CORRECTION: In the women’s wheelchair basketball competition, we said the US defeated China 41-36, when in fact, China won this game. China will face Netherlands for the gold medal. The US will play Germany for the bronze. We regret this error.
It’s Day 10 of the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics, which means the team events are starting to wind down. But, the competition’s heating up! We’ve got all the action on the day’s events, who was soggy and who stayed dry, and (as always) some thoughts on today’s television coverage, which almost makes us miss Mike and Maya.
TRANSCRIPT
While every attempt is made to ensure this transcript’s accuracy, it is still machine-generated; therefore, please cross-reference with the audio.
Tokyo 2020 – Paralympics – Day 10
Jill: [00:00:00] Konichiwa, Paralympics fans and lovers of TKFLASTAN, and welcome to day 10 coverage of the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics on Keep the Flame Alive, the podcast for fans of the Olympics and Paralympics. I’m your host, Jill Jaracz, joined as always by my lovely cohost, Alison Brown. Alison, Konnichiwa!
Alison: Konnichiwa! We’re going to be better today.
Jill: Yes, we are. Yesterday…. so when we did the Olympics, about day 12, we just broke and lost it. And we found out that on the Paralympics, that is day nine. I cut out a lot of our breaking points, cause it just, devolved into just pure silliness that’s only funny to us.
Alison: Fair enough.
Jill: I made a lot of mistakes. So we’ve got some corrections Yesterday um, Oh, I, I left out a whole result first off. So in athletics, in the men’s 100 meter, T 54 class, which is a moderate to high degree of disability in or in the legs, or an absence of both legs. Gold went to Athiwat Paeng-Nuea from Thailand with an area record. Silver went to Leo Pekka Tahti from Finland and bronze went to Juan Pablo Cervantes Garcia from Mexico. And that was really our breaking point. That race right there.
Alison: We had a little slip at the start there, a little trouble in the, you know, the second lap, but then we pulled it back together for the bell lap.
Jill: Exactly. In the women’s 100 meter T 54 event also in athletics. Gold went to Zhou Zhaoqian from China. Silver went to Amanda Kotaja from Finland, and Cheri Madsen from USA won bronze.
Jill: In the 100 meter breaststroke for women. This is the SB seven class Tiffany Thomas Kane, won bronze she’s from Australia. Okay. Thus ends our mistakes, hopeful that today we have no corrections to add for tomorrow.
Jill: Followup file. [00:02:00] So did you see the little bit, when Carolyn Manno talked to Oksana Masters?
Alison: No.
Jill: Okay. So there’s a little bit on yesterday’s broadcast, where she had a chat with Oksana and they were talking about going switching over to the training she’s going to do for Beijing.
Jill: And we wondered what the difference was between cycling and cross-country, if she had much to do. Cycling is all push action. Cross country is all pull action. Cause she’s pulling her body on the skis and she’s pushing with the bike.
Alison: Oh yeah. So that would definitely be different upper, upper body muscles and physique.
Jill: Yes.
Alison: Well, follow up to her talking about the underground tunnel. I found a video of the underground tunnel in Oberhof, Germany. There’s also another underground cross-country tunnel in Norway.
Jill: I’m not surprised.
Alison: Makes sense. The place is enormous and it was custom built in 2008. It is open to the public. It’s not just a elite skier training facility.
Jill: Nice!
Alison: I know. So I will post this in Facebook and if you want to put this in the show notes, you can take a look at the underground ski facility. It’s beautiful. It’s bright, it’s not dark or dank or scary or anything.
Jill: We had some more news on why the shot putters were late for the big shot put controversy from a couple of days ago. Thank you to a listener angela who posted this in our Facebook group. They were three minutes late to the call room and apparently didn’t hear the announcement, or the announcement was in another language and they didn’t understand. So the protest was lodged pretty quickly, but then the judges, let them go ahead.
Alison: Three minutes?
Jill: Yes. This is from the BBC. And that’s, I mean, he was allowed to compete because at the time he had a logical reason for being late. And then later a referee [00:04:00] found there was no justifiable reason for him to be late. So therefore they stripped him of his medal. You know, I kind of think, because we’ve talked about, this is the F 20 classes for intellectual impairments.
Jill: This could be a slippery slope, but one would think that maybe for the intellectual impairment classes, you get a little window of time and maybe it’s five minutes or 10 minutes. I can imagine somebody just going all the time, well, I can be 10 minutes late, so it’s okay. But I think if you had a repeated incidence where you were always 10 minutes late, you get yellow carded, and you can continue to compete.
Alison: And then if there’s another violation, then it’s a red card. Yeah, that’s …
Jill: And, and I would say this just for this class, or I don’t know if that could carry from competition to competition or what, because yeah somebody could always push that boundary and just be, well, I’m in my little window. But it wouldn’t be a long window, but you’re, you’re dealing with a class that probably you need to have a little bit more patience with, I would imagine.
Alison: Well, I’m surprised given that explanation that there was a language barriers as well, that, you know, they brought this up to the level of the IPC and World Athletics who gave no ground. This is not done, clearly.
Jill: Did you see the marriage proposal on the track?
Alison: I did! I was thinking to myself, man, if he had the ring in his pocket and he ran the race, how do you focus?
Jill: I don’t know. Don’t know. So this was a Cape Verdean athletic team, visually impaired class runners. The athlete’s name is Keula Nidreaia Pereira Semedo, and her partner Manuel Antonio Vaz da Veiga. He popped the question after the T 11 200 meter heats.
Alison: Hey, you know, go big or go home, man.
Jill: That’s right.[00:06:00] Also in other news, Belgian wheelchair tennis player, Joachim Gerard has been hospitalized after feeling faint in the Paralympic village. He has a suspected cardiac issues.
Jill: This is reported by Inside the Games. He’s 32 years old. He suddenly felt faint unexpectedly. So they’ve had him be in the hospital. he regained consciousness. He’s responsive, but they’re going to keep him for observation for a little while.
Alison: Oh, good vibes for him. That’s scary.
Jill: All right. I hate to say it. I’ve got feed beefs once again.
Alison: I’m sorry.
Jill: A lot of it is still around the fact that we watch yesterday’s action today or yesterday’s late night or overnight coverage in prime time. And it’s not even prime time cause it starts at nine o’clock, but it’s also not really even prime prime time because we’re on NBC SN, which is a sports channel on deep cable.
