We’re finding feeds and watching lots of sports, and it’s fantastic! Catch up on Day 3 action at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics.
Today’s sports program includes:
- Cycling – Track
- Equestrian
- Goalball
- Powerlifting (not that you can watch it)
- Swimming
- Table Tennis
- Wheelchair Basketball
- Wheelchair Fencing (not that you can watch it)
- Wheelchair Rugby
Thank you so much for listening and until tomorrow, keep the flame alive!
TRANSCRIPT
Tokyo 2020 – Paralympics – Day 3
Jill: [00:00:00] Konichiwa Paralympic fans and lovers ofTKFLASTAN and welcome to day three coverage of the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics on 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: Konichiwa.
Alison: I found goalball
Jill: Oh, yay!
Alison: It took some digging. But I found a match. Don’t know which day the match was from. But I got to see it. So I’m going to go with that and just say we’re on the uptick there.
Jill: Yeah. I was able to triple screen it today. I had two streams going on the computer and then the television going.
Jill: So I thought, okay, we are doing well so far, except for what I was watching this morning when I got up was what I had on the DVR, which was taped coverage until 9:00 AM Eastern time. And with maybe five or so minutes to go, we’re in the beginning parts of women’s wheelchair basketball, US versus Spain. I’m like, wow, are they just going to end? And they did. They just ended. The tape stopped. There was no host wrap up or anything. I guess they moved on to the next show. I don’t know what happened there. So we have that to work out. And then on the Paralympics website, there’s a story like “ones to watch in wheelchair fencing”.
Jill: And I had to tweet that and go, Hey, Paralympics, we can’t watch them because they’re not streamed. Hashtag We the 15. That’s what I’m going to do every time. I know I’m just, co-opting that for the poor sports that don’t get any kind of live stream coverage.
Alison: But I think that’s fair.
Jill: And I mean, because honestly you can’t have spectators, so these athletes’ family members couldn’t have come anyway. And then on top of that, you can’t tell them, oh, watch me at [00:02:00] home, because there’s no coverage. And if you say, well, there’s highlights. Yeah. But if you’re the athlete who is so thrilled just to make it to the Paralympics, you’re not going to be in the highlight reel.
Alison: I watched the highlights show today.
Jill: Okay. And does it include any of those sports?
Alison: No. Well, it’s not true. It does. Not that it includes any of those sports, any of the sports that it includes.. So for example, in swimming, they showed two races. The last lap of two races and that’s swimming. And, they had some wheelchair rugby. Showed maybe, you know, a score or two. I mean, it truly is highlights. Like this is what you would show on an evening newscast in the US. You’re not even, you know, you were talking about seeing two points in fencing. You probably won’t even see two points. You will only see the winning point, and then maybe if something weird happened. So their highlights are extremely limited.
Alison: And it came on an hour and a half after it was supposed to, so you had to scroll through 90 minutes of “The coverage will begin shortly”.
Jill: Wow.
Alison: You know, I’m hoping it’s better than other countries, that they’re handling it better, but I’m not hopeful that that’s actually happening.
Jill: Yeah, and I don’t think there are many countries, there might be some, uh, I think maybe Australia, maybe Canada because I know Canada has added some coverage since they announced their plans, that have as many hours as NBC touts.
Jill: But as we talked about yesterday, what does the number of hours actually mean? So I don’t know. The anger still, I was so angry yesterday. Today. I went down a little bit, but then I always find something to just poke me, poke me, poke me.
Alison: Oh, just watch some wheelchair rugby or wheelchair basketball. You will feel better.
Jill: Yes, definitely. Definitely. All right. Some news. COVID situations going on, similar to the Olympics, there are COVID cases related to the Paralympics, [00:04:00] including some athletes. So there’s COVID in the village, but this is a first: The Kyoto News reported that a person from overseas who is linked with the Paralympics, but is not an athlete has been hospitalized after testing positive on Monday.
Jill: So this patient is not displaying severe symptoms they’ve said, but still, that’s a step further than well, many steps further than anybody wants to happen, but that’s kind of scary to think about.
Alison: Well, I am going to speculate just a tiny bit on this one, because if this person is not displaying severe symptoms, but was still hospitalized, that tells me there’s a complicating factor.
Alison: He or she has some kind of preexisting condition that putting that person in the hospital is a preventative measure.
Jill: Right. And I think that’s the real worry with so many of the Paralympic athletes is that there are so many pre-existing conditions that could just be exasperated by this. So hopefully we can keep this contained for just another week or so.
Jill: All right, moving on to “What officiating or volunteer job do we want?” Alison, what would you like to do?
Alison: I don’t think I’ve ever laid claim to the medal assistants.
Jill: Oh, OK.
