We jump right in to competition at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics! Our Day 2 coverage includes
- 3×3
- Archery mixed doubles
- Men’s road cycling
- Sabre and epee fencing
- Women’s football
- Handball
- Hockey
- Judo
- Softball
- Taekwondo
- Volleyball
- A TKFLASTAN update from table tennis
- The first medal of the Games over at the shooting venue
Who’s done great commentary? Which announcer has said some really stupid stuff? Why are they yelling on the fencing strip, and why does it sound like a literal cat fight over at the taekwodo venue?
Also, fans did get to see some Olympic action — we tell you all about it!
Join in the fun – viewing guide, fantasy league, brackets and more at https://flamealivepod.com/tokyo
Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive!
TRANSCRIPT
Note: This is an uncorrected machine-generated transcript. It contains errors. Please do not quote from the transcript; use the audio file as the record of note. If you would like to see transcripts that are more accurate, please support the show.
Jill: [00:00:00] Hello, Olympics, fans, and lovers of TKFLASTAN, and welcome to Keep the Flame Alive, the podcast for fans of the Olympics and Paralympics. I am your host, Jill Jaracz joined as always by my lovely co-host Alison Brown. Alison Konichiwa. How are you?
Alison: Konichiwa! Day two.
Jill: I know, it’s so exciting. So much action. We had a 22 sports on the program today, so we’ve got a lot to fit in a little time.
We have a little bit of follow-up from day one. So, uh, remember from our pre Tokyo round table episode, after Australian, uh, equestrian show jumper, Jamie. Was selected because he tested positive for cocaine. The Australian Olympic committee got the information that the remaining to show jumpers, Edwina tops, Alexander, and Katie Laurie will be allowed to compete in the individual jumping competition, which was a big relief.
And then Australia is just not going to have a team in the team competition, which really stinks, you know, Uh, question is one of their, one of their sports. I know. And you know, just one guy messes it up for everybody. We forgot to mention during the parade of nations, because everything happened so quickly and nations came out so quickly.
Although, you know, now that I think about it, they should have spaced them out a little bit better, not just for COVID, but just because of timing. Uh, we forgot to mention PETA to fi to Fuqua the infamous flag bearer for Tonga. He is in his third game to remember he. Catapulted himself to fame in 2016, because he was the shirtless flag bearer slathered in oil.
So he was also at young Chang, 2018 for the winter Olympics. And now he’s back for summer. He’s competing in TaeKwonDo again, once again, shirtless oiled up, but Vanna Watts. Game recognize game. They also have a shirtless lag bear who was, um, I believe his name is re uh, re re Lillo, um, who is a. Uh, we got a lovely email from listener.
Jamie who wanted to give us a lot of context about, uh, Anastasia palace Palisade being in Tokyo. Uh, she is the premiere. We T we talked a little bit about, uh, John coats, uh, IOC VP, and many, many other things, uh, talking about Brisbane winning the 2032 bid and palace show is going to go back to Australia.
And he said, no, no, no, you have to stay and go to the opening ceremony. And a listener. Jamie told us that, uh, palish is having a hard time in back home because of decisions she has made regarding governing the, the, the COVID pandemic. So nobody’s allowed to travel. So her going to Tokyo was a big deal anyway, and got people very upset.
And she said, okay, well, I’ll just go to. Meeting, and then I’ll come back and not make it a huge thing. And it was kind of like, well, you’re here anyway. You should just
go. Yes. So now she can blame John coats as forcing her to go. She doesn’t have to take responsibility for violating her own travel restrictions.
And speaking of violating restrictions, did you read about Christophe Dubi’s little fit? No, I didn’t. Okay. So as we mentioned yesterday, We talked a lot about team USA, not wearing masks, but there were many countries, you know, flagbearers coming in with no masks on or taking them off very quickly. Well, Christoph Doobie got up in front of the press.