Jill: If it was like NBC primetime and the main network I’d have a different feeling about this. But so half of our day is still spent watching major races from the day before. Although, you know, swimming is at least kind enough to do one stroke and focus on one stroke a day for the most part.
Jill: So when I saw all the breaststroke races, I’m like, those are yesterday and I hit my fast forward button.
Alison: I found similarly that in athletics, they were mixing days.
Jill: Athletics is worse. Yes. Because they were mixing days horribly. And that throws me off.
Alison: So a race from Tuesday being aired on Wednesday and then they would switch to something live Wednesday and not tell you, oh, we’re going back to coverage from an earlier session. Oh no. So that was really frustrating. And I mean, I understand part of it is they just want to make a smooth broadcast, [00:08:00] but how hard is it to say, this is action from an earlier session? How does that break the moment?
Jill: They did cut to the road, cycling race, which they were getting OBS commentary for it, but we didn’t have commentary for a good 20 seconds or so. And it was just watching cyclists bike in the rain and fog, which was a little bizarre, but I can understand how that happened. Goalball we missed a Chinese goal because of commercial, and that was frustrating. This was, I think that the Chinese- USA men’s game. And I get that television needs to have commercial breaks. And there are many sports where there are specifically breaks in the action to accommodate television commercial time. And they don’t know, obviously, obviously goalball is not going to become the next NBA basketball in the United States. Could it be? I don’t know. There’s part of me right now. It’s like, come on, show more goalball once the Paralympics are over.
Jill: But they don’t know how to time it, so they’re constantly breaking into the games with commercials at inopportune moments, and they don’t know what’s going to happen. Especially if, if it’s live, they don’t know what’s going to happen. So they’re just picking their times and they say, oh, at this time we have to break for commercial. And I think they need to learn how to do commercials better or commercial time better, or do a screen in screen. The Paralympics is a little bit better about advertising. So maybe even have like, when they do a soccer matches and they have advertisements, come on the screen while play is happening. Maybe they can start doing that with some of these sports.
Jill: They actually showed some shooting on the coverage.
Alison: Yes, they did. I actually caught some shooting today.
Jill: This was a, a pistol match and the goal of the [00:10:00] match was you hit it, or you miss it. It’s not looking to see what score you get. It’s best number of targets you hit.
Jill: This is definitely not an NBC problem because they’re pulling from OBS at this point. I don’t think this is a shooting sports Federation or world para shooting problem, because I think they understand how to broadcast their sport. Listener John was talking with me on Twitter about this and showing examples from the federations where it was easy to understand. So I think this is an OBS issue, which bothers me a lot. And what happened was you would see a head to head competition, or they’d show two shooters, but they’d only show one person’s score along the bottom.
Jill: So they’d shoot at the same time, and you’d see if one person made it and you wouldn’t see if the other person made it, and then they’d switch. You would have to pay attention. I mean, OBS you’re the Olympic Broadcasting Service. Olympic is supposed to be the pinnacle of excellence.
Alison: And it’s not like shooting is a unique Paralympic sport like goalball where they don’t know how to do this because they haven’t done it that much.
Jill: And it’s not like biathlon doesn’t know how to show you how everybody shoots at the same time. That was my thing. Just put it on the side of the screen, all of the targets. That is possible. You can do that, make it happen.
Alison: You have the technology. This is not a new engineering feat. You already to do it for biathlon.
Jill: So that’s, that’s my beef with OBS. And do you have any beefs? Cause I’m just still full of them.
Alison: My biggest beef is I was watching Olympic Channel when they switched to NBCSN, I guess at 9:00 PM, don’t say anything. Middle of a point, just goes off.
Alison: Don’t [00:12:00] say like, oh, if you want to continue watching, go to… Nothing. I’m watching an event. And then I’m not.
Jill: Yeah, that happens on the NBCSN coverage too in the morning, cause I’ll catch up with the tape, and I’ll get to the end of the tape, and it just ends. And like, there was something that happened. We’re not done with this game.
Alison: I mean, at least throw it back to the studio for 10 seconds saying, we’ll be back at this time we’ll or go to the feed or something because that– I think I’ve had a stroke and I missed half the coverage, or I had some sort of time loop.
Jill: Yes, it’s not good. Maybe– we’ve only got a couple days left. Maybe we can get through without one beef.
Alison: I’m hoping. I’m glad we’re not accepting this poor coverage. You know, I, I’m annoyed at listening to myself complain every day about this, but on the other hand, this is not good enough. Right. And these athletes deserve better, and we as fans deserve better.
Jill: Yes. I would agree with you. You know, who else is upset? I think Mike and Maya of the Toyota first date ad, because I am seeing that commercial more and more, and I feel like it’s, they’re back and they’re just going, Hey, Jill. Remember when you talked about us every day? We miss being popular like that. And they think, oh, if we just show this more and more, she will see it and she will break.
Jill: But I already, I have broken on something else. I’m not breaking from Mike and Maya.
Alison: Well, I have to tell you when just a little teaser for the round table. We do have some follow-up from Superfan Sarah from Toyota about Mike and Maya, so you have to tune in after the Paralympics are over and we do some roundup on that. We’ve got some updates from the source.
Jill: Okay. Time for Name That Commentator. [00:14:00] Listener Patrick from Green Bay has been busy looking for our commentator team because they don’t necessarily say who the OBS commentators are. And OBS, definitely doesn’t say who the OBS commentators are. So he’s discovered that for shooting, our team is Richard Drew and Heather Fell.
Alison: Which are really funny names to use for shooting, Drew and Fell. Come on, somebody at OBS thought that was a really clever pun
Jill: Or if you have a really good punny name, do you go into presenting?
Alison: Well, it only one works for certain, you know, drew and fell. There’s only certain sports that that works for as a pun.
Jill: All right. Moving on to What Volunteer or Officiating Job Would We Do? What’s on your, your mind today?
Alison: So at the Olympics, I wanted to be the towel girl at swimming? Discovered a new towel girl. Road cycling. You didn’t know you needed a towel girl at road cycling, but they needed them today. And there was this nice woman walking around with a giant stack of towels covered in plastic, handing them to the different teams.