Alison: I don’t think I’ve ever said, I think it was just sort of assumed that we all knew I would want to be a medal assistant, but I’m, I’m going to claim that officially.
Alison: I want my blue outfit. I want to guide the people to the medal stands and with the para athletes, it’s even kind of more fun. Because if they’re visually impaired, you can, you physically helping them to the medal stand. So that makes it even more visceral experience. So I want my blue outfit. I want to make sure they get the right color. Someity flowers help them off the stand, escort them out. I want the whole job.
Jill: Excellent. Excellent. I have many jobs lining up. But today, I think we’ll, go to goalball and there’s a a handful of things I would like to do in goalball. But the first big one I would like to do is be the official on the goal line, [00:06:00] who not only says this was a goal, but also kind of bounces the ball back into them. And I like how they just kind of chunk it down.
Alison: And it doesn’t have as much bounce, as you said yesterday, that you would like, so it’s got it, throw it over sort of a thunk.
Alison: Yeah. And
Jill: it looks like they like kind of like kind of medicine, ball-y. I wonder if you hold it, if it’s a little heavier or not. Sometimes they also do some taping. Re taping the end. I’ve I have experience doing that, I did see a tape job and I went, oh, that’s not a good tape job because of those little bubbly, but I I’ve done some taping of floor in my life.
Alison: Okay. I’m going to reference back to one of our Olympic shows. You’re no Latvian basketball player. Who can tape his foot back together.
Jill: All right. before we get to today’s action, we’d like to tell you about our Kickstarter campaign. We have media accreditations for the Winter Olympics and Paralympics in Beijing next year. And if, if coverage of the Paralympics has got you all riled up here, us being in Beijing will make it a little bit better.
Jill: I’m not going to say it’s going to make it all better, but we’re going to move a step in the right direction with having more on the ground coverage in Beijing. This is coming up really quick. We’re so excited for this opportunity, but it was the opportunity that came knocking probably three to five years earlier than we’d planned.
Jill: So we operate on a shoestring budget anyway, and our shoestrings are not as long as they need to be to get all the way to Beijing. So we have a Kickstarter campaign to help fund this project and we need your support to get there. Find out more about our campaign and check out our fabulous supportor bonuses, kickstarter.com/profile/flame alive pod.
Jill: I’m waiting for somebody to become a director.
Alison: Oh, that would be fun.
Alison: There are roles where you can tell us, oh, you are going to go to this sport today.
Jill: And with you being there, you can actually, especially for the Paralympics, you will [00:08:00] absolutely go. You will do what you are told. You are a good Midwestern girl. You follow instructions well.
Jill: All right. track cycling. I want to kind of reiterate maybe every day or so, what the classes mean because I still get confused and that still seems like so many events. So, track cycling today, it was a one time trial that was for the women’s B class, which is a visual impairment, so it was a tandem rider situation. The other events on, today’s schedule were men’s C classes, which are amputations, hemiplegia, or other limb impairments. And that was individual pursuits and also time trials.
Jill: So in the women’s race, gold was won by Netherlands Larissa Klaassen, whose pilot was Imke Brommer. Silver went to Aileen McGlynn. Great Britain, who is an OBE. It’s interesting that they have got the titles in with the winners.
Alison: We had a Dame yesterday, right?
Jill: Yes. Dame Sarah Storey. McGlynn’s pilot was Helen Scott ,and bronze went to Belgium’s Griet Hoet, who was piloted by Anneleen Monsieur. I did see this race. It was interesting. Again, like we we’ve talked about before with this class, it’s interesting to watch the pilot go and just kind of go with the flow, but steer the bike, and I bet it’s kind of complicated to steer that longer bike around some of the turns of the velodrome. Well, what gets me with the Netherlands tires, I think this is just the whole team is there’s something with the tires in the making them aerodynamic. Cause all the tires have covers on them. But there’s something in them that makes them look square. So when you see the tires roll around the track, it looks like squares, or reminds me of a Flintstones bike. It just looks like squares rolling on the track.
Jill: And I tried to get a picture of it, but it doesn’t really photograph well. But if you go back and watch any of the Netherlands cyclists
Alison: because optical illusions do not screenshot.
Jill: In [00:10:00] the men’s C four to five class, 1000 meter time trials, gold went to Spain’s Alfonzo Cabello Llamas. Silver went to Great Britain, Jody Cundy and bronze went to Slovakia’s Jozef Metelka. In the men’s C1, 3000 meters individual pursuit… this is a long race and, and long because the commentators remind you how long 3000 meters is and how tired you get by the end of it. And they’re like, hold on, just hold on a little bit more.
Alison: And then all of a sudden you feel so tired
Jill: Exactly.
Alison: Like as if your energy is being drained. But yeah, I was watching 3000 meters yesterday and I’m like, they’re still going, what is happening?
