The 12th edition of the World Games, Chengdu 2025 is underway! We discuss what sports and events we and other listeners have been bingeing on our feeds.
It feels like it’s been forever since we last watched the World Games, but it’s only been three years. The World Games is a summer-sports-only multi-sport event, held the year after the Summer Olympics. That means the last edition of the World Games was Birmingham (Alabama) 2022, making this perhaps the last domino that was tumbled for the COVID-19 pandemic.
This time the World Games are in Chengdu, China, a city of about 21 million and the capital of Sichuan province. It’s known for its panda sanctuaries, so of course, one of the Chengdu 2025 mascots is a panda named Shu Bao. The other mascot is a monkey named Jin Zai. Both are absolutely adorable (China hits it out of the park again!).
Chengdu 2025 features:
- 34 sports
- 60 disciplines
- 256 medal events
- Over 4,000 athletes
- Over 100 nations
This makes it larger than a Winter Olympics!
The festivities kicked off with an excellent Opening Ceremonies, which took a cue from Paris 2024. We break down what went right and where maybe the Olympics could take some hints.
Chengdu 2025’s sports program is so packed, we can’t watch it all, so we’re discussing the sports we watched and what we thought of them. This week that list includes:
- Canoe Polo – chaos in the water
- DanceSport – some interesting musical choices
- Dragon Boat – a new sport on the Chengdu 2025 program
- Finswimming – we have a lot of thoughts about freediving
- Floorball – intense and impressive
- Gymnastics – we have thoughts on the new format
- Orienteering – a tragic event, but compelling competition
- Parkour – parkour!
- Squash – a tough collision
- Tug of War – who’s stronger, the athletes or the rain?
- Wakeboard – for those who don’t have an ocean to surf in
Plus, our traditional Games question: What volunteer or officiating job would we want to do? And (surprise), we’ve got some beefs.
Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive!
Photo: Chengdu 2025
TRANSCRIPT
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404-World Games: Chengdu 2025 – Week 1
Jill Jaracz: 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 joint, as always, by my lovely co-host, Alison Brown. Alison, hello. How are you?
Alison Brown: Getting a little tired of balancing on top of your head on one palm in a handstand.
Jill Jaracz: Well, let me just throw you then. Okay. Fly, baby fly.
Alison Brown: Just swing me around like a jump rope.
Jill Jaracz: Oh, yes. We are talking about the World Games and all of these sports and disciplines that we don’t see very often because they’re not publicized as much, but exist and, it’s been a week.
Alison Brown: I have been having so much fun watching all this stuff.
I, you know, like you said, that we don’t see too often and that. I don’t know about. So I’m like, what is this? What is this? Let me try this. Some are good. Yeah, some are a little scary.
What is the World Games?
Jill Jaracz: Yep, exactly. So we are talking about the first half of the 2025 World Games from Chengdu, China. The World Games are the purview of the International World Games Association, which IWGA and they showcase sports that are not typically on the Olympic or Paralympic program or they could be on the Olympic program.
’cause some have moved up from the world games level to the Olympics like a lot of karate did for, Tokyo. But now it’s back out of the Olympics. Breaking was in the world Games ahead of Paris 2024. squash has been on the World Games Program for a while. That’s gonna be at LA 2028 along Lacrosse.
Lacrosse. Yes. so it’s kind of a, a testing ground for new events. New disciplines perhaps. And then it’s also a place where there’s just, the Olympics are too big, so we’ve got them here and they’re, they, deserve a worldwide competition that’s special ’cause it happens every four years, just like the Olympics.
And these
Alison Brown: are all events that have world championships?
Jill Jaracz: Yes. So for
Alison Brown: example, like world aquatics covers a lot of these water sports that we’re seeing. They just don’t have them in the Olympics. But these are international worldwide sports where you’ve got enough participation, it’s just not quite. At the same level.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. World Games is only summer sports. They are held once every four years, a year after the Summer Olympics, so you’ll always see them one year later. The World Games has a list of sports. It recognizes just like the IOC does, and they choose the host cities. the host cities choose the sports they want on their program from the list of, approved sports.
And then the other big thing about the World Games is that they can’t build any new venues. everything has to take place in what already exists. So you will see sports Drop off the program and come on the program with what the host city wants to have on their sports program and what they have space for. So that’s kind of interesting
Alison Brown: though. Chengdu seems to have bent that rule a little bit because they did, they did build an artificial beach.
Jill Jaracz: Oh, okay.
Alison Brown: But it was not ostensibly for the world games.
it’s now gonna be turned over as a public park. So I think there’s a little wiggle room in that build. But the idea is that, the IWGA does not want cities investing the millions and millions of dollars that it takes to host an Olympics. But if they fix a few things, that’s okay. But we know with Birmingham, there was nothing built.
It was just a few, oh, let’s clean it up.
Jill Jaracz: Right and
Alison Brown: make it up to a certain standard, but minimal investment. So cities like Birmingham and Shang, do you know, these smaller cities that could never in, you know, a million years host an Olympics, can host this really amazing international multi-sport event.
Jill Jaracz: Exactly. And Birmingham was, uh, Alabama 2022 host. So we are also still on a post pandemic watch. It’s amazing how long those legs are because, Birmingham 2022 got postponed, so therefore there’s been only three years since the last World Games. And then this kind of, I think, wraps up the pandemic postponements.
Alison Brown: I think so, right, because there, because Tokyo got postponed, so then Birmingham got postponed. You know, there’s that, domino effect of all these different events. And I love when people are just like, oh. We need to move the Olympic host for whatever, and I’m like, you do not understand the mountain you are asking to be moved and how, yeah, we’re in 2025 and we’re still feeling the ripple effects of 2020.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. Yeah. It’s pretty amazing. So like we said, some sports move from the world games to the Olympics for LA you will see world games sports squash and lacrosse and flag football on the program. So this is a good time to watch those sports if you haven’t seen ’em before. And you can see who’s at the top levels, what the sports look like and, and all of that jazz.
if you are new to the World Games, which you might be, and uh, it is still something that even though we watched Birmingham together as a podcast. I still have like, what is the world Games all about going through my head. Because if, if you think the IOC is not transparent, you don’t get much information from the IWG at all
Alison Brown: though, to be fair, I think that is a point of the number of employees and how much money they have.
Oh yeah.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. And then, oh, I’m sure.
Alison Brown: And then you had the added this time of we’re getting a lot of things that were translated from Chinese,
Jill Jaracz: yeah. From the host that got a
Alison Brown: little wonky.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. But I just don’t think that they, it’s kind of this interesting dichotomy that you see with smaller organizations that are trying to be big and the world games is a big event.
I mean, this is only the 12th edition, so if you put that into Olympics.
Alison Brown: 12. 1912 is 48. So the 1936 or 48, thereabouts.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something. So you’re talking about how early that would be in Olympic history, and yet you have today’s desires to have so much media and so many outlets and, so many social channels, and that’s a lot of work to put together for a small organization that likely doesn’t have a ton of money, although the IOC is involved somehow
Alison Brown: and does support financially.
Yes, there is, there is money flowing from the IOC.
What’s happening at Chengdu 2025
Jill Jaracz: Yes. And, and I would imagine broadcast help as well. For Chang do we have 34 sports, 60 disciplines, 256 medal events, over 4,000 athletes, which is bigger than a, a winter Olympics in terms of athlete numbers. And then over a hundred nations are there.
So that’s pretty good. It’s much smaller than a summer Olympics, but pretty darn big for an event. I mean, that’s
Alison Brown: bigger than a Youth Olympics.
Jill Jaracz: general observations you’ve had so far slash feed beefs or feed yays?
Alison Brown: Well, I do, I have not been using the app. I’ve been using the website.
Okay. Generally, if you go to the schedule. Just the day by day list versus there’s another screen that gives you tiles of different events.
Jill Jaracz: Mm-hmm.
Alison Brown: Go to the schedule, you will do much better of getting the right thing. There have been a few times where I click on something and it shows me something else entirely.
Yes. That’s been annoying and there’s been a lot of reloading of pages, but in general, if you are watching a replay, very easy to move back and forth. There was one day where it got very glitchy.
But that was just one day in general, their streaming I think, has been really good.
Jill Jaracz: I would agree. I am pleasantly surprised.
I am also using the website, even watching it on my phone via the website versus the app. I’ve heard that the app is glitchy. I think one of our, I think listener Tommy said that it was not great and I would agree that I’ve clicked on some events and not gotten what I wanted or what I thought I was getting.
And the other thing that I like about it is that if you pause something, they kind of save it for you and you’re like, do you wanna continue watching this?
Alison Brown: Right. So if you go back in, it’ll be at the spot you left it.
Jill Jaracz: Yes.
Alison Brown: Oh, that’s been amazing. That’s been good. Yeah. A lot of people have said in the app, sometimes if an event hasn’t happened yet and you click it, you get the Birmingham.