Jill: Towel? Towel? Towel?
Alison: Warm towelette? And those people were grabbing those towels, like thank goodness you’re here.
Jill: That does sound like a good job for you. I am also at the road cycling venue because I saw, I think, I think for the Paralympics, I’ve been very drawn to flag jobs, because I saw the course marshals, and granted they were out in the rain and it just looked like it was a long day to be standing out there, but they held the flag that was like a pendant flag. So it was pointed at one end and they’d hold both sides and they’d have it stretched out so that the riders would know where the courses and make sure that they didn’t go off course. And a lot of them would sway the flag back and forth, move it so you could see it visible and it would be [00:16:00] in motion, so it would catch your eye. But I kind of liked that.
Jill: Before we get to today’s action. We’d like to tell you about our Kickstarter campaign. Just a few days left to help our project that is going to fund our trip to Beijing to cover the Winter Olympics and Paralympics there. And we’ve gotten media accreditations. This was a surprise to us. So we hadn’t budgeted for this quite so early in our existence. So therefore we really do need your help in getting there. You can find out about our campaign and check out our supporter bonuses at kickstarter.com/profile/a flame of life pod. We are 45% funded right now, which is fantastic. And we are so grateful to everybody.
Jill: But this is an all or nothing campaign, so we absolutely need to meet our goal. If you’ve given already, thank you. If you are on the fence, now’s the time to get off the fence and click that donate button. And if you if you could share it with your friends and family, we would appreciate that as well, because we do need to meet the goal otherwise, it’s going to be extremely difficult to take advantage of this opportunity to give you a unique podcasting experience and hopefully a lot more fun covering the Olympics and the Paralympics from the site itself, and telling you what’s going on as you have questions. So please help us today.
Jill: And we take all dollar amounts, large and small, and getting more backers with small amounts can help just as much as a couple of backers with large amounts, because it helps raise our page’s profile. Help us out. Share, share, share, and give while you can. That’s kickstarter.com/profile/flame alive pod.
Jill: All right. We’ve got some archery today, which I saw on the feed. What??.[00:18:00]
Alison: Finally.
Jill: Yeah, it was the women’s individual class today, and the gold went to Zahra Nemati from Iran. Silver went to Vincenza Petrilli from Italy, and bronze went to Wu Chunyan from China. So I did look, remember we talked yesterday about wondering how the Korean para archery program is compared to the Olympic archery program? The two Koreans in this competition tied for 17th. So they were both out in the round of 16. So I do wonder if it’s, it could have been a bad day for both of them, for sure. But I do wonder how their para program compares to the Olympic program.
Jill: Moving over to athletics. Did you see the, did you watch this little piece?
Alison: I didn’t get to see it.
Alison: I think having Scout Bassett in the booth with the American commentators is having a good effect because they did do a little piece about how wheelchair racers maintain a grip on their cycles when it rains, because it rained again.
Alison: And so Louis Johnson got together with Ray Martin and they talked about spider tack, which is this super tacky putty. It’s not a putty. It’s just like super tacky hair gel, for lack of a better word. And you put it on your gloves and the wheel. And that helps you keep a grip. Some people put sandpaper on their gloves. Tatyana McFadden does that as well. So that was really interesting .
Alison: Yesterday, Chris Waddell and Ahmad Fareed had a conversation in the studio about what racers do in the rain. So maybe this came out of that conversation, because what Chris had to say was very interesting. He talked about, I didn’t understand that he was saying the word spider tack. I understood that he was talking about something tacky and he was talking about sandpaper and he was talking about other things that the throwers [00:20:00] were doing.
Alison: So that must have said, oh, we can do a segment on this.
Jill: I really enjoyed that. Let’s start with the throws. Speaking of throwers, the men’s javelin thrower F 13 class held its competition. This is a visual impairment class. Gold went to Daniel Pembroke from Great Britain with a Paralympic record. Silver went to Ali Pirouj from Iran with a personal best, and bronze went to Hector Cabrera Llacer from Spain. Then in ShotPut we had 4 different competitions, starting with the F 33 class, which is moderate affectations to the whole body, a high level of leg apparent impairment and additional moderate, upper body disability.
Jill: Gold went to Asmahane Boudjadar from Algeria with the Paralympic record. Silver went to Fouzia El Kassioui from Morocco, and bronze went to Maria Strong from Australia.
Jill: In the F 35 class, both women and men competed in this class. And this is a moderate impairment in both legs class. For the women, gold went to a Mariia Pomezan from Ukraine. Silver went to Marivana Oliveira da Nobrega from Brazil, and bronze went to Anna Luxova from Czech Republic.
Jill: For the men. Gold went to Khusniddin Norbekov from Uzbekistan. Silver went to Emanuel Herman Urra from Argentina, who got an area record, and bronze went to Fu Xinhan from China.
Alison: It was hard to watch these standing classes because a lot of these athletes were slipping and falling.
Jill: Yes. I saw that in discus. Yes, it was rough. And they’re sitting out there mopping up the circle as best they can, but it’s, it’s concrete. And then some of them, their prosthetic doesn’t have a grip on the bottom necessarily, and that just slips. Or they have to try to work around it or not spin as much or as fast. It was, it was a tough, tough day [00:22:00] for field athletes.
Jill: Finally in the shotput we had the F 57 class for women, which is a seated class with low level of disability in one leg, including below the knee amputation and moderate disability in both feet. Gold went to Safia Djelal from Algeria with a world record. Silver went to Xu Mian from China with an area record, and bronze went to Eucharia iyizaki from Nigeria.
Jill: In discus, we had two men’s competitions. The first was an F 64 class. It was a combination of about six different classes. So it’s moderate disability to one or both legs or the absence of legs. Gold went to Jeremy Campbell from USA. Silver went to Ivan Katanusic from Croatia, and bronze went to Dan Greaves from Great Britain.
Jill: And then the F 11 class also competed, this is a total visual impairment class. Gold went to Alisandro Rodrigo da Silva from Brazil with a Paralympic record. Silver went to Mahdi Olad from Iran, and bronze went to Oney Tapia from Italy.