Jill: Well ,in the C one class gold went to RPCs Mikhail Astashov. Silver went to Canada’s Tristen Chernove, and bronze went to China’s Li Zhangyu. In the C2 class, it was gold for France’s Alexandre Leaute and silver went to Australia, Darren Hicks, and bronze went to China’s Liang, Guihua. And in the C3 class, it was gold for Great Britain’s Jaco van Gass. Silver went to Great Britain’s Finlay Graham, and bronze went to Australia, David Nicholas.
Jill: In equestrian. Have you gotten to see some of your dressage?
Alison: I was watching dressage this morning! And what the fun thing about dressage is at the Paralympics, I feel like it’s one of those sports that when you’re watching, it doesn’t feel like you’re watching para sport.
Jill: Yes.
Alison: The look of it. And I mean, unless you’re obviously staring at the rider and they are missing a limb, but just the feel of it is the same. what makes good dressage good dressage is the same.
Jill: Right. And they talked so much about the partnering with the horse and just how the partnering worked together.
Jill: And every once in a while, you’d hear, okay, they’ve got two whips because they can’t use their legs to help steer the horse. And that, to me, [00:12:00] all of that was really interesting because the whips, of course, they just basically, tap the horse to make it go. It’s not like you’re thrashing the horse, but it’s, it’s interesting.
Jill: I wonder how that works and how you teach the horse to respond to that action.
Alison: Now, from our conversation with Sydney Collier, obviously what the rider is doing is very different based on their disabilities, but looking at it as a spectator, it’s just as beautiful and joyous and wonderful.
Alison: Don’t have a favorite horse yet. Surprisingly, this announcer did not tell me enough about these horses for me to fall in love with one. So I’ll be watching again for my horse to love. I need a new Pumpkin,
Jill: Also joyous? Music selection.
Alison: There was some rock today. I was surprised there was more rock at Paralympics than there was at Olympics, but there was still, you know, the orchestral movie music, the Hooked on Classics, versions of songs, the things I was like, Ooh, were you intoxicated when you picked out this music and thought that was a good idea? And then there are a few pieces, I’m like, did the horse pick the music? It was like one tap for two.
Alison: Equestrian’s divided into five grades. That’s their classification, terminology. So we had grade two, grade four, and grade five today. In grade two, it’s a severe trunk impairment and minimal arm impairment or moderate impairment of the trunk, arms and legs. In this grade, gold went to Great Britain’s Lee Pearson, who was riding Breezer. Silver, went to Austria’s Pepo Puch who is on Sailor’s Blue and bronze went to Great Britain’s Georgia Wilson, who was on Sakura. Grade four, this is athletes with severe [00:14:00] impairment or deficiency of both arms or a moderate impairment of all four limbs or they’re short of stature.
Jill: And so gold went to Netherlands Sanne Voets on Demantur. silver went to Brazil’s Rodolpho Riskalla on Don Henrico, and bronze went to Belgium’s Manon Claeys on San Dior 2.
Alison: What happened to San Dior 1?
Jill: And when I saw that I went, Hmm, maybe they just say two instead of junior.
Alison: Fair enough. So is there a, is there a San Dior one back home at the stables going, Yay, son?
Alison: You did it. I don’t know why my Belgian sounded like this from Arkansas, but I’m just going to go with that.
Alison: All right. Then in grade five, these are athletes who have mildly impaired range of movement or muscle strength or deficiency of one limb or a mild deficiency of two limbs. And this grade also includes vision impairment of the B2 sport class, so this is a more mild vision impairment. The gold went to Belgium’s Michele, George on Best of 8. Silver went to Great Britain, Sophie Wells on Don Cara .M and bronze went to Netherlands- Frank Hosmer on Alphaville. So you will see these riders and horses again, along with the other top eight in each grade for the, individual free competition. It was nice to be able to watch that like, oh, you did put a stream on it.
Alison: It kind of surprised me that they put the stream on for equestrian and not for fencing. It was a strange choice.
Jill: It might be easier to do equestrian because well, the thing with the fencing competition, is you start with pools, and so everybody’s got to fence each other in the pools, and then it goes to knockout stages. So it’s probably a little trickier to show on a screen, but you can work that out. Maybe you don’t show the [00:16:00] pools. Maybe you start at qualification or maybe, you know, you just have multiple streams. I don’t know
Alison: Or maybe you just even show the medal rounds. We’ll take that. We’ll take what we can get.
Jill: Anyway, goalball. We had more men’s and women’s preliminary action. On the men’s side, Belgium defeated china ten to three. US beat Brazil, eight to six. I saw this game and it was a lot closer than it looks. So I have stuff to look up. the U S started off getting a delay of game penalty. And the commentators had said… did you watch this?