Which is very confusing. I, I agree. That is very confusing. So if you’re having trouble on the app, try the website. ’cause it really has been working well.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. And so I’ve been really impressed. I would love to have a ten second or 32nd fast forward button. they do a rewind.
But there’s a lot of times where I rewind too far ’cause I miss something and then I gotta sit there and watch. I can’t jump back to where I was ’cause there’s no fast forward button. And a lot of times you know, my big fingers on my little phone can’t move it ahead where I want it to be.
and like this happens with the Olympics feeds too, where you’ve got maybe 10 minutes of dead time ahead of an event starting. And that’s just the way it is because the, the things will go to air. I would love to be able to more easily fast forward than you’ve got on there
Alison Brown: now.
And it seems like all the sports are there. You don’t necessarily see every, if they have multiple mats going, say in preliminary Jiujitsu, you don’t see all of the mats. They’ve got it on one mat. But it seems like all the sports are there, so whatever sport you wanna dip into, you can take a look.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah, and that’s good.
and of course they have a lot of good commentators, I will say, because Shuk, Stan’s, Ali Hagman and Blythe Lawrence are there. And that is great to hear them. I
Alison Brown: only watch Floorball, so I could listen to Ollie. And he did not disappoint.
Jill Jaracz: Oh, he doesn’t disappoint. He is so excited about Floorball and he told me to watch, a women’s match, Sweden versus Switzerland.
’cause it was amazing. And it was, but I only had gotten through like one period and then had to go away. And I haven’t gotten back to it. And I think floor ball medals have already been awarded,
Alison Brown: but, well, the, the fun thing about the world games is you really don’t have to worry too much about spoilers.
You know, it’s not on your feed, it’s not all over the news. And also we don’t know most of these athletes. So even if you know the outcomes, it may not stick with you who won or, or, or who won the gold medal. So you can watch things from four days ago and it’s still a great watch and a great competition.
Jill Jaracz: Right. And I do think that is part of the struggles or challenges. I would say that’s, I do think that’s part of the challenges that the IWGA has in getting momentum going for this event from the general public. ’cause you do see pretty empty stands in a lot of sports. There are some sports that are not spectator friendly at all.
That’s fine because most of your viewing audience is gonna be on a screen, but it helps the athletes to have people there. Oh, right. It helps the athletes to have, it makes the, and it makes your giant global event more of a global happening.
Alison Brown: One thing I think the World Games missed an opportunity with advertising is that there are several Olympians who are competing in the world games. For example, gold medalist in trampoline. Brian E. Page is competing in synchronized trampoline, and I have barely seen her on their feeds. I mean on their, their social feeds and there are others.
Mm-hmm. Especially several times Blythe who’s doing all the gymnastics events, said, oh, this person competed in Paris last year in solo trampoline and now they’re competing in synchronized and I’m sure there are others. I know there was a swimmer and, a couple in the, in the fighting sports and obviously in karate, people who competed in Tokyo, I think they missed out on advertising those, you know, we have Olympians in our event as well, making that connection then that, so that spectators who don’t know what the world games is, understand that this is an incredibly high level elite competition.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. And that’s tough. I mean, how do you build that audience with a very limited staff, limited resources, but. I, I dunno, you tell people to
Alison Brown: go watch every form of acrobatics you can.
Jill Jaracz: Oh. But I mean, it’s the same struggles that we have as a podcast. Right. And even the, these smaller Olympic sports. Yes. And they don’t have the budget to necessarily give a lot of promotion to their sport.
I mean, where do you, if you have a limited budget, where does that go in terms of getting the staff you need to do the work behind stuff? Where does that go into providing stipends for athletes so that they have funds to put towards their training? Where does that go to promoting the sport to get an, a bigger audience for it?
Is it a sport that wants an audience? I don’t know. doesn’t every sport want an audience, you would think. But I, I mean. Maybe it’s the who wants to be at that level and who at that kind of competition and who doesn’t.
Alison Brown: Mm. Fair enough.
Jill Jaracz: So, but yeah, it’s, it’s a real struggle. And you see some events that at Chang do that do have people there and you see a lot of empty stands.
But I just, I wonder also from the organization side, how much resource did they have to put into advertising and building what the World Games is? And maybe with all of the, feeds that they’ve got and the building of video content, maybe that helps the next edition, which is gonna be in Germany
Alison Brown: and Birmingham had the benefit.
And obviously we don’t know Chinese geography very well. Birmingham was in driving distance. Several good population centers so that the world games I think are, is a lot of, I don’t know how many people will fly,
Jill Jaracz: uh, right at this point. I mean, could it be right. Something that people fly to and go, oh, this is something I wanna see.
I dunno. But Chiang do, I think, is a huge city.
Alison Brown: Is
Jill Jaracz: it? yeah, it’s got over 20 million people.
Alison Brown: Oh, okay. So yeah, there’s, there’s enough people. That’s not an issue.
Commenting on the Chengdu 2025 commentators
Jill Jaracz: Right. It’s, it’s getting them to come out. And also it’s probably, it sounds like it’s been hot and humid, so who wants to sit outside for some of these sports? Like parkour? I mean, parkour is something you could put inside, although I’m sure outside is easier to stage.
Alison Brown: I couldn’t watch parkour because all that kept going through my head. Was that sound from the office. Parkour parkour. And there were no announcers on parkour at one point. Oh.
Jill Jaracz: We had one. I watched a woman’s sprint that had announcers.
Alison Brown: Okay. Yeah. Earlier, a couple of the events did not have announcers.
And I discovered I don’t like that.
Jill Jaracz: No, that’s, it’s, that’s hard because you do need somebody there to describe what’s going on,
Alison Brown: especially when it’s a sport you’re unfamiliar with. But even when it’s a sport I’m familiar with, I, I, I find that very comforting. Like I’m watching it with somebody.
Jill Jaracz: Right. And it is the rare commentator who can do this job solo as well.
Life, like Blythe can do it solo because she knows gymnastics so well. But if you are getting a sport that is new to you, the inability to have somebody else there to bounce stuff off of is, tough.
And there have been some sports where I’ve been like, Ooh, you need a color person, but
Alison Brown: then you get the color person from wakeboarding.
that
Jill Jaracz: was a tough
Alison Brown: one.
Jill Jaracz: That was hard to
Alison Brown: listen to. Okay. So if you’ve watched wakeboarding, if you’ve watched some of the freestyle skiing, or, skateboarding, sometimes the co the, the sport expert will be a little loose, let’s just say.
And, you know, using the lingo and,
having a little fun with it. Great. But this guy went like 10 steps too far.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. And needs a lesson in learning how to commentate for women.
Alison Brown: Oh, goodness gracious. Yes. But also he, he swore a few times he did. Well, not swears like that would be, um, FCC band. Correct. Okay. But certainly not something you do on sports commentary.
Okay. You know, you don’t say HE double hockey sticks on sports commentary. It’s just not done. But the joke that I put in the Facebook group was he said, Coley cannoli Axel Foley.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. Yeah. Which again, who, I mean that’s kind of funny, but as we had listeners did not know who Axel Foley was
Alison Brown: and I was more mad ’cause holy cannoli is mine.
That’s what I say. How dare you? Wakeboard commentator. Oh. Who was never identified
Jill Jaracz: in anything that I heard. Good reason. For good reason. I need we’re coming for
Alison Brown: you.
Jill Jaracz: I know I do wanna go back and watch some more of the boating sports, but, uh, he, when I saw him commentating on the, oh, everybody’s got a crush on this one athlete.
Let’s talk about this athlete’s earrings. Let’s, that just was, I hope he’s getting feedback. I hope he is getting some, uh, ways to improve and I wouldn’t be surprised if, if some of these commentators are athletes trying to transition into commentating because there have, I’ve seen a lot from the IOC and IPC about learning how to commentate and helping athlete and doing a lot of training for athletes to do that.
So I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them got got hired or an assignment. To help out at World Games and aren’t up to snuff.
Alison Brown: They’re not all working with Ollie Hagman.
Jill Jaracz: No, no. That is very true. But it’s, it is fun when you do have the athlete perspective. ’cause I saw that in Marathon Canoe. That was really helpful.
Orient hearing the, the color commentator who was an athlete was very, very helpful with that tug of war actually
Alison Brown: Yes. Was very good. The, the athlete commentator who, who was doing that, talking about the strategy and it’s not just pull your hardest.
Jill Jaracz: Right, right, right. Well, and we’ll, we’ll get to, to fin swimming, free diving, which we have thoughts about.
But I will say the color commentator who I believe after I, after I watched enough of it, I think he was introduced with a, a Spanish name, which made sense, but he also sounded a little like Oscar from, uh, the snowboard venue. The inhouse they sing. Yes. Oh, and like, this guy’s the best ’cause he, he’d start everything with like, okay, this is what’s going.
