Alison is back, and things are heating up in Tokyo — literally. Some sports have heat delays! The heat’s a bigger issue with Paralympians, and we’ll explain why.
Also, 17 sports on today’s event program:
- Archery
- Athletics
- Boccia
- Cycling Track
- Equestrian
- Goalball
- Judo
- Powerlifting
- Rowing
- Sitting Volleyball
- Swimming
- Table Tennis – with TKFLASTANI Melissa Tapper
- Triathlon
- Wheelchair Basketball
- Wheelchair Fencing
- Wheelchair Rugby
- Wheelchair Tennis
We need your help! For the upcoming Winter Olympics and Paralympics in 2022, we’ll have an on-the-ground presence. This will allow us to bring you an Olympics audio experience like no other. But getting to Beijing will be difficult, so we’ve got a Kickstarter campaign running to help get us there. Please check it out and support our efforts to bring you a better show. Thank you for your support!
Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive!
TRANSCRIPT
Tokyo 2020 – Paralympics – Day 5
Jill: [00:00:00] Konichiwa, Paralympics fans and lovers of TKFLASTAN, and welcome to day five coverage of the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics on Keep the Flame Alive. We’re 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. You’re back, Alison!
Alison: I’m back. You can’t say “as always” to me.
Jill: I know. I know, you know, and that’s just part of the pattern.
Alison: It’s what we say. And I have failed you once again. Well, thank you to Superfan Sarah for filling in for me yesterday. It is greatly appreciated. So got one out of the house, so I can watch more Paralympics undisturbed.
Jill: Oh, that’s good. That’s very good.
Jill: All right. It’s a big day on the Paralympic program. So let’s get to our news and followup file. Great news that just came out before we recorded. Craig Spence, who’s the chief brand and communications officer for the International Paralympic Committee posted on Twitter that the two Afghanistan athletes have arrived in Tokyo and they will get to participate in the Games. That is fantastic news.
Alison: That is the best news I’ve heard all day. That’s fantastic.
Jill: We’ll go to not so good news.
Alison: Well, I heard you guys talking about it yesterday and then I went back and saw the story. Absolutely horrified by this.
Jill: The athlete who was hit by the self-driving bus has withdrawn from the competition.
Jill: This is Aramitsu Kitazono, who is a judoka. He suffered no external injuries. He had an MRI and it showed his brain was not affected by the accident. However, he said, he doesn’t feel quite right, and he doesn’t have a good appetite. And some doctors said, you know, you probably shouldn’t compete for a week just in case you have a concussion and those symptoms haven’t really fully manifested yet.
Jill: So he got apologies from Hidemasa Nakamura, who’s the Tokyo official helping to ensure the Games go off smoothly and Akio Toyoda, who’s the president of Toyota motor [00:02:00] company who made the car, which is called the e-palette. Toyota said the engineers of the car had never considered what it means to lack the ability to see or hear at the Paralympic venues.
Alison: Wow. That’s — I can’t even… well, first of all, I want to say, no kidding he doesn’t feel like himself after he got hit by a car. And I mean, that is so basic. I mean, I could get with, oh, they misunderstood certain elements of limb impairment or, but not expecting people with visual and auditory impairments at the Paralympics?
Jill: You know, I think they just didn’t think about it. I honestly think it was not an honest mistake, but going along with that whole, We the 15 campaign, I just think that people don’t really realize when, when you think of, oh, we had the Olympics and the Paralympics, and the Paralympics are for disabled athletes. And then you just forget that disabilities come in many forms and you just go about your business. And if you don’t have any of these people in your life on a regular basis, you just don’t consider it..
Alison: I think you’re being too nice.
Jill: I don’t think it’s right. I’ve only got so much outrage.
Alison: I want to take these engineers and slap them upside the head. I mean, if you don’t know what disabilities you are dealing with, you find out. Come on!
Jill: And it is a big bad learning moment for Toyota.
Alison: I hope they are humiliated and embarrassed by this. They should be.
Jill: That followup was courtesy of the Asahi Shimbun.
Jill: COVID cases with the games now, number over 200. So the, the upside is that for the second straight day, no athletes or individuals staying in the athletes village have tested positive. According to Kyodo News.
Jill: Heat has been a problem. Who’s surprised?
Alison: Really?
Jill: You know, who was probably surprised? All the IOC members who approved [00:04:00] the bid back in 2013 when the bid book likely said, oh, temperatures are very nice.
Alison: So you’re telling me that there’s heat in Japan in the summer and visually impaired people come to the Paralympics? Who knew?
Jill: I know. Right? So a temperatures have been over 30 degrees Celsius or more since August 18. And this is a bigger issue on the Paralympic side because people with disabilities often have issues that aren’t conducive for them functioning properly in high heat. So it’s harder for them to perspire or expand their blood vessels to bring down the body temperature.
Jill: The pressure of competition puts greater pressure on them. Excitement they have about the Paralympics can also be a factor. So they may not realize that their body temperatures approaching dangerous levels. Both the Asahi Shimbun and Kyodo News were reporting about that.
Jill: If some athletes who are closer to the ground, especially if they’re in a wheelchair, may get more heat from the ground than an able-bodied athlete does who stands up. So that can also be an issue in a regulating body heat. And so the heat stress index figures used for the Paralympics are a lot stricter than those for the Olympics. And we’ll talk about that, how that’s affected some sports later on.
Jill: Feed beefs. I was going to try really hard not to make this a segment, even though I’m making it a segment now.
Alison: See, I go away for one day and Sarah encourages you and then everything just goes off the rails.
Jill: Thank you, Sarah. So I was going to try really hard not to make this a segment, but NBCSN. I thought they said, we’re going to have coverage on every day from 9:00 PM to 9:00 AM. Follow along or set your DVRs. Right?