Alison: I did not see the beginning of the game, but this is the game that I did watch.
Jill: Okay. So they got a delay of game and the commentator’s, like, yeah, there are a couple of delay of games going on in this tournament, so the referees are no nonsense, man. And then there, there’s another penalty called a long ball that I have to figure out what that is because what happens when, when you get penalties, it’s not like they pull you off the court for a minute or so. It’s that the other team gets the penalty shot with just one person blocking the net and pretty much, you’re going to score. There were some really cool goals. There was a goal that went between somebody’s legs. Brazil sprung out to the side and, and while they were splaying out, their legs split and the ball went right between them.
Alison: I saw a goal in this match that sort of, it was almost like a bounce pass. It’s sort of, I mean, that’s the only way I can describe it. It was flung and then bounced and sort of went over someone’s leg. In. And I was like, how did you do that? It’s not a bouncy ball. And yet it did sort of, and that could have also been an, a bit of an optical illusion that it wasn’t quite as bounced as it looked, but it was very cool.
Jill: Right. And Brazil had an own goal, which I did feel better, but ah, that’s gotta be the worst, but that was, it was fun game to watch. Like some of these other sports like track cycling, it’s kind of nice and calming to watch goalball I think. Except for the, [00:18:00] the other job I would take is quiet, please. Quiet.
Jill: And I don’t think you and I could go and see goalball because I don’t think we’d shut up.
Alison: It’s probably true. They would put us in a corner. They put us in, you know, what they would need? They would need those boxes that they have at a question where the, the judges are in their sort of like in their cone of silence, we would need one of those.
Jill: Also on the men’s competition, Ukraine beat Germany, 11 to five and Lithuania tied Algeria, seven to seven. On the women’s side RPC, defeated, China, four to three. Turkey defeated Egypt, 12 to, two .Canada beat, Israel, six to two.
Jill: And. In power lifting– oh, I forgot another officiating job I’d want. I might do two.
Jill: I might do the job I know exists. And the job I’m going to make up because I can’t verify it exists. And that would be in power lifting because power lifting doesn’t have classes. They go by weights. But what they do, I noticed when on the results they list what rack height the athlete has.
Jill: So of course, now I want to know what rack height has to do with it and why they definitely denote that in the results. and I want to know because some of these people lifted the same thing and I, my guess would be, is that someone got the higher result because they got to the higher weight first or did it in two lifts instead of three? I don’t know. Or were magically the first person in the starting line and got it first.
Alison: Or I wonder if rack height has a point value?
Jill: Oh, that’s a good question.
Alison: So the idea is if your rack height is either higher or lower, the standard is different because I would assume your rack height has to do with your, your reach. So if you’re a small stature, you’re going to have a much different rack height, or you have limited mobility in one arm or the other. And that then influences how the weight is weighted in [00:20:00] your score.
Jill: That’s interesting because I did notice in track cycling that there were I want to say adapted times, but that’s not the right terminology, but they had, depending on what class you were in or your impairment, you got a different time than what the clock said because they accounted for the level of disability. So you could be very right, but I would like to be a rack adjuster.
Alison: You like the pressure jobs. You wanted to change the plates.
Jill: I still want to change the plates.
Alison: See, that’s too much pressure for me.
Jill: Because I want to know. On the Olympic side it’s, they put the plates on and everybody who wants that weight goes, and then they add more weight and then you keep going.
Jill: So that they’ll have competitions where people don’t pop in until like 20, 30 minutes into competition, because now we’re finally at our weight. So what do you do if you have different rack heights? Do you start with the rack at one height and then just keep adding weight and then take it off for the next rack height? Or do you go by weight again, and just keep adjusting the rack? So many questions. If you know something about pair of power lifting, get at us. Flame alive pod@gmail.com or 2 0 8 3 5 2 6 3 4 8. That’s 2 0 8 FLAME-IT.. You can text us or leave us a voicemail and let us know how this works because we’re obviously not learning from the Paralympics sadly.
Jill: Men and women each had two weight classes today. So men started out with 49 kilograms. Gold went to Jordan’s Omar Sami Hamadeh Qarada who lifted 173 kilograms. Silver went to Vietnam’s le van Cong who also lifted 1 73. Bronze, went to Azerbaijan’s Parvin Mammadov who lifted 156.
Jill: In the women’s 41 kilograms, gold went to China’s Guo Lingling, who’s got a world record and Paralympic record with her best lift of 108 kilograms. Silver went to [00:22:00] Indonesia’s Ni Nengah Widiasih who lifted 98 kilograms, and bronze went to Venezuela’s Clara Sancy Fuentes Monasterio who lifted 97 kilograms.