Jill: Yeah. I saw some of the discus and that was just, that was rough to watch. In the long jump we had one competition each for men and women. Different classes though. The men did T 37, which is moderate impairment to one side. Gold went to Vladyslav Zahrebelnyi from Ukraine with an area record. Silver went to Brian Lionel Impellizzeri from Argentina, who got a personal best, and bronze went to Mateus Evangelista Cardoso from Brazil. You know, I have to say, I’m impressed when people are getting still getting personal bests in really bad conditions.
Alison: And these conditions were bad. What was funny was when they did the jump, they were jumping into mud. So that each jump was more [00:24:00] exhausting. Cause with the sand, it kind of gives you some spring, back up. It’s easy to climb. They were slogging out of the pit after each jump.
Jill: Oh my, I bet the rakers had a really tough time.
Alison: I was worried about that. They were getting drenched and they were really having to pull. They needed Oksana Masters’ musculature. Wait, there she can do a fifth sport.
Jill: On the women’s side, they had the T 63 class, which is moderate to one full leg disability, or an absence of a leg above the knee. Gold went to Vanessa Low from Australia, who got a world record. Silver went to Martina Caironi from Italy, who had been the world record, and now settling for silver. And bronze went to Elena Kratter from Switzerland, who got a personal best.
Jill: Moving over to the track. We had three different races in the 100 meters. We started with the men’s T 11 total visual impairment class. Gold. Oh man. So I saw, did you see the heats of this?
Alison: No, at all.
Jill: Okay. So I saw the heats and Athanasios Ghavelas and his guide Sotirios Gkargkanis from Greece, they set a world record in one of the early rounds, and it was incredible. And then in the finals, they set another world record .And a Scout Bassett was saying in the replay, you really saw this: From the side, you could not tell it was two runners. They were that in sync. It was amazing to watch these two run.
Jill: Silver went to Timothee Adolphe with his guide Bruno Naprix from France, and they got a personal best. Bronze went to Di Dongdong from China with an area record. In the US we heard a lot about David Brown, he and his guide Moray Steward got into the semi-finals. They got [00:26:00] a yellow card for rules around guide tethering. A couple of days ago, I think, NBC did a piece on him. He got a new guide, so they did a piece on the process of him getting a new guide, which was really interesting. And that has to be hard to get a guide so close to the Games.
Alison: Right. It was only a few months. I want to say it was in the spring. They haven’t been together more than a few months.
Jill: But I think he was pleased with his results given that factor. In the women’s T 12 moderate visual Impairment class, gold went to Omara Durand Elias and her guide Yuniol Kindelan Vargas from Cuba. Silver went to Oksana Boturchu k and her guide Mykyta Barbanov from Ukraine, and bronze went to Liang Yangfen with guide Zhu Xuankang.
Jill: I saw this one and I was surprised that all the guides were men.
Alison: I noticed that as well.
Jill: And I wondered, cause part of me was like the height differential, especially on the Cuban team was quite large. And I wondered how hard it was for him to keep maybe a shorter stride to not pull her along. If that would be the case, I wonder how hard it is for the guides to maintain the athletes speed and hold back a little bit if they need to, versus sprint all out. You know what I mean?
Alison: Right. Well, we’ve talked about this with skating and diving, where you’ve got that partnership and very different body types and trying to match. I mean, that’s in an artistic way, but it’s still a physical matching, and you spin too fast or your stride is too long.
Alison: But I noticed that in almost all the sprints with guides, women were guided by men. And I don’t know if that’s a lack of knowledge that they just assume only a man could do that [00:28:00] job if that’s a bias on the coaching, if that’s just availability of athletes.
Jill: Right. I also, yeah, I did wonder if, if there were many women guides out there to begin with, just the available, the availability of elite women athletes to be guides for Paralympians.
Alison: We already know all the barriers that female athletes have for their own careers. I can’t imagine trying to be a female guide athlete and that barrier when it’s not even your own career, it’s really somebody else’s athletic career.
Jill: And the last 100 meter race for women was the T 37 class for moderate impairment to one side. Gold went to a, Wen Xiaoyan from China, who got a world record with a 13 seconds flat time. Silver went to Jaleen Roberts from USA, who got an area record and bronze went to Jiang Fenfen from China, with a personal best,. Saw this race too, and and just the joy from China and, and Jaylene Roberts was really happy with her time. It’s it’s always nice when people are happy with the results.
Jill: In the 400 meter distance, we had a bunch of races. So we start with the T 53 class for women, which is a wheelchair with no arm impairments. Gold went to Catherine Debrunner from Switzerland. Silver went to Samantha Kinghorn from Great Britain, and bronze went to Zhou Hongzhuan from China.
Jill: Next, we have the T 54 class for women, which is a moderate to high in level of impairment to both legs, including the absence of legs above the knee. Gold went to Manuela Schaer from Switzerland, silver went to Cheri Madsen from USA, and bronze went to Zhou Zhaoqian from China, with a personal best. And this is Tatyana McFadden’s class, who, big star in the USA. She placed fourth. She said she [00:30:00] had a really bad start.
Alison: And she talked a lot about the tack versus sandpaper. She used sandpaper and she was not happy with her choice after the race.
Jill: Interesting. I wonder if the sandpaper gets too wet if it’s really bad rain.
Alison: But she was happy in the interview that the family had the dog there watching the race, and Bentley apparently started barking very furiously when he saw Tatyana on the screen.
Jill: Aw www. For the men, we had two visual impairment races for the 400 meter. First was T 12. Gold went to Abdeslam Hili from Morocco with a world record. He beat his own world record. Silver went to Noel Malone from the USA, with an area record, and bronze went to Rouay Jebabli from Tunisia, who got a personal best. So this was one of those with a four-person final, but runners had no guides.
Alison: But they have the option of guides, which is why they keep it to four. Because some runners in that class do use guides just happen to be these finalists did not.
Jill: That makes sense. It was interesting because in this race, everyone kind of, everyone seemed to slow down at the end, but then you see, well, a world record got set, so it was still way faster, but you could tell that the distance really wore on them. I think of that all the time now, how, how brutal the 400 is 400
Alison: It’ll kill you every time. Paralympics, Olympics. The 400 is -because it’s a sprint at a distance. I’m not running 400s ever. I’ll get caught by the zombies. I’m okay with that.
Jill: In the T 13 class, which is a low level of visual impairment, [00:32:00] gold went to a Skander Djamil Athmani from Algeria with a world record. Silver went to Mohammed Amguoun from Morocco, and bronze went to Johannes Nambala from Namibia.