Jill: And then last night at 9:00 PM, I turned on my TV. And there was nothing, there was nothing on NBC, NBCSN, nothing on Olympic channel that was Paralympics related. They had stuff on not Paralympics related and you didn’t [00:06:00] get anything until like midnight. And I was just frustrated beyond belief. We had a little bit of judo on last night, but it was kind of like, I want something on the big TV and it was all so hard. Like I couldn’t pull up anything on Peacock. I couldn’t pull up anything on the NBC Sports app. It was just like highlights or “this is coming up.” We don’t have anything past to show you or if they did, I couldn’t find it. So that was a real frustration. So of course, again, I go to bed too late because I wanted to see something.
Jill: Then I get up at 5:30 to cram in everything that was on my DVR and try to watch. And try to populate the show sheet with winners. I am beyond angry. I’m also angry because if you go to NBC Olympics.com and look at the sports schedule, if you scroll down to the schedule section, it claims that some sports start much later than they actually do.
Jill: So archery is underway. But according to NBC competition doesn’t start until September 1st.
Alison: Well, I’m going to prevent a frustration for you tonight. NBC Sport does not start it’s coverage until one in the morning. So that nine to nine is getting less and less as we’re going along.
Jill: Okay. And, and when I was watching my DVR coverage, I think they do repeats within.
Alison: Yes.
Jill: Cause I was like, near the end of the day’s coverage. I’m like, wait a second. I saw this swimming race cause I know who wins. And then I got confused. And then I got angry.
Alison: Right. Especially for swimming and track where there are multiple classes of the same race. To be repeating things, it makes it so frustrating and confusing for the viewers. I had the exact same experience. I was watching a swimming race and thinking, didn’t I watch this? And I said, oh, it must be a different class. And then when I saw the winner, I said, Nope, I saw that already.
Jill: Yeah. It’s, it’s frustrating. It’s demoralizing. And I had stuff going on feeds. [00:08:00] I really wanted to watch throwing because throws competitions in athletics, I think are fascinating, but they don’t put that on the broadcast coverage here in America. You have to find it on feed. So I did find the feed that had the club throw, cause that is a new to me event, and I wanted to watch. The feed had no commentator..
Alison: Which is so helpful when you’re watching a new to you sport. And most Paralympic sports are going to be new to people. We’re mad,
Jill: Just angry. I’m angry.
Jill: Hey, what, what officiating or volunteer job would you like?
Alison: Okay. So I know yesterday you talked about the mat disinfection process at judo.
Jill: Yes.
Alison: You left out the most important element of this, the synchronized sweepers that follow the sprayer. So they peel off one at a time and they slightly overlap. So there are no edges and they each go one and then the next one is two steps behind. And then, so they cross in a triangle and that triangle, they cross in a diagonal. Okay. So I want to be one of those synchronized sweepers and they also did sort of a little sharp turn when they went onto the mat and off the mat. I was like Jacqueline Simoneau. I have some new artistics swimmers for you, but you need to give them a broom
Jill: Very nice. Very nice. So I would like to go out to the field again, the athletics field. When I was watching club throws, I did see our little autonomous robot cars that deliver the throwing implements back to the athletes. But —
Alison: Did they hit anybody?
Jill: I don’t know. Cause I only saw a glimpse of one. I did not get to see much of one.
Jill: But I did see that there is a person who takes the implement, who must– I did not see this part of the process because the the club was presented to the athlete in a basket by one of the, either volunteers or [00:10:00] officials. So there must be a process to, I removed the club from the robot car, put it in a basket and bring it to the athlete and they get to choose.
Alison: Do you get a cute outfit with your presentation basket?
Jill: No, it’s the same volunteer one, which I like very much to be quite honest. The more I see it, the more I like it.
Alison: Yeah. I have to do a little bit of exploring at athletics because there are a lot of people with volunteer outfits standing around all the time.
Alison: And I want to know what all those people are doing when they’re not just standing around. There’s no clipboard. There’s no, I don’t know what they’re doing, but they have a job and I want to know what it is.
Jill: All right. Before we get to today’s action, we’d like to tell you about our Kickstarter campaign. We have eight days left in the campaign, so we really need your help. It’s exciting. We are at 40%, but this is, you know, time’s getting to be a factor here. So this Kickstarter campaign is to help fund our trip to Beijing next winter, we got accredited as media for the, both the Olympics and the Paralympics and This was a surprise to us. We applied to thinking that they would not come, but they did. And the, the issue with us is that we’re an independent podcast. We also have an independent podcast budget and that budget planning didn’t include travel to an Olympics and Paralympics for another few years yet. So we’ve, especially now given the Paralympics coverage we’ve experienced here, we really want to be able to get to Beijing and have an on the ground presence that we can share what the games are really like there with you all.
Jill: So we do need your support to get there. Please visit our Kickstarter campaign. Thank you to those who have already donated if you haven’t donated yet. And you’d really like to help us out, go to kickstarter.com/profile/flamealivepod and check it out and you can give to there
Jill: All right. Starting off with archery, which, you know, surprise! That started.[00:12:00]
Jill: So we had men’s individual competition in the compound bow, and I wanted to talk about a couple of matches. USA’s Matt Stutzman, who is well-known here. He gets promoted by the USOPC and by NBC a lot, which I’m so very surprised they’re not showing this because they do like who we call the Armless Archer. He beat India’s Shyam Sundar Swami 142 to 139.
Jill: So the matches are five ends with three arrows each. Stutzman won three of the five ends Swami, won one, and they tied in the fifth, but Stutzman was ahead at that point. So he won the match.
Jill: Another match of note that I wanted to let you know about was USA’s Kevin Polish versus Finland’s Jere Forsberg.