Jill: In the women’s 45 kilograms, gold went to Nigeria’s Latifat Tijani who lifted 107 kilograms. Silver went to China’s Cui Zhe who lifted 102, and bronze went to Poland’s Justyna Kozdryk, who lifted 101.
Jill: And on the men’s 54 kilograms, gold went to Kazakhstan’s David Degtyarev who lifted 174. Silver went to France’s Axel Bourlon, who lifted 165, and bronze went to Greece’s Dimitrios Bakochristos who lifted 165.
Jill: Over to swimming, which I got to watch a bunch of that too.
Alison: So I want to make a mention about the OBS. I assume it’s the OBS announcers that we’re hearing. This swimming announcer is not Rowdy Gaines. The swimming announcer is just as fantastic. So good.
Alison: But I want to mention something that listener Dan pointed out. He really liked the announcers in goalball, and he wanted to get their names and can’t find them. I can also not find them or the names of the swimming announcers or a name of the rugby announcers that I like so much.
Alison: So apparently OBS, announcer work for MI-6.
Jill: Yeah. And they never tell who they are.
Alison: They don’t give their names. They don’t put them on the screen. you cannot find it on OBS. So unlike NBC that touts their announcers endlessly, OBS announcers sort of fade into the background to the point where I want to know who they are and can’t find them. So, this is now my quest.
Jill: I know, because I noticed I enjoyed the equestrian announcers today as well. And I [00:24:00] know they were different from the ones at the Olympics.
Alison: Yes. The voice was different.
Jill: Yes, but still very elegant, very elegant, British bordering on Dame Judi Dench set of actresses. And I’d love to know, like how, how are they connected? Or are they just a sports commentator or a commentator and other things and they just picked up this gig?
Alison: So this is now my, my search. I’m going to find out who these people are.
Jill: Okie doke. Well, good luck. All right. So, with swimming, our classes are. S and SB one. SB is for breaststroke, but the S is for just stroke. One to 10 is for physical impairments, 11 through 13 is for vision impairments. And then, the larger the number, the more functional ability the athlete has. Class S 14 or SB 14 is for athletes with intellectual impairments. We had an individual medley today. So that’s not really a sports class, but there’s a really complicated calculation involved with how to index them, because I think they look at all of your stroke classes and put something together. So today was a 200 individual medley later in the competition. There’s going to be a three discipline, 150 meter individual medley, so I am looking forward to seeing how that works.
Jill: But today competition started with the hundred meter freestyle. That’s men’s S5 and S4 classes. And then women’s S5. In the men’s 100 meter freestyle, gold went to Italy’s Francesco Bocciardo ,silver went to China’s Wang Lichao and bronze went to Brazil’s Daniel de Faria Dias.
Jill: Okay. So one thing I noticed about this, I have a question.
Alison: I can answer this question.
Jill: Oh, you can answer this question! So in the freestyle, some of the swimmers who had no arms were [00:26:00] doing butterfly kick, not the, not the silver medalist who had no arms, but he did a freestyle kick, but why do swimmers with no arms can do butterfly kick and, or be on their backs? Why wouldn’t that be backstroke or butterfly?
Alison: Because technically freestyle means you can do any stroke. So even in Olympic swimming, you don’t have to do the Australian crawl for freestyle. You can do any stroke you want to, it’s just, the crawl is the fastest stroke. So that’s what everybody does.
Alison: But depending on your impairment, it may not be the fastest stroke. So you can do any kick, any stroke.
Jill: Interesting. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. In the women’s S five class for this race, gold went to Great Britain’s Tully Kearney, who got a world record. Silver went to China’s Zhang Li, and bronze went to Italy’s Monica Boggioni. That was a fun race to watch because I think Tully Kearney was a little surprised that she got her world record.
Jill: And in the men’s S four class, gold went to Japan’s Suzuki Takayuki, silver went to Italy’s Luigi Beggiato, and bronze went to RPCs Roman Zhdanov. Okay. So if you get, I don’t know if this is on the highlight, but you should really go back and find this race, because this was a good one. This, I think this is Japan’s first gold at least if not at the Paralympics, it might be in the pool.
Jill: So the announcers were like, oh, he goes out fast. And he usually can’t hang because his, disabilities are, he has one arm that’s pretty much fine. And then one is amputated at the elbow and both of his lower limbs are amputated above the knee. And then they were talking, comparing him with, Beggiato who has got two arms, two full arms, but no use of his legs. It’s interesting to see how that compared in the pool, because they said, oh, well, Suzuki, he [00:28:00] usually goes out fast and he usually can’t hang on. And you could see on the second length, Beggiato is starting to catch up with him because this is where he’s going to kick in and shine and Suzuki, you could almost seen the light flash on going, no, you are not doing this to me at home in my country. And he kicked it into another gear and it was so much, I mean, and just like put the commentators to shame almost.