Apparently had a meeting with all the chefs to on and said, this is not going to fly. You better get your people in line. We have a playbook use it.
Wow good for him because I mean, really a health B everything is kind of on the line for so many people regarding having this games. So why people can’t play along.
Okay. Make it work. I don’t understand. And there were several countries just not wearing masks. And you could say, well, we were outside in a stadium, but you weren’t far enough away from people.
Alison: And I saw a article today on Bloomberg about the number of, of COVID cases at the Olympics, and it broke it down into athletes, uh, contractors, media, and volunteers.
And you want to know who has zero positive COVID cases. The volunteers good. They’re the ones who are doing the job. And I am so proud of Tokyo for that. It’s all the other people that are screwing it up, but the people of Tokyo are trying to make this happen. Let’s what have I been saying for weeks?
Don’t be stupid.
Jill: Who else got called out for not wearing a [00:05:00] mask? Uh, the Asahi Shimbun reported that Yahoo Ciro, uh, Yamashita, who is the president of the Japan, Japanese Olympic committee. I did not wear a mask while talking to officials at the judo competition, you know, better, you really know better. So we’ll see, uh, COVID numbers connected to the games do are rising a little bit.
We’re up to 127 cases right now, 71 or Japanese residents and 56 are non-residents who are in Japan. And then, uh, the Olympic flame has reached its permanent resting place over at the Tokyo waterfront area. It’s it’s
Alison: so funny, you call it a resting place. Cause it’s like where Olympic flames go to die?
Jill: I actually, that’s a quote from inside the games gets copied, but, but it does look like flame on us. Unfortunately,
Alison: I think it was. And we talked about this earlier. This was the urban park that was supposed to be filled with arts fairs and craftsmen and activities and viewing stations. And now it’s just a big empty cement field with a giant silver.
Jill: And the flame. So that’s really tough. Well, before we get to today’s action, we would like to give a special thank you to our Patrion patrons, their financial contributions, help to cover the extensive production costs of the show. If you would like to support us with an ongoing donation, head over to patrion.com/flame alive pod, and you can learn more information there.
If an ongoing donation is. Up your alley. We will have a Kickstarter starting tomorrow that will help fund our travels to Beijing because we will be on the ground in Beijing for both the Olympics and the Paralympics. And we need your support to get there. So today, 22 sports, six metals, I don’t even know.
Should we just go down alphabetically? Um, well I
Alison: watched 22 sports.
Jill: No, I did not watch. And I have not seen
Alison: any metals. Oh, wow. I haven’t watched any metal sports
Jill: yet. Oh, holy cow. All right. Well, what, let’s start off with, what did you watch?
Alison: I watched, um, some three on three
Jill: men’s basketball start there.
Cause I watched one of those games as well. So Belgium in Japan, this was, oh, this was the men’s pool. Oh, this was a close game. It
Alison: was, it went into. I think double overtime, I’m not sure, but it certainly went into overtime and Japan upset. Belgium is apparently is a huge upset because Belgium was a heavy metal favorite.
Wow. And what was so interesting about the Japanese team? They have this giant Texan on the team named IRA brown, who in 2018 became a Japanese citizen. He plays on the three by three X, three circuit in Japan. And lives in Okinawa.
Jill: Wow. Well, I guess lucky for them, Japan did beat Belgium 18 to 16. Um, I caught some of the Netherlands versus the Russian Olympic committee, uh, Netherlands 1 18 15.
Women and men played. I didn’t catch any of the women, but the pool so far is a Russian Olympic committee and USA are both two and oh, the ROC had close win over Japan and then easily beat China. USA had two easy wins over France and Mongolia, China and Japan. Italy and France are all one in one, China, easily beat Mongolia and Japan, easily beat Romania there.
Italy had a one point win over Mongolia. So I may go back and watch that, and they had a close loss to France. And then on the bottom are Romanian Mongolia with no wins. Two losses on the men side, uh, Serbia is two and O they easily beat China. They had a one point win over the Netherlands. Then. Latvia Poland, uh, ROC Netherlands, Japan and Belgium are all one-on-one and China is Owen to, so
Alison: I do want to call out the American announcer on NBC.