Jill: And the last three ends were tied, but Forsberg had won the first two ends by one point each. So he got a victory of a 145 to 143, and he moved on to the round of eight.
Jill: Then we also had the mixed team W1 competition. Gold went to China. Silver went to Czech Republic ,and bronze went to RPC. If you happen to see any archery, let us know how it is. I would love to know how it is.
Alison: I’m sure it’s very good.
Jill: Moving on to athletics. Big day in athletics, lots of stuff going on. So we’ll start with the women’s discus, the F 57 finals. The F 57 class is impairments in one leg. Both feet or below the knee. And gold went to Uzbekistan’s Mokhigul Khamdamova. Silver went to Algeria’s Nassima Saifi, and bronze went to Brazil’s Julyana, Cristina da Silva.
Jill: In the men’s shot put F 12 class. This is a standing class and involves visual impairments. Gold went to Spain’s Kim Lopez Gonzalez with a world record. Silver went to Ukraine’s Roman Danyliuk, and bronze went to Uzbekistan’s [00:14:00] Elbek Sultonov, who got a personal record.
Jill: In the men’s 5,000 meter T13 class, which is a visually impaired class, gold went to Spain’s Yassine Oudadi El Ataby, who got an area record. Silver went to Australia’s Jared Clifford, who also got an area of record, and bronze went to RPCs Aleksandr Kostin, who got a personal best.
Jill: Now Kostin ran with a guide, who was a Iurii Koptcov, but the other two did not. And I did not see this race, so I don’t know why. Maybe got a, if you’ve got an idea, let us know and we’ll do follow-up or maybe we can find it on the feeds.
Jill: In the women’s 5,000 meter, T 54 class. This is a wheelchair class. Gold went to USA’s Susanna Scaroni. Silver went to Switzerland, Manuela Shaer, and bronze went to USA’s Tatyana McFadden. Of course, this race was on television twice.
Alison: This was one of the races that confused me because I said, oh, it’s Tatyana McFadden racing again. So quickly after that long race. No, it was the same race.
Jill: So Scaroni made a move pretty early on and gave herself a huge lead over the rest of the field. And afterwards, I was listening to the interview and Tatyana McFadden said she stayed in the pack. She saw that, that move. And she said, I’m going to stay with the pack and try to keep them back so that Scaroni could maintain her lead, which was really nice and a good teammate thing going on.
Jill: McFadden did manage to get out of the pack enough to get into third place and get the bronze.
Alison: If you want to cry, watch this medal ceremony.
Jill: Really?
Alison: Susanna just, you could see she’s trying not to cry, but she can’t not cry. It’s a great medal ceremony. It’ll it’ll make you feel better about everything.
Jill: Okay. That’s good.
Jill: In the men’s 1500 T 46 class. This is impairments in one or both arms. Gold went to RPC’s. [00:16:00] Aleksandr Iaremchuk, silver went to Bulgaria’s Hristiyan Stoyanov, and bronze went to Uganda’s David Emong, who got a personal best.
Jill: In the women’s long jump T 64 final. The impairments in this class involve missing limbs. So either one lower leg or missing one or both legs below the knees. So gold went to Netherlands’ Fleur Jong, who got a world record. Silver went to France’s Marie-Amelie le Fur, who got a Paralympic record because Fleur is in class T 64. Jong is in class T 62, but the two classes were combined. So that’s how you can have those two records go. And bronze went to Netherlands’s Marlene van Gansewinkel.
Jill: In the women’s javelin throw F 13 class, which is a visual impairment, gold went to Uzbekistan’s Nozimakhon Kayumova. Silver went to China’s Zhao Yuping, and bronze went to Belarus’ Lizaveta Piatrenka.
Jill: In the women’s 400 meter T 11 final, which is visual impairments, gold went to– and these have no guides, so I wonder if this is a lower level of visual impairment. Gold went to China’s Liu Cuiqing with a Paralympic record. Silver went to Brazil’s Thalita Vitoria Simplicio da Silva, who got a personal best, and bronze went to Colombia’s angie Lizeth Pabon Mamian, who also got a personal best.
Jill: In the men’s javelin throw F 57 class, this class involves impairments with one leg, both feet or below the knee. Gold went to Azerbaijan’s Hamed Heidari. Silver went to Iran’s Amanolah Papi, and bronze went to Brazil’s Cicero Valdiran Lins Nobre.
Jill: In [00:18:00] the men’s club throw F 32 class, and this is movement and coordination issues, could be across your entire body that cause involuntary muscle spasms. So these competitors throw while seated. Gold went to China’s Liu Li with a world record Silver went to Greece’s Anthanasio Konstantinids with an area of record, and bronze went to Algeria’s Walid Ferhah, who also got an area record. And like I said, I got to watch a little bit of this competition. And again, they did all five throws at once. I would imagine that’s because it takes a while to strap them in the chairs and make sure they’re safely and secure. The other thing I was really wondering and could have used a commentator for, was the fact that some throws were scratches, and I didn’t know why. And it wasn’t that the throw went out of bounds. I didn’t know what happened to make that judgment call.
Alison: Right. And it’s not like in standing Olympic throwing, you can go out of the circle. If they’re seated, they’re seated.
Alison: Right. Right. So I don’t know if there’s boundaries to where their bodies can go forward, but that doesn’t make sense.
Alison: So if you know why some throws for seated athletes are listed as scratches, please let us know.
Alison: We’ll keep looking.
Jill: In the women’s 1500 meter T 13 class, which is a visual impairment, but not running with guides, gold went to Ethiopia’s Tigist Geahgn Menigstu with a personal best. Silver went to USA’s Liza Corso who also got a personal best time, and bronze went to Tunisia’s Somaya Bousaid.