Jill: And finally, on the track, we had two 800 meter races for the men. The first was the T 53, which is a wheelchair class with no arm impairment. Gold went to Pongsakorn Paeyo from Thailand, who got a Paralympic record. Silver went to Brent Lakatos from Canada, and bronze went to Pierre Fairbank from France.
Jill: In the T 54 class, which is a moderate to high level of impairment to both legs, including absence of the leg above the knee. This is also a wheelchair class. Gold went to a Marcel Hug from Switzerland.
Alison: The silver bullet. For his silver helmet.
Jill: Very nice. Silver went to Dai Yunqiang from China, and bronze went to Saichon Konjen from Thailand.
Alison: I don’t know if you noticed how many times you said Switzerland in the athletics results.
Jill: A lot.
Alison: Four gold medals. It is the best day for Switzerland in athletics at the Paralympics.
Jill: Wow.
Alison: Chocolate for everybody!
Jill: Including us?
Alison: Well, yeah. The silver bullet will just shoot some over to us.
Jill: Okay. Para badminton started up, and we had a lot of group play action in doubles and singles competition.
Jill: I saw a little bit because NBC actually put some on, but it’s group play. So it’s just one of those, a lot of matches happening. Same goes with boccia. We’re in preliminaries for the mixed team and mixed pairs event. And then canoe sprint also started with heat races. So we’ll keep an eye on getting to the finals for that. Cause I do [00:34:00] want to catch that sport.
Jill: Moving over to cycling. The road race. Oh boy.
Alison: Fog, rain. It was chilly. We’ve complained about the heat now. Apparently it was very cold and uncomfortable because they started so–. They kept changing the times. Remember, because they were concerned about the heat. So the road cycling started very early in the morning ,and it ended up because it was so foggy and wet, being kind of chilly for them.
Jill: Oh my.
Alison: And then of course they were getting soaked. So it would’ve had to have been really hot for it not to get cold quickly for them.
Jill: That is a shame. We had several road races, and they were on a variety of different, different kinds of bicycles. So we’ll start with a C class, which is a traditional bicycle.
Jill: The men did combined classes, one through three, and they did a 79.2 kilometer race. Gold went to Benjamin Watson from Great Britain. Silver went to Finlay Graham from Great Britain, and bronze went to Alexandere Leaute from France. For the women’s C four to five class road.
Jill: race. This is low to moderate degree of disability to one side or the legs. And they race also 79.2 kilometers. Gold went to Dame Sarah Storey from Great Britain. Silver went to Crystal Lane-Wright from Great Britain. And bronze went to Marie Patouillet from France.
Alison: These two races were being run simultaneously. So both the women and the men were out on the course together. And the two gold and silver from each race are all Team GB and they all finished within about a minute of each other.
Alison: So Watson comes across, Graham comes across ,and then not a minute later, you know, Storey comes across. And so the party in the Team [00:36:00] GB parking area started right away. They were all hugging and jumping and then they immediately started cheering for the one Team GB male rider who is still out on the course.
Alison: Because he was in this giant peloton that was racing for the bronze medal of the men’s race. He ended up being fifth, but there was this group of about seven riders that were coming in for the bronze. So then someone said, oh, Jaco is still out on the course. And they all rushed to the side and start yelling, go Jaco.
Alison: Not that he could hear them because this peloton was significantly back. But it was just such a great moment for the whole team to be finishing and winning all at the same time together.
Jill: Very cool. And even better, Dame Sarah Storey is now a 17 time gold medalist. She has 28 medals overall, and she is now the British Paralympian who has the most gold medals.
Alison: And I believe the most models as well overall. Oh, she is the most successful British Paralympian, bar none.
Jill: In the T class, this is a tricycle class. So they use a tricycle for moderate disability, across several areas of the body where they need the stability of the extra wheel. And the race distance is a 26.4 kilometer distance for the men.
Jill: Gold went Chen Jianxin from China. Silver went to Tim Celen from Belgium, and bronze went to Juan Jose Betancourt Quiroga from Colombia. For the women, gold went to Jana Majunke from Germany. Silver went to Angelika Dreock Kaeser from Germany, and bronze went to Jill Walsh from USA.
Jill: Then we had a team relay, and this was a mixed H one to five [00:38:00] class relay. So they’re all hand cycles, but the hand cycles are all different depending on the class. Which was really interesting. I didn’t, I saw some of this, but I didn’t get a chance to really focus on it and watch the whole thing because did, did you see, you saw some of it?
Alison: I did see at least the last round of this, and you would see different hand cycles on the course at the same time. So there was strategy involved as to who went in which round, like you see in the swimming relays. Okay. But the last round was the most interesting because France was in 10th place, way behind and they came roaring back to win the silver medal.
Jill: Wow.
Alison: And they had pulled into third and fourth with US. And then at the very end on that last lap pulled ahead and got into the silver medal position. So if you like a come from behind story, It is France in this race.
Jill: Fantastic. I will say I was excited to see, like they had the. The handoff on these cycles basically where you had to pass the next rider, but they were all lined up like in a little pit row. And they, they pulled out of their little, like lane, their little driveway area, once they got past.
Alison: It’s like a highway get on.
Jill: Moving over to football five-a-side. We had the classification matches for seventh and eighth place and fifth and six places. Thailand took seventh. They beat France three to two, and then Japan beat Spain, one to zero. I did see a little bit of the Japan and Spain match cause it was on, and a, very physical game in terms of grabbing onto each other, like Spain would just grab on to the Japanese players. It’s just like, don’t hold them back. What are you grabbing on for? But that was a low scoring game.
Jill: Then we had team semi-finals. Argentina beat [00:40:00] China, two to zero, and Brazil beat Morocco one to zero. So it will be Brazil and Argentina playing for the gold medal, and China and Morocco will play for bronze. Oh, this gold medal match. Is going to be tough.
Alison: That’ll be fun. You know, Argentina and football and Brazil and football. Those are some long, long history there.
Jill: Exactly. And I also learned from Carolyn Manno that the guide person behind the goal who whacks the goal on penalty kicks to let them know how, how, wide the distance is, also yells out how, like things like distance to the goal.