And I loved it. I loved it so much. And I know that English wasn’t his first language but he just had a rhythm and excitement about the sport. That was it. It did, it was catchy. But overall, this has been a fun experience to watch and I feel like they’ve improved from Birmingham
Alison Brown: very much. I mean, the feeds have been so much better. I know people have had a few glitches and problems, but Ugh. So much better.
Yeah. On the whole,
Jill Jaracz: this has been so much fun to watch
World Games Chengdu 2025: What officiating or volunteer job would we want to do?
officiating or volunteer jobs we’d wanna do.
Alison Brown: Okay. I got two. Okay. One. I am wearing those light up sneakers and those light up gloves from the opening ceremonies, I’m gonna come into the office wearing them every day. That was fantastic. And then the second one I want, which I didn’t see, but I know has to exist, I wanna put the mannequins in the bottom of the pool for lifesaving.
Oh,
Jill Jaracz: that, that was also one on my list, because I did see people on the side, like with mannequins and nets, kind of pull ’em down the side of the pool. I’m like, oh yes.
Alison Brown: It’s kind of like at the Olympics, we saw the guy who had to jump into the pool to rescue a, an errand, swim cap.
Jill Jaracz: Yes.
Alison Brown: So I do like to swim in the pool, but I’m not a very, I shouldn’t say I’m not a very good swimmer.
I’m a perfectly good swimmer, but I can’t actually like swim strokes, if you know what I mean. Uhhuh. So like, putting the mannequin in would be perfect for me. I just gotta get down there, set it exactly right and get back up.
Jill Jaracz: I would even, even though fin swimming, free diving, I have issues with, I did like how the announcer would say top time
when it was time for them to go, they had like 20, you know, here’s the time where you have to, you have 20 seconds and you gotta get underwater. But it was called top time. So I did like that. I also enjoyed a canoe kayak. I watched, uh, the kayak marathon and they have people who weigh the boats. ’cause the boats had to be specific weights, uh, would like that job.
There was also a person who was fishing weeds out of the lake so that they did get caught on the boats.
Alison Brown: I also saw a job perfect for you at dance sport. Oh. Which I have not watched yet. Yes. So there is a person, because order is randomized. So the, the couples don’t know when they’re all doing the walls for the cha cha cha, whichever.
They don’t know what order they’re gonna go in. There is a woman standing on the side. She’s got a headset, she’s got a clipboard. Yes, she has a pen where she directs people. Oh yes. It gets better. And even though it’s all electronic, they do have a, it looks like a, a, a pin board where then they put the numbers of the dance couples up in the order that it goes and it’s for each dance so that she’s continually pinning things, ordering these couples around.
I said, that is for Jill.
Jill Jaracz: Oh, okay, guys show’s over. I gotta go watch dance sport. That’s been fun. Totally. I will totally watch dance sport for that.
Chengdu 2025: The Opening Ceremony
Let’s talk about the opening ceremony.
Alison Brown: Well, I, he, I think the opening ceremony is the best place where you see the difference in scale from an Olympics or a Paralympics. This opening ceremony did not cost $7 million to put on
Jill Jaracz: No.
Alison Brown: Very low key in that sense, but tremendous amount of fun. Oh, I loved it. I loved it.
They had the beginning with the dancers, with the LightUp shoes and the gloves. They had the dancers. That reminded me of the ones we saw in hockey and Beijing with the big feathers that we loved so much.
Jill Jaracz: Mm-hmm.
Alison Brown: In their hair. So there was a lot of that fantastic Chinese cultural elements to it. The Parade of Nations moved along briskly.
It was a lot of fun. Tons of fireworks, fun fireworks, really good fireworks. Like they made a tree with the fireworks, singing children. They checked all the boxes and didn’t break the bank.
Jill Jaracz: Yes. And I had ended up reading in, Shehu, uh, I’m not sure if that’s the right way to pronounce it, but a Chinese website that’s in English News website.
And there was the, the venue for the opening ceremonies along a lake. And they had a long viewing stand. And they said, initially we planned to reuse the stadium that they used for the Chengdu, uh, univers odd games in 2023. But after watching the Paris 2024 opening ceremony, we decided to craft something new.
So they were really inspired by Toma Choli.
Alison Brown: Using the lake. So using the ri Yes. The way he used the river, they used the lake.
Jill Jaracz: And uh, and I will say those Bluetooth lights are the new projection mapping, I don’t think we’re gonna see as much projecting projection mapping anymore. We will see all of those lights, which are really cool.
they had this intro video to the beginning, which I don’t think they needed. ‘ cause it wasn’t like a change of scenery thing. It was kind of, it was really more for the TV crowd,
Alison Brown: the screen crowd. But the Bluetooth works, I think we’ll have to see it more in person. But I think Bluetooth lights work well both in person and on.
Oh yeah. No television better than the projection mapping.
Jill Jaracz: Yes. Yes. Because it’s easier to film and you don’t have to be at a certain angle to, to enjoy it.
I want some silver pants like they had in the opening ceremonies.
Alison Brown: Those were amazing though. They did remind me a little bit of those sweat, the pounds off tracksuits from like the seventies and the eighties.
Jill Jaracz: So yeah, they had this fun opening number. They go immediately into the athlete’s parade. So you have, uh, in the center of the stage, while they’re dancing, you have still have more dancers.
Alison Brown: The, the tireless volunteer dancers.
Jill Jaracz: Yes. And then you have the country plaque ladies who didn’t blink. Oh, they were amazing.
They walked forward. But the, the rest, their upper body was sideways so that they, the plaque would face the, stands.
Alison Brown: But if you notice, they turned sideways when the country was announced. Oh. But then they didn’t blink. They were slightly terrifying. But incredibly beautiful. And so as you would expect,
Jill Jaracz: most of the uniforms for the athletes were sporty, which was good.
Alison Brown: Variation on track pants or shorts, t-shirt or polo shirt.
Jill Jaracz: Mm-hmm.
Alison Brown: China was green. I wrote down, why is China in green? You have two colors on your flag that are very good,
Jill Jaracz: but I think they call Chendu the green city.
Alison Brown: Okay, that’s fair. And they’re trying
Jill Jaracz: to make it a lot more of a environmental thing, which makes sense
Alison Brown: with the tree.
Jill Jaracz: Yes. of course, huge delegation from China.
Alison Brown: they’re in everything.
Jill Jaracz: Yes. The panda and monkey mascots were following pretty much every delegation. Oh my gosh. They’re so cute. especially compared to what they brought out for the closings, handover ceremonies at Birmingham 2022.
Alison Brown: I mean, we jokingly called, The, the, when we saw it in Birmingham, I think I called it a dime store, Bing, dww. It is much improved the graphics that they’ve created for each of the sports that they’ll show with the, the mascot doing fantastic. not disappointed in all the sportswear, all were good. Disappointed that team USA did not get Ralph Lauren.
They just got like a USA T-shirt, but, oh, Italy got Armani. Did they? Yes. They had that same EA seven logo on it. So Team Italy for the World Games was dressed by Armani. Wow. Which is the official Olympic, outfitter for that team.
Jill Jaracz: Interesting. That’s something I’m very curious where the World Games fits into Team USA’s list of stuff to do.
If they’re like, oh, here is yet another event that we have to deal with, is what comes to mind. Manage, but manage. Yeah. yeah, why, why? That doesn’t, why their uniforms don’t just get rolled over into the rest of the Olympic kit because they don’t send a big team.
Alison Brown: And not that I minded, because you know, I’m not a Ralph Lauren team, USA kit fan.
Jill Jaracz: Mm-hmm.
Alison Brown: But extra kudos to Columbia ’cause they carried balloons. And the Philippines, who even though it was a tracksuit, was just an explosion of color.
Jill Jaracz: Very nice, very nice flags came in and then I remembered the flag throwing. I
Alison Brown: wrote it down so. The, do you wanna know what I actually wrote down?
Jill Jaracz: Yes, I do.
Alison Brown: The flag flick is back, baby. Oh,
Jill Jaracz: thank you. Because I couldn’t remember what we called it and I’m like throwing, that’s not right. Oh my gosh. And they were spectacular.
Alison Brown: I was so excited. But then you get the message from the IOC president and I got confused for a second. Did you,
Jill Jaracz: what? What were you confused about?
Alison Brown: That it wasn’t tebo? Oh, it threw me when Kirsty Coventry popped up and I think that’s gonna take it, that’s gonna take some time. This was the first event of her presidency to really do this welcome. She did it on video. It was very nice. It was very, you know, uh, youth of the world, athletes of the World come together.
Isn’t this great? Wonderful.
Jill Jaracz: Right. And, and I thought it was very, it sounded a little maternal. She wanted every Let’s have a good time and, and go athletes. And, and I, I thought it was a good little message for what it, what it was agreed and behold, officials talking and, and protocol stuff that you have to go through.