Alison: This is, you know what? They scream my house. This is my house.
Jill: Oh, it was, it was a great race. Go back and watch that one if you can find it. but there was a stream. I got it on a stream after it was over.
Alison: We got to get over this because this is going to get annoying, really fast.
Jill: Oh, do you want me to get me started on the Nike commercial? No, no, no. You don’t want that. So we’ll just go with this for, for our Mike and Maya. What’s up with your feed today?
Jill: We moved on to the 200 individual medley. This was the men’s and the women’s SM six classes. On the men’s side, gold went to Colombia’s Nelson Crispin Corzo who got a world record. The world records are dropping like flies in this pool. It is amazing. Then silver went to RPC, Andrei Granichka and bronze went to China’s Jia Hongguang. On the women’s side, gold went to great Britain’s Maisie Summers-Newton. Silver went to Ukraine’s Yelyzaveta Mereshko, and bronze went to Germany’s Verena Schott.
Jill: That is another race to go back and watch. Did you see this one?
Alison: I have not yet.
Jill: Okay. Go back and find this one. This is also a great race because. US’ Elizabeth Marks was in this and they kept talking about her being in the mix for the gold that was really going to be like Marks versus Mereshko. And what happened was that on the breaststroke leg, out of nowhere [00:30:00] comes Maisie Summers-Newton, and she just catches up and gets ahead and just takes it off in the freestyle. And she gets this world record and it’s just incredible. Like no one expected this it’s a great race.
Alison: So remember in the Olympics, when the swimmer Zach Stubbelty-Cook was racing and the announcer kept saying Stubbelty-Cook more than he really needed to?
Alison: Well, this announcer loves saying Nelson Crispin Corzo in the same way, because she would say the entire name every time she referenced that swimmer. So I’m hoping she does the same thing with Maisie Summers-Newton.
Jill: No, because they didn’t know she was going to come out of nowhere. I’m like, whoa.
Alison: And what I’m really, really hoping is she screws up and calls her Olivia Newton John, at least once.
Jill: People are professionals.
Alison: Doesn’t mean they don’t get physical sometimes.
Jill: Oh, okay. Then we moved on to the men’s and women’s 400 meter freestyle, the S 11 class. This is a vision impairment class. So if you’re curious about how vision impairment races work, this is a fun one to watch too.
Alison: Well, they won’t have seen it because they’re visually impaired.
Jill: Now that you say that I will give some props because, NBC does have a track of– some of the coverage gets the audio description treatment. And they had this for the opening ceremonies too, where they describe what’s happening for visually impaired people. So I do give them some credit for putting that together and making sure that that’s an option.
Jill: But, in how these races work, the swimmers have to wear blacked out goggles. And so what you get is wall tappers. So there’s somebody on each end of the lane with [00:32:00] a tapping device on a stick. And it can be anything and it can be a soft little thing. It can be a, I think I saw a tennis ball or something.
Jill: And this is not just a volunteer job. This is somebody who has worked with a swimmer before, because they down and tap the swimmer when they’re getting close to the wall so that the swimmer can time how far they have to go before they have to turn. And you got to get the timing just right, or the swimmer’s going to miss the wall or they’ll bonk into the wall. And so what happens is, in the men’s race, you get to see where this goes wrong and where this goes right on the same swimmer who won gold, uh, Netherlands Rogier Dorsman. And there was one time where the Tapper tapped too early. And I guess they count the strokes and he counted and like flipped and there was no wall there.
Jill: And you have to go back and get that, that momentum again. But he was, he was really far ahead anyway, he was really great swimmer. So that was really interesting to see. And then in that race, silver went to Japan Tomita Uchu. Bronze went to China’s Hua Dongdong. And the women’s side, gold went to USA’s Anastasia Pagonis, who broke her own world record that she broke in the heat. It was phenomenal. She was so far ahead. And the commentator was great because he’s like, her guide dog is named Radar, but she doesn’t need radar in the pool,
Alison: But I bet Radar would love to swim in the pool with her.
Jill: I’m sure he would. Silver went to Netherlands, LiesetteBruinsma, and bronze went to China’s Cai Liwen
Jill: Then we moved to the breaststroke. We had men’s and women’s 100 meters SB nine class, and the men’s side gold went to Italy, Stephano Raimondi. Silver went to RPCs Arten Isaev and bronze went to RPCs Dimitrii On the women’s side, gold went to Netherlands’ Chantalle Zijderveld, silver went to Netherlands’ [00:34:00] Lisa Kruger, and bronze went to Australia’s Keira Stephens. Over to backstroke. We had the S 13 class for the 100 meters. On the men’s side, gold went to Belarus’ Ihar Boki. So he is like walking away with some, some good medals there. Silver went to Canada’s Nicholas Guy Turbide, and bronze went to RPCs Vladimir Sotnikov. On the women’s side, gold went to USA’s Gia Pergolini, silver went to Italy’s Carlotta Gilli, and bronze went to Australia’s Katja Dedekind.