Oh no. For three x-ray Kyle Montgomery. I’d like to know one of the clever little quips he gave
Jill: today. Oh no, you put
Alison: the round thing in the round.
Jill: Oh boy.
Alison: And that was one of the clever things he said. So three X, three is not getting its due. Uh,
Jill: the announcing side. I am sorry to hear that. Very sorry to hear that, but can
Alison: we talk about another sport?
Who’s doing much better with announcing what men’s indoor balls.
Jill: Oh, okay. You watched you watch some poop. I did.
Alison: I did. So I watched, uh, the USA men and France and Paul Sunderland, who was a member of the 1984 [00:10:00] USA volleyball team. Okay. Was so fantastic in his announcing. And here’s the best comment he made.
Apparently volleyball is huge. Real popular sport and how it’s unique that they have a dedicated venue for volleyball. So he was saying how great the stats are, you know, the great the venue is and the, um, facilities and everything. But here’s the thing that he, he said that really made me happy and sad at the same time, because he’s played a lot in Japan and he said, what we are missing out and I’m not quoting him exactly, but what we are missing.
In not having fans, the Japanese fans there is, we are missing out getting to know the Japanese people. Oh. And I realized, because you know, a lot of these teams do play in front of empty venues frequently. You know, the shooters don’t have big crowds. The archers don’t have the crowds, but even we at home are missing.
Yeah. And getting the stories of the athletes going into Tokyo and getting to know the Japanese people. And that made me really sad, but so amazed that he pointed that out. So I’m looking forward to watching more volleyball because I did not know your volleyball boyfriend carts, Corolla. Was team USA.
Women’s coach. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Miss that. Because I was thinking, as I was watching the boy volleyball where’s cards cry, he’s the coach. So that makes me very excited to watch some more volleyball.
Jill: Okay. So men’s volleyball was men’s preliminary pools, uh, Italy, three Canada to Brazil versus Tunisia.
Brazil wins three and nothing. Uh, ROC versus Argentina ROC versus, uh, wins three, one, uh, Japan beat Venezuela three, nothing. Which again, like you said, would have been fantastic to watch, uh, Poland versus, uh, Iran, Iran 1, 3, 2, and then the U S beat France three, nothing. And I did not
Alison: make a note of the name of the Brazilian women’s player.
They were mentioning. There is a lot of excitement around team USA, meaning team Brazil in the women’s tournament. Ooh. Okay. Put that, put that on your
Jill: list. Speaking of crowd, you know, where there was a crowd
Alison: outside the opening ceremony
Jill: protesting? No. At the cycling road race. Cause I had that goal. Yes, because the road race was really long.
And then it went out to around, you know, started around Tokyo and went out to like Mount Fuji area into areas where you could have fans, but there were people on the street and people on bridges watching and cheering. And when they were in the, it ended in the, uh, Speedway racing stadium, auto racing stadium, and right at the finish line are they, they’ve got like the.
Bumpers kind of thing to create the bike lane and people lined up, you know, pummeling the bumpers to clap everybody in. It was so much fun to see. And, you know, I, I get it. I get COVID is a problem, but. People were some people were wearing massive. I mean, the bike, the cyclist went by so fast. You couldn’t necessarily see, but you could see just people watching and having a good time and really getting into it.
And that, that made me sad for it made me happy for the cyclist, but it made me sad for other events.
Alison: One of the conversations that has been going on in our Facebook group is how strange it is without the fans. It is, it’s very strange. Raise the question. I wonder if in a few days we’ll just get used to it.
Know this will be our new normal. I hope so because I don’t want to be constantly distracted by the no fans. I want, I want to move past
Jill: it. I know, I know we watched judo with no fans in this beautiful stadium. It’s got so much history and it was very sad to see that, but men’s road, race, goal. At the end, Richard Conner pause from Ecuador pulls out the wind.