Jill: So everybody who’s yelling all the time is yelling what’s going on on the field so that players can try to understand where they are and where the ball is and where the goal is. And it’s, it still sounds like absolute chaos.
Alison: And I think this will be really interesting. If the, the team spoke the same language.
Jill: Oh, yeah.
Alison: You know, none of these matches that will be true, but if they did that, it would get very confusing. Cause who are you talking to?
Jill: Right. You would have to know your voices, your people’s voices as well.
Alison: Or they would have some kind of code, like in baseball, you have signals. Maybe there’s a there’s code words and things so that, you know, who’s talking to whom.
Alison: I mean, this’ll be easy because you’ve got Spanish and Portuguese and Chinese and, and I guess Arabic or French, I’m not sure, depending on the Moroccan players moving over to goalball
Jill: Moving over to goalball. We had the men’s and women’s semi-finals today. So after the US men’s amazing victory yesterday, they did not do so well against China. China beat them eight to one. So it of, [00:42:00] it looked like those other games earlier in the tournament where they just got beat by the mercy rule
Jill: And then Brazil beat Lithuania nine to five. So it’ll be China and Brazil for the gold. USA and Lithuania will play for bronze. Then the women’s semi-final. Oh! Okay. Turkey beat Japan. Eight to five. Then Brazil played the US. US is down two, zero, and we’re in the second period, and with maybe a couple of minutes to go, the US scores, and we keep playing.
Jill: And with 15.4 seconds on the clock, the USA ties it up. So we end the game with a tie and we’re going into overtime golden score situation. You know how Lisa O’Sullivan gets excited about that. Two overtimes later, we have to go into the extra throw situation. And US pulled it out. So they got three points on the extra throws. Brazil only got two. So USA wins five, four, and they will be playing for the gold against Turkey.
Alison: It will be very interesting to see how this affects the Americans in the gold medal match, because they’ve basically played twice as long, right. That semifinal with two overtimes and then a shootout, they played a lot, and Turkey just had a normal game. Interesting to see.
Alison: And yeah, Lisa O’Sullivan could not contain her excitement. She was saying how this is so great for goalball to have a match like this, but here’s the quote that I wrote down at one point in the second overtime, she said, “Nails are being bitten. Mouths have gone dry around the world, watching this. And that’s just me.”[00:44:00]
Jill: She’s fantastic. But what you’re saying about the US being extra tired, some of the things they talked about during the game were, goalball players have lots of knee issues from crawling on the ground a lot. They also get fatigued from listening so hard. And you know, when you’re doing something and you’re concentrating and or you, you take a big exam at school and you’re just drained afterwards, I bet that’s exactly what it feels like because they have to pay so much attention and use their brain so much to hear the ball.
Alison: And I wonder if now they just want stuff to be silent. Like, do they need a rest from sound like some people don’t when they’re singing, they need not to talk. I wonder if they need not to listen for a while.
Jill: That’s a good question.
Alison: The other thing I wanted to mention is, well, first of all, Brazil was amazing. And this is definitely one of those games when you hate to see anyone lose. But we’ve said Brazil’s name a lot in the pool, on the track and the team events. And I would like some PhD student to do a study as to the bump post- host, especially for the Paralympics.
Alison: Cause you got to figure in Brazil, when Rio hosted the Paralympics, that was the first time a lot of Brazilians had seen any parasport, and four years later we’re seeing so much Brazilian success.
Jill: That’s an excellent point because not to denigrate the ability of Paralympians, but because the numbers are so small and there’s probably so many people, especially in Brazil, I would think that don’t know about the existence of para sports to get that exposure and know that it exists and try it. And if they’re athletic already, they may have success pretty quickly and be able to get on the stage.
Alison: At the Olympics, [00:46:00] we talked about the Team GB from London bump. So it’s like the Olympics, it’s two cycles, the Paralympics it’s one, just because the Paralympics, the competition is not as developed in many countries. So I would like to see someone do the study of the two cycle bump for host Olympics and the one cycle bump for Para.
Jill: Moving over to shooting. We had the P three mixed 25 meter pistol, S H one class. This is where athletes have one good shooting hand. And they may either sit or stand. Gold went to Huang Xing from China with the Paralympic record. Silver went to Szymon Sowinski from Poland, and bronze went to Oleksii Denysiuk from Ukraine who was eliminated by a shoot-off for this.
Alison: Yeah, there was a lot of shoot offs in this competition. It was sort of every place there was a shoot off.
Jill: Over in sitting volleyball, we had the ranking matches for men’s team fifth and sixth, place, seventh and eighth place. Japan ends up on the bottom of the tournament. They lost to China three to zero for fifth place, Egypt beat Germany, three to two that’s close and a long game, man.
Jill: Then we moved over to the semi-finals where RPC beat Brazil, three to one, and then Iran beat Bosnia-Herzegovina three to zero. So it’ll be Iran versus RPC and Brazil versus Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Jill: We have some more news from our sitting volleyball correspondent Listener Brittany. So I had wondered about what’s up with competitors legs under the net, because a lot of times in, in standup volleyball, you know, the net is a forbidden zone kind of area and you shouldn’t cross under it.
Jill: But when you sit, you know, your feet do have to go somewhere. If you’re, you can still have a, be a healthy distance away from the net with your [00:48:00] torso, but your feet might be underneath. And she brought up rule 11.2, which is called Penetration Under the Net. So you can have your legs underneath the net, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the other team’s plays.
Jill: And she has been watching the competition closely and has yet to see this be an issue. So it’s, we have a rule in case it happens, but I think it sounds like players are very good about keeping out of each other’s way. Listen, if you’re not in the Facebook Group, our correspondent Brittany also posted a fascinating article about one of the players from Iran.
Jill: Did you read this?
Alison: Not yet. I saw the article, but I didn’t get to read it.
Jill: Yeah. This player is eight feet tall. So if you’ve watched Iran play, you know who we’re talking about. So this talks about how he got to be eight feet tall and how he found sitting volleyball. And it’s really one of those “sports saved me” kind of stories. So that was really cool to read.
Jill: Moving over to a swimming. Today was mostly backstroke day, but we had a little bit of butterfly and some freestyle and a relay. So starting off with the men’s and women’s 100 meter butterfly S nine class.
