U S one, silver and Alessandra. from San Marino.
Won the bronze. It is San Marino first Olympic medal ever, and also the least populous country to win an Olympic medal. They have just over 34,000 people in the country.
Alison: Well, it’s this little tiny, tiny section surrounded
Jill: by Italy. Right? So congratulations to her. She was very excited. I mean, at the end, when it was apparent that she was.
Going to get much farther than bronze. She was just really thrilled to win a medal. Um, Kaylee brownie. Okay. Two things about Kaylee brownie. Uh, Kayla started off like her first five shots. She missed like three of them and it looked just dismal prospects for her and she just stepped it up and started hitting and was consistent with her.
Her shooting looked really, really good, really happy. She won the silver and the feed announcers were. British, I believe these were the OBS feed in answers. They kept calling her kale. And like, she can’t be killed. That’s gotta be Kaylee
Alison: and her brother spinach
and her cousin cauliflower,
kale. I mean, English is their native language. Don’t they know that kale is about to, they call something. Do they call
Jill: kale something? I don’t know. I don’t know why they thought it was a silent E, but that was, that was, I
Alison: mean, if her name had been auger, Jean, at least that would have been, you know, a pretty sounding vegetable,
Jill: um, moving over to the Tokyo aquatic center for some swimming, a lot more finals.
And semi-finals yesterday we had the men’s 800 meters, which, uh, Robert Fink from the U S one. And he came from behind to win that one. Yes, he did. Um, he beat out Gregorio Paul ternary from Italy and then, uh, Mukalla, Roman, Chuck from Ukraine won the bronze in the men’s 200 meter breaststroke. I love this name
Alison: and you know who else who loved this?
It was rowdy Gaines. Cause he kept saying it more than he absolutely had to.
Jill: Right. So Australia’s [00:30:00] Isaac stubble, the cook one, the gold Arno coming up from Netherlands won the silver and Matti. Mutsun from Finland won the bronze. I was so excited that Finland won a medal and they don’t, aren’t known for their swimming prowess.
One of the. Big contributors in our Facebook group is mano, who is from Finland. And I was just thrilled for him that Finland won a medal. And again, another, I went to look at one of the newspapers that was around where, uh, Monte’s from. And yeah, again like four or five stories. He didn’t opinion. This is just, it’s fantastic that everybody can kind of get inspired by, uh, UN.
In the women’s 200 meter butterfly China’s Zhang. You Fe one gold, uh, Reagan Smith from the U S one, silver and Haley Flickinger from the U S won the bronze, the men’s 100 meter freestyle, Caleb Dressel of the U S one gold Kyle Chalmers of Australia, one silver and a climate coals. And the car Coles now.
From ROC one bronze. And this was a pretty emotional race,
Alison: very here. So in the interview after kale, Dressel was just sobbing like a kid, and then they brought in the wife and parent video chat, and then they’re all crying.
Jill: Right. And you know him talking about how hard it’s been a real. And this piggybacks off of the Simone Biles, withdrawing talk and the criticism that should she have withdrawn, but the pandemic affected everybody differently.
And that’s one of the interesting things about this last year is that you didn’t know how it was going to affect you. And you didn’t know when. You were going to get hit by pandemic blues. So to say, because you could just be okay for a little while and then be like feeling desperate. And I think when I saw Kayla Dressel do the interview, I realized, oh yeah, We think of the athletes, not only in the struggles of trying to find a place to train, but they also mentally had to go through ups and downs and deal with no competition and not having, not knowing maybe how to deal with the adrenaline you get during competition or the, the strategies you have in competition.
So I think. With things like athletes, withdrawing for injury or mental blocks, just we’ve all been through a pandemic, man, give everyone a break.
Alison: And in dog news, they did feature Caleb Trestles black lab. And have you ever seen a dog and person more in sync and go together better than Caleb Dressel and his dog Jane.
Jill: Oh, and the. Uh, evening of finals in the pool ended with the women’s four by 200 meter freestyle relay China. When the gold us won the silver and Australia won the bronze,
Alison: huge upset. Huge.
Jill: I need to go back and watch this because I stopped watching. I didn’t catch this one. So tell
Alison: me about it. So Australia was the heavy, heavy, favorite, and just China comes in and.
Dominate. Wow. And, uh, the U S pulled into the silver metal position. They really fought for that. So it was just one of those races where you didn’t understand what was happening. Cause that’s not what was supposed to happen.
Jill: That’s interesting. And China has shown a presence in the pool that we have not seen in a while.
And I understand that their big star is not here because of issues with doping. And, uh, that’s one thing, but it’s interesting to see the whole team perform.