Not that far, a few seconds behind was a big pack of people and just eking out silver and bronze, where Woodfin from Belgium and Teddy Pega, char from Slovenia.
Alison: Now was this the race where Garrett Thomas of the UK had the axis. It must’ve been, this was the
Jill: only cycling. So
Alison: he, uh, Garren Thomas had the, had a crash and he withdrew.
Oh, that was the only news I had heard from road
Jill: racing. I, I had it on, it was, I did a two screen thing yesterday and working my way up and it was really good event to have on your second. And then, cause you don’t need to follow every [00:15:00] second. Exactly. So the roads were really wet in places and, uh, it was, it was so interesting to watch like cyclists drop back to find their cars.
And then it’s like some, I think it was Canadian writer needed new shoes. So the car support changed the shoe for him while he was on the bike. And then he went back off and you know, it’s just, they’re all trying to navigate. These are, there’s like the Peloton of cars and then the Peloton of bikes. Okay.
I
Alison: know who needs to be in those cards, moms of toddlers, because nobody can do things in a moving vehicle. The way a mom of a toddler can make that happen.
Jill: Very true. Very true. So they had like food bags and they’re getting water and it was really hot. So people had ice Fest and they’re shoving, you know, cold stuff down there, their shirts.
It was, but it was really funny event to watch. I may tune into the, the women’s cycling as well. All right. Uh, what else did you watch softball? Oh, how was that? Because I did,
Alison: you are not watching the women’s softball tournament. You are missing. The games are fast, the athleticism is fantastic and it doesn’t feel so empty because the teams go crazy for one
Jill: another.
Yeah. And there were some big games yesterday, right? So I
Alison: was watching the team USA and Mexico game Abbott and Osterman once again. Oh, if you, if you love pitch. And those two women are on believable. The final score was choose zero. So it wasn’t even like a runaway. It was just, you have, you must, the tournament ends on the 27th.
Do not miss any more games. Exactly.
Jill: So, uh, also playing a Canada, be Australia seven to one, and Japan be Italy five to nothing. And every team has two more games before the metal matches happen. Japan and USA are on top of the leaderboard tied at three, nothing. Canada has two wins, one loss Australia, one wins, two losses, Mexico.
and
Alison: I think if you’re on the east coast, in the U S the team USA Australia match is going to be 9:00 PM on Saturday night. Oh, nice. Okay. So it’s kind of a, it’s going to be Sunday in Japan. So that’ll be on kind of our day three pieces, but I wanted to mention that because USA and Australia going against each other, all the powerhouses in that tournament.
Jill: All right. What else did you watch?
Alison: Well, that was everything. And then I watched the opening ceremonies again, and
Jill: I did watch the pictogram segment twice. It gets better with every viewing. Well, because the more you watch it, the more you pick up on the little details that you didn’t know before, and just how complex that whole segment was, is it’s so impressive how they did it.
And even though they had pictogram heads on, so you couldn’t see who was doing the personality that they showed while performing it is just, it was just fantastic.
Alison: Brilliant. That was just ingenious and clever and great fun to watch.
Jill: I’m going to watch it again today. Um, so I watched some archery. I watch a good amount of our tree.
It was the mixed team event, which is new for Tokyo. I watched early matches USA lost in its first match. It. Amazing how nothing happened with them. It just looked like they shouldn’t have been there. Oh, it was USA versus Indonesia and the score looks tight five, four, but they did, uh, the USA did not look good.
Brady Ellison was not shooting. It took them forever to get a 10 and that’s really unusual. They had to go to a shooting. And they lost the shootout. Uh, it took until the third set for the USA to get a 10 and Brady Ellison looked off and I was really surprised. Mackenzie brown looked fairly off and the Indonesian team just out shot.