Jill: Then we had more breaststroke. I did not see this race. It was the men’s and women’s SB eight class for the 100meter breaststroke. On the men’s side gold went to RPCs Andrei Kalina. Silver went to Spain’s Oscar Salguero Galisteo and bronze went to China’s Yang Guanglong. On the women’s side, gold went to Ireland’s. Ellen Keene. Silver went to New Zealand, Sophie Pascoe, and bronze went to RPCs Adelina Razetdinova
Alison: Yay Ireland!
Jill: I know. I get excited when Ireland won and then we ended the day with our first mixed relay. It’s called the 20 points relay. This is a four by 50 meters. And the points are, you add up your classifications and they can’t total more than 20 points, and you have to have two men and two women. And again, it’s that strategy of putting the points together. And who do you swim? When? Well, China just rolled away with this one. They took the gold, Italy took silver and Brazil took bronze.
Jill: Fun day in the pool and glad I got, you know, it was nice to watch a bunch of swimming. In table tennis, we had another million matches, and every once in a while. They just pop a random one on to the NBC SN show and, and Carolyn Manno would be like, I just love table tennis
Jill: I did see people in wheelchairs who were a little more mobile and had a little more sporting [00:36:00] wheelchair. I also saw the, the standard wheelchairs as well. So more to try to uncover.
Jill: Our TKFLASTANI Millie Tapper did play, but she was not on a stream. There are like, I don’t know, probably I wouldn’t be surprised that there were a dozen tables in that table tennis hall, and they only have two streams going on.
Jill: So she was not on stream today, and she lost to Brazil’s Bruan Costa Alexandre 3-0. So hopefully, and this is pool play, so hopefully she’s got another couple of matches or so to, lift yourself up in the rankings before knockout stages begin.
Jill: Then we had some wheelchair basketball. On the women’s side, Germany defeated Australia, 75, 58, Japan beat great Britain, 54 to 48, US beat Spain, 68 to 34. So I did see the first half of the first quarter before it just cut out. And China beat Netherlands 45 to 38.
Jill: On the men’s side USA beat Germany, 58 to 55. I watched this one too. And it was good because it oh…
Alison: This was wild.
Jill: It was because Germany had a decent lead. It was pretty close, but even so, like there were points where the, the US was down several baskets and clawed their way back near the end, too.
Jill: Spain beat Canada, 78, 41. Great Britain beat Algeria, 72-43 Australia beat, Iran, 81 to 39. Turkey beat Korea, 80 to 70, and Japan defeated Colombia 63 to 56. I got to say, it’s fun to watch wheelchair basketball because of the fundamentals you see on display that you don’t get in standup basketball.
Alison: The ball handling like I was talking about yesterday is so outstanding.
Jill: And the use of the backboard as well. I think it’s just really fascinating how much they work on getting the angles right and where on the backboard they have to hit to get the ball in the hoop.
Alison: [00:38:00] What always amazes me is –I’m going to try and say this without sounding insulting. I am about as tall standing up as a lot of these guys, especially the men are in their wheelchairs. I am very short and you know, if I’ve ever played, you know, basketball. When my daughter was young or two, I could never get the strength to get the ball up. I’m a classic air ball. And the way these guys just arc those things in. The upper body strength blows my mind. And I’m sure able-bodied basketball players are the same, but it’s so easy to see in wheelchair basketball because you know, that distance is so far there’s no, oh, seven foot or I can just reach up and throw it in.
Jill: Yeah. That’s what I like about watching wheelchair basketball is I appreciate the game a little bit more versus, oh, we found the tallest people who also can run and kind of shoot. Like you say, just tip it in. But these athletes, oh man. They did a little package on Team USA on the women’s side. In the package, they showed a clip of them working out in the weight room and just the chin ups and all of this upper body work that they do is phenomenal.
Jill: Well, wheelchair fencing happened.
Alison: Not that we got to see it.
Jill: Nope. In wheelchair fencing, all the classes are combined into two categories. So in Category A you have good sitting balance and you, you may or may not have the support of your legs and you have a normal fencing arm in Category B, you have good or fair sitting balance and minimally are affected or a normal fencing arms. So Category B fencers , they could be paraplegics. They could be incomplete tetraplegics. That’s the kind of differentiation they do with these categories.