It was, it was a good message,
Alison Brown: but there was definitely that little moment of, oh, you’re not tebo. it made me remember to not evaluate anything that Kirsty Coventry does against Tebo. ‘ cause I know my affection for him. Not that I don’t recognize his flaws, but I do have an incredible amount of affection and respect for him as a human being and for what he’s done as IOC President.
So that reminded me. Be fair to Kirsty. She, she deserves her shot. Yes. So, yeah, I agree. It was a good speech.
Jill Jaracz: Yes. after all the oath, we do another performance and there’s video with kids and you hear the theme song, which is some pop schlock that I’m, I’m sure is stuck in everybody’s ears who is there.
’cause they’re hearing it all the time.
Alison Brown: Did you have a reaction to the Chinese anthem?
Jill Jaracz: I did. I, you know, I, what kind of reaction did you have?
Alison Brown: Just my heart stopped for a second ’cause it took me back.
Jill Jaracz: It did. We heard it
Alison Brown: so much.
Jill Jaracz: Right.
Alison Brown: Being in Beijing and I just, oh, and I don’t think I’ve really heard it since.
I don’t remember hearing it in Paris. I just might not have been at any event where a Chinese athlete won. Mm-hmm. So it. It made me jump a little bit, but in a good way. In a nice memories way.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. The memories like, but my, my body just went, ’cause they go do, do do do do, do, do. And then I just automatically flicked with, with the flags.
I knew when it was coming,
Alison Brown: oh do I? That was the best memory flood. I’m like, the flag flick is
Jill Jaracz: back so good. But the sad thing is I have, I haven’t watched a lot of the medal ceremonies because Im just, I haven’t seen
Alison Brown: it
Jill Jaracz: so far behind on watching everything I want to watch. And I did see a bit of one ceremony, I think in gymnastics and they had all
Alison Brown: electronic.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah,
Alison Brown: me. That’s pretty much any indoor sport. The flags are on the screen. They don’t have physical flags.
Jill Jaracz: And that I understand because that probably something to be installed. Somehow in whatever venue they’re in. But I gotta say I miss it and I’m sure I, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s in outdoor venues too, where they just don’t have flagpoles and that’s a lot of flags to buy.
Yes, that’s very true. So I get budget, but boy, it was so, and you know, we’ll see it again at the closing
Alison Brown: flick that flag baby.
Jill Jaracz: better fireworks in Beijing. And I think that’s because you weren’t in a stadium. And I saw them from within the stadium, which was cool. But the, the bird’s nest has like an overhang, so you don’t get necessarily the full effect when they’re going all around you.
But these were amazing fireworks
Alison Brown: and, you know, it was the best moment of all as it should be. The cauldron lady. The cauldron, the cauldron coming up out of the water. Right.
Jill Jaracz: This is apparently the first World Games with a Caulder lighting and they, oh man. They started off with a bang eight via powerboat
Alison Brown: and they lit the little torches along the way, which weren’t really lit.
I realized it was a light, but it didn’t
Jill Jaracz: matter. No, but it seemed like the first people who came into the stadium, they had fire, but then when they gave it to the wakeboarders, ’cause it was water ski, wake boarding, lighting that was obviously electric. And then the commentators kept saying, oh, will the flame go out?
And I just was yelling back, no, it won’t go out because it’s not a flame. It’s electric, but it’s electric. Do do, sorry. But then when they lit the fountain, ’cause in the center of the, the lake was a a fountain and then they lit it and it looks like actual flames are coming out of the top of the fountain.
Alison Brown: Brilliant. Brilliant design, brilliant execution. Amazing with the fire and the water combination. And if we’re looking at, we’re trying to integrate the lake and integrate these elements. Absolute five star cauldron.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. Yeah. What do way short show overall, and I’m sure part of that is because not as many nations, but also they were, I mean, they only went in a straight line, so they didn’t have to parade around a whole stadium.
It was just very quick, very snappy, very fun, very effective. Yeah. what a way to start your event.
Alison Brown: all they needed, honestly, from me was that cauldron,
you know, after the great. I, I mean the, the what, what did we call it? The snow flame?
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. Oh. Oh.
Alison Brown: And then they came out with this. I’m like, Beijing, good job. Good job. You should have gotten the folks from Chang do involved.
Chengdu 2025: Medal ceremonies
Jill Jaracz: Right. I wanna talk quick about the medal ceremony. ’cause I did see one the podiums are green Yes.
As well. ’cause of the green city thing. Metals
Alison Brown: are beautiful on screen.
Jill Jaracz: Uh, they also get a little box with mascot.
Alison Brown: Yep.
Jill Jaracz: metal girls have these long flowing skirts. Very lovely. Very pretty. it’s a nice look.
Alison Brown: And the metals, which as we mentioned, did not, they, when they did the press release, did not include this detail.
Have a small piece that can be removed and given to a, a coach. A loved one. A friend.
Jill Jaracz: Oh, is that it? That’s, wait, but that’s. What an initial design for like Paris was.
Alison Brown: Paris originally was a stack of metals. Your metal would be stacked of multiple very thin metals. Yes. So what Chengdu did is it’s designed like a locket.
It opens up and there’s a piece that comes out that has some outta
Jill Jaracz: here,
Alison Brown: graving. And you can give it to another person to share your medal with.
Chengdu 2025: Gymnastics
Jill Jaracz: Okay. Let’s get into the sports. I don’t think I even watched put, I, I watched more sports than was on here.
What did you start with?
Alison Brown: Okay. So lots and lots and lots of the gymnastics events, all the acrobatics pairs, mixed groups. love everything about it. It has all the drama of gymnastics. It has all the fun music and costumes of figure skating. You have people flying around. You have people balancing on other people’s heads. You have several iterations of grease music that seemed to be a popular selection.
Jill Jaracz: Okay.
Alison Brown: Which again, love that. Um, the British Men Group, particularly theatrical.
Jill Jaracz: I did see that. I know what you’re talking about. So that’s a, the men’s acrobatic group routine is a four person routine. Yes. and with acrobatics, you always have some larger people who are bases, and then one small person who is a flyer, and that is part of the deal.
and there’s a lot of, let’s make a tall tower of people, or one person if you’re in a pair, and then the flyer will get on top of all of you and then like balance on the top, the next person’s head on one
Alison Brown: eye. Right. So in the pair you’ve got a base and a flyer in the groups you have a base, a middle, and a flyer.
Yes. Chinese men’s group had a fall, but what, oh, please go back and watch that. Because they are special in terms of their choreography and their skills as you would, I mean, China, China has such a long history of acrobatics.
Jill Jaracz: Which I was surprised that I didn’t see them in more events. Maybe I’m not watching enough, but I watched, the men’s group and I watched a little bit of the men’s pairs, and then I watched women’s pairs and then trampoline, men’s synchro trampoline and women’s double tramp.
These, these
Alison Brown: gymnastics events are all qualified from the previous world championships, so they don’t have a lot of, I think there was only eight teams in every event.
Jill Jaracz: Right. So I was really surprised. So a very limited number, but I was surprised that with China’s tradition in gymnastics and acrobatics, that they would not just necessarily be in the finals in everything.
Alison Brown: Who was in the finals of everything was Israel. And we know Israel has a huge, has made a huge push in rhythmic gymnastics, but also in all these acrobatic and, tumbling yes events. You’ll see Israelis, which I think is very interesting because it’s an aspect of gymnastics that doesn’t require anything but a mat.
And I wonder if that’s, I mean also obviously you have a lot of Russian emigres, and this is very important in Russia and all those pieces. But I think it’s interesting once again, and we’ve talked about this a million times, how different countries focus on these different aspects of a sport and become very good in certain areas.
I’m sure you had the reaction of why aren’t some of these here versus rhythmic gymnastics.
Jill Jaracz: Oh, why aren’t some of them in the Olympics? Olympics? I do, I do. I wish I tumbling was in the. Olympics. I wish synchronized trampoline was in the Olympics because they already have trampoline and you’re already bringing in trampolines and it’s a one day event.
Make it two and get more exposure to that sport. but I hadn’t thought about it the way that you put it with, you don’t need a lot of equipment for some of these disciplines and it makes it easier for other nations to get involved and absolutely true.
Alison Brown: But Australia was also very strong in a lot of these events.
We saw them, uh, do very well in double mini tramp. Again, it’s a very easy entry sport.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. Yeah. but they’re fun to watch. Of course, A lot of times you’re watching like four teams or four entries and it’s over before you know it, but. I wanna talk about the format that they had for some of these with the knockouts.
Yes. So they tried a new format this year for World Games, and I wonder if they’re testing it here to see if it would work at the Olympics. And they put people in a bracket. So you would have four people or teams in the finals, and they’d have two head-to-head. And the winners would move on to the gold medal round and the losers would go into the bronze medal round.
Alison Brown: Hated it. I
Jill Jaracz: did too. Especially in double tramp.
Alison Brown: Yes, because what ended up happening in the men’s double tramp, one bracket, both teams did not finish their routines. They had a mistake in the middle. Oh, for the synchro tramp, for the men’s synchro synchronized trampoline. And then in the other bracket, both teams.
Got ridiculously high scores. So you end up with a team, you don’t end up with the best teams on the podium, right? Or who had the best performances. Obviously they’re, they’re all really good teams, but meaning the people who had the most outstanding programs in this event. So I think it was Netherlands and Germany who both messed up, for lack of a better word, in their semi, but then got to move on.
‘ cause one of them has to move on,
Jill Jaracz: right?
Alison Brown: And you messed up one round and you could still win the gold medal. And someone who had a perfect program doesn’t get to compete for the gold medal,
Jill Jaracz: right? So you take your semi-finals and it was a weird element of. Taking your semi-finals and your finals.
’cause I saw this on Women’s Double Tramp, which is a mini trampoline that is long. So you run down a runway like you’re doing a vault. You jump on the tramp, do a flip in the air, jump on the tramp again, do another flip in and a landing. And the winner from the previous World Games from Spain, , she went all out in her semifinals and had a bad landing.
Uh, she fell on her landing ’cause she yes, tried to do a triple, uh, pike somersault backwards. And it was amazingly difficult and she fell. And, that put her in the bronze medal and she seemed to have a good attitude about it because she tried and did what she could. But then in the final round, she got the best score out of everybody and got the bronze, So Portugal and the US were in for the gold medal round, and the US gymnast
Alison Brown: grace harder,
Jill Jaracz: thank you. Did not even hit the trampoline for the second time. She totally missed. She completely missed, but got the silver medal right, and got a score of zero and, and all that happened, it seemed over and over again.
Yes. In different events. And it just was not the way you want
Alison Brown: a finals to go. Right. You want, in these scored events, the people who perform the best on the day to win. I understand they were trying to raise the stakes, but I, I don’t think you needed to raise the stakes. I think with scored events, there’s enough drama,
Jill Jaracz: right?
This isn’t a team sport where you’re scoring points. I mean, you’re scoring points, but yeah, it’s judged. I don’t love
Alison Brown: it. Let’s not do that again.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah, let’s not do it. Okay. What else did you watch?
Chengdu 2025: DanceSport
Alison Brown: So watched a lot of dance sport. So much fun. I just wanna mention the couple that won the standards, uh, it’s Anastasia Gla Nova and Alexa Glucko from Moldova.
They have won 27 out of their last 27 competitions.
Jill Jaracz: Holy cow. Holy cannoli.
Alison Brown: Holy cannoli. So, over the past, I think they said two, two and a half years, nobody’s beaten them, but there was one problem during the Latin round. So when each couple does its solo dance, but they’re all doing the same dance. So they’ll say it’s the, the Chacha or the, the samba.
The problem was the song that they chose was, get Out of My Way. Ugly Woman. I have never heard this song before. And then you have all these absolutely stunning, beautiful ballroom dancers on the floor and it’s Get out of my way. Ugly woman. So I’m hoping that DJ just didn’t speak English.
Chengdu 2025: Tug of War
Tug of war.
Jill Jaracz: Tug of war was
Alison Brown: amazing. So what surprised me was they’re classed by total weight of the team. So I watched the smaller weights of both the men and the women.
Jill Jaracz: Okay?
Alison Brown: And especially the men. It looked like the British team who ended up winning the gold medal in the 640 kilograms, looked like they gathered a bunch of blokes from the pub.
Like there’s your perf, there’s your teacher, there was the plumber, there’s, they looked. A lot of mustaches, a lot of glasses. The guy who was the lead for the British team was this bald, like 40 something man. I said, are you here to fix my air conditioner? They did not look athletic until they started, and then all the muscles would pop out and ripple and pull and the strategy.
And it was great because they weren’t the really big size where you’re like, oh, okay, I, I see where this is going. This was very much like ordinary men and women. I, the men is what struck me because they all were, so many of them were wearing glasses and yet they clearly worked so hard to be in shape to do this and work together, and that was just so much fun.
And again, the commentator. who I believe was a Swiss athlete who had competed in tug of war, did a great job explaining, okay, now they’re doing a poll. Now they’re redo this footwork. Oh, he put his hand down, he has to pick it up in three seconds or they’re gonna be disqualified. So you think tug of war is so simple?
No, no. And so much fun and nothing celebrates like a team gb
Jill Jaracz: Oh,
Alison Brown: gold medal. They, they were so excited.
Jill Jaracz: I watched, the women’s 500 kilograms and a lot of it was in pouring rain, like monsoon levels of rain. I don’t know how they did it ‘ cause they’re in mud. And that just added to the, difficulty of the whole event.
Chinese Taipei.
Alison Brown: Chinese Taipei is really good at tug of war in all the categories.
Jill Jaracz: And did you notice they had like these synchronized movements? Yes. Where they were just like, we’re going foot, foot, foot, foot, foot, foot. And they had the ability to, lean backwards where you could tell when their opponents were like, oh, their opponents are starting to lead forwards.
They’re, they’re gone. Forget it. And they would just be Chinese type A, okay, we gotta stop for a minute. But then we’re all doing our synchronized stuff. And I think that synchronization is what made them so successful.
Alison Brown: And apparently each team has a very special formula for their stickum, for their hands.
Jill Jaracz: Oh, okay.
Alison Brown: And again, the announcer was explaining that this is the secret sauce of tug of war, and you do not share what’s in that stickum.
Jill Jaracz: Oh,
Alison Brown: right. That is. Top secret, the KG B will comfort you if you tell their formula.
Jill Jaracz: but Chinese Taipei won the gold for the sixth time and did not lose one poll in that.
’cause it’s always best of three in a matchup. It was just so amazing to watch. Uh, you can also buy those shoes for a hundred to 125 pounds. That’s not bad. That’s not bad at all. What else did you watch
Chengdu 2025: Dragon Boat
Alison Brown: Dragon Boat
Jill Jaracz: did? Watching Dragon Boat? I wanna watch more. Dragon Boat. So Dragon
Alison Brown: Boat is basically rowing with a drum and a dragon at the top of the head.
But it’s a canoe paddle.
Jill Jaracz: Yes. And you have two people on a bench.
Alison Brown: Right? So the drummer is like the coxswain setting the pace for the. Paddlers. And also these races seemed, they’re not straight lines like Olympic rowing. Okay. They’re, a lot of them were circles or like the marathon was very long.
Jill Jaracz: Okay,
Alison Brown: fantastic.
If you love rowing, there’s nothing not to love about Dragon Boat.
Jill Jaracz: Okay. I only watched it’s drums. I know. I only watched like a race and a half and like what is up with the drums? I wanna know more. And I haven’t gotten back to it because I went to watch yesterday and saw on the feed it was Canoe Marathon, dragon Boat Mixture, and like, oh, dragon Boat.
And then it turned out to be the kayak marathon, which I sat through the women’s for the mo. Then I fast forwarded through some of the women’s. but that’s what I ended up watching a lot of yesterday.
Alison Brown: So the drumming will remind you of that scene is at Spartacus, where they do the drums in the slave boat.
Jill Jaracz: Oh, okay.
Alison Brown: Same idea where it’s ramming speed. So you’ll hear the different rhythms and the different poles and, and, and calls. So it’s the drummers, the coxswain, but in a much cooler way.
Jill Jaracz: Nice, nice addition by Chendu. What else?
Chengdu 2025: Lifesaving and Finswimming
Alison Brown: Let’s talk about life saving and fin. Oh, lifesaving.
Jill Jaracz: Ah, I have thoughts on lifesaving.
Alison Brown: Okay. Lifesaving in general, swimming with accessories, so love it.
the one that freaked me out a little bit, well, we’ll get to free diving, but they had two different kinds of fins. So they have one fin where it’s one fin, and the swimmers look like mermaids.
Jill Jaracz: Okay.
Alison Brown: And then there’s another fin where it’s two fins.
Jill Jaracz: Okay. I only saw the two fin one.
Alison Brown: I have to go. Okay. The one fin is amazing. If you ever had to play mermaids when you were a little girl, or you’re a mother who had to play mermaids with your daughter, the minute I put this on, I did not say a word, and my daughter immediately said, oh, it’s like they’re playing mermaids.
So for everybody out there who has a daughter, just put the, the one fin on and they will be happy.
Jill Jaracz: So lifesaving had different events that usually involved swimming part of a pool, diving down to the bottom, partway through, to pick up a mannequin, and then dragging the mannequin back.
I always felt so bad for the mannequin because you’re saving them, but they were still submerged, like they had to. Swim with the mannequin with one arm, which I get that, but like, take the mannequin, keep its head above water. You’re, you’re just, it’s a mannequin, Jill. But like, if it was a real person, would you do that?
Well, if it was a real
Alison Brown: person, you wouldn’t be racing against the clock. Well, you are because they’re dying. Well, no. Okay. Let’s be fair if you are lifeguarding, the person isn’t necessarily, DRA isn’t already not breathing most of the time when you scoop them up, it’s just that they can’t get themselves out of the water.
also the person would be helping hold its own head above the water. The mannequin is not participating.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. But if somebody was at the bottom of a pool
and they were obviously not coming back up. Of their own accord and you went in to go get them, would you want their head to be underwater for the length of half a length of a pool,
Alison Brown: but in lifeguarding, often you begin, breath of life in while you’re still in the water.
Jill Jaracz: I have a hard time picturing that, but that’s okay.
Alison Brown: Yeah. That’s if the person is truly not breathing, you begin as you’re swimming. You do both at the same time.
Jill Jaracz: So that would mean their head would be above water.
Alison Brown: Yes. But there’s also not eight other people that were stuck at the bottom of the pool.
They’re being rescued at the same time and you’re trying to beat a world record.
Jill Jaracz: Anyway, it’s a lot of fun to watch. I will say the, the lifesaving thing is, is fun to watch
Alison Brown: and also very simple, you know? Yes. And like swimming is, you know, how. This works and And who to win.
Chengdu 2025: Freediving
Jill Jaracz: Yes. But then there’s free diving.
Alison Brown: Dear Lord in heaven. I lasted for about two minutes watching this. Oh,
Jill Jaracz: that’s it.
Oh my goodness.
Alison Brown: Before, because, okay, since we’ve already established that this show is my therapy, I absolutely have a fear of getting trapped in a car and getting stuck underwater.
Jill Jaracz: Oh, okay. Okay.
Alison Brown: So when those people were kind of trapping themselves under the water to stay submerged as long as possible, you might as well have just put me in a snake pit.
Okay. That was awful.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. So this free diving I watched Dynamic Without Fins, and then I think they have one with fins that I. I probably won’t have time to watch
Alison Brown: This cannot be good for their brains.
Jill Jaracz: No. So the, the point is how far distance-wise can you go underwater in one breath and you can take as long as you need for this.
There’s like a whole preparation time. You have two people in the water at once and they just go at their own pace. And there are a lot of spotters who are in the water too, especially when the swimmers surface. They have to surface, they have to give an okay sign and they have to kind of stay conscious for 20 seconds and they get a white card.
If they do, that means their free dive was. Valid if they black out or fall back in the water and need assistance. Within that 20 seconds, somebody else touches them, to help them out. Then they get a red card and their dive is disqualified, which I would say if you’re underwater for four minutes, three, four minutes, that would be tough to lose it at
Alison Brown: the end.
And you know, these people have to train for this. So the hypoxia that is happening with their brain over multiple years,
Jill Jaracz: well, it can’t imagine what training goes into
Alison Brown: this. But that’s, and they do this weird, I think, was it listener Brian who got upset about the weird breathing at the beginning? I got upset
Jill Jaracz: about the weird breathing too.
well, okay, so there they have a whole countdown thing at the, which is terrifying, which is, and there’s a point in the countdown where. They start taking very shallow breaths to get as much air into their lungs as possible. And to me it looks like competitive eating and I physically cannot watch competitive eating without needing to get, like, 4th of July is just the worst for me.
If we’re out and about and, uh, happen to see TV and they show the competitive eating stuff ’cause I physically cannot look at it, that’s what this looked like. and these people have neck weights on as well to keep them kind of down. And then the announcer says top time, and then they have a certain amount of time to start their dive and then they just do very slow, very long underwater poles for as long as they can.
And that can be up to. 170 some meters, 200 meters. I think some we saw a world record, or I saw a world record that I believe was over 200 meters.
Alison Brown: You know, this goes back to discussions that have been had about football, American football. Mm-hmm. Is it a sport if you’re killing people, you know, is it a sport if you’re giving them permanent brain damage?
Right. And this isn’t as simple as, not as simple, but you know, with football it’s this, oh well it’s contact. We don’t really know. Starving your brain at of oxygen over long periods of time, over many years. We know that does damage.
Jill Jaracz: And a lot of these athletes were in their like late thirties and fifties, so
Alison Brown: they’ve been doing this
Jill Jaracz: for eight for.
How long, right. And I just, how often do they train? What goes into the training? Do they not take many attempts under I I don’t know how you train your body to go that far. And I get the general purpose of especially like I can just see myself in the pool as a kid. I bet I can go underwater farther than you.
I totally get that. But to the extent that you have fortified this so much, and by sportify I mean like added all these dimensions to train, like those net weights are $262 on free diver shop.com.
Alison Brown: And I understand the pushing your body to the limit and so much of sport is about what is my body capable of that I didn’t think it was capable of.
Jill Jaracz: Right. But to say, I wanna see how far I can go before my brain shuts off and my body shuts down. That doesn’t seem like it’s in the same spirit of other sports. Like, I mean, people don’t go play football because they’re going to say, I, I wanna play football because I wanna hit somebody so hard they die.
I don’t think people go into football doing that. I don’t necess, I
Alison Brown: think there are people who go into football doing that, but
Jill Jaracz: I,
Alison Brown: but yeah, I mean, a lot of sports are dangerous, A lot of sports. I mean, there’s always a risk of injury. There’s always a risk of hurting yourself. There’s always a risk of a head injury, even in ordinary, you know, ordinary sports.
Sports that we’re very comfortable with. I mean, we had that whole discussion about pole vaulting. Mm-hmm.
Jill Jaracz: And
Alison Brown: how dangerous that can be. But this feels like There’s no upside.
Jill Jaracz: Right? I really would love to hear from people who enjoy this sport because I want to understand why there’s an enjoyment factor or if you participate in this sport, I would love to know why you do and just to understand, because from what I see, just watching it, I struggle to understand the appeal on a sporting level.
Yes. And understand why you wanna push yourself that far. And I think what got me about the neck weight is if you have to have a sport that keeps you down underneath the surface, and if you have to have something physical to keep you under the surface of the water for longer, what’s really working there.
Should be,
Alison Brown: are you pushing your body or, or are you just using these tools?
Jill Jaracz: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously the tool helps you push your body farther, but should you be allowed to do that? But then I guess you could go, well, marathon runners had the fancy shoes, so what’s what, where does equipment and who was the first person who said, oh, hey, I know what’ll help me.
I’ll just throw some weight around my neck and that’ll keep me down longer.
Alison Brown: I don’t know, but possibly a gangster.
Jill Jaracz: So you’re saying Jimmy Hoffa did this sport. He’s the original
Alison Brown: world coach. Champion.
Jill Jaracz: So yeah, I mean this is a very conflicting sport, I would say a, a really conflicting event. And we had a huge discussion about it on Facebook, which is, it’s been a really inter interesting discussion, but this is a sport that I, it’s, it’s a tough one.
So if you’ve watched free diving, if you participate in free diving, get in touch with us ’cause we wanna hear about it. What else did you watch? Oh, go ahead. I
Chengdu 2025: Floorball
Alison Brown: watched Floorball.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah,
Alison Brown: there is a Swedish Super League of Professional Floor Ball players. Wow. So a lot of these, I was watching the, the women and a lot of these women do play in that, Swedish, league.
I was watching Finland and Switzerland Fins. Apparently it seems to be extremely popular in the Nordic countries.
Jill Jaracz: Okay.
Alison Brown: talk about old school competitive. It’s, it’s for hockey and it’s fantastic and apparently the Swedes and the Swiss, and I know Swiss is not Nordic, don’t come at me. And the Fins, they all do very well in this.
Jill Jaracz: Okay.
Alison Brown: And got to listen to Ollie Hodgman
Jill Jaracz: all awesome. I only watched a period of Sweden versus Switzerland for the women. ’cause Ali told me, you have to watch this right now. He was not wrong. I will say that it’s a fun sport to watch. It’s really cool. It’s very
Alison Brown: simple to understand. If you’ve watched any combination of basketball, hockey, field hockey, you will understand what’s going on.
Jill Jaracz: Mm-hmm.
Alison Brown: And you’ll understand why some of these, especially the women, are just so darn good.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. And I do wanna know what it’s like to be a goalie and have that ball whipped at you because it, if I’m correct, it looks like a whiffle ball almost. It’s got holes in it.
Alison Brown: I couldn’t really see it very, to be honest.
I, I couldn’t tell. But it can’t feel good.
Jill Jaracz: Uh, what else did you watch
Chengdu 2025: Canoe Polo
Alison Brown: today? I was watching canoe polo. Oh. Which is, because that has
Jill Jaracz: started.
Alison Brown: That has started today. And it is. Water polo and horse polo, I guess in a way because the people are in canoes in a pool, so it’s like they’re on the horse, but it’s water polo ’cause they’re in the pool.
A little hard to watch on TV simply because it’s hard to find the ball.
