Episode 212: Re-thinking Olympic So-Called Disappointments
Amira Rose Davis, Shireen Ahmed and Lindsay Gibbs start the show with customized "twisted" triathlons. Then they dive into a discussion about the immense pressure Olympic athletes carry into these games and what happens when they they don't meet the expectations placed on them. This episode revisits, contextualizes and reclaims three historical so-called disappointments: the 2000 Sydney Olympics vault controversy and Russian gymnast Svetlana Khorkina, world renowned Brazilian gymnast Daiane dos Santos never capturing an Olympic medal and Perdita Felicien's 100m hurdles in the 2004 Athens Olympics.
Next is a preview of Amira's discussion with three writers on the African Diaspora in the Tokyo 2020 games. Then they torch all the garbage in sports this week on The Burn Pile. Following the flames, they celebrate those shining light including so many Olympic firsts and Torchbearer Raven Saunders, silver medalist in the shot put, Olympic twerker and voice for the oppressed. The wrap up the show with what's good in their lives and what they are watching in sports this week.
This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network.
Transcript
Amira: Welcome to Burn It All Down. It may not be the feminist sports podcast you need, but hey, it's what you got. I'm Amira Rose Davis and today I'm here with Lindsay and Shireen. We are going to be talking about Olympic disappointments – or are they? We're going to be rethinking a lot of those ideas about disappointment and the Olympic games. We also, of course, we'll be burning a lot of things and lifting up some torchbearers of the week. But before we get into all of that, y'all, you know, first of all, I've gotten very into triathlons. I told you the miracle for me was I watched all one hour and 45 minutes of the men's tri. But when me and Lindsay did a pop-up primetime event for our Patreon – thanks to all those who joined – we talked about how chaotic the triathlon was, and I invented a new Olympic sport, which was at random you would pick three Olympic sports and that would be your new twisted tri. So I had to know, Shireen and Linz, If you guys had to make a twisted tri, what three Olympic events would they be? Lindsay.
Lindsay: Okay. I’ve thought a lot about this. I wanted to get a lot of variety in there. So I think rhythmic gymnastics – that's the one with the ribbons and the batons, right? Yes. So that, and then hammer throw. So, you know, the strength. And then a 50 meter free. So you got to have like a sprint event, like a speed event in there.
Amira: So you got to jump in the pool…
Lindsay: I mean, just like, we're talking chaotic evil, here. And I am just all for it.
Amira: I love the chaos, you know? Mwa ha ha – that’s my evil laugh. [laughs] Shireen, what's your twisted tri look like?
Shireen: Okay, so I was very sure on the first two: shot put, just because I'm fascinated by it and I liked the idea of throwing heavy, circular objects to things…Spherical, rather. Then skateboarding, because I'm slightly obsessed with that, and in my head I think I can make the next Olympics as a skateboarder. Initially the third one I had as curling because my mind always goes right…And Amira, I know you're going to call me out on that. [Amira laughs] So I was going to say it, because y'all didn't specify which Olympic games, like summer or winter! Yes, I know we're in the summer. But so I ended up taking it out and going with canoeing because I thought, think how cool this would be. I've literally envisioned the path of this. You shot put, and then you jump on your skateboard and you're doing your stuff and you run down to the dock and then you do some type of flip into the canoe. And then you go off.
Amira: [laughs] It’s the flip into the canoe for me.
Shireen: You know, I feel like aerial skiing, aerial skateboarding, that could work. Basically what I'm saying is, I think mine is legitimate.
Amira: Okay, well, let me tell you mine. I went the kayak slalom, because every time I watch that course I know it's not an amusement park ride, like, I know that it's really hard, but in my head it still just feels like a really fun amusement park ride in the white waters. So I would want to do that, and then jump out of that and do a 400 just quick one like pseudo-sprint around the track, and then end with sports climbing – the speed version, because you know there's three different versions. Although I could be convinced to do the one where they have to like do obstacles. And please note here that Shireen definitely upped the ante on chaos by adding a winter sport because I had to point out to her, like, where would they…Would ice just magically appear in the…Do you know the temperatures in Tokyo right now? Like, [laughs] there'd be an Olympic games alone to try to prevent that ice from melting!
Shireen: Look, if Qatar can do a world cup, then we’re good.
Lindsay: [laughs] Well, they shouldn’t be…!
Shireen: Exactly. I know. I’m just being chaotic. [laughs]
Amira: The last note I have to leave you with, because I'm thoroughly convinced that all of these twisted tris are a miracle, though. I guess I ended with sports climbing because I had a vision in my head of like somebody bursting into tears as they're propelled down. But then I realized it was basically American Ninja Warrior, so maybe that's just what we're designing. But the last thing I want to leave you with, since both mainstream…We’re talking about former kind of canoeing and stuff like that. Also, I just need you to go look at the TikTok of Aussie medalist Jessica Fox, who’s a bronze and gold medalist in canoe, who made a TikTok to talk about what she uses to patch her canoes up – spoiler alert, it's condoms, which is a very creative use for all the excess condoms that the IOC usually provides in the Olympic village that they're now trying to get people not to have sex because of COVID. But Jessica Fox has a use for those condoms. So, now you know.
Gymnastics commentator: Well, when you have the resolve that she does to come and win gold, you wonder what happens in your mind when you know and everyone knows that the gold is gone.