Alison: Yeah. The Chinese women have come on very strong.
Jill: That is something to watch. Compare. Before we get on any further, we’d like to give a big thank you to all our Patrion patrons.
We’ve gotten some new patrons during the game, so thank you so much for your ongoing support. If you would like to make an ongoing donation to keep our flame alive. Checkout patrion.com/flame alive pot table tennis. I turned this on, uh, today because I wanted to see the women singing. Even because it was China versus China, number one in the world versus number two in the world.
That was just amazing. So, uh, Chang Shankman won the gold yang Shasha son won silver and ITO MIMA from Japan won the bronze. The score doesn’t necessarily reflect how close this matchup was for the gold medal. [00:35:00] It was, uh, four games to two or four sets to, to. And, but all of the sets were very, very close and it was just back and forth and back and forth and play was so fast and was just one of those, oh, I put in just an ounce, more on the ball and I lost the point and that happened on both sides constantly.
And it was just, just a tight battle. That’s one worth going back. In tennis action. We are getting near the end of some of the play. So the women’s singles had their semi-finals, uh, Belinda Ben vintage from Switzerland defeated. Kazakhstan’s Elena, Rebecca. 7 6 4, 6, 6, 3, uh, Czech Republic market. Devinder Silva beat Ukraine’s uh, Elena’s fit fit.
Fidelina 6 3 6 1. So Benson and will meet each other in the finals. Uh, Serbians Novak Djokovich has. Uh, Nisha Corey K from Japan to get into the semi-finals in the women’s doubles. Semi-final Czech republics, Kris chick, UVA Kova, and Sinia Cova defeated or OCS cruder Metova and vesnina 6, 3, 6. Three six and then the tie-breaker was 10, six, and Switzerland’s benches and global edge defeated.
Brazil’s Pagosa and stuffy. Uh, Stephanie 7 5, 6, 3. So, you know, vintage had two matches in one day. That was really. And in the men’s double semi-final Croatia’s, uh, met and Povich defeated. USA’s crowds a check and send grin 6, 4, 6, 4, and Croatia’s a silly and Dodi Dodi defeated new Zealand’s Danielle and Venus 6 2 6 2.
So we will have an all Croatia final, which means
Alison: we’ll get to see those fantastic Croatian. Warm-up suits that sort of have the Italian, uh, table, uh, the Italian restaurant table cloth. Oh, it’s that red check. I want to bring out like some nice key D and a candle and a wine bottle.
Jill: I may tune in just to see that because I haven’t seen much of Croatia.
Uh, in volleyball again, to the end, we’re getting to near the end of pool play. So the current standings on the men’s side, pull in Japan, Iran, Italy, ROC USA, Brazil, and France are all sitting in spots to move on to the quarter finals in the women’s competition, Serbia and Italy have clenched spots in the quarterfinals, Brazil, Korea, Japan, U S ROC and Turkey are sitting in a position to address.
Men’s water polo again, we’re near the end of group play. So, uh, looking at the standings on the men’s side, Italy and Greece are advancing to the quarter finals and, uh, hungry us. Spain, Serbia, Croatia, and Montenegro are sitting pretty on the women’s side, Australia, Spain, Canada, Netherlands USA, ROC Hungary, and China are all sitting.
Pretty in the standings, but nobody has clinched a spot in the quarterfinals yet. So looking towards tomorrow. What are up to?
Alison: Well, you’re super excited because Connor fields will, can be competing for a metal in BMX cycling. Yes. So
Jill: good. Oh, Hey, about BMX. You know what they have over there? I don’t, I haven’t seen any other venue.
They have a little kiosk that says athlete moment on it, and it’s a. Video hookup with their home. So they can talk with their, their loved ones right there on the screen and not have to wait for NBC to do it. And half the time it was, can you hear me? But it was very nice. I wonder, I wonder if that’s at all the venues.
Somewhere set up, but that one, they showed it on BMX anyway, back to our team. Keep the flame alive. Yes. Phillip Dutton begins
Alison: his event in competition. Over at the equestrian facility. He will be in session one and Maggie Shay and Stephanie Robel are continuing in sailing’s 49 FX.
Jill: Excellent. So it is time to get a little sleep, take a nap, get some tea Sayonara today, seven as always.
You can email us@flamealivepodatgmail.com or text or voicemail us at 2 0 8 3 5. 6 348. That’s 2 0 8 limit. Don’t forget our Kickstarter and help us reach our goal of bringing you on the ground coverage at Beijing. That is kickstarter.com/profile/blame a life pod as we go out to music by mercury sunset.
Thank you so much for listening and until tomorrow, keep the [00:40:00] flammable.