Jill: In the women’s shot put F 37 final– this is coordination or impairment of movement down one side of the body. And this causes a bunch of asymmetry and affects an athlete’s ability to generate power. Gold went to New Zealand’s Lisa Adams.[00:20:00]
Alison: She’s Valerie Adam’s sister!
Jill: And Valerie’s her coach!
Alison: So as we mentioned in the Olympic podcasts, Valerie Adams, five-time Olympian, four-time medalist. Just all around amazing person. And not only is she continuing her own competitive career after having her children, she’s just casually coaching her sister to a Paralympic gold medal.
Jill: And Paralympic record!
Alison: These two are amazing. I want to go over there for dinner. Of course, I come up to both of their like elbows. They’re two very tall women, but I will just hug them around the waist. I would say, I love you Adams sisters!
Jill: But there’s a third Adams sibling. There’s a brother who plays football.
Alison: Of course there is. They could just play football with me. And I don’t mean I would be a player. I would be the ball.
Jill: But that was fantastic though. What a family! Silver in that competition went to China’s. Mi Na, and bronze went to China’s Li Yingli.
Jill: In the men’s 100 meter, T 38 class. This is a movement or coordination issues in the lower body or down one side or across the whole battery body that causes asymmetry while a runner runs. Gold went to Great Britain’s Thomas Young, who got an area record. Silver went to China’s Zhu Dening, and bronze went to Australia’s Evan O’Hanlon. In the women’s 100 meter T38 class, gold went to Sophie Hahn from Great Britain. Silver went to Colombia’s Darian Faisury Jimenez Sanchez, who got an area record, and bronze went to Lindy Ave who got a personal best.
Jill: In the men’s long jump T 63 final. This is the T 63 class is when an athlete has an above the knee amputation or is missing most of their leg. So [00:22:00] they’ll have difficulty getting out of the starting blocks. The gold in this race went to South Africa’s Ntando Mahlangu with a world record. Silver went to Germany’s Leon Schaefer with a Paralympic record. And again, this is another one of those combined classes, so silver can get the Paralympic record. Bronze went to , Daniel Wagner from Denmark.
Jill: In the men’s 5,000 meter T 54 race. This is a wheelchair class with lower leg impairment. Gold went to Switzerland’s Marcel Hug. Silver went to Brent Lakatos from Canada, and bronze went to Putaret Khongrak from Thailand.
Jill: In the women’s 400 meter, T 47 finals. And this is, I believe a one arm is missing here. Gold went to Anrune Weyers from South Africa. Silver went to Lisbeli Marina Vera Andrade from Venezuela who got a personal best. And bronze went to Anastasi And that rounds out the day in athletics. Big day
Alison: Lisa Adams and Valerie Adams have matching medals now.
Jill: The boccia competition got underway. There’s a lot of preliminary action going on. It seems much like table tennis where there’s just 25,000 games going on at the same time and here in the US hard to find, but hopefully we’ll be able to look at the action soon because that’s one of the sports I really want to watch and understand how it works.
Jill: It is the last day of competition at track cycling, so we had three last races. It was the men’s B class 1000 meter race. This is a visual impairment class. Gold went to Neil Fachie with pilot Matthew Rotherham from Great Britain. They got a world record. Silver also went to Great Britain, James Ball with pilot Lewis Stewart. And [00:24:00] bronze went to France, Raphael Beaugillet and pilot. Francoise Pervis. The women’s B class also had their 3000 meter individual pursuit race. Gold went to Laura Fachie with pilot Corrine Hall. They’re from Great Britain. Silver went to Katie-George Dunlevy and pilot, Eve McCrystal from Ireland, and bronze went to Sophie Unwin with pilot Jenny Holl from Great Britain.
Alison: Laura Fachie and Neil Fachie are husband and wife.
Jill: I kind of guessed that one.
Alison: I wasn’t sure if they were going to be siblings. I mean, it’s not a very common, last name. So another British married pair. Getting these matching medals. We had the pair from the Olympics. Now we have them for the Paralympics. You get married and you cycle in Britain, you win gold medals.
Alison: It’s just a little life advice for you.
Jill: And wrapping up the competition was the mixed C one to five 700 meter team sprint competition. Gold went to Great Britain. Silver went to China, and bronze went to Spain.
Jill: In equestrian. It is time for the team test event. So they had their test to music, preliminary competitions. We’ll be able to report more on that when they get towards the finals.
Jill: Goalball. Did you see any goalball?
Alison: I did not see goalball.
Jill: Okay. So I have to say the, the goalball I saw on the broadcast TV, the commentator was Lisa O’Sullivan, and she is fabulous. She is so excited about goalball and pretty good about telling you what’s going on, especially like in terms of penalties. Because a couple of days ago I talked about what is a long ball and I didn’t know what that, so she said it bounced before a certain line, and I didn’t see how that happened, but it might be before their first line.
Jill: And I also learned that the tape [00:26:00] on the floor, they have string underneath it so that the athletes can find where they are And on a roller derby track, you have rope underneath your tape. This job is more and more to my understanding.
Alison: So they put strings so that it’s raised. So you can feel the difference in the floor.
Jill: Exactly.
Alison: See Tokyo engineers, not that hard.
Jill: In women’s group play, Australia defeated Canada four to three, Japan defeated the US three to two. That was kind of a heartbreaker to watch. But Japan did really well — and different playing styles. That was interesting. I w I want to know more about, sometimes people would spin before they threw, sometimes they wouldn’t spin before they threw.
Alison: Spinners and gliders in another sport.
Jill: Right? Apparently, the Japanese athletes would kind of like chirp, like birds to throw off the other team. I couldn’t hear it, but I bet it was happening. Israel defeated RPC eight to three and Turkey defeated Brazil, eight to four. On the women’s side, Turkey is the only undefeated team in group play. In the men’s competition, Turkey beat China, six to three, Japan defeated Lithuania 10 to two, and Germany defeated Belgium two to zero. And on the men’s side, Japan is the only undefeated team in group play so far.