So that was interesting. I did get to see India cause I’m looking forward to watching the Indian shooters. There’s um, uh, an Indian shooter named, uh, we’ve talked about her on the show, call our show or the newsletter called, uh, her name is Deepika Kumari and she is very talented. Has been to London and Rio.
There’s a Netflix documentary about. Lot of pressure from the country to do well. And I watched her and her partner, Pravin, Jada beat Chinese top hit Taipei five, three, but they did not. They, I believe lost in the quarter finals. Uh, it [00:20:00] ended up with, I did watch the bronze that all three metal matches are all two metal matches.
So it was Mexico versus Turkey for the bronze. And this was amazing because. Uh, Louis Avarez from Mexico hit eight two in the second set. You do not see Olympic shooters hit
Alison: a T. Wow.
Jill: I know. And one of the reasons I do love watching archery is because you learn your numbers in another language,
Alison: uh, to, I didn’t know, it was a number you did not
Jill: recognize. So, but then Turkey answered, uh, shooter. Nagus got a five in the third set and that’s what allowed Mexico to win. I know you don’t see twos and fives at the Olympic level. Really. This is a match to go back and watch. It’s very fascinating. And it’s also, uh, this, this event is interesting because they only have so many seconds to shoot for the entire match and it’s clock management is a big deal and they’re just, you see the clock going down and you wonder, are they going
Alison: to get the shot off?
I was just gonna say, it’ll be interesting to watch the archery competition as it unfolds. And if we keep seeing some of these anomalies, then it no longer becomes an anomaly and it makes you wonder, is there something on going on with the venue because they couldn’t have a full test event.
Jill: Could be, I don’t know.
Well, uh, it’ll be interesting. The wind was a little, little going in different directions. It wasn’t super windy, but there was a wind in that could have been a factor too, just reading it wrong. So from Mexico, Louise Alverez is the first Mexican man to metal and archery. So congratulations. And, uh, his partner Alejandro Valencia is the third Mexican woman to get a medal in archery.
So the gold medal match. Also so tight and it was, again, I was Korea versus the Netherlands and the Netherlands was actually ranked first in the world. At this point, Korea was ranked second, but Korea pulled out the wind. Why? Because Steve wilier from the Netherlands got a six and a third set. Just these random shots you don’t see.
So that’s a, that is a tournament to go back and watch if you like archery. Um, I also, we dipped into fencing a little bit because, uh, Ben, we Ben and I met fencing epee and, uh, uh, he wanted to watch, uh, more Hauser from Brazil and she was favored to metal cause she did well on the worlds last year, but she lost to Flamingo from Italy in the table of 32.
And that kind of. It’s Howard does on the rest of the competition, but the gold went to sung you when, from China, the silver one to Anna Maria, Popescu from Romania and Katrina. Lahey’s from Estonia won the bronze. Uh, there was also men saber individual, which we had that on the, the, the stream of the fencing is interesting because there’s four strips in the.
Arena and they have all four on the screen. So you almost don’t know what to watch. And then when they aren’t off, there’s like, there must be some DJ in there because they are playing some funky music to get people excited. It was funky music
Alison: at three on three as well,
Jill: but that’s part of three on three.
Cause I play music during the thing. Yeah. They try really hard to build an exciting environment for three X, three. But Penn’s like saber would be more interesting if it wasn’t just people running at each other and yelling. Cause it really is. A lot of
the goals went to Aaron Schlage from hungry Luigi. Samala from Italy. Got the silver and Kim June one, I believe from Korea bro. Got the bronze. I don’t think
Alison: I’ve ever heard you make that sound
Jill: before. Oh, it gets better. You want noise? Going to TaeKwonDo. We had some TaeKwonDo on as well. And the OBS commentator was fabulous because he said kicks, punches and squawks so far from this, that was a, it was a woman from Egypt who just was like, and it really sounded like cats going at it, just yelling.