Jill: This is the low degree of disability to all four limbs, a significant disability or absence of one leg gold for the men. Gold went to William Martin from Australia, who got a world record. Silver went to a Simone Barlaam from Italy, and bronze went to Alexander Skaliukh from RPC. And for the women, gold went to Zsofia Konkoly. from Hungary who got a Paralympic record. Silver went to Elizabeth Smith from the USA, and bronze went to Sarai Gascon from Spain. And this was another race where Sophie Pascoe, who is one of the stars of the pool she was in she’s led for most of the race. And then just. Faded in the last, like 20, 25 meters.
Alison: They may, I mentioned a story on NBC [00:50:00] that on the day before, after her races, Sophie Pascoe had needed some medical attention, that she had been feeling dizzy and lightheaded and unwell during the interview post race. So she could have been feeling the ra–. I think she’s just fatigued. She’s swam a lotta races.
Alison: So she was clear to swim this, but my guess is she was not feeling her best.
Jill: Okay. So then we focus on backstroke. We’ll start with the men’s 50 S one class, which is significant disability across the entire body. Gold went to Iyad Shalabi from Israel. Silver went to Anton Kol from Ukraine and bronze went to Francesco Bettella from Italy.
Jill: For the S two class, which is a high degree of disability to the legs, trunk and hands and low degree of disability to arms, 50 meters. Both men and women had races in this. For the men. Gabriel Geraldo dos Santos Araujo from Brazil got gold. Alberto Abaraza from Chile got silver, and Vladimir Danilenko from RPC won bronze. For the women Yip Pin Xu from Singapore won gold, Yamada Miyuki from Japan won silver, and Fang Yazhu from China won bronze.
Jill: In the 100 meter S 10 class. This is a low to moderate degree of disability and one leg, the hip area, both feet or one hand. Maksym Krypak from Ukraine won the gold with the world record. Stefano Raimondi from Italy won silver, and Florent Marais from France won bronze.
Jill: In the women’s side of this race, Bianka Pap from Hungary won gold. Aurelie Rivard from Canada got silver, and Lisa Kruger from Netherlands won bronze.
Jill: And then we round out the backstroke races with the S 14 intellectual [00:52:00] disability class. For the men, gold went to Benjamin James Hance from Australia with the Paralympic record. Silver went to Viacheslav Emeliantsev from RPC, and Reece Dunn from Great Britain won bronze. For the women. Bethany Firth from Great Britain won gold, Valeriia Shabalina from RPC won silver and Jessica-Jane Applegate from Great Britain won bronze.
Jill: Then we had several freestyle races. So first we had some 50 meters and then we had the 400 meter distances. For men’s, 50 meter S three class, which is a significant disability to the legs and trunk and absence of multiple limbs. Gold went to Diego Lopez Diaz from Mexico. Silver went to Zou Liankang from China and bronze went to Denys Ostapchenko from Ukraine.
Jill: In the S four class, which is a significant disability to the legs and trunk and or absence of legs and one arm. For the men, gold went to Ami Omer Dadaon from Israel. Silver went to Suzuki Takayuki from Japan. Bronze went to Luigi Beggiato. from Italy.
Jill: For the women. Yeah. This also included the S3 class for the women. Rachel Watson from Australia won gold with a Paralympic record. Arjola Trimi from Italy won silver. She got a world record for the S3 class. And then Maria Fernandez Infante from Spain won bronze.
Jill: In the 400 meter distance, it was S six, our hodgepodge class. For the men, gold went to Talisson Henrique Glock from Brazil. Silver went to Antonio Fantin from Italy and bronze went to Viacheslav Lenskii from RPC. For the women, gold went to Jian Yuyan from China who got the world record.
Alison: The flying fish.
Jill: Oh, nice. We had the princess of the pool. We had the flying [00:54:00] fish. We have the silver bullet.
Alison: I’m keeping a list.
Jill: And the beast!
Alison: The beast was not racing today, but they did manage to mention him twice.
Jill: Silver went to Yelyzaveta Mereshko from Ukraine, and bronze went to Nora Meister from Switzerland.
Jill: And then we rounded out the session with the women’s four by 100 meter medley relay. This is the 34 points class. Gold went to USA. Silver went to RPC and bronze went to Australia.
Alison: This was a great race. So going into the freestyle, the USA was in fourth. Here comes Morgan Stickney. And in the last maybe 50 to 25 meters pulls up from fourth into the gold medal position.
Jill: That was impressive because she was like a good 15, 20 meters behind. So to make up that distance, and then win kind of handily, you know, it was, it was a sizable margin by like a second or so I would say.
Alison: Yeah, she, it was no Photofinish. It was very clear, very impressive.
Alison: And that US team had four individual gold medalists on it. And now they’ve got the team gold medal, which is really exciting.
Jill: In table tennis, we had team finals today. So we’ll start with the women’s team final for the one to three class. This is a locked wheelchair class with varying upper body ability, so they can do some extra arm reach. Gold, went to China. Silver went to Korea. Bronzes went to Croatia and Italy. For the men’s four to five class. This is a mobile wheelchair class. Gold went to China. Silver went to Korea, bronze went to France and Slovakia. .Oh, man, I’m just looking at the list and just, I’m sorry, China cleaned up for the women’s team side.
Jill: This is the women’s six to eight class, which is a standing class with a [00:56:00] low degree of disability in the full body, moderate degree of disability in one side or both legs. And the absence of legs. Gold went to China. Silver went to Netherlands, bronze, went to France and RPC.
Jill: For the men. MT eight class. This is a low degree of disability in both arms or both legs or moderate degree of disability in one leg. Gold went to China. Silver went to Ukraine. Bronze went to France and Great Britain. And the men’s MT three class, which is a locked wheelchair with extra reach in the upper body. Gold went to China. Silver went to Germany, bronze, went to Thailand and Czech Republic.
Jill: Did Millie not play?
Alison: She did not. They have been playing fast and loose with the schedule. I don’t know if you’ve noticed that as well. So Millie is playing tomorrow though. Originally that team was scheduled to play today, but then it was rescheduled to tomorrow.
Alison: We’ll see a lot of that when we get to tennis wheelchair tennis too.
Jill: But that makes more sense for wheelchair tennis, because it is outside when it is rainy and nasty outside, and table tennis.. Unless, what ,did they have a leak in the venue? Did they open the roof magically?