Jill: We had more judo action, which we watched just a few minutes of this, but not, not enough to make a difference. In my understanding of, of para judo.
Alison: They were having a lot of hair issues in the match that I was watching.
Jill: Really? Like what?
Alison: Like her bun kept coming out, so they would have to stop play and reset her bun. It was the judoka from Azerbaijan, and she had beautiful hair. And they all wear that same sort of topknot style so flip over. I was like, Ooh, now I know how to do that. I don’t nearly have enough hair to do that, but I’m learning all [00:28:00] about judo and the hair styling.
Jill: In the women’s 57 kilos gold went to Azerbaijan’s Sevda Valiyeva, silver went to Uzbekistan’s Parvina Samandarova. Bronze went to Lucia Araujo from Brazil and also toZeynep Celik from Turkey.
Jill: In the men’s 73 kilos Feruz Sayidov from Uzbekistan won gold. Temirzhan Daulet from Kazakhstan won silver. Rufat Mahomedov from Ukraine and also Osvaidas Bareikisfrom Lithuania won the bronzes.
Jill: In the womens 63 kilos, Khanim Huseynova from Azerbaijan won gold. Iryna Husieva from Ukraine won silver. Wang Yue from China, won bronze as well as Nafisa Sheripboeva from Uzbekistan.
Jill: And rounding out the competition for the day, it was the men’s 81 kilos. Gold went to Huseyn Rahimli from Azerbaijan. Silver went to Davurkhon Karomatov from Uzbekistan. Eduardo Adrian Avila Sanchez from Mexico and Lee Jung Min from Korea won bronzes.
Jill: In power lifting we had four weight classes for the day. Men’s 72 kilos. Gold went to Bonnie Bunyau Gustin from Malaysia. This was a Paralympic record with a best lift of 228 kilos. Silver went to Mahmoud Attia from Egypt. The best lift was 191. Bronze went to Micky Yule from Great Britain, whose best lift was 182. That’s a pretty big difference for Malaysia.
Alison: Yeah, impressive. That’s a lot of weight
Jill: in the women’s. 61 kilos, gold went to Amalia Perez from Mexico whose best lift was 131 kilos. Silver went to Ruza Kuzieva from Uzbekistan, [00:30:00] whose best lift was 130 kilos. And bronze went to Lucy Ejike from Nigeria who also lifted 130 kilos. But as we learned yesterday, Kuzieva was a lighter body weight, so she took the silver.
Jill: In the women’s 67 kilos, Tan Yujiao from China won gold with a best lift of 133 kilos, Fatma Omar from Egypt won silver with a best lift of 120 kilos. Olaitan Ibrahi m from Nigeria won bronze with a best lift of 119 kilos. Very close there.
Alison: Just looking at these weights at the weight classes and the lifts blows my mind sometimes.
Jill: Right? And like we had finally had the cameras on the weight submission table for the Olympics and you got to see just the frenzy of coaches, go back to the table and change the lifts. Well, I’d love to see that also on the para-. I’m sure that happens on the para side too, because if you look at the results, they’ll have like weights scratched out and what they lifted, what they didn’t lift and you go, whoa, okay. I bet this is what their strategy was going, going here.
Jill: In rowing ,finals start tomorrow for single sculls and double sculls and mixed four. So we will be looking forward to watching some of that action.
Jill: Sitting volleyball got underway. In the men’s side, Iran defeated Germany, three to zero. Brazil defeated China, three to one. And the women, USA defeated Rwanda three to zero, and China defeated RPC three to zero.
Jill: Over to the swimming pool. First we had the 100 meter breaststroke, SB six class for men and women. This is kind of a, kind of a hodgepodge of impairments. It could be impairment on one side, it could be your lower trunk and legs. You could have an absence of limbs, or you could be short of stature.
Jill: So in the men’s competition, gold [00:32:00] went to Bohodaiko Yevehinii from Ukraine. Silver went to Nelson Crispin Corzo from Colombia, and bronze went to Matthew Levy from Australia.
Alison: The American announcer does not have as much fun with Nelson Crispin Corzo as the OBS announcer. So I was disappointed when I watched this race, and the American announcer — the NBC announcer. I should say, wasn’t getting as excited as saying Nelson Crispin Corzo . So I just said it for her.
Jill: In the women’s competition, gold went to Maisie Summers-Newton from Great Britain, who blew the competition away. She is fast. Silver went to Liu Daomin from China and Sophie Hertzog from USA won bronze.
Jill: Then we had the men’s and women’s 100 meter freestyle S 10 class. These are for athletes with moderate, lower limb impairments. On the men’s side, gold went to Maksym Krypak from Ukraine. Silver went to Rowan Crothers from Australia, and bronze went to Stefano Raimondi from Italy. For the women, Aurelie Rivard from Canada won gold with a world record. Chantalle Zijderveld from the Netherlands won silver, and Lisa Kruger from the Netherlands won bronze.
Jill: Then we had the 150 meter individual medley, SM four class. This is significant impairment in the trunk and legs and or missing lower limbs. This would include missing feet or below the knee amputations. And this was a race I wanted to watch and haven’t gotten the chance to find it on the feed yet, because I want to see what 150 meters looks like. I’m assuming they eliminate a stroke.
Alison: I didn’t see these races either. So yes, I don’t know what the difference is.
Jill: Okay. Well, we will find that out. In the men’s race, gold went to Roman Zhdanov from RPC, who got a [00:34:00] world record. Silver went to Ami Omer Dadaon Israel, and bronze went to Suzuki Takayuki from Japan. For the women, Liu Yu from China won gold, Zhou Yanfei from China won silver, and Natalia Butkova from RPC won the bronze.