Amira: So, we finished a week of the Olympic games. Of course there's a lot going on, but one of the most dominant conversations of course is centered on Simone Biles, the discussion of mental health, the twisties, and a lot of people combating the rhetoric that she's somehow letting down or disappointing her team or her country. I was happy to see so many people standing up with her and by her side and talking about this really important topic. But it also made me think about how we recall the Olympics and what we think about in terms of nostalgia, and I think we remember these kinds of underdog stories and these kinds of glorious moments, and it made me think about what happens when people just fall just short of expectations – not even not medaling, but maybe just getting the wrong medal or, you know, just not doing what everybody thought. Like, McKayla Maroney has made this entire commercial now where she's having the same kind of disappointed face after she got silver on vault finals. So I think that that's one very visible way, but what about other people who maybe we lost to Olympic history?
And so I wanted to do a quick round table revisiting some of these so-called disappointments to think now, with the conversations we're having in 2021 about mental health and about these expectations and these burdens, do these so-called disappointments look a little different? And is there a way that we can draw parallels today that makes us rethink and maybe reclaim some of these other amazing competitors? Lindsay, I want to throw it to you first. Who came to mind when I asked you about Olympic disappointments, quote-unquote?
Lindsay: I’ve been thinking so much about this, and I'm going to give a shout out to the podcast Blind Landing, produced by one of my friends and a Power Plays contributor Jessica Taylor price, as well as many others. But I was driving back from DC last weekend and I binged the whole thing. It's a very quick listen. This is all gonna be spoiler alerts, but the podcast is about an actual event that took place in the year 2000. So, you know, [laughs] don’t feel too bad about that. But the whole thing was centered around this vault controversy at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, where for two full rounds of the women's gymnastics all around competition, the vault was two inches lower than it was supposed to be, and it resulted in fall after fall after fall from these competitors. And most notably Russian Svetlana Khorkina, you know, legendary gymnast, we’ve all watched her, but never won an Olympic all around gold medal, and was the prohibitive favorite going into the 2000 Olympics.
And so I think that one of the big things about this was just how it dealed with both the mental aspect of gymnastics, the trust that goes into these games from, you know, competitors, to the equipment, to the spaces where they're competing, right? Like, the blind trust you kind of have to have in everything around it. And also of course this led to careers being changed and what's happened since then. So, one of the biggest things for me was that it was Australian gymnast Allana Slater who had a very unique and open relationship with her coaches, and also from Australia, so it was her home Olympic games. And she's the one who was in the third rotation and was supposed to go first on vault and kept looking at the vault and was like, this is not right. And she had to go up to her coaches, stop the meet and force them to get out the tape measure because she was like, this vault is too low, this vault is too low.
And first of all, her coaches had to believe her enough to like, you know, call…That’s a big thing to stop a meet in the middle of it. And you know, the podcast kind of dives into how that speaks to so many women before didn't even look at it, assumed that the falls, that the vault problems was their fault, right? Assumed that there was something off with them, that it was the pressure getting to them, right? That they had done something wrong to create this fall. And it was her relationship with her coach and her comfort to speak out that ended up changing that, and that got me thinking a lot about how I don't think Simone Biles would have been comfortable stopping in 2016, you know? I think she would have endangered herself, right? She wouldn't have trusted what her body was telling her and what her mind was telling her.
But I think on a more pertinent note to this conversation is the fact that these gymnasts, after they fell in the vault, the ones who…Because the people who had to vault on the lower ball went first and second. So then they had so many events to compete afterwards, and it was this snowball effect, right? The mistake on vault, the fall on vault, the feeling so off on vault and feeling like it must be their fault went on to impact their performances and all these other competitions, you know, on the high bars. Because you lose trust in yourself, you lose trust in your abilities. And the big controversy here beyond the initial mistake is that everyone who went in the first two rotations was allowed to redo the vault, but not their other events, right? And so for so many, like Svetlana Khorkina, didn't even redo the vault. Like, she refused to. She was like, this is not okay. Because she had a fall, I think it was on an event, the event she did right after vault, because she was so in her mind about the vault.
So anyways, I just can't stop thinking about how this blind trust we have in the places around them and how once that trust is broken, how many athletes blame themselves, how hard it is to move on from those disappointments, and how these little things can change forever. I mean, a lot of athletes ended up going on and having great careers and of course have all made peace with it, right? I think that's a big thing. Except Khorkina. I don't think she'll ever really, you know…She went on to have a great career after that, but how do you move on from losing that much trust in your system? And I think, you know, while it's not often equipment malfunctions in this, do you know what I mean? That's of course a rare case.
But like, we talk about Khorkina’s career and we say, oh, she didn't have this and this big gold medal, right? And you lose the context of this huge meet, where she was a prohibitive favorite going in. And then, you know, this huge thing happened. So it's going to be thought about like how, you know, we need to view people's careers in the full context, how defining these moments are, and how hard it is to move on mentally once a mistake has happened.
Amira: And it's also to me, Linz, like when you're talking about that, talks about how much importance we put on what is seen as the pinnacle moment in that sport, like, the way that Olympics gets held up in a way that worlds isn’t, right? That these other kind of competitive moments…People are really decorated in other areas, but it's like if you've never gotten it at the Olympics, then…And I think about this, of course, we were having this conversation in other areas around…I know Shireen’s very happy about Christine Sinclair, for instance, or Brenda was so ecstatic about Messi, right? And because why? There's this way that, like, we put these arbitrary markers of greatness, where like unless you have gotten this specific agreed upon thing, it's like nothing to hook your career onto. And I think we lose sight of a lot of people, to your point, with that vision, I also thought about gymnastics and thought about this idea of burden, especially.
And this is a conversation that we're seeing happening in terms of Simone, in terms of the weight of many expectations, but also on the nation in kind of Olympic marketing and all of this stuff. And it made me think of another Black gymnast, Black Brazilian gymnