World Games: Chengdu 2025 – Week 2

It’s the final week of the World Games – Chengdu 2025! We’re joined by John Moorhead, 2017 World Games athlete and current USA Fistball secretary, to get some insight as to how the athletes in Chengdu have enjoyed their time at the World Games.

Jill and Alison also recap their week 2 watching, with thoughts on:

• Boules
• Breakdancing
• Cheerleading
• Gymnastics
• Drone Racing
• Flag Football
• Inline Skating
• Motosurf
• Billiards
• Racquetball

Plus, we recap an amazingly short Closing Ceremony. It’s been fun, Chengdu! We’ll see the World Games again in 2029 in Karlsruhe, Germany!

In other news, LA 2028 will offer naming rights to its venues. This is a huge shift in visible sponsorship at the Olympics. Is it the right move?

The International Paralympic Committee recognized two new sports and will be holding board elections again in September.

Also, Salt Lake City 2034 offered insights on ticket prices. If you’re interested in volunteering for the Games, organizers offer some advice.

We have a ton of news from TKFLASTAN, including Listener Tommy Phillips new book on Moscow 1980. You can order it here (affiliate link).

If you haven’t seen Noah Lyles get into it with TKFLASTANI Kenny Bednarek, check this out:

Not cool, Noah!

Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive!

TRANSCRIPT

Note: This is an uncorrected machine-generated transcript and may contain errors. Please check its accuracy against the audio. Do not quote from the transcript; use the audio as the record of note.

405-World Games 2025 – Week 2

Jill Jaracz: The greatest festival of our contemporary

Theme Music: society, the Olympic Games is about to begin. This is gonna be close. Oh,

Jill Jaracz: they’re all completely gassed. They’ve given it

John Moorhead: everything

Jill Jaracz: on bucket. Oh yeah.

Brilliant. Brilliant, brilliant. But that is an Olympic champion. Ready. Hello and welcome to another episode of Keep the Flame Alive, the podcast for fans of the Olympics and Paralympics. If you love the games, we are the show for you. I am your host, Jill Jaracz, joined as always by my lovely co-host, Alison Brown.

Alison, hello, how are you?

Alison Brown: I am hoping. You will drive the motorboat for me.

Jill Jaracz: And what will you be doing off, off the back of it?

Alison Brown: I will be. Hanging on to my little board and my little cord and flipping around.

World Games – Chengdu 2025 – Week 2 with John Moorhead

Jill Jaracz: Alright. I would love to see that. Today we are talking about the second half of the 2025 World Games from Chengdu, China World Games, as we’ve talked about before, the purview of the International World Games Association and showcase sports that either aren’t on the Olympic or Paralympic program, or could be on the program someday.

And we have a special guest with us. Our very own Shuk Ani John Moorhead, who competed in American football at the Ross Law 2017 World Games. Hello, John.

Alison Brown: I, I would also trust John to drive my motorboat.

Well, what I would trust John to absolutely. Is to throw me in the air and catch me.

Yeah.

Jill Jaracz: That would be very fun. John, you still are connected to the World Games? A little bit.

John Moorhead: A little bit, yes. So can you tell us

Jill Jaracz: a little bit about what you do?

John Moorhead: So currently I work with loosely with the US Fist Ball Association. I help with some of their operations and I am on the board of directors as their secretary.

I’ve just kind of. Fell into that. after the roll call games or in 2017, I had talked to some guys and their, their base is back in New Jersey, which is like not too far from Maryland. So I would drive up, play some fist ball with them and it’s a very, very small group. Like there might be like 15 players on the men’s national team.

There’s only like eight on the women’s national team. So it’s a very small group and I just kind of. Whenever they need help with stuff, I, I just, I help out a little bit. I was with them in Birmingham and I kind of followed, helped them prepare for Chang do

Jill Jaracz: What have you heard back from Chengdu?

John Moorhead: so from Chendu, the experience was really good. It was a lot bigger than Birmingham, so a lot of, like, there’s several girls from the team who were, uh, who competed in Birmingham, who were holdovers to the Chengdu team.

Just everything was just bigger. They felt like the Athlete’s Village was, was bigger. There was more food options, there was more things to do in the athlete’s village. Venues were further away though, like the, like when in Birmingham, they stayed at Birmingham Southern College and they stayed in the dorms and then you walk out in the field was right there.

The practice field’s right there, the training centers were an hour away, so they had to take like a shuttle an hour. There was a much more fan interaction. the ladies said, so like, there were like, you know, there was more people than there were at the Birmingham games. and you know, they, they played, they played better than they thought they were going to.

They stole a couple sets from Chile and Argentina, which is, you know, fist balls, a historically German sport and very popular in like the Bavarian region of Southeast Germany. So Switzerland’s very competitive. So is Austria. And then there’s, you know, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile who have that. Some of those, those little German clusters in their, in their countries are also very competitive.

So the United States is always, it’s always really tough, especially with such a small player pool to choose from, uh, to be competitive. But they, they were the girls, the girls were competitive. They, they qualified, the, the men did not qualify. the women did. And, you know. They played with a lot of grit.

and it was an overall good experience. I will say, like they talked a lot about how the humid the climate was in Chang do. Birmingham was hotter. According to the girls. Birmingham was way hotter. It was during, it was a heat wave in July when the Birmingham games were. So overall, the fitness, the fitness levels wa the girls were ready for that and it showed.

Alison Brown: So, yeah, I think we’re all looking forward to 29 in Carls Road, Germany, where we will not melt.

John Moorhead: Yeah, yeah, no, like we,

Alison Brown: like we were sitting there, but the, the, the athlete be, but you could tell,

John Moorhead: you could definitely tell, I mean, they actually had it, you could see

Alison Brown: it. Yeah. They were, every outdoor sport, every athlete was just walking out onto the field soaking wet Already

John Moorhead: it’s, but you could tell that they actually had it at the flag football venues and, even the fist ball they had the, the, the mist machines going. Mm-hmm. So the athletes had a chance to cool off and ultimate disc had cooling breaks like they do at, in, in soccer. So like they were better prepared than they were in Birmingham. Birmingham. They were not as prepared for the heat as they were in Shang do.

Alison Brown: Which is ridiculous because Birmingham is not it.

It’s not in New Hampshire.

John Moorhead: No. No.

Jill Jaracz: Alright, so general observations you have from watching this World Games, John, as you’ve been involved with them for a few sessions or a few additions. Yeah,

John Moorhead: well, one as an athlete, one as I guess a worker with the USA fist ball. And then one just is, this has been actually nice ’cause I, I was able to sit at home and just, besides the time zone, but we know we’re all pros at, if you’ve watched enough multi-sport events, you, you can kind of deal with the time zones.

but. I will say, you know, just comparing the three that I’ve been a part of in some capacity, they’ve all, they’re all very different. And I think that’s kind of what makes the world game special. Like the Olympics are held in these mega cities. You know, LA Tokyo, Paris, these are world cities that have, you know, millions plus people.

Now Chang do did have 24 million. They do have 24 million people who live in their city, but. Like Roslov was, ver was much smaller, right? It was more of a homey local feel. every venue’s within 10 minutes away, you know, one central athlete’s village, so you’re around a lot more athletes. Birmingham was much more like sport focused.

I felt like Birmingham was more like they, they advertise flag football and lacrosse and softball like sports that were core to the American culture. Uh, and they kind of really pushed out those smaller sports. Like fist ball and I think woohoo were the only sports at Birmingham Southern College.

And you could tell there was a lot less publicity. Less, less lot less, lot less, you know, people. Um, and then chendu from what I’ve seen, or I saw what, who I’ve spoken with like. That it had more of a, a mega multi-sport game feel more of an Olympic feel with the big athletes village, the multiple things to do.

They had a, they had a daycare center for like, athletes with babies. they had, you know, massage rooms. They had puppy therapy rooms. They had like, you know, they went all out the, the cafeteria was all out. I just remember the food and, and slaw being terrible. Like the food in Poland was so just dried chicken and rice and you’re just like, there’s no other options.

Food in Birmingham was just like, you’re American. Like, oh, you can get burgers, you can get pizza, you can get pasta was, it was a little more to my liking, but like, I think chendu, they had like different cuisines from around the world that you would see at an Olympic games, like, The ath. So, you know, the athletes were raving about the village.

They were raving about the opening ceremony, you know, that, that felt like it, it felt like a major opening ceremony. I mean, savv was like, I didn’t, I wasn’t there. I was sleeping during the one in Savv. I just got off the, the plane. I was like, I’m not going to this. And that’s one of my huge regrets I have.

but it was like a half empty stadium in Birmingham. from what I saw on TV, was a little more like chendu, just not as like athlete centered and focused. It was a lot, lot shorter. and then just the, the transportation, just getting athletes to and from the shuttles were consistent.

So, from what I’ve heard, the chendu felt like more of like a, a bigger. A bigger feel like a, an Olympic feel. Savv was a much, you know, smaller feel, which isn’t always a bad thing. And then Birmingham was more just, let’s get the money kind of thing.

Jill Jaracz: Didn’t, that sounds very American.

John Moorhead: Yeah.

Jill Jaracz: But I, I’m, I’m curious because you have this, what should the world Games be?

And I would think for a multi-sport event, you would want to be able to focus on. Bringing athletes together from other sports, because that’s the magic of something like a world games. I mean, having a bigger athlete’s village and having more facilities or more options for them sounds really good.

It also sounds a little expensive, but it also. Where I, I guess it’s where you prioritize what you’re spending on, and maybe that’s something the World Games hosts think about going forward to create that big feel with, more optimized budgets, I would say.

John Moorhead: Yeah. I’m not sure. Like, uh, I mean, we stayed in dorms in Poland and then they stayed in dorms in, in Birmingham.

this one had like more of a hotel vibe feel. I I do know that, the IFA, so the International Fist Ball Association, they would only, allocate you 11. You got, you got 11, 11 rooms if you wanted to bring, so like a team, we brought a team doctor, uh, team manager, um, a social media person.

So USA fist ball, had to pay for three extra. Three extra, you know, that that wasn’t gonna be covered by Chendu local or, or the IFA. So each, international federation got a certain number of, of beds I guess you could say. And then any extra bed you had to foot the cost yourself. so, or the national governing body had to foot the cost or the individual, a uh, person had foot the bill.

There were some like restrictions when it came to like who could stay there and the budgeting and things like that.

Alison Brown: Though, when you’re at a city with 24 million people, you know, if you build more housing, it’s not gonna go to waste. You know, as in Birmingham, if all of a sudden you build all these apartments or all these hotels, probably not gonna use ’em afterwards much.

John Moorhead: Well, the funny thing is that, that Birmingham Southern College is, is no more that. That’s, that’s they, they shut down. And it was actually a crazy story because they shut down about two years ago and when they closed their doors, their division three men’s baseball team was still in the Division III College World Series.

And they kept playing. They kept winning. So they were actually a base, it was a baseball team without a school because they ’cause the university closed doors like May 24th, like after commencement and the baseball season, you know, baseball gets extended into like June. So they were actually still playing baseball.

without a school name. I don’t think they, they didn’t end up winning it, but they made it like to the final four. It was actually a pretty interesting story.

Alison Brown: It’s like the unified team of college baseball.

Jill Jaracz: Wow.

John Moorhead: so the, so the, the dorms that, the fist ball athletes and the Woohoo athletes.

Used are now just sitting there, so Wow. Like another, what is it called? The Olympic Ghost City? Uh, the white elephants. Yeah. Another ghost city. Yeah.

Jill Jaracz: Wow. What other sports besides fist ball did you watch for Chengdu?

John Moorhead: I watched, I tried to watch just about everything. I watched a lot of sports that were on in the morning, China at time, Chendu time, so that was like.

Eight to nine, eight to like 10:00 PM east east coast time. So, five football, softball, men’s softball. So women’s softball tended to be kind of towards the middle of the night most of the time. Um, but men’s softball was early. you know, there’s some, some inline speed skating. While orienteering, duathlon, those were all like early morning sports.

and then sometimes in the morning you would, I would see like morning East Coast time, which was nighttime, like eight, 9:00 PM Chendu time. A lot of kickboxing, uh, sambo, a lot more of the combat sports. Um, power lifting. I saw a, a bunch of, but then I, I would go back and I try to like watch some things.

Like I, I really wanted to see, like, I would go back and watch like. inline hockey, floor ball, canoe polo, just like a lot of team sports that I wanted to just kind of check out.

Alison Brown: I did wanna ask you about flag football, especially the women’s tournament. ’cause that’s, I didn’t watch much of the men’s, but I did watch the two metal matches, for flag football in women’s, which were fantastic.

Really great games. Uh, the gold medal was US versus Mexico. Huge upset it felt like, because Mexico won. What do you think of the play? Is it typical of flag football? was this tournament indicative of what we’re gonna see in la do you think?

John Moorhead: I think yes. I think me, so Mexico, so this is quite the rivalry the two countries have, ’cause Mexico defeated the United States.

At the World Games in 2022, but at the World Championships in 2024, us, the US beat Mexico. So they, they’re, they’re, they’ve been going back and forth. and I, Diana Flores, the Mexican quarterback, she is quite the celebrity. She’s got it going on. Um, she’s one of the few athletes who I think can just do flag football full time and just make enough off of sponsorships and, other types of, endorsements and income.

I, I think the women’s play is so much better than the men’s play. There. There was no men’s competition. for some reason, I guess Chendu was setting its priorities with flag football and lacrosse already being in the Olympic sports. In LA 28. So I think they, they didn’t have any men’s sixes for lacrosse or men’s flag football, but they also didn’t have any like women’s inline hockey.

So like, there’s some like, weird team sports, like why were some, were some included one word, I don’t know. anyway, the, the women’s version of the game is so much more like. Technical, I would say. But like, it’s exciting because the men will do like, the double passes, the women utilize it a lot more.

The men’s a lot more, Hey, it’s one-on-one. I’m jump ball corner in the end zone. I’m gonna out muscle out jump you. The women’s games a lot more like running slants to get open, to kinda like the pick play at the end of the game against Mexico. Just like a little more, it, it, it’s more exciting I think.

I think. you also see the rest, rest of the world catching up. Like Austria, that was the Austria’s first major international competition and they gave the Americans a really tight run for their money. The men’s game, it’s the United States, it’s Canada, maybe throw Mexico in there.

The women’s game. I mean, I think in four years or three years you give, you give it a couple of these countries time to develop and actually like, and that’s what’s attractive about flag football. It’s the fact that like. You don’t have to play this game your whole life. you give yourself four years of training.

You can be, and with an athletic background, coming from a track or coming from a softball or coming from a volleyball, give you, with an athletic background, you give yourself four years of training, you can be an Olympian. Same, same. It’s kinda like bobsledding, right? A lot of those bobsledders were track and field athletes.

They were football players. But those skills transition easy. men’s game. If you played tackle football, you have a huge advantage when it comes to flag football. So the fact that a lot of Americans play, uh, tackle football, Europe is growing the game. Canada has their own league, Mexico has their own league, but it’s gonna be, you know, the powerhouses, the women’s games, you’re gonna see a lot more, especially in la it’s gonna be, the playing field’s gonna be a lot more even than the men’s playing field will be.

Alison Brown: Yeah. There seemed to be a big difference in the style of the North American countries. Play versus how Europe, uh, the European countries were playing. So it was like Canada, us, Mexico seemed more similar mm-hmm. Than the European teams. But that makes sense that the European teams are growing the sport.

John Moorhead: Yeah. A lot, a lot of deep balls. A I was very impressed with Canada’s quarterback. I think her name’s Sarah Parker. but her arm, she has, she has better arms than, than most high school varsity quarterbacks. Like she was, we call it Chuck in the pigs skin. Like she was just. 30, 40, 50 yards downfield.

And her girls would get under the ball, would get under most of those balls. you watch the other, the European teams playing and even Japan and China, it’s a lot more, we call ’em dinky think and dump routes. A lot of more underneath balls. You know, coverage is deep. You wanna throw underneath the coverage.

You’re only gonna get five, 10 yards. But you’re gonna pick and pick and pick because you know, you don’t have the athletes quite yet, or the arms quite yet to throw those. Throw those deep balls, downfield. But the um, Canadian quarterback, she impressed me with that. She was just letting it rip and it was awesome to see.

Alison Brown: And the US is old lady Benita crouch. Gotta give a shout out to the old lady.

John Moorhead: She’s great. I mean, old is gold. I know it was silver this time, but it’s. Yeah, the age is just a number to a lot. I mean, if you look at honestly, not just, her, a lot of the other athletes, I mean, the oldest athlete was like 68, was an American.

I mean, there was a canoe polo player from Spain. She was 49. that’s the World Games. You can definitely see. I think there were over a hundred of the 4,000 athletes. I think there was over a hundred or 40, and over. Wow. So you see a lot more of. a broader range of of sports athletes that, you know, can still do it in, in an older age, which is always nice to see.

Jill Jaracz: Gives you hope, gives me hope

John Moorhead: it does. All right. Like you never say never. I mean, we’re

Jill Jaracz: not dead yet. Not dead yet.

John Moorhead: And you find yourself, the older I get, I find myself pulling for those athletes more, more times than not. It’s like, oh yeah, gay to the old lady. When you see, when you see the 29-year-old break dancer going against the 13-year-old, you’re just like, I hope he beats this kid’s butt.

Go back to go back to middle school.

Jill Jaracz: Well, Joan, thank you so much. it’s always great to catch up with you and get some world Games. Talking Of course. We’re really glad that you had some time to come on and talk with us.

John Moorhead: Thank you for having me. This is always fun.

World Games – Chengdu 2025 – Observations and Feed Beefs

Jill Jackson: Alright, world gains week two for us. Do you have any general observations or feed beefs?

Alison Brown: I do. I did run into a lot more trouble this week with How so? So I would click on an event. I was in the website, not on the app. I would click in an event and I would get the wrong event.

Jill Jackson: Oh, like

Alison Brown: what do you mean by wrong? I would click into inline skating and woohoo would come up like really wrong event. Oh. That happened a few times. And also it took a very long time to be able to watch the closing ceremony. Not live. Oh, okay. Like I couldn’t go through my normal, I was just clicking through the schedule.

I had to really find it elsewhere on the site to be able to watch it. But once I got in, it was fine.

Jill Jackson: Okay. Because I didn’t, but getting into

Alison Brown: things became a little trickier.

Jill Jackson: I had a beef with how they have stuff within the sport because I kept going into the sports to look via that way, because I was hardly ever watching live.

I was so far behind on everything. I’d go into the sport, I’d click on something like fist ball. We were talking to John. He also, I was like, I will watch a little fist ball before we go on. And I watched probably 20 minutes and then I realized, oh, we’re in Birmingham.

Alison Brown: Oh yeah. Somebody else was complaining about that on the Facebook group.

Jill Jackson: Yes. And the problem I had was the game was one of the first ones up there and it was labeled 2025. Oh. So if it got added this year. Into the system, it might say 2025. And you had to really look at the thumbnails to find the right logo. And it was so difficult to do that. And I wish there was better labeling.

I wish there was better dates added because I’ve, I’ve really had several instances where I ended up watching Birmingham and went, wait a second, this is not the right place. And that really frustrated me. ’cause then I had thoughts on fish ball. I’m like, well, I have thought thoughts on fish ball from three years ago.

You know,

Alison Brown: nobody wants those. So normally we do not have a to, uh, for World Games. And actually for most other things, we don’t have a toilet time segment. But I do wanna mention that the past couple weeks I have had toilet time because we got, we adopted an, we adopted a new dog who is fabulous. But I’d be sitting there watching the world Games and suddenly I would say, oh wait, I have to pause.

And take Daphne out. So I realized that even at home, during these multi-sport events, I end up having toilet talk. ’cause there was, there has been so much discussion in my house about Daphne’s toilet activities, which

Jill Jackson: is norm for a new puppy. Okay. So

Alison Brown: the, the segment has returned unintentionally,

Jill Jackson: but did you notice I can bring this to the world games?

Did you notice during the closing ceremonies that one of the camera positions for when the athletes paraded in was right by the floor signs that told you like where the toilets were? I didn’t, now I gotta go back and watch it again. I just kept finding them like it was, you know, athletes go this way, the village is this way.

Something was one way and the toilets were another way. And it just was like, why did you put the camera person there? Why? But that’s okay. That was fine. It made me laugh.

World Games – Officiating or Volunteer Jobs We’d Want to Do

Jill Jackson: Officiating or volunteer jobs you’d want to do?

Alison Brown: Okay, I got two. Okay. And one is, one we’ve seen before is the, whoever is directing the athletes in the kiss and cry for gymnastics and aerobics and cheerleading because these poor athletes never knew when to stay seated.

Oh. They would always pop up. And I know that that poor person behind the camera was frantically telling them to stay seated. So clearly she needed, I, I’m assuming it’s a she, ’cause I think it was when we kind of saw her up from the other camera, she needed better signage for the stay seated probably in multiple languages and like red lights and green lights.

So I felt bad ’cause that poor person, whoever he or she was, was frantically telling. ’cause then suddenly the, the athletes would all. Make a face like, oh, so surprised. I’m supposed to still be seated. Or like the coach would grab them and pull them back. they needed some more help over there.

Jill Jackson: They needed to recycle the old masks on, masks off signs from the podium, celebrations from Beijing, and that, that may have helped. The,

Alison Brown: the other job was the Motos Surf Start Judge.

Jill Jackson: Okay.

Alison Brown: Because in Motos Surf, they do a circle to start, and they have to be more than a half, machine length, but no more than two Moto whatevers apart.

Each one. Oh, okay. So the judge would tell ’em to go around again until they were exactly perfectly placed. So in the men’s final she made them go around like three times.

Jill Jackson: Wow. ’cause

Alison Brown: they were not lining up the way they were supposed to. I thought that also would be good for you. ’cause you would’ve loved like, Nope.

Do it again. How hard is it to follow the instructions? This is not rocket science. People just line up half a body length, two body lengths. Do you not understand the geometry of this?

Jill Jackson: Well, I also had two jobs I’d want to do both in events that we will get to that I have plenty of thoughts about. The first one was, the roller slalom judge.

Why I would wanna be a roller slalom judge is because they just said, oh, you’re first place, second place, third place, fourth place. There was no other, like, they had criteria, but it was just like, oh, this the, the first person to go always gets all first places because nobody else is gone. And then as other skaters go, go, they have to rejigger the number somehow.

And it just felt really loosey goosey. And I’m not a loosey goosey person, but I would be like, oh, well, you know, compared to the other people, this guy now is in fourth place.

Alison Brown: It’s kind of like the old 6.0 system from yes. Figure skating back in the day. Because even though you would give people a raw number, 5.4, 5.6, you were actually in the old words, ordinals.

Placing them in relation to all the other skaters. So it was never, oh, this program was X scored in abstraction. It was always in comparison. So yeah, I would also love to put the cones down.

Jill Jackson: Yeah. Yeah. That would also be good. Yes. Yeah. Yes. the other job I would be interested in was in bulls, the, Leone’s progressive shooting.

Did you watch this? Oh, you did watch this. I saw this on your list. And I would wanna be the person standing on the side that would replace the target ball during, on either side. Yes. During, during the event. So that’s a good one. Those are two things to do. let’s get into the sports. Go.

World Games – Chengdu 2025 – Boules

Jill Jackson: Well, let’s just start with, with bowls, since we’re already there.

Alison Brown: I watched both the Lineese and the Pente. Pat Batton, is that how you pronounce it? I believe so. So we saw this, remember all the old men in that park in France?

Jill Jackson: Yes. Yes. It’s right by where we stayed. Yes.

Alison Brown: Right. So this is one of these, it’s like the Italian bocce.

Jill Jackson: It is bocce on a rocky surface. Not super rocky, but it’s like garden rocks.

But it’s not pebbles either. It was a little rocky with balls that on TV you couldn’t tell apart. Right. But there was the

Alison Brown: green ball, which was the target.

Jill Jackson: Yes. And I watched the one where they had to, they stood in a ring, like there was a ring placed somewhere and they had to stand with both feet, feet in the ring, which I think makes the shot a little more difficult to do.

Yes. And the Lena,

Alison Brown: they’re running, that’s like the speed version. Oh, okay. Okay. Where it’s, they go back and forth between two setups. Okay. And do as many shots as they can in a certain amount of time. Yeah.

Jill Jackson: So the Leone is, so the Patal is a game. Yes. The Leone is a drill. Yes. The Leone is basically, they have two target balls set up, one on either side of a strip, and you take a running shot at the target ball, and then you run after it and to get to the other side, and then you repeat it.

trying to hit the ball on the side, you just left. So you just go back and forth on the strip trying to hit as many target balls as you can in five minutes. And of course, sweating profusely in the hum humidity.

And this to me looked like a drill.

Alison Brown: I’m surprised you didn’t like the slower version and the, the zen quality of it.

Jill Jackson: of Paton. Yeah. I would have liked it more if I could figure out whose ball was whose. Oh,

Alison Brown: that’s

Jill Jackson: fair. I couldn’t because one on my screen looked blackish and one looked silvery dark gray.

And I, I honestly couldn’t figure out who was who. And that was a little frustrating to me. I did love how they called Leone’s on the commentary. This is Paton’s tripped to a its essence, which is, is not, it’s a drill. So I, I watched very little of that and I watched, a bronze medal match of the actual game, which was interesting and would be quite fun to play. I think it has that b quality to it.

I think they need some help in trying to make it work for TV in terms of visibility and other stuff. The color guy was fantastic in this bronze metal match ’cause I think he was from the association and he, he’s apologizing for his English, which he did not need to do. Because it’s perfect. I think he was Swiss, if I remember correctly. It might have been. And he did say, we are trying to get away from this old man’s sport with the red wine and the cigarettes, which is exactly what

Alison Brown: we saw.

What was so funny was when we went to that park in, in France, I think it may have been a part of the Luxembourg Gardens, they had a coat rack and all the blazers with, with wire hangers were hanging up and the men who were waiting to play were all drinking wine and smoking a cigarette.

Jill Jackson: Right. I mean, that part was fantastic.

The commentary, I, I will say the commentary on the hole, we’ve had some exceptions on the whole, the commentary’s been great. Agreed. And a and way improved. So, congratulations to, I believe it’s IBS. It’s not OBS doing this, but the, but they do use. Obviously OBS, commentators because I believe they’re all freelance, but the, the commentary game and the color commentary people they have picked have been very, very good.

this color commentator might have been the one who did keep coughing and he was kind of like, I am, I’m done. One of them was really like, I am done. My voice is shot.

Alison Brown: And we have experienced that. Yes. After 11 days of, of straight work Yes. Of straight shows. So

Jill Jackson: we feel you, we feel you.

World Games – Chengdu 2025 – Breakdancing

Jill Jackson: Commentator break dancing. I did not get to break dancing yet. So what did you think? I watched

Alison Brown: women’s break dancing. We saw some familiar faces. Nika. Okay. And 6 7 1 from the Olympics. I actually watched this with my daughter, which was kind of fun. And her comment, she said, what are they judging them on?

I said, I don’t really know. And she said, they’re just making stuff up. Meaning the judges as to pick the winner. And we spoke to two different break dancers. We watched a li and we spoke to a judge and we spoke to um, we watched it, we listened to the commentary and I still don’t know how they pick a winner.

And that’s the most frustrating thing about break dancing.

Jill Jackson: I would agree, not having watched this competition, but I would agree that if you don’t know how something is being judged and you can’t figure it out and the commentators can’t help you, that’s an issue with your

Alison Brown: event. So the one comment, the, the sort of the broadcast professional kept asking the color commentator, you know, pick a winner for this round, pick a winner for this round before the judge’s score would come up.

And, and the, the color commentator, and I apologize for not knowing, uh, all the names ’cause they don’t always say them in the broadcast. He’s like, I don’t know. This person had vibes, this person had vibes. So. It, it isn’t even obvious to people within the sport what’s being judged, right?

World Games – Chengdu 2025 – Cheerleading

Jill Jackson: Cheerleading.

Alison Brown: Cheerleading, double palm. Okay. Saw

Jill Jackson: that? Yes. Mixed. Mixed doubles. I saw the mixed doubles.

Alison Brown: And the thing about this mixed, I’m actually gonna do I think this week’s newsletter about this because the mixed double palms could be two women, two men, or a man and a woman. There was no rule about the gender setup.

And I loved that. And we, that was very cool with every configuration. And it was very clear how they were being judged. You know, difficulty, crowd engagement. precision synchron and the different gender combinations didn’t change the quality. It changed some of the elements, you know, some of the ways they performed.

It didn’t matter. And I loved that about this sport, that it was gender neutral

Jill Jackson: in a way, in a way. Because there was always a way to work your routine to add in difficulty for you or some other kind of form of pizazz that made your team shine and still exploited the point system. You, you know what I mean, exploit’s a big word, but like leverage the point system to its full potential.

Alison Brown: Right. So on some of the male female teams, or even some of the women, women teams where one woman was smaller and one woman was stronger, they would do some crazy lifts.

Jill Jackson: Mm-hmm.

Alison Brown: Or sort of, sort of throws, but then in some of the other teams, they would do these really precise jumps.

Jill Jackson: Yes.

Alison Brown: And, and really, uh, strong flexibility so that the teams had different strengths.

It made it very fun to watch. And I think kind of an interesting example for where we could go in some other sports, I’m looking at you figure skating. Oh.

Jill Jackson: Oh, okay.

Alison Brown: Like wouldn’t it be interesting and I dance has sort of been playing with this on the professional level. Wouldn’t it be interesting if pairs were just a pair of people

Jill Jackson: That would be interesting.

How would that work? I’m

Alison Brown: gonna write about that in the newsletter.

Jill Jackson: All right. I thought, okay. So I think cheerleading is the in between stage between artistic gymnastics and rhythmic gymnastics because they have something in their hands, they just don’t do anything with it. Though the USA did, they sort of, they they swung it around?

Yes, they swung their po. So they all, all the teams have to have pompoms in their hands. And the USA team did have one move where they swung a pompom out and they also pulled out a different pompom from that was hiding in their, uh, uniform so that they could do a red, white, and blue montage. that was cool.

But it, it was, if you’re looking at this not knowing what cheerleading is in, if you’re going, oh, cheerleading is a sport, and you don’t understand that cheerleading is connected to cheering for other teams at games, you don’t understand why you have to have pompoms in your hands.

Alison Brown: Well, this is a category.

There are many different kinds of cheerleading, right? So there’s cheerleading, this particular event. Included double palm. But if you, if they had different colors, you could see them, they handed off pom-poms, sometimes they would switch Right? Handholds. So you could see that they, that some teams were doing difficulties with the palms,

Jill Jackson: but you didn’t have to, it’s not you, it’s not a ribbon or a ball where if you have a ball, you must catch it in your crotch or have it drift across your buttocks.

Um, which I thought you would appreciate because you

Alison Brown: hated that part of rhythmic.

Jill Jackson: I did hate that. I still hate that part of rhythmic, but, but that gets me about the mixed doubles palm cheer. And, and granted, this is the only thing I watched in cheerleading, so, well, this was the

Alison Brown: only cheerleading event.

Jill Jackson: Oh, okay.

Well that helps because I obviously didn’t figure it out. one thing I did like, ’cause I have to do a a plus minus, I liked the fact that the floor was not springy and the fact that. Everything that they did was based on their own strength. So you could see how high they could physically propel themselves without the assistance of a springed floor.

And that I thought was very impressive. I thought some of the movement, the USA team was just so phenomenal and the shapes they made with their arms and their palms and what they, they did. I also hated the music. Yes, everything was a super frenetic song. Like you had Eminem’s, the eight Mile song.

Lose Yourself, lose Yourself. But it would be, Jack, you only got one shot. Do not miss your chance to blow the you SA you can, you know, and, and I love Rock and Roll was in there and there was something that had, like, it rains from the center of my guitar or the center of my guitar slowly, I don’t know.

But it was like, you’d hear enough of the lyrics to go, what is this sweet hell, you know? It was like, oh, all the music was on cocaine. Yeah. So everything was chopped and screwed to an inch of its life. And I don’t know how you deal with that going in. Um, but Palm was interesting. Cheerleading was very interesting.

I will say I.

World Games – Chengdu 2025 – Gymnastics

Alison Brown: I’m gonna go a little out of order ’cause I wanna mention the music in some of the gymnastics, in the aerobics competitions. Oh, okay. ’cause I did not get to that yet. Okay. So there’s two things you need to look out for. So in the group gymnastics also, by the way, no criteria for how many men versus how many women.

So you see different configurations and how different teams use those different configurations. Very interesting. Also the same with trios. So some trios will be two men, one woman, two women, one man. Interesting. The way that they use that. But you think aerobics, you think eighties bouncing techno music.

Mm-hmm. So many sad girls in flowy dresses, kind of music.

Jill Jackson: Did it have any pop beat? Did like some of the electric beat

Alison Brown: did. Some of them didn’t. You will be be very surprised at some of the musical choices for aerobics and again, what they do with it. Here’s the wildest thing. Two different group teams had a chess theme.

Oh my. Not the show. Not the show. The Broadway show.

Jill Jackson: Right, right.

Alison Brown: The just playing chess and they were chess pieces. Oh my Romania and Hungary. One more successful than the other. Both really interesting. Okay. I.

And the costumes tell the story. Oh, let’s just put it that way. Oh

Jill Jackson: boy. Does it make you long for the old leotards? No, I actually really enjoyed

Alison Brown: them. Okay. Well that’s good. There are a few other themes that were Quest. No, but the chess theme was actually really fun, surprisingly. But I did want somebody to throw in some one night in Bangkok for their chess theme.

That was a disappointment. Okay. And if you get that reference, you probably also know who Axel Foley is.

Jill Jackson: Any other gymnastics thoughts?

Alison Brown: I agree with something we said last week, even more so. Rhythmic gymnastics is the wrong gymnastics event for the Olympics. It’s, we have so many better options than rhythmic gymnastics.

As in additional gymnastics event.

Jill Jackson: Interesting,

World Games – Chengdu 2025 – Drone Racing

Jill Jackson: Drone racing.

Alison Brown: The buzzing is still in my mind.

Jill Jackson: Oh, wow.

Alison Brown: Oh, that sound. and we were talking to Alex from Fantasy Five Rings the other day, and he said he watched the first half with no sound. And that’s the way to watch drone racing. The sound. I think this could be a new torture element.

Jill Jackson: It could be.

Alison Brown: Oh,

Jill Jackson: it was a tough watch and I like there’s so much to watch that I did not give much time to.

If I didn’t like it, I watched it for a little bit and I would turn it off. So drone racing was one I turned off. So you have drones, little tiny drones, and they had to fly through an obstacle course and it, when they set it up, it kind of looks like Alex from Fantasy five Rink said it looks like a roller coaster.

And when you look at it from the aerial view, it’s a shape of a panda head, which is really cute. I adored that portion. the round I saw was four on four. Yes. And then the screen split into four sections and you could not tell where anybody was in the course at any given time.

if the drone hit something and, and crashed out their quadrant of the S screen screen, went blank basically. And then like they had died. Yes, yes. But it, it was. It was really hard to see. I would imagine that in person it’s easier to, to find the drones and watch them do their thing. But yes, you’re just listening to buzzing and you see the first person of this drone going very, very quickly through all these obstacles.

Sometimes they have to do reverses or go high, go low. You can’t really tell what’s going on or what’s coming next. And then the competitors are all just sitting in chairs with headsets on.

Alison Brown: And I did appreciate, you know, whenever the woman would beat a couple of these teenage boys because that’s the round I happen to see.

But yeah, this is not spectator friendly.

Jill Jackson: It’s not tv. It’s not a TV audience friendly. So if TV audiences are better for your. Event then this is not the, the event for you. I will say the commentator knew what he was talking about. Yes. Oh my gosh. Did he know the sport inside and out? It was amazing.

Alison Brown: But that buzzing will live in my brain and haunt my nightmares

World Games – Chengdu 2025 – Flag Football

Jill Jackson: and,

flag football. I saw most of the gold medal match for the women.

Alison Brown: So much fun. So much fun. I got so excited watching that game for LA and I agree with John. watching the women’s game was interesting. Different tactics. Hearing a woman as an official yell first down got me a little emotional, you know, because we’ve.

You know, we talk so much about gender parity and, and women’s opportunities in sports and obviously in professional football, you, you don’t see women and you don’t see women officials. And to hear a woman on that football field calling Downs was exciting and fun and not just from a gender point of view, it was a good game.

And, and literally down to the last second in that US Mexico gold medal match.

Jill Jackson: Yes, I will say that the, quality of that match is just so good. And Mexico and, and I, I don’t wanna knock the US ’cause they are a very, very good team. Obviously there, I think a lot of expectations for them to win because it’s a sport that originates in their country.

This is the second games in a row that they’ve got in the silver but Mexico man, do those women know how to sprint and. Dodge and evade. They are just gonna be so much fun to watch in LA and I am curious how the rest of it will play out. As John said, there are fewer teams in la so you’re gonna have a smaller tournament.

Is that gonna be enough to give you a true sense of what this is? Although if you’re watching just one game, do, do you care?

Alison Brown: I watched the bronze medal game as well between Canada, uh, where Canada beat Austria, and that was also quite a good game. So there is enough, since it’s a small tournament, I think if you watch any game, you’re gonna see some really good quality flag football.

Okay. Which will be helpful. I don’t see this again, because the tournament is so small, I don’t see a lot of blowouts happening. Mm, okay. Which, which keeps it interesting. Yes. You know, and that you have at least three teams. Because I think in a couple years, Canada, Canada’s close. So I think you’re gonna have three teams really battling for that gold and then possibly all six, you know, at least four that have a really good shot at the podium will keep it interesting.

Jill Jackson: And that’s on the women’s side. And that’s on the women’s side. I have to see some men’s to see what that is gonna be like. So appreciate John’s insights on that.

World Games – Chengdu 2025 – Inline Skating

Jill Jackson: Inline skating.

Alison Brown: So I watched, first of all, Ecuador and Columbia Oh are so good in the speed skating realm. I remember that both men’s and women’s, I think it was Ecuador, only sent four athletes, but came up with a handful of medals outta speed skating, which was fantastic.

Um, I watched the the 10,000 meter elimination. Oh, this is like short track in that everybody’s on the track at once and then it’s like that speed skating where they have bell laps.

Jill Jackson: Mm-hmm.

Alison Brown: But if you’re last in the bell lap, you get pulled off the track. So that made it even higher stakes with each round.

Yes. It’s like that cycling, cycling event too. Yes. Love that. Yes. So that there’s speed and tactics and strategy involved. So that was fun to kind of watch. Okay, yeah, you gotta go really fast, but you’ve gotta conserve yourself ’cause it’s 10,000 meters, but you can’t be last in this particular moment.

You’ve gotta keep with the group. that was really enjoyable to watch. And then we both watched classic slalom, which is this, I thought it was going to be a race when I turned it on thinking it was going to be like, like a ski race with slalom. Oh no, no, no, no. This is some bizarre cross.

Between slalom racing, figure skating, inline skating. So they perform, I don’t know, figures, dance moves between cones to music and there’s a costume involved.

Jill Jackson: Yes. This is another I Sound is so

Alison Brown: stressful.

Jill Jackson: What? What made

Alison Brown: it stressful? Because they were gonna hit the little cones. Oh, okay. And then if they hit a cone and it was outta place, and then they hit the cone again and the cones would start flying everywhere

and again, some interesting musical

Jill Jackson: choices. So to me, this was another drill that became a sport or an event, because I totally saw, oh, we’ve got all these cones lined up so you can practice your slalom technique and we’re gonna drill on this. And there happens to be music going on in the warehouse because, or somebody brought the boom box to the beach.

’cause it’s, you know, we want to have fun. And then someone’s like, oh, that was a cool move. I bet I could do that. And they’re like, no, we gotta do it like this. And lo and behold, we have a sport.

Alison Brown: I don’t know, I think this falls into your same category of disliking, rhythmic gymnastics.

Jill Jackson: I mean, I,

Alison Brown: there was no crotch involved.

Jill Jackson: Well, no, and I don’t wanna knock what people do. It’s not for me, and I don’t understand. That’s where we get into the lines of why is this particular thing a sport?

Alison Brown: Versus versus other events.

Jill Jackson: Uh, versus other events, because I very clearly, and, and, but, but then again, we go, well, the world games are only so old and you have a lot of new sports in this.

In a hundred years time are people gonna be like this? Will this have evolved? And to be something very, very different and very unique and very, and this is a hard thing to do because they are moving their feet so fast in between these cones. But in the early days of whatever we’re calling this, I really see it as I see the evolution from a drill to an event.

Alison Brown: And this seemed to be put in place in roller sports in a replacement to. The thing that looks more like figure skating, the singles and the pairs. ’cause we didn’t see that this time. No, the quad wheeled.

Jill Jackson: Yeah. The quad wheel. The roller skating, you

Alison Brown: know? Right. Kind of the old school performance roller skating where they would do axles and mm-hmm.

Pirouettes and, and camel spins and things that would look like Olympic figure skating. We got this instead. Because I think more people rollerblade than roller skate. Now

Jill Jackson: I am curious because there’s different types of roller skating.

Alison Brown: Yeah.

Jill Jackson: And I don’t see a ton of people rollerblading like I used to when rollerblades first came out.

That’s true. You’ll see people rollerblading because you can tell that they’re hockey players. Right. And this is their summer hockey. and how they keep up. But I don’t see that as much as I used to, but I would be not surprised. To find out in other countries that this is a big deal,

Alison Brown: right? Because all of the roller sports, there was inline skating, uh, inline hockey speed and slalom.

It’s all roller blades. There was no roller skating events.

Jill Jackson: Mm-hmm.

Alison Brown: So is that the evolution of roller sports? Good question.

Jill Jackson: I mean, it’s, it’s interesting to be in this time where you see, as you see sports evolve and we, you see it in Olympic sports or Paralympic sports, you can still see evolutions because there’s sometimes we’ve gotta respond to technology or somebody’s figured out how to do a move differently or better, and that just makes them so much better than the competition and everybody’s gotta catch up.

But yeah, you really see some, we’re evolving from early days of sport and there’s a lot of change that happens. I did love the commentating duo. Because you had the woman who was very excited as the main commentator and the color commentator who was not super comfortable speaking in English but so she was very, very blunt and I loved it so much.

That was not good. It was fantastic. That

Alison Brown: was a mistake.

Jill Jackson: That music

Alison Brown: is not good.

Jill Jackson: That was great. I’m like, that’s right. It wasn’t,

World Games – Chengdu 2025 – Motosurf

Jill Jackson: let’s move over to Modo Surf.

Alison Brown: Don’t ask me to explain it. I don’t know what the heck was going on, but here’s the cool thing. When they did the mixed team, the Polish team was a father and daughter.

Jill Jackson: Oh, that is right up your alley.

Alison Brown: That is right up my alley. Exactly. And I think that also goes back to what John was saying, that you have a much broader age range in the world games than you often see in the Olympics. You’ll see. Some of these pairings that was, that were interesting. And what was funny was the commentator was commenting about whether ma, uh, whether dad or daughter were going faster Okay.

And what the conversation would be like between them if one beat the other. And I was concerned he might’ve been having some parental therapy happening as he was doing the commenting like, oh, her dad is going more quickly. They may have to have a discussion, or, oh, she beat him, that, that will be helpful.

But the really fun one was on the last day in the men’s moto surf competition. So in this competition you’re on, not a jet ski, but this other Yeah. Film. So

Jill Jackson: let’s, let’s talk a little bit about the sport first. Yes, You’re on a little board, like a wake board, but it’s, it’s self-propelled. So it’s like the standup version of a jet ski.

In a way, and I will tell you, you can get one yourself for just about $15,000. Really? Is it that expensive? Yes, they are expensive. and these are like battery powered and that would be a whole package I saw, which came with the board and the battery and the case and the towel. More for the 14 nine.

Well now, you know if it comes on prices, right? Yes. I’m so ready for that. In, in

Alison Brown: the, in the showcase, add 15,000 to your Yeah. To your retail price.

Jill Jackson: So it’s a, it’s a standup jet ski. I did see the men’s race, so they race around a course and they have to do different things. It’s a big loop with an extra loop added called the long lap.

And so they’ll have to slalom, they’ll have to go certain directions around buoys and they do it very as fast as you can. So basically it’s a, it’s a speed race with obstacle elements to it. And then in the, the men’s at least, it was a 10 lap race and two of those had to be a long lap. So you would spin off on this extra loop and do a couple of things on the extra loop.

Meant you had to have more endurance. You could put your long lap wherever you wanted to in this race. So that was strategy because the other thing is that when everybody starts together, you have a lot of wakes that you have to mess with and work your way through. Once you peel off on a long lap, you get out of everybody’s wakes.

So maybe you could go a little bit quicker. So Right. So some people

Alison Brown: like to do it at the beginning. Some people like to do it in the middle. If they get caught among a whole bunch of of other moto surfers, only problem is you gotta remember to do it. Yes. And unfortunately the Korean writer Dow, Kim forgot to do one of his long laps.

Mm-hmm. In the final. So he crossed the line first thinking he had won the gold medal and he ended up being dq. Yeah. It was ’cause he only did one of the long laps and the poor announcer. Was they got confused themselves because they both said, wait, he didn’t do a second long lap. And then the other announcer said, oh wait, maybe the, the screen just hasn’t caught up.

And they were both like, no, he didn’t do it. And then a few seconds later it came up that he was DQ and Czechia of all countries, won both the men’s and the women’s.

Jill Jackson: Interesting, interesting. Uh, Z from China also did not do his second long lap. that was fascinating. I loved the strategy and the tactics of this.

I think I would like watching this in person. It was very hard to watch on screen because they used, it seemed like a lot of drone technology or maybe they had cameras stationed in certain spots. Again, some of the camera work, they also did not talk with the people doing the overlay. So that you would have the standings on one side, the current standings going up one side of the screen.

Very cool. You could see who was where and how much of the race they had to do and what position they were in. Some of the camera work would also be on that side of the screen, so you’d be looking at water and buoys and never see who you’re supposed to see. It was also difficult to tell which athlete was which.

Yes,

Alison Brown: they were not terribly distinguished, say with different colors or numbers or something. That made it very simple right to to point them out. Though I will give compliments to the broadcasters on this one because, oh, theyre fantastic. They were really good. They were also very good prior to the race saying, you know, oh, is a horse, is a horse ski from check.

As the world champion, this person is up and coming. This person has been the hot new racer. They gave us a lot of grounding in who we could expect to be good. And who the competition would be between and as we were going along. Okay. He did his long lap, so it may seem like he’s behind, but he’s actually ahead.

So that helped

Jill Jackson: a lot. Yes. And it just would’ve helped to be able to see what they were talking about easily. And this is a quick fix. This is a, everybody gets a different colored vest that they put on over their, uh, life jacket every, or they have different colored life jackets or like you say, numbers, something that is very visible that helps you pick out which person is which and can help you see them go that fast.

Interesting sport. it’s a race, it’s kind of demolition derby esque in water. It looks fun. Yes. I will go back and I did, that’s the only one I watched of that. Um, it’s fun. It’s fun to watch. Yes. So it was, it was a lot of fun.

World Games – Chengdu 2025 – Billiards

Jill Jackson: What else? You watched some billiards? I did watch some billiards ’cause there was talk on the feed of Caram and I was gonna figure out what was caram about and I watched some of the bronze medal match because I did need to fast forward to find out who won.

Caram basically is a, a pool table with no pockets and you have three balls. You have a white cube ball, you have a, a what looked to me like an orange ball, but they kept calling it a yellow ball and a red ball.

Alison Brown: And is that kind of like how blueberries are kind of purple?

Jill Jackson: Yeah, I think so. And each player there’s two, it’s one-on-one and or what I saw was one-on-one, I was watching the women’s bronze medal match and they each pick a different ball to be their Q ball and they hit the Q ball.

So I was watching, uh, Sorenson from Denmark versus Perez from Peru. And Sorenson’s ball was the white ball. And I believe, Perez took the yellow. And so what Sorenson would do is hit the white ball and it’s got a caram off and hit the next color ball. And that ball has to hit the third ball. So you have to care ’em everything and work the angles and the, the power you put behind your shot.

Just so, so you hit everything. If you hit all three, you get a point and you keep going and you basically can run up the table. You keep going until you miss. And so you play till 25.

Alison Brown: I gotta be honest, I’m bored just listening to you explain that to me.

Jill Jackson: it was a little tough to figure out. This also could be a drill.

You do to practice regular billiards. these women, it was, it was something like per Peru’s first medal in billiards very nice. These were both older women, so I applaud that as well. They used a lot of chopstick on their cues. It was just gotta figure out this shot. Let me go back to the cues.

Let me, let me chalk it up some more. it did take a little while to figure out. It’s a very quiet sport. Very I would say mesmerizing if you put it, you do love a bit mesmerizing

Alison Brown: sport. Yeah.

Jill Jackson: So you can put it on and just be kind of mesmerized by it for a little while. But like I said, I did have to fast forward ’cause I’m running outta time.

World Games – Chengdu 2025 – Racquetball

Jill Jackson: I didn’t have a whole lot of time this week to watch world games. did watch a tiny bit of racketball as well.

Alison Brown: I lasted about 14 seconds watching racketball.

Jill Jackson: Yeah, this was harder for me to watch than squash. And I think maybe the ball was too bouncy. Maybe it was because you’d have to judge where in the feed the competition would actually start.

’cause there was usually about five minutes of silence before something actually started. There were a lot of appeals, there were a lot of replays. I just had a hard time watching this. And I’ve played racquetball. I played racquetball for a little bit in college for funsies and tons of fun to play because the ball just goes everywhere.

It’s super bouncy and you gotta pay attention to that and, and try to hit stuff on the as fast as you can. And it’s, it’s a lot of fun to play. But this was a hard watch and I’m not sure they had. As good of camera shots for replays as they did for squash, and maybe they just had a hard time tracking the ball.

So you lasted 14 seconds. What?

Alison Brown: I just, I couldn’t, obviously, I don’t know the sport. I’ve never played it, and I had the same problem that I did with squash. It was just not camera friendly. It’s definitely one of those things where maybe if I was there, I’d be able to follow what was happening more, but on screen I just could not keep track of who was who, what was where the ball was going, and it was incredibly frustrating with just knowing what was happening.

Jill Jackson: I’d be curious to know how squash has evolved. How to make their sport more TV friendly and what they’re talking about in terms of coverage for LA and how to make that something people tune into. Because that’s obviously the more important element of the sport spectator experience to the IOC, to the, because that’s where the bigger, bigger audience is.

I mean, you’re gonna sell out the the stands because it’s on the universal lot. It’s cool. It’s a new sport. You’ll sell it out. People will have a good time. But how do you make it so it’s engaging to watch on a screen?

Alison Brown: Because that’s how you grow a sport. You see it. Yeah. Then you wanna play it, then you wanna be involved, then you wanna watch it again.

And you know, most people’s exposure to these sports first is on tv.

World Games – Chengdu 2025 – Closing Ceremony

Jill Jackson: Yeah. So that is the extent of my world Games watching. Did you see the closing ceremony? Oh, besides the closing ceremony. Okay. The sports, that’s the extent of my sports watching, closing ceremony one hour long, so fast. It was basically parade speeches, fireworks done right with a little bit of dancing and a long handover ceremony.

Alison Brown: Okay, so let’s talk about this dancing for a second. So there’s two dancing things I wanna talk about. I fear the barefoot dancer in a flowy dress has become the new children’s choir. That every closing ceremony is going to have this barefoot dance. I mean, we had this in Beijing when it was, you know, four degrees at least this, the poor girl wasn’t freezing.

Jill Jackson: Well true. And this is both. The next host City’s performance. So at Beijing 2022, Milan brought out a pair of dancers and they did a modern dance barefoot in this cold weather. And here Carls Rowa brings out another dancer slash gymnast to do part of their come to Carl Rua In four years,

Alison Brown: they also brought out maybe possibly the only pop singer in Carl Ru because otherwise, why did they bring him out to sing?

I mean, we’ve heard some bad songs related to games. I wrote one particular line of this song down. Only one can be the champion. We gonna party as a family.

Jill Jackson: Oh my, I, I did write, write down world games. Here we come, because that, that was rough. That was a really, really rough moment to get through.

And I say I would feel bad for the songwriters, but I’m betting this stuff is AI generated now.

Alison Brown: Yeah. It was not, there was not a lot of, you know, Diane Warren being added into this lyric construction. It was, it was questionable but fun. Appropriately poppy, appropriately bouncy, appropriate dancers all around.

Another dance element I wanna mention is. No idea how much the Chinese love their ballroom dancers ’cause they brought them back. Do you remember at the Paralympic closing ceremony that they had that whole sequence of the ballroom dancers that we actually saw rehearsing in the parking lot of our hotel this time?

They had a whole Latin sequence. Yes, which was great. So apparently the Chinese love ballroom dance, who knew

Jill Jackson: also a very fun moment and very, like this ceremony seemed to be very time sensitive. I’m not sure how many spectators there were there. And if it was just for the athletes. They came in, they had a good time, we got some fun and games.

Here’s where the next ones are. IWGA President declares the games. Close it and. Poor guy. I should make one of them love.

Alison Brown: But you know what, I did love that each person pretty much spoke in their own language. They didn’t use the, the Olympics have two official languages, English and French. But everybody here just spoke what they wanted to.

And Ali Hagman, our lovely friend, Ali Hagman, was doing the call and gave the television viewer the translation that they had been given. Like we were given at Yes, at the different ceremonies. So if people were not speaking in whatever language, you understood what was happening. So that I thought was more international if

Jill Jackson: that’s the right flair, that, and they are more comfortable speaking the language.

So at least you get that genuine feeling that comes across when you’re speaking in a language that you’re. Your native tongue, so that I appreciated and, and that was fine. And everybody kept everything pretty short. pretty standard. There was no, yeah, nothing super exciting. Carls Ru seems very excited to host the games.

They had a big video thing. There were lots of course, video clips of what happened, during Chengdu 2025 in terms of competition. It was very cute because every segment had a different w and it all spelled out We wish for a wonderful World. Once you were done, the different segments came together. then we just had the cauldron extinguishing with the children’s choir singing old l Zine, which a

Alison Brown: perfect song choice, but also an odd song choice.

Like wouldn’t there be an appropriate Chinese

Jill Jackson: song for that moment? One would think, and yet, here we are. But it worked. it was nice. again, fantastic cauldron. Yes.

Alison Brown: And then the announcement came on and this took me back to China because as the program was ending, you could hear the stadium announcer say, the athletes, the after party will begin shortly.

Please remain seated for a while. And it took me back to that announcement in the Beijing, media center about the, the how, the train. Back to to, was it Young

Jill Jackson: Chin? Tai Chi? Tai chi chin.

Alison Brown: Yeah. We’ll, we’ll be leaving shortly. Please. Get to the buses and just the way the announcements were made were just very gentle, feminine voice bossing you around, which was so much fun.

And, and, and if you kept the feed on you heard it a few times. Yeah. But I also loved remain seated for a while. We’re not gonna tell you how long it’s an after party, so just sit tight. Yeah.

Jill Jackson: But overall, well done. Chang do.

Alison Brown: Very well done.

Jill Jackson: I do think we’re dealing with different. resources, available, resources, expectations, and, finances than Birmingham had.

But it’ll be interesting to see what the next city does,

Alison Brown: you

Jill Jackson: know, as we keep

Alison Brown: following this.

Jill Jackson: Um, and first

Alison Brown: reports have been, it was from the athlete’s perspective, very, very successful, which is what you want.

IWGA News

Jill Jackson: The IWGA during Chengdu 20, 25, did sign memorandums of understanding with three national Olympic committees.

So they were from Kazakhstan, uh, Saudi Arabia, and Slovakia. So that means a lot more joint cooperation and trying to get the world gains, more visibility in these countries. And the reason we talk about, I wanted to talk about this is because they only had these agreements with 23. OCS or national sports organizations.

And obviously a lot of, there are a lot more countries participating in the world gains, but you see how small this is as an organization still and how much more it has to evolve. they also signed a memorandum of understanding to establish the IWGA Sports Research and Promotion Center in Shang do, which will do sports research and athlete development, sports medicine, and more to advance non-Olympic sports in China and around the world.

Alison Brown: Maybe that’s why they had some additional facilities available to them in terms of like could be, uh, sports medicine and massage therapy and because then they were gonna take those and move them or use them for this, this sports research center.

Jill Jackson: Right. I am curious to see what this will look like. How long it will take to be up and running and, and that kind of element.

Sometimes I think stuff like this happens or they sign agreements and, and we don’t know what happens after that. so next games are gonna be in Carls ru at Germany and 2029. Philippines and Korea are currently interested in hosting for 2033, so we will see what happens there as well.

LA 2028 News – Stadium Naming Rights

Jill Jackson: We got some LA 2028 news. Let’s start with the small news first. Okay. So para climbing events have been finalized. Para climbing has been added to the Paralympics. First time in a long time. A new sport’s been added to the Paralympic games, so this is very exciting. They’re going to have a visually impaired upper limb deficiency, lower limb deficiency, and then range in power.

So there will be a total of eight metal events. 40 men and 40 women will be participating. Okay, now let’s get to the big news. The big news is that the venues will have sponsor names on them,

Alison Brown: and this is first time in Olympic history that venues will be allowed to be sponsored. Obviously, this is gonna be controversial.

Some people love this idea. You know, I’ve seen Ken Hanscomb and Terrence Burns, both of our friends talking about this on LinkedIn, and on the one hand, lovely resource of, in a source of income, this is gonna be a lot of cash for organizers. On the other hand, the Olympics has a hundred year old tradition of a clean field of play where there is no sponsorship allowed on the court field, or course right On the third hand, I’m gonna need like 14 limbs.

It’s also recognizing reality. Honda Arena, Comcast Arena, SoFi have these names.

Jill Jackson: Yes.

Alison Brown: Should we give them a new name for two weeks? That seems silly.

Jill Jackson: Yes. When people know them as one thing to suddenly give them a new name. For Paris, we just knew it was Port De La Chappelle.

We didn’t know. Well, we knew it was Aidas Arena and you could see that covered up big time. But we just

Alison Brown: called the Port de la Chappelle. And that was a new facility. Yes. That wasn’t a long established facility like SoFi. I mean, SoFi’s been there for several years. to all of a sudden, call it something else is GPS gonna get you there.

True, true.

Jill Jackson: Rich Perlman, our friend who writes the sports examiner, he said that this was another step in the evolution of the IOCs view of sponsorship. And we first started seeing stuff in Paris, how LVMH was incorporated into the opening ceremonies, which was very jarring, I will say. And then Samsung phones just magically appeared at the podium.

And what was

Alison Brown: the, was it the Purell? they had those stands at the swimming venue where you could see the sponsor name on the dispensers.

Jill Jackson: Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. ’cause it was a p and g product. Yes, it was. It was in the diving wells.

Alison Brown: Yes.

Jill Jackson: In in diving, in the showers, they had the shampoo and body wash there.

he wrote that the IOC is still committed to a clean field of play. And the ban on in stadium signage will continue, but I bet we see more of this creep.

Alison Brown: You know, it’s so funny because it always seems to be an American games that really pushes the envelope on what’s acceptable. 1984 was a huge watershed for house sponsorship and organizing committees.

Atlanta was a big change that then the IOC decided had gone too far in terms of commercializing the area around the venues. And now again, LA pushing the envelope as to what’s acceptable, what’s not acceptable, and we’ll just have to see how this plays out. You know, will this work? And we know in other areas of the world, we have sponsored venues.

I mean, we saw it in Paris, we’ve seen it in. In other countries. So it’s not like this is a uniquely American phenomenon but it is a predominantly American phenomenon where I think stadiums are named after a sponsor.

Jill Jackson: Yes. I do think it’s an opportunity to give the IOC top sponsors something more for their buck more bank.

’cause they’ve been May yes. They’ve been losing them. Yes. More bang for their buck. And sometimes, you know, people roll off, but as Terrance Burns has said, they don’t get a whole lot for their money. So if they can get a stadium named, and you talk about this stadium for several years ahead of time, really talk about it during the games, they are getting something that’s a lot more visible and of course visible in the city as people drive by it.

Alison Brown: But they’re also talking about temporary venues will get sponsored. which is just for the games, but that’s okay. The one thing that I do wanna point out is they’re not going to give a new sponsor to an existing sponsored, venue. So for example, SoFi can only be SoFi or the Olympic Stadium in Inglewood.

You couldn’t give that another sponsor’s name, So that I think is important to, that. We’re not gonna all of a sudden get these competing sponsor names for the same venue.

Jill Jackson: the other thing I like about this is that we don’t have to waste time and resources and manpower covering up existing stadium names, unless of course those sponsors don’t wanna be, purchasing those rights.

But it is a lot of effort to cover up a lot of stuff and. Always very silly. And which always takes me back to our hotel room in Beijing where they put, this went to an extreme, like our toiletries that we had in the room were taped over the brands, but the TV was also taped over the brand. And then you turned on the TV and you saw that it was a Phillips tv.

Oh, okay. But it gets to the extreme of what you use and, and cover up the brand because it’s not an official brand. And I, I get that, but I think that, but SoFi is still a

Alison Brown: Pepsi stadium, so

Jill Jackson: that’ll, oh boy. I cannot wait to see what happens there. So we, I can just see concession stands closed and popped up.

pop up concessions elsewhere, but who knows? But, we will see how this goes. There’s been some good conversation on our Facebook group, so that has been helpful with, with a lot of thoughts either way and, and a lot of concern that there’s gonna be, a slippery slope going on and we will see, a not clean field to play at some point in the future.

I dunno, depends on how much everything costs.

Salt Lake City 2034 News – Volunteer Update

Jill Jackson: So we’ve got some news from 2034, uh,

Alison Brown: salt Lake City. You scared me for a second with that music ’cause I haven’t gotten used to our Salt Lake City music. And the first couple notes sound like our doping mu sounder. So I, because there’s no doping notes on our our

Jill Jackson: sheet,

Alison Brown: so I got really

Jill Jackson: scared. Oh well this is Salt Lake City 2034.

news@ksl.com reports that people are already asking about volunteering for Salt Lake City 2034. Which is fantastic, but calm down. Yes. The, uh, organizing committee, CEO, Brad Wilson said they’re probably not going to start recruiting until 2032 or 2033, so you got plenty of time to become a volunteer.

There may be a chance to pre-register online, so look for that if you’re really wanting to do this. However, Wilson also said that there could be upwards of a hundred thousand people signing up to volunteer for not as many slots as a hundred thousand, and they’re gonna be selective if that happens.

They will look for people who already have a resume of being volunteers. He said, if you want to volunteer for the games, go volunteer in your communities now so you got time. Build up your resume or learn some really obscure language that would have a delegation at the games. Yes. Don’t go learning like tie when there’s gonna be a handful of tie athletes there.

Alison Brown: Well, you never know. That could be useful. Very true for their one volunteer coordinator if you spoke some tie.

Jill Jackson: Very, very true. So the organizing committee leadership also had a meeting with state lawmakers who asked how the gains were gonna be paid for because there’s no state budget line item for this.

They reminded me and they’re like, we know. it’s not public money, it’s private money. you’re gonna get money from broadcast rights, sponsorships, tickets, and they said ticket prices are gonna be like a barbell weighted to be very affordable or very expensive. So they could be heavy prices, they could be light prices.

They are committed to selling 34,000 tickets for $34 each, which will be the affordable side. they did say expect the affordable tickets to be ones for the competitions at the Soldier Hollow Nordic Center. So that will be your cross country skiing and your biathlon, or would that be the seven 11 Slurpee Soldier Hollow Nordic Center.

International Paralympic Committee News – New Recognized Sports

Jill Jackson: Wow. You never know. You never know. Got some news from the International Paralympic Committee. They have recognized two federations. so this would be new ones that they recognize, Sambo and bowls. So those are, on their list of sports that could be chosen for a games does not necessarily mean they will be in, but it means they could be into a games at some point.

The IPC is also having elections coming up. Meaning that Andrew Parsons will be running for a third and final term as president this time. He has some competition from Dong Young Bay, who’s from the, uh, national Paralympic Committee of Korea. And the election will be taking place at the IPC General Assembly on September 27th.

So we will keep an eye on that.

TKFLASTAN News

Jill Jackson: Welcome

Alison Brown: to sh

Jill Jackson: Stan. Good to see time of the show where we check in with our team, keep the flame alive. These are past guests and listeners who make up our citizenship of our very own country. Sh Stan, a lot of stuff going on in athletics and para athletics.

Alison Brown: Yes.

So representing the United States at the Para Athletic World Championships in New Delhi, September. Selections were made based on the national championships. Noah Lambert will be in the long jub, T 63 and a hundred meters. Jaden Black Belt will be competing at the a hundred meter and 400 meters in T 38, and Justin Fong Sivan will be throwing the javelin.

Jill Jackson: And then also at the U-S-A-T-F Para National Championships, Daniel Roman Chuck won the men’s 5,000 meters in the T 54 and Noelle Malcolm Maki placed first in the women’s shot put F 46, that’s her fourth national title. She said on Instagram she was opting not to go to the worlds this year ’cause she’s trying to navigate the life of a professional athlete, which I thought was interesting and smart for her.

And, I totally want to talk to her about this.

Alison Brown: I know we talked to her a little bit about that transition time she was having last year. So not a, not a big surprise in a way. So on the, athletic side. From the United States who’ll be heading to the World Championships in Tokyo. Kenny Bednar in the 100 and 200 meters, he plays first in the nationals in the a hundred meter and second in the 200 meter.

I just saw that race the other day. Oh, did you? Oh, I went back and washed it after we had a conversation about it. So there’s a little, uh, hardy rivalry with Noah Lyles.

Jill Jackson: Yes. Let’s

Alison Brown: just say,

Jill Jackson: well, you know, well, let’s, if you haven’t seen it, we’ll put a link to that in the show notes. But we all know that Noah Lyles likes to be, he’s got a lot of personality on the track.

He likes to talk big, he has big, gestures, he trash talks, whatever. Apparently something was said before the 200 meter to Kenny and Right. And then

Alison Brown: at the end of the race, Noah Lyles looks over at Kenny as Noah’s crossing the finish line in a very aggressive. I mean, I hate to say a very aggressive stare, but it was not a friendly little Usain boat.

Look at us finishing. Yeah, no, it was. And then Kenny Bed Nark as Noah Lyles kind of crosses in front of him after the race. Gives him a shove out of his way.

Jill Jackson: Yes. Caused a little kerfuffle. They’ve talked it out since.

Alison Brown: We’ll see if we can find out some more.

Jill Jackson: Yeah.

Alison Brown: Also, heading to World Champs a Katie Moon who finished second in Paul Vault and Deanna Price won the hammer throw.

Jill Jackson: gymnast, Brody Malone has been named to the men’s national team heading to the World Championships in Indonesia In October, babying John

Alison Brown: will be heading back to the Added OS Arena in Paris to compete in the Badminton World Championships, which run August 25th to the 31st.

Jill Jackson: Para powerlifter Louise Sugden has qualified for the World Championships in Cairo in October.

Alison Brown: Congratulations to Para Archer Matt Stutzman for achieving his goal of reaching 200 miles per hour in his drag racing car. He is qualified for the NHR. NHRA US Nationals in Indianapolis, which run from August 27th to September 1st

Jill Jackson: figure skating analyst Jackie Wong has launched the Rocker Skating Podcast, and you can find it wherever

Alison Brown: you listen to

Jill Jackson: podcast.

Alison Brown: Congratulations to listener Tommy on the publication of his book, the 1980 Moscow Olympics, a day by day history. Very

Jill Jackson: excited to get my hand. Oh, I have my hands on it. I’m very excited to get my nose in it. I gotta wait to get my hands on it ’cause you got my copy. Yeah. But thank you very much Tommy for sending that to us and uh, yes, we’ll have a link to that in the show notes as well.

You can get it through our book shop.org site and uh, if you purchased books through that link, uh, you support independent bookstores. You also support the show ’cause we do get co commission from purchases. Uh, congratulations to Water polo player Ben Hallick and his new wife Kara, who got married on August 7th

Alison Brown: and this is the best news ever.

Very special. Congratulations to Samantha Schultz and her husband Carl, who are expecting a baby girl in November.

Jill Jackson: Yay.

Comment of the Week

Jill Jackson: And, uh, speaking of Shik Stan, we have a very good comment. It’s our comment of the week this week.

Alison Brown: So from our very good friend, listener, Patrick from Chicagoland, he said, uh, on our Facebook group, I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but let me just say, listening to the podcast about the world games is more entertaining than watching the World Games itself.

Excellent. I, Patrick, I totally

Jill Jackson: appreciate that. Thank you Patrick, for the love. So if you comment in our Facebook group or on, our different social media handles, we’re all at Flame Live pod, all of them. or send us a voicemail or email. All that information is in the show notes. when you look at the show description in your apps, let us know.

We will be playing the best of the best every week. And that is gonna do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening,

Alison Brown: and until next time, keep the flame alive.