Jill Jaracz: Okay. Not boats, but also
Alison Brown: a lot of boats in the pool. But again, easy to understand but all I’m like, how are they not falling out of the canoes? The, the lower body and core strength of these players must be so amazing and it’s fun.
It’s, again, it’s, it’s just like watching water polo at the Olympics. It’s just a fun spirited game that, okay, the ball has to go in the net. I understand that part of it. I can follow this. And the canoes crash into each other. So you got a little demolition derby happening. Sometimes somebody flips and they pop back
Jill Jaracz: up.
That is what I remember from watching it in Birmingham. So I am putting that on my list of two. Anything else?
Chengdu 2025: Disc Golf
Alison Brown: And then I just kind of bounced around and saw a little, A little disc golf. A little cof ball. A little, yeah, little of, little of littles
Jill Jaracz: little stuff that I did pop into disc golf and I think I turned it on live so I couldn’t rewind when it was happening. And I wanna know more. I’d like to go back and watch this to see, because the number of discs these people were traveling with was just astounding to me. And I did want listen to a little of the World Games podcasts they’ve had.
They’ve been putting out shows, and they’re very short episodes and. they don’t have the same approach that we do with how does this work. So I tried to figure that on out on the fly. Couldn’t figure out if there were caddies with them. Uh, they did talk about the enormous building that, Patrick from Chicagoland pointed out this enormous building in the background, which is, pretty impressive us.
But, you
Alison Brown: know, it’s about the height of one player’s worth of discs. Oh. Because they take so many discs with them, just stack ’em up and you could get to the top of that building.
Jill Jaracz: Right. So I, I’d love to understand like the different sizes and I actually have a set of disc golf discs. It’s a three pack. You do not, somebody gave it to me as a gift and I haven’t been able to use them.
’cause I disc golf has not necessarily for me that I know of. I have a course when you come by. Okay. Right near my house, you know, well, maybe I’ll bring ’em with, and we’ll figure it out, but, I am curious to learn more about it. And it seemed interesting.
Chengdu 2025: Orienteering
I popped into orienteering, oh, we haven’t talked orienteering, uh, tragedy in orienteering because, sadly, there’s been a tragedy in the orienteering competition. DE from Italy was found unconscious during the men’s middle distance competition on Friday, the 8th of August. And they took him to the hospital immediately under Expert Medical Care. They said, sadly, he passed away on the 12th and we don’t know what the cause of death was, but that just so sad, had to have that hanging over the competition.
And I, I jumped into the women’s sprint and that wasn’t addressed. But I also think he was still in the hospital at that point, orientating. I, I mean, you’re running very fast and you’re thinking on the fly. ’cause you’re reading a map while you were running and they were talking about how insanely humid it was.
Out there don’t know if whether was a factor in his passing could be, don’t know how long, middle distance is. That’s also a tough thing. The sprint was, they said about three kilometers I think over overall, and that would take roughly 14, 15 minutes tops. They went through a botanical garden type place it looked really cool.
Tons of different cultural gardens. Some of them blocked off ’cause they weren’t allowed to go in some areas obviously, because they didn’t wanna ruin the vegetation. But it was trying to figure out which was the best way you were allowed to go on the fly. And running into little nooks and crannies along the way, trying to find things started to rain.
Near the end and the end is where all of the top sprinters went or were running. So they had to run down sets of stairs or like terrorist stairs. So there’d be like five stairs and somebody would jump down and then run a couple, couple steps and then you’d go down again. I’m like, oh, you are taking the next set of stairs one by one must be slippery.
’cause it did look like slippery rock. every once in a while, and I remember this from watching orienteering at Birmingham, they’d put up the map that the participants are looking at and they’d have different lines of where different athletes were on the course, so you could follow them that I loved.
They also had, drone footage going on helpful, but the drones were too high.
Alison Brown: So you couldn’t really tell if it was a tree or a person.
Jill Jaracz: That’s true. Yeah. You couldn’t tell if it was a tree or a person and you couldn’t necessarily. I couldn’t also gauge how big the course was. So it may have been you couldn’t get a full aerial view and see enough people running that would’ve been too high.
And then to get low to low to see something. You got a little bit, but you couldn’t tell where in the course they were. And then you’d have a couple of stations where you’d have camera people on the ground running with them. I know this, God bless them, had to run probably 40 meters or so. It wasn’t a very far run.
Thir 20, 20 to 40. Yes. With their
Alison Brown: equipment. Yes. And they can’t look down.
Jill Jaracz: Right. So they’re following. So you got, yes.
Alison Brown: You gotta hope there’s not a, a tree root on your right, on your section. Right.
Jill Jaracz: That was impressive. I’ve, I really tho those camera people needed to be applauded for that. So I think they were trying to find ways to.
Make orienteering more spectator friendly. And maybe you could do it like if you had like biathlon or cross country where you can put people along the route. But part of the sport is figuring out what the route is. So if you have people on it, you know, oh, I can’t go over there. But it, it’s a really tough sport to follow.
and the way they do it is they have one person out on the course, and it must be a minute or so before they allow the next person out onto the course.
Alison Brown: Like a cycling time trial.
Jill Jaracz: Yes. So it, it does get confusing to know where you’re at and they obviously can only have so many controls. That are filmed.
So it’s tough. I like the sport a lot. It’s a really fun sport to do, but it’s really, it’s tough to watch and I think they’re trying very hard and I think it’s a great sport for the world games, but it’s, it’s a tough, tough watch.
Alison Brown: It’ll be interesting to see how Milan handles ski mountaineering
Jill Jaracz: with
Alison Brown: that.
It’s a little different because there is a set course, but just that not everybody is on the course at the same time. And how do they make a sport that people are unfamiliar with? More accessible. True, and exciting.
Jill Jaracz: True. And it’s kind of like biathlon where you have a, a sprint that is individuals get released, but I don’t know how they did it back in the day to make that IT format that works. And it’s not also, but like Americans loved by Lon. No, but you know, you have plenty of countries that do, right? So there’s plenty of countries in Europe that love orienteering and just need a, need, a way to make it more friendly.
Friendly. But then you also would think like, well if you have cross country or mountain mountain biking, it’s another one that’s similar where you can’t, there aren’t many places where you can have people on the path. How do you film this? I will watch more, ’cause I do like it
Chengdu 2025: Parkour
watched a tiny bit of parkour.
I wondered why modern pentathlon did not go with a parkour sprint versus the obstacle course. ’cause it’s so much less equipment. I think it’s a lot of pipes and a lot of blocky boxes and maybe a little ramp ness. But it looked like a lot of, Kind of an Ikea put this assemble, you know, stuff comes in pieces and you assemble your parkour course like you want to.
it also, it seemed more cost effective versus an obstacle course.
Alison Brown: I tried to turn it into parkour and the particular event, as I mentioned earlier, didn’t have an announcer, so I got very frustrated very quickly. But I did think it was a lost opportunity on the parkour course. And this could just be World Games and Budget that you could do so much more with that course like you do for, uh, a show jumping.
Oh, yeah, you could in terms of, you know, you could put tree, not real trees, but like the, just like they do with the horse jumps. Please don’t put the naco summa wrestler there, like Tokyo did. But that same idea of kind of selling the city an opportunity to sell the city or wherever it is. In that port.
Again, it would make it more expensive, but it could be a, a fun little aspect to it. Because I remember Birmingham, it was just plain as well.
Jill Jaracz: Yes.
Alison Brown: So I guess in general, parkour courses are plain, but I think they’re missing a chance. Right,
Jill Jaracz: right. So I, I saw Women’s Sprint that was a lot of fun. It’s head to head for the most part.
saw a tiny bit of men’s freestyle, which is just let them loose on the course. I think they have to, and they, they kind of stop when they’re done. Maybe they’ve made a mistake or they’ve hit some, landed something a little funky and they’re, they’re done. Or they, they go, I bet there’s a time limit too.
And that to me is more, it’s more of an improvised like figure skating routine almost, because you have a lot of twisting and flipping and using different, well then you use different elements of the course to. Do your moves, but that to me, just, I have a harder time following that and it, it falls into the kind of skateboarding realm for me.
So I like races.
Alison Brown: You do like races? I like
Jill Jaracz: races.
Alison Brown: And you like races where they have to do things, especially
Chengdu 2025: Men’s Softball
Jill Jaracz: Yes. Yeah. Uh, watch a tiny bit of men’s softball. This was like day one. Uh, Singapore versus Canada was on and Singapore was ahead. So you could see how, Canada was getting frustrated, but it was fun to watch men play softball.
Alison Brown: Yes, though, unfortunately, the, the medal games ended up getting washed out because of that monsoon rain that we talked about. And they just canceled them. They just canceled them and awarded two gold medals and two bronze medals.
Jill Jaracz: So then I was like, oh, as. Player you want to have your last game didn’t understand if the scheduling wouldn’t allow it.