Jill: We also had the men’s 150 meter individual medley SM three class, which is more significant impairment to your lower limbs. Gold went to, Jesus Hernandez from Mexico. Silver went to Ahmed Kelly from Australia, and bronze went to Grant Patterson from Australia.
Jill: Then we moved on to the 100 meter backstroke S 11 class for both men and women. This is a visual impairment class. For the men, Mykhailo Serbin from Ukraine won gold, Viktor Smyrnov from Ukraine won silver, and Yang Bozun from China won bronze. For the women,
Jill: Cai Liwen from China won gold, Wang Xinyi from China won silver, and bronze went to Li Guizhu from China.
Jill: And we had the men’s and women’s 200 meter, individual medley, SM eight class. This is a moderate impairment to the legs or the ability to use only one arm. On the men’s side, Denis Dubrov from Ukraine won gold. Xu Haijao from China won silver, and Yang Guanglong from China won bronze. For the women, Jessica Long from the USA, won gold. Xenia Francesca Palazzo from Italy won silver, and Maria Pavlova from RPC won bronze. And Jessica won this handily. It was a very good race, I thought. I saw, I did see this one because they cut away from wheelchair rugby to show it.
Alison: Well, thank goodness for NBC’s purposes that Jessica Long won a gold medal because they have been [00:36:00] pushing her and pushing her and putting that commercial over and over again.
Jill: But well deserved. I mean, she’s doing very well.
Alison: Absolutely not a criticism on her. Just, you know, we’re going to slam NBC as many times as we can. ‘Cause we’re mad..
Jill: Well, there we go. Then we had the men’s and women’s 100 meter breaststroke SB five class. This is a high impairment or high degree of impairment from the mid trunk through the lower limbs. For the men, Andrei Granichka from RPC won gold, Antoni Ponce Bertran from Spain won silver, and Li Junsheng from China won bronze. For the women, Yelyzaveta Mereshka from Ukraine won gold. Grace Harvey from Great Britain won silver and Verena Schott from Germany won the bronze.
Jill: And then we ended up the session with a four by 100 freestyle relay.
Alison: As you should. All sessions should end with a relay.
Jill: Right? This is a mixed one. So again, I would like to go back and find this because I’d like to see. How that worked. So far, the mixed relays for swimming for me have been a mixed bag, so to speak, because usually one team does really well at putting together a strategy and just creams the competition. So we’ll see what happens in these. This is an intellectual impairment class. The gold went to Great Britain. Silver went to Australia, and bronze went to Brazil.
Jill: In table tennis. We had some quarterfinals. We’re still in singles, and we’re getting to the end stages of the singles tournament. Sadly TKFLASTANI Melissa Tapper lost to Australia’s Yang Qian three to zero, but their games were kind of close. So we’re sorry you’re out of this competition, but I think there’s still a team competition.
Alison: Yes
Jill: in the [00:38:00] women’s singles, Ws 11 class. This isintellectual impairment. Gold went to Elena Prokofeva from RPC. Lea Ferney from France won silver, and bronzes went to Ito Maki from Japan and Wong Ting Ting from Hong Kong. So Hey, Hong Kong getting on the medal board!
Jill: I don’t know why we
Alison: get so excited about Hong Kong and New Zealand gettingmedalss and India,
Jill: you know, I think because TKFLASTANI, Derrick Leung curls for Hong Kong. So there’s that connection. we’ve got TKFLASTANIS from New Zealand. I don’t know. I think it’s the smaller countries. It’s nice when they can also win on the global stage.
Jill: In the men’s singles, M S six class. This is a standing class, but they have coordination issues with the arms, legs, or body, or an absence of limbs, or they’re short of stature. Gold went to Ian Seidenfeld from the USA. Silver went to Peter Rosenmeier from Denmark, and bronzes went to Paul Karabardak from Great Britain and Rungroj Thainiyom from Thailand.
Jill: And we saw a little bit of the end of the Seidenfeld match because they did show that on television. And that was exciting because I think his dad was his coach, who also had medaled at the Paralympics.
Alison: Oh, really?
Jill: If I’m wrong, please check me. In the men’s singles MS 3 class, this is a wheelchair class where your legs are highly effected and your arms or trunk may also be affected. Gold went to a Feng Pangfeng from China. Silver went to Thomas Schmidberger from Germany, and bronzes went to Jenson Van Emburgh from USA and Zhai Xiang from China.
Jill: In the women’s singles Ws one and two classes. This is another wheelchair class, and these athletes have a high degree of trunk impairment, and their hands and arms [00:40:00] and or arms and shoulders could be moderately affected. Gold, went to Liu Jing from China. Silver went to Seo Su Yeonfrom Korea. And bronzes went to catia Cristina Da Silva Olivei ra from Brazil and Nadezhda Pushpasheva from RPC.
Jill: And finally in the men’s singles, Ms nine class, which is one arm is affected or could be absent. One leg could be affected or absent below the knee. Gold went to Laurens Devos from Belgium. Silver went to Ma Lin from Australia, and bronzes went to Ivan Mai from Ukraine and Iurii Nozrudnov from RPC.
Jill: We had triathlon today. That was fun. I got to see some of that. And there were, there were people watching. Spectators in the streets. So that was pretty nice. We had 4 different races. So we started with the women’s P T S two class. This is athletes who have low level coordination issues or moderate coordination issues down one side of their body.
Jill: They could be missing one leg, two lower legs or two lower legs and two forearms. Gold went to Alyssa Seeley from the USA. Silver went to Hailey Sanz from USA and bronze went to Veronica Yoko Plebani from Italy. Melissa Stockwell from the U S who was flag bearer for the team and also has been highly touted throughout, ’cause she was the defending bronze medalist from Rio. She placed fifth and was thrilled because just a couple of weeks ago, she had a bad accident on her bike and hit a tree. So she’s been recovering from that and was just muscling through to, to get to Tokyo.