Alison: I think originally they were going to use multiple tables and then changed their minds to allow for more focus on, on medal matches. I don’t know. But I have noticed this throughout the Paralympics that the schedule that was published ahead of time is not matching what we’re seeing, which is also frustrating when you’re trying to find things.
Jill: TaeKwonDo started today. So we had a one weight class for each of the men and the women. This is again, not a sport that we will be able to see because it’s not being shown. We might see highlights, but we’re just not going to be able to get the sport in its entirety.
Jill: For the women we had the 49 kilogram class. The gold went to a Leonor Espinoza Carranza from Peru. Silver went [00:58:00] to Meryem Cavdar from Turkey. Bronze went to on, oh, this is also another, a sport with two bronzes. So bronzes went to Anna Poddubskaia from RPC and Kwansuda Phuangkitcha from Thailand.
Jill: This is also the event that the Afghan woman was competing in. She did not do so well, but she grateful to get to compete. She’s also not talking to the media, which I’m on board with.
Jill: For the men, they had the 61 kilos class. Gold went to Nathan Cesar Sodario Torquato from Brazil.
Jill: Silver went to Mohammed Elzayat from Egypt, and bronzes went to Daniil Sidorov from RPC and Mahmut Bozteke from Turkey. This was kind of a strange one because Mohammed Elzayat left his semi-final on a stretcher after the win. He decided he was okay to take the mat for the final. But once the fight started, the referee stopped it pretty quickly due to the extent of the injuries Elzayat was suffering.
Jill: And then he left the arena in a stretcher. So the gold medal match was stopped really quickly. We got our news from Inside the Games. We’re not sure to the extent of what Elzayat going through, but hopefully we’ll find something else.
Alison: Right. The score was zero, zero. So he, the referee stopped it almost immediately.
Alison: When he took a look at the Egyptian fighter, he was like, oh no, no, no, no, you are not fighting this match.
Jill: Well, I’m glad because safety is one of the things that officials are there for, and I’m glad they did not let anything more happen to all that.
Jill: Moving over to wheelchair basketball. We had some classification matches for the men.
Jill: This was for ninth and 10th place. Iran beat Korea, 64 to 54. Then we had a women’s [01:00:00] classification playoff for seventh and eighth place. Great Britain beat Spain, 62 to 43. And we had the women’s semi-finals. Netherlands beat Germany, 52 to 42, and the USA beat China 41 to 36. So this is a rematch, and they won. And didn’t this game stop mid point for us?
Alison: It did. I did not see the end of this game because I couldn’t couldn’t find it.
Jill: Wow. So this, it will be exciting. This will be a rematch of earlier group play Netherlands versus USA for gold, and then Germany and China will face off for silver. I am excited to watch this because Netherlands has been a powerhouse the whole tournament .We’ve been watching them because they’ve been working on building this team for years, and then USA has really come together as a team.
Alison: It should be a fun match. I would hope that they would show this in its entirety and highlight this at the very least the second half. So let’s keep our fingers crossed that this will not get interrupted, you know, with two minutes left and it’s tied.
Jill: Moving over to wheelchair tennis. What is going on here?
Alison: Okay. So here’s the problem with wheelchair tennis. First, it was the heat, and now it’s the rain. So they can only use center court, which closes its roof. So now you’ve got, because a lot of these matches were scheduled for both center and court one. So now you’ve got one court. So they have extended the tennis day, but there’s only so many matches you can get in a day.
Alison: So this tournament is going to go on at least one day longer than originally scheduled, possibly two, depending on how long some of these matches are.
Jill: So the organizers are hoping for no tiebreakers
Alison: Oh yeah. They, they like the quick ones. But of course, as we mentioned yesterday on that at the end of the show, there was the three set match that did not end until well into the evening.
Jill: [01:02:00] Wow. So that was in the quad doubles category. Japan’s Moroishi and Sugeno defeated Great Britain’s Cotterill and Lapthorn 7- 5, 3- 6, 7- 5. Wow. That was a long match!
Alison: I remember when I said yesterday, we’re going to be here a while. They were there a while.
Jill: Right. And that was for the bronze medal.
Jill: And then the gold went to Netherlands, Schroder and Vink, and silver went to Australia’s Alcott and Davidson. Then we had the women’s doubles semifinals that was also postponed from yesterday. China’s Yang and Zhu defeated Great Britain’s -Shukar and Whiley 6- 4, 6 -2. Then we had men’s singles semi-finals. Japan’s Kunieda Shingo defeated Great Britain’s Gordon Ried, 6 -3, 6- 2. And Netherlands’ Tom Egberink defeated Alfie Hewitt from Great Britain, 6- 4, 7- 5. So it will be Japan versus Netherlands in the finals.
Jill: In the women’s single semi-finals Netherlands Diede de Groot defeated defeated Jordanne Whiley from Great Britain, 6 -4, 6- 4. And then Japan’s Kamiji Yui defeated, Netherlands’ Aniek Van Koot 6- 2 6- 2.
Jill: So it’ll also be Japan and Netherlands in the final.
Jill: Very nice how that worked out. And then our other two matches were in the quad singles and they were postponed. So those were medal matches and hopefully they’ll get on the schedule.
Alison: Yeah, they are playing from very early in the morning until very late at night. So this is going to be a little rough on the players.
Jill: We’d like to take a moment to thank our Patreon patrons. These are listeners who give financial contributions on an ongoing basis, and their support helps fund different aspects of the show. Thanks to our patrons [01:04:00] who have come on during the Olympics and Paralympics, we are now able to offer transcripts of the show, which helps us reach a greater audience.
Jill: So we are so grateful to our patrons. If you would like to donate to the show on an ongoing basis, please check us out at Patreon.com/flame alive pod.
Jill: All right. TKFLASTAN watch.
Alison: As we mentioned earlier, Millie Tapper and team Australia take on Poland for the gold medal in women’s team table, tennis classes, nine and 10.
Jill: All right. That means it’s time to say sayonara. 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’s 2 0 8. Flame it. We’re flame alive pod on social. I’m on Twitter. Alison is killing it on Insta and Facebook. So be sure to get at us there. If you’re not in the Keep the Flame Alive podcast Facebook group, you are missing out.
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