And it was, it got to be very, very annoying after a while this. To contests that they had yesterday were the women’s 49 kilograms and the men 58 kilograms. And on the women’s side upon APOC, from Thailand. Got the gold Adrianna Cerezo Yglesias from Spain, got the silver and bronze is, went to Tiana Bogdanovich from Serbia and a from Israel.
And then in, uh, the men’s side of Villa Del Akila from Italy, when the gold Mohammed college and Doobie from Tunisia one, the silver John June from Korea won the bronze as well as Nicola Mikael. [00:25:00] from the Russian Olympic committee. We watched this match between Jack wooly, from Ireland and Lucas. Lofaro Guzman from Argentina and.
Jack Wooley could lay these head kicks on you that were just like, how does he make his body turn like that? Cause his body would be going one way. His leg would be going another way. And this foot would be like curl around and just like bonk you in the head. It was so amazing to watch, uh, he was doing well, it looked like he was going to win.
And then right at the end, his coach called the challenge to. Have a kick that Jack scored scored as a spinning kick, which was a higher point value. And it wasn’t a spinning kick. They’d lost the challenge. And then, um, the Argentinian just got two punches in the trunk or two, he got two points in the trunk really quickly, and that sealed the deal for Argentina.
So it was interesting to watch TaeKwonDo. An interesting sport because I forget that you can, people score a lot, you can have prints. You know, it’s kind of like when we learned about handball and handball scores are like, it can be in the twenties and soccer. Football is in the zeros and ones. Well, that’s kind of like TaeKwonDo, TaeKwonDo to say judo, you know, one point for judo.
Uh, but you could have like 22 points in Texas. So that was interesting. Did watch some judo.
Alison: Did you
Jill: see Tokyo’s first gold metal? No. Did not see that, but I ma I would go back to watch that because I, I keep thinking, well, the Stanfords would go crazy, but oh,
Alison: there’s nobody to go crazy. So it was to Cahto Nao.
HISA in the men’s extra light judo. And I immediately saw that. Oh, I’m so glad the extra light is early in the competition because now we can go eat.
And then I realized, no, he can’t because he has to pack up his stuff and get the heck out of the village. He’s only got 48 hours. Maybe they’ll give him a to go box from the,
Jill: there you go. There you go. And, and he be young your way from Taipei, uh, to get the gold. And then bronze is went to Luca Makita from France and yellows Smit off from Kazakhstan on the women’s side, we did see.
Well, I ended up figuring out that it was, uh, one of the bronze medal matches between Ukraine and Israel and Daria below did from Ukraine one. And, uh, she did a formidable job. This is again, due to what we talked about this before it judo is blink and you miss it. And I would constantly be looking at a different screen or blinking and I’d be like, oh, I just missed the end of the match.
What happened? Rainy
Alison: and athlete had the power of her Fanny pack from the opening ceremony.
Jill: Right. So on, on the women’s 48 kilogram side, uh, the other bronze went to, uh, your on tanks to TIG muck bought from Mongolia. Uh, silver went to from Japan and the gold went to district krasniqi from Kosovo, which congratulations to Kosovo for getting a gold.
And I think I had her in my fantasy league, very excited. I haven’t been able to check the fantasy league because they’ve been over quota when I’ve tried to log in. So, uh, I have Garrett Thomas
Alison: in my fantasy league. So that should tell you how I’m
Jill: doing. So there you go. I did catch like a couple of performances on the men’s gymnastics side.
Uh, Sam Mikulak from the U S did a really good parallel bars routine. So they had qualifying the teams, the teams going to the finals, our Japan, China, Russian Olympic committee USA, great Britain and Germany. The top three teams are very close in points. And then the bottom three teams then, or USA in great Britain are very close at Germany’s, uh, quite distant.
So they were happy to get into the finals. I’m really curious to see how that shakes out for the finals.