And then, uh, listener Brian pointed out to me that the federations may not have money for the athletes to stay longer. So they may have gotten, you know, like you may have been scheduled to go out the next day. And in a way you go, well, what kind of World Games experience do you get out of that? Because, and this happens in the Olympics too, because it they can’t have every athlete stay in the village at the same time.
And especially during COVID, they were like, okay, you’re in and you’re out. But if you want to have like this Olympic experience and bring the world together and bring athletes together and promote peace and learn how to get along.
Why not let them stay longer? But I know money’s a factor because the federations have to pay for it. And also,
Alison Brown: I,
Jill Jaracz: I’ve been watching a
Alison Brown: few of the daily shows. Oh, they’ve been, oh yeah, we have, we haven’t gotten to those. And they’ve talked to some World Games officials and one of the things that, that they’ve all been highlighting is we are trying to be both environmentally responsible
Jill Jaracz: mm-hmm.
Alison Brown: With the no bill and very cost effective. So they don’t want the federation spending more money than they need to. They don’t want the cities spending more money than they need to. So rescheduling games and reissuing tickets and all that kind of thing, They didn’t say, we don’t wanna be bloated like the Olympics, but that was certainly, they wanna be lean and mean and very agile so that more cities wanna do this and the sports want to continue to participate.
Yeah. That this isn’t a drain on their funds, that it is an opportunity to win more fans, win more participants, because these sports don’t get the exposure.
Jill Jaracz: Right. And that all makes sense. It’s just like the downside of that is when you have a situation like this, right, and yeah, it’s exciting to go home with a gold medal and you know, you’ve won the gold in one way, but you’re like, well, you know, did I really, I I didn’t, I didn’t get that last game to prove it.
So I don’t, I don’t know what the athletes think of that versus the organizers. There’s two different points of view, but interesting how they do that.
Chengdu 2025: Squash
Uh, watched a, bronze, we match for the women’s single squash. Spains, I believe Marta Dominguez, baes Ho from Hong Kong.
I have played a little bit of squash. Squash is very hard. The ball is very dense and they a whack. How does that play
Alison Brown: on TV given that they’re in a box?
Jill Jaracz: Um, well, the box is glass, so you can see through it. The, the camera angles could have been better. I think they still are figuring out where to show the points from because it moves so fast that they tended to have a camera angle from the back, and then on replays they would show different angles that you could see the ball, because I’m sure it’s trying to figure out you can’t anticipate quickly enough, I think, to change where the ball is gonna go and where the players are gonna go.
Maybe could have zoomed in a little bit during. Actual play, but, uh, it was an interesting match. Dominguez was really dominating and then accidentally during a point whacked hoe in the head with the racket. Yeah. And so there was a little bit of an injury timeout, and then pretty soon it was almost at the end of the match, hoe got another point or two, but then lost the match pretty handily.
Hey Jill, you wanna go play some squash with me? Do you wanna
Alison Brown: play squash? I might wanna hit you in the head with a Oh no, I would never,
Jill Jaracz: well, it depends on if you yell at me. Yeah, right. Sure. There’s plenty of like, oh, I just wanna hit her in the head with a squash racket. But, uh, it’s fun. I mean, the sport itself is fun.
If you like racket sports, you’ll probably really like squash. Um, and
Alison Brown: we’ll see it in la so nice chance to, to get a little familiar with it.
Chengdu 2025: Wakeboard
Jill Jaracz: Exactly. And then. Like we mentioned, watched a little bit of wakeboarding right in the beginning of the games. I know listener Brittany was like, oh, this sport is so cool and
Alison Brown: it’s cool.
It has the same appeal of surfing. Yes. And, skateboarding and those kinds of, of you do tricks and it’s, it’s fun, right?
Jill Jaracz: So you, uh, are pulled by a power boat. You use a rope to stand up on your wakeboard, and then at a certain point you let go of the rope and you are basically surfing in the wake of the boat.
So it’s like basic, it’s really, if you don’t have access to the ocean, you get waves made for you by a power boat, and you could be in a lake and still do surfing moves. And it was very cool.
Alison Brown: The funniest part, I, I’ve forgotten that I did watch some of this besides, you know, holy cannoli axle Foley. They were talking about the driver of the.
And they were saying they had brought in a driver from South Korea because he’s one of the best in the world at these competitions. So talk about specializing in something nobody’s heard of for wakeboard competitions. Are you a good powerboat driver?
Jill Jaracz: Oh, man. If we had the resources to do a World Games podcast, uh, that just went on my list of stuff to ask, but sadly, that’s going in the pipe dream list I think for, for now.
But, uh, what I liked about wakeboarding is that it made surfing accessible to a lot more people.
Alison Brown: Both as viewer, both as spectators and participants? Yes. Because this was a lot easier to watch than Olympic surfing, which you’re in the middle of the ocean. Very hard to do. Camera angles.
They had a camera on the boat and then they had a separate camera that went with the rider. And very easy to keep the person in focus.
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. Yeah. Lot of fun and one person
Alison Brown: at a time.
Jill Jaracz: Yes. Lot of fun to watch. Lot of fun. so yeah, we’ve got, uh, one more week.
Alison Brown: we have not talked any of the fighting sports.
No. So we’ll have to make a point of taking a look at all of those. Barely talked much team sports. We haven’t talked KF Ball.
Jill Jaracz: No. And that’s been another Domination, domination Nation in KF Ball. A lot of people are seeing different stuff and I know Brian was talking a lot about, uh, cof ball, so gotta see that beach handball.
Sounds like the end was fantastic. Gotta see that We’ve got lacrosse and flag football coming
Alison Brown: up. Yes. and we didn’t even mention billiards.
Jill Jaracz: I watched about five seconds of billiards yesterday before, well, not a little more than five seconds, but less than five minutes before I switched over to squash.
’cause I was like, oh, I better watch some squash. And it was mesmerizing. I only saw one person do part of a table. But it is also the wearing suits and you have whatever officials in a nice suit. So billiards is going onto my list to watch tons and tons of stuff to watch. Uh, we at daily show. I watched about 10 minutes of one episode.
Chengdu 2025: The Daily Show
Alison Brown: I’ve dipped in and out, so every so on the feed, every day there is a daily show. Kind of like what they do with Carolyn Mano for the Olympics. They have a couple people in a studio chitchatting about the events, but they also do a cultural segment.
Jill Jaracz: Mm-hmm.
Alison Brown: A much classier version of the Mary Carillo segments that I would just denigrate to no end.
But these are much, that’s because of people
Jill Jaracz: with accents. They have accents.
Alison Brown: No, it’s not that they have accents, it’s that they don’t approach it like, gee wiz, I’m an American. Isn’t this funny what they do here? Oh, they present it like you as a viewer are intelligent and you want to see that these beautiful aspects of the Chinese culture and the beautiful aspects of Chengdu and this region.
So worth a watch. Okay. If you like those aspects of Olympic coverage,
Jill Jaracz: I mean, what I got, ’cause like I said, I only watched 10 minutes of one episode and they had just like, here are the athletes of the day, was the one thing sandwiched in of World Games. And I didn’t understand necessarily why the solo athlete of the day was the athlete of the day.
’cause I’m not sure the, the announcer, the, the ho main host knew it either. as I was watching the culture, there was the cultural segment, and then they had another interview with some other broadcasters who were local. I could have used that in the week leading up to the games to make me excited about Chendu.
And I think that’s because there are so many sports and so many things to watch at all times because everything’s on a stream that. If this was the only way I was getting coverage and it was the late night show or the primetime show and they were putting the cultural elements in it, because that’s what you do in a primetime show and you’re gonna watch it because that’s the only thing you get to watch, then I’d be happier with it.
But knowing that I have like five more sports on my list to watch today and your daily highlight daily show, if there are highlights in it, I don’t know. There might be some highlights. I think so there are highlights. Okay. But I, I, I would have loved that going into the games to learn more about Chang Chengdu and get more excited about the city.
And then you’d see stuff like, oh, I see this building in the background. That’s what they talked about in the segment. So I, I wonder if there, there is a place for that, but I wonder if it’s now something that you have to do in the lead up to a games. Versus trying to sandwich that in, in the middle of all this action.
Alison Brown: Like, is that their social media campaign ahead of the games?
Jill Jaracz: Yeah. Or even like, they’ve got a feed, put it on the feed once and, start Chang do before Chang do starts. So, I don’t know. I’m not sure. I, I kind of think that there’s a place for that style of broadcasting, but I’m not sure where it is in the coverage anymore.
But listeners, if you have thoughts, let us know.
If you are watching and you are not in our Facebook group, try to get into our Facebook group listener. John’s doing a great job of putting up a daily schedule, which John, we really appreciate that. And, , lots of talk going on with tons of people, so it’s a lot of fun in the Facebook group.
Alison Brown: Keep the Flame Alive podcast.
Jill Jaracz: Yes.
So that’s gonna do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening,
Alison Brown: and until next time, keep the flame alive.