Jill: In the men’s PTS 4 race. This class is also low-level coordination issues on one side of the body, or there’s a high degree of [00:42:00] coordination issues in one arm, or you could be missing an arm or a leg below the knee.
Jill: Gold went to Alexis Hanquinquant, from France. Silver went toUda Hideki from Japan, and bronze went to Alejandro Sanchez, Palomero from Spain.
Alison: Also a medal ceremony you should watch. Udo. Hideki is the first Japanese athlete to win a Paralympic triathlon metal. And he does a dance. He kicks, he kept kicking his partial leg. And sort of swinging his arms, and he was so excited about this whole thing, and he cries at the end. It will make you just, it’s the classic. So excited, so emotional and he’s home in Japan. So even the, you know, we talk about the volunteers just standing around. They were not just standing around. They were getting emotional.
Jill: Nice, nice. And he got to do it in front of some spectators too. That also has to bring you a lot of energy.
Jill: And then we’ve rounded out the day in triathlon with the, the men’s and women’s PTV I classes, which are visual impairments. For the women, gold went to Susana Rodriguez with her guide, Sarah Loehr, who are from Spain. Silver went to Anna Barbaro with guide Charlotte Bonin from Italy, and bronze went to Annouck Curzillat and guide Celine Bousrez from France.
Jill: In the men’s side, gold went to Brad Snyder with guide Greg Billington from USA. Silver went to Hector Catala Laparra with his guide to Gustavo Rodrigueez Iglesias from Spain, and bronze went to Yoneoka Satoru, with guide Tsubaki Kohei from Japan. I saw a lot of this race as well because of Brad Snyder being from the USA. [00:44:00] Greg Billington competed in triathlon at Rio 2016 and retired and came out of retirement to become Brad’s guide. And I guess this happened not that long ago, because Brad was talking about how he had to work really hard.
Jill: And then when Greg came on board as his guide, just the way Greg pushed him, helped him become so much better. And that was, that was really interesting and really nice to see.
Alison: So sort of guide sort of coach sort of training partner all in one.
Jill: Exactly. In wheelchair basketball, we had men’s and women’s action. For the men, Spain defeated Turkey, 79 to 61. Australia beat Germany, 64 to 53. Japan beat Canada, 62 to 56. Great Britain beat USA, 64 to 63. Oh, that was a close one. I saw the, just the end of that. And that was just USA. Almost could eke that one out, but they didn’t but it’s still pool play, so they just are not going to have an undefeated record. And then they kind of wanted that one. And Korea defeated Colombia 66 to 54.
Jill: For the women. China defeated USA 42 to 41. And this was kind of a shocker because I was there and then I wasn’t and then I came back and what happened?
Alison: I did watch the end of this game. It was one of those I missed free throw, a missed long shot, a stolen rebound, just those classic, you know, one or two plays in basketball.
Alison: But the problem now the American women are in trouble in their pool play. They may not move on. So that would be a shock. I mean, you think American basketball, but the Paralympics are different.
Alison: As we’ve said before, they’re a very young team.
Jill: And, and it was weird because the U S in the [00:46:00] first half was up 21 to seven at halftime. And the, even the commentators were saying, oh, it seems like the, the referees were calling the game very tightly at the beginning. And then they got looser as the game went on. And I think that may have helped China as well, because there were a lot, a lot of foul action going on early.
Jill: That was a tough game to watch, but some beautiful baskets. I’ll tell you that, man. Also in the women’s action, Spain beat Algeria, 80 to eight, whoa. Germany beat Canada, 59 to 57. Great Britain defeated Australia, 75 to 38.
Jill: You know, one thing I noticed at the venue, did you see this in the stands right behind the player benches? Somebody had taken volunteer shirts, the blue ones. Cause I was like, that looks weird. And they made a pattern on the seats. So they’d cover seats with chairs and it spelled out saying Yoko 50 and it had a smiling face. And I didn’t know what that meant. So if you know, or somebody said anything, I wondered if somebody turned 50 or , the venue is 50 years old. I don’t know, but I would be curious.
Jill: In wheelchair fencing, not that we saw it, it was foil day. So in the men’s individual foil category, a and, and basically the difference between the two categories. They’re, they’re both wheelchair, but one has a better use of the fencing arm. In category, a gold went to Sun Gang from China. Silver went to Richard Osvath from Hungary and bronze went to Nikita. Nagaev from RPC. In category B gold went to Feng Yanke from China. Silver went to Hu Daoliang from China and bronze went to Dimitri Coutya from Great Britain.
Jill: For the women category a, gold went to Gu Halyan from China. Silver went to Nataliia Morkvych [00:48:00] from Ukraine and bronze went to Rong Jing from China, which leaves category B and who is in category B, but Italy’s Bebe Vio, who is one of the stars of the Rising Phoenix documentary.
Jill: She’s in one of the Toyota commercials. She is incredibly vivacious and you cannot not like her. Well, the way the competition goes is that there’s a pool play. And then you move on to be seeded from pool play and you play a direct elimination from there.
Jill: So she had pool bouts, six of them, and each bout is the first to five points wins. She won all six of her pool bouts. She gave up only four points. The most, anyone scored on her in pools was two. In the quarter finals, she beat Georgia’s Irma Khetsuriani 15 to six because now we’re in direct elimination, so the bouts to go up to 15 points. In the semi-finals she beats Ludmila Vasileva from RPC, beats her 15 to four, and then she was in the finals against Zhou Jingjing from China and beat her 15. -9.
Jill: You look at the other scores from the other players, even the, the, the other medalists, Bebe Vio just dominated this whole tournament. Would have been fantastic to watch.