Alison: That should be an excellent competition because pretty much five of those teams could easily. Turn up on the podium and how they turn up on the podium could be in any combination thereof. So I think the men’s gymnastics team is going to be a lot more interesting in terms of you really don’t know who’s going.
As opposed to the women’s. Exactly.
Jill: Exactly. I did dip into a little of badminton and caught a bit of a doubles match, but did not finish watching it. Uh, did watch Millie Tapper or Chick-fil-A’s and she
Alison: had hemming Q lost a France out of the mixed doubles company.
Jill: Yeah, that was tough. They lost for nothing.
And their individual games were 11 5 11, 9. That second game, I think was the, they could have, they could have turned it around because after that it was 11, 1 11. Nothing. Yeah. They kind of, yeah, but it was really fun to watch her compete and she still has the
Alison: individual and a competition. Okay. She’s not [00:30:00] done.
Neither is hemming. You good? Good. He’s doing both men’s and doubles. So they’re, they’re not.
Jill: A beach volleyball had some preliminary gains. We’ll start getting into scores when it gets further down, except for in the women’s side, uh, Japanese team, she and Murakami beat check and you beat is in quotes, uh, her MANOVA and, uh, Sokovia Nash because, uh, ciclova now has tested positive for COVID and they had to forfeit.
So that was tough football. And women’s group play Canada, beat Chile, two to one. Great Britain, G beat Japan, one to nothing, a tie. If China in Zambia at four, all. Uh, tie for another lens in Brazil, three, all Sweden beat Australia for two and USA came coming back from that Sweden game six one against New Zealand.
Alison: Okay. I do want to mention how the hand-wringing that has happened in the American media about the U S women’s soccer team losing a match and the pool. Calm down. Number one, it’s pool play. Number two, these women are not invincible. This is not the 1992 men’s basketball dream team where it’s unheard of for them to lose, right?
Yes. The team team USA is clearly top of the, to the heap of women’s soccer, but can we all calm down right? Without them losing a
Jill: match, everybody can lose at some point. Um, over in handball. Norway beat Brazil, 27, 24, France beat Argentina, 33 27, Sweden over Bahrain, 32 31. That sounds like a good match that I might go back and watch Spain beat Germany, 28, 27 Egypt over Portugal, 37 to 31 and Denmark beach, Japan 47.
30, uh, hockey, both men and women played yesterday. Australia beat Japan, five, three Belgium beat Netherlands, three, one India, beat New Zealand, three to Argentina and Spain had a one, one tie, great Britain beat South Africa, three, one Germany beat Canada, seven one on the women’s side, Netherlands beat India.
Five one. I do. If there’s a difference for the women’s Indian, Indian women’s team versus Indians men team in terms of expectations, I was happy to see India win their first game funding. Yeah, well that goes without saying really, uh, also on the women’s side, Ireland beat South Africa to nothing how shooting that’s the other thing I watched because it was the first minute.
It’s first metal. Women’s 10 meter air rifle. I tuned in right when the finals were starting and saw every, so it was single elimination. They got a couple of shots and they were eliminated. It was really fun to see what happened. And it was down to a young Chang from China and Anastasia gala Sheena from the Russian Olympic committee and they both shot poorly.
It was so, and Clyde’s anti-climatic uh, and then Nina, Kristin from Switzerland got the bronze. So what they did for the metal ceremony, cause I really wanted to see that too, instead of having. Gold up top silver one step down bronze, two steps down silver and bronze are on the same level. And it’s like, they took those blocks and spread them out.
So you have a very spread out podium and the bronze and silver medalists get on either side of that. So that they’re quite distant from the gold. I know. Because then what happened? So then T-ball came out with the metals on the tray, cause it’s the first event. So he does the metal and they take the metal and they put it on themselves.
So that’s how that’s going to work. And then the, uh, president of the shooting Federation came with the bouquets and they’ve got the marijuana , but the Marotta wise, instead of the blue trim on, on his face, it’s metallic that matches the color of the metal that they.