Jill: It was individual epee today. On the men’s side in Category A, gold went to Great Britain’s Piers Gilliver. Silver went [00:40:00] to RPCs Maxim Shaburov. Bronze, went to China’s Tian Jianquan, and Category B, gold went to RPCs Alexander Kuzyukov. Silver went to Brazil’s Jovane Guissone and bronze went to Great Britain’s Dimitri Coutya. On the women’s side in Category A, gold went to Hungary’s Amarilla Veres. Silver went to China’s Rong Jing and bronze went to China’s Bian Jing. In Category B gold went to China’s Tan Shumei, silver went to RPCs Viktoria Boykova, and bronze went to Thailand’s. Jana Saysunee
Jill: And we rounded out the day with some wheelchair rugby.
Alison: Did you see the US-Canada men’s game?
Jill: Oh my goodness! Oh, wow!
Alison: Are we all in love with Chuck Aoki now? He is so, I mean, I don’t care if you don’t know anything about wheelchair rugby, you have to watch Chuck Aoki because this athlete is just incredible.
Jill: And he played the entire game.
Alison: This is watching Michael Jordan. This is a real treat to see somebody at that level of skill and talent.
Jill: Just his ability to see where to pass, to make passes happen, to maneuver his chair, to get where he needs to be .It… unbelievable. And the team is working so well together too. There were some unbelievable passes that we could not believe got caught without being intercepted.
Alison: Feed announcer, adores Chuck Aoki. And clearly loves wheelchair rugby. So he super excited when there are collisions. He’s like, yes! This is what we live for. He just gets so into it. He does not talk at all about it as a sport of disabled [00:42:00] athletes.
Jill: Yeah. Yeah. The commentary is really fun to watch Canada. Oh, It was really close, back and forth. And then the US stretched out their lead at the end. Poor Canada is now 0 and 2 in pool play, and they are a really good team. And it’s just really sad, likely they are not going to move on out of the group stage because of that 0 and 2 record. A, it’s a testament to the quality of the teams, but B that’s gotta be rough.
Alison: Yeah, the commentator was talking about the pool B, which is US, Canada. New Zealand is just the death pool that it’s… they were saying that whoever comes out of that pool is likely going to be your gold medalist
Jill: The death pool, and Murderball?
Alison: Death pool and murderball. Well, hey, you talk about dipping your toe into swimming, so I don’t want to hear it.
Jill: Okay. So besides the US- Canada, Japan defeated Denmark 60 to 51. Oh. So, NBCSN did show the last point of the Denmark -Australia game. Denmark’s got women on their team. We were wondering about who had women. Denmark’s got women. Root for Denmark, although I’m also rooting for Japan too, because host nation. Australia beat France, 50 to 48 and Great Britain, defeated, New Zealand, 60 to 37.
Jill: We’ve got one more day of pool play. Top two teams from each group move on in group A Japan is undefeated. In group B US and Great Britain are undefeated. They’ll face each other next, but I believe they’re both going to end up moving on just because the other two teams are 0 and 2.
Jill: I did notice that in wheelchair basketball, if you tip over, you have to pick yourself up.
Alison: Teammates were picking each other up. What my favorite system is, somebody rolls over and you use their wheelchair to pick yourself up, like you use their arm rests or whatever to get up.
Jill: Interesting. And I’m [00:44:00] assuming it’s just that the cage on the wheelchair rugby chair prevents that mobility from happening. Like once you’re down, you’re down.
Alison: The bottom is so wide that I think it’s a bit of a T-Rex effect where even if you’re, that your arms aren’t long enough to reach over that very wide bottom.
Jill: Right, right.
Jill: We would like to take moment to thank our Patreon patrons whose ongoing financial contributions help make this show possible. Thank you. We got some new patrons overnight, so thank you so much, new patrons. We will be in touch with you about how your benefits will work going forward. Thanks to our patrons, we have been able to add transcripts to our show. This is something we’ve wanted to do for a long time and just haven’t been able to do it. So, thank you patrons. Thank you, new patrons. If you’d like to support the show on an ongoing basis, check out patreon.com/flame alive pod.
Jill: Do we have any TKFLASTANIS competing tomorrow?
Alison: The table tennis pool play has not been updated as of yet. So if Millie Tapper has another match today, I will put it in the Facebook group and put it in the newsletter as well.
Jill: Excellent.
So that means it is time to say sayonara. As always, you can email us at flamealivepod at gmail.com, text or voicemail us at 2 0 8 3 5 2 6 3 4 8.
Jill: Please do not forget our Kickstarter and help us reach the goal of bringing you on the ground coverage at Beijing. And giving the Paralympics a little more of the, of its due. That is kickstarter.com/profile/flame alive pod. As we go out to music by Mercury Sunset, thank you so much for listening and until tomorrow, keep the flame alive.
Attempts have been made to ensure the accuracy of this transcript, but it may not be fully complete. Please cross-reference the audio.