Jill: You know, what you can see though. Cause I posted, I did post this on Twitter and I posted it in our Facebook group, which is Keep the Flame Alive Podcast. Somebody from Italy recorded, it’s a video of Bebe Vio’s, like final point. So you see her win, but it’s somebody who recorded a screen and it looks like an Italian sports channel had a guy in like an office room who had a TV behind him. And then they put the camera on the TV. And showed her final point, but the camera angle is from the back of her. So you don’t see her. Yeah, I know it’s from the backside of the, I [00:50:00] don’t know what was going on.
Jill: Somebody thought, well, maybe it’s a, it was a camera phone shot, but I don’t know. But if you do want to see Bebe Vio’s, final point, we do have some video.
Alison: So I forgot to mention this. When we were doing when we were talking about wheelchair basketball, one of the games I was watching, they were having a problem with the on-screen graphic.
Alison: So the score wasn’t coming up. So after anybody scored, they would show the in-house score. Oh, nice. Just like a video shot. I mean, they were handling it well so that you keep track of the score, but it felt like I was watching a video of a basketball game from like the 1960s. And then about halfway through the match, it got straightened out.
Alison: But you know, at first I kept saying, why do they keep showing the scoreboard? And then I realized that when they weren’t showing the scoreboard, there was no graphic. So you can get creative NBC showing us things.
Jill: In a wheelchair rugby, we are on the second to last day of competition. In the seventh to eighth place classification match Denmark, beat New Zealand, 56 to 53, a close match.
Jill: But I pulled up the stream because I was just like, well, I, I want to watch something and there’s nothing on NBCSN, and I knew rugby was going on. And then I got the bright idea, oh, can I go back to the beginning of the stream? So about 50 minutes, 58 minutes or so into the stream, the game actually starts, as you have noticed,
Alison: coverage will begin shortly.
Jill: Yes, we got a haka and that did make yesterday a little better. So that was very, very nice to see. In the fifth and sixth place classification, Canada beat France for 57 to 49. [00:52:00] And then we had our two semi-final matches, Great Britain beat Japan, 55 to 49. I’d like to note Japan has a woman on their team. Very nice to see. And then the U S beat Australia 49 to 42 Australia also has a woman on their team. They ran out of replacement tires?.
Alison: So I was watching this match and it seemed like Australia kept blowing tires. Like the mechanics would run out and change the tire and the person stays in the chair while they replace the tire.
Alison: So there’s, you know, several people involved in this operation and toward the very end of the game, Australia blew a tire and the game stopped for a couple of minutes. And the, it seemed like Australia had run out of tires too. And so U S the U S gave them a tire.
Alison: So there was good sportsmanship on the tire front. You know, your breakdown on the side of the rugby court, they’ll share a tire, but I want it to note that that announcers– so I watch one match on feed and one match on NBC.
Jill: Okay.
Alison: The feed announcers are these fantastic Australians who just, they don’t care. What kind of rugby it is. They just love it. And the American announcers are different, but equally as enthusiastic and good. So this sport is getting its due.
Jill: Very nice . This game between US and Australia. We talked the other day about how we were surprised that when, when you think about murder ball, the documentary that we’re going to watch for movie club and the play we had been seeing wasn’t as violent that you would call it murder ball. But boy, this was a defensive game and that murder ball stereotype that really came out there, they were ramming into each other blocking holes, blocking people. It was so much fun to watch from the defensive aspect of it.
Alison: I think the flat tires, but at one point the feed announcers, [00:54:00] Chuck Aoki comes back on the court, right? Of course does something amazing. Cause this guy is just unreal and the announcer goes, oh, Chuck Aoki. It’s always Chuck Aoki and his love for rugby and how well Aoki plays.
Alison: Just in that one sentence. I said, I, I don’t know which announcers I want to watch. I think I’m going to have to watch the gold medal game twice.
Jill: Oh, that would be cool.
Alison: Because the American announcer did a much better job of explaining what was happening, but the OBS announcers just could not be –they’re the rowdy Gaines for me and enthusiasm.
Jill: Very nice. And finally, we had action starting in wheelchair tennis. So it was first round for the men’s doubles and women’s doubles and quad singles. And then second round for women’s singles. listener Kaori had said in the Facebook group that they had big heat delays for wheelchair tennis and yeah, Kyodo News confirmed that saying that by 11:00 AM, the temperature was 33 degrees Celsius. Yeah. So they didn’t start play until after five o’clock in the evening. And that caught some of the players off guard cause they were scrambling to get to the venue on time. And the, the match I had been watching that got interrupted by NBC the other day in midpoint that was on central court. They can close center courts, roof and put on the air conditioning.
Alison: Well, that’s helpful. And be careful when you rush to the venue, you may get hit by a driverless car. I’m so mad about that.
Jill: Yeah. It’s just like very narrow minded thinking in your design. Anything on tap for TKFLASTAN Watch?
Jill: No, we are
Alison: quiet now for a couple of days, [00:56:00] but McKenna Geer is gearing up.
Jill: Excellent. Very excited to see some shooting action. All right. That means it’s time to say sayonara. As always, you can email us@flamealivepodatgmail.com. Text or voicemail us at 2 0 8 3 5 2 6 3 4 8. That’s 2 0 8. Flame it. We’re @flamealivepod on social. I’m on Twitter. Alison is on Insta and Facebook. So please get at us there. If you are not in Keep the Flame Alive Facebook group, you are missing out. So please join in the fun. Please don’t forget our Kickstarter and help us reach the goal of bringing you on the ground coverage at Beijing. That’s kickstarter.com/profile/flame alive pod.
Jill: As we go out to music by Mercury Sunset. Thank you so much for listening and until tomorrow, keep the flame alive.
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