Alison: Oh, no serious. Yes. Isn’t that fantastic.
Oh, goodness gracious. Now I’m upset. I turned off the shooting because it was making me so stressed out. I tried to tune in for just a couple of minutes and clearly I am not a shooting.
Jill: Yeah. Yeah. It’s tough. It is nerve wracking. Yeah. So that was cool. And then they try so hard to be socially distant and nobody knows what to do because everybody’s kind of happy.
They, the, they played the anthems and the, uh, volunteer escort, escorted them out kind of, and they were kind of standing there and, yeah. The press obviously wanted photos and shooting the range was actually packed, not packed, but the range had a lot of people in it because it was the first metal. So it felt like there was a crowd there.
And that was exciting. [00:35:00] So then of course the, the mentalist were like, well, let’s go with this back in front of the podium again. And when they do, they stood together.
Alison: I can’t see how keeping the podium apart makes any sense. They’re in the range on top of each other. They are, you know, Luca Jones posted a picture of all the canoe women from all the different countries met and took a picture, which is apparently a tradition.
So they were all together. Yeah. And they’re all
Jill: like during competition. They have their masks off and in the shooting ranger in an indoor facility. So what’s, it’s really, there’s so many. COVID theater at play here. Tremendous. It’s just, it’s really tough. So the, the mentalist had to wear the masks during the ceremony, but you could see the gold medal winner.
She was, you know, her eyes are smiling and she was ha you know, you could see that happiness. And, uh, it was, it was nice, but it was, you know, it’s just one of those very weird things. I wonder if we’ll get used to it, but. And over on the men’s air pistol Javad for OGI from Iran. When the gold dumber meta Amica w from Serbia one, the silver and whey Pang from China.
When the Browns,
Alison: oh, before I forget, I did want to mention that the three X three basketball mentioned what’s up with Serbia.
Jill: Hey, you heard it here first. You heard it here first. All right. Well, chipless on watch.
Alison: Yes. Okay. Couple of quick things. As I mentioned, team USA and coach Laura Berg will be, uh, up against Australia. Jenny Fuchs has got her first, uh, bout against Svetlana. So the Inova of the ROC. So that’ll be on overnight.
If you’re in the U S and Luke Jones, speaking of starts Q1
Jill: tomorrow, I will definitely tune into that. Cause that is. I’m ready,
Alison: ready
Jill: for some water sports. Exactly. Uh, and, and I know some swimming finals probably start tonight, too. I’m ready.
Alison: I’m ready for the swimming ready for Brody
Jill: game. I know, let me burst your bubble here because of Algerian judoka Fetty.
Uh Noreena. And his coach, uh, have withdrawn from Tokyo because there is the possibility of him meeting in Israeli opponent. So Noreen him, uh, competes in the under 73 kilogram class, he would have faced, uh, Football of Israel in the second round. So not only is there, like you got to get fast the first round for first buddy, but Ben and I were talking and it’s just like, I know you don’t like Israel and you don’t recognize Israel, but you know what, why don’t you put them in their place?
We’re not going to like, I don’t like you. Yeah.
Alison: I’m still gonna fight you. This is the Olympics people. This is the point, right? Remember you don’t come to the Olympics to be a wimp. You don’t come to the Olympics to be a worst. There you
Jill: go. That’s trillion
Alison: of questions taught us that that
Jill: is exactly right.
Okay. So don’t forget to go to Phil flame, live pod.com/tokyo to get in on all the action. Let us know how you did on opening ceremonies. Bingo. I think there was a little harder than I thought it would be, but read. Yeah. If nobody’s gotten a, we’ve seen some very close cover. So, uh, covered cards, but if you didn’t get, so if you got close, but didn’t get everything, let us know because I’m, we’ll start going on, who covered the most and there’s fantasy leagues and all that jazz.
So now it is time to say CYO Noura. So as we go out due to music by mercury sun, Thank you so much for listening and until tomorrow, keep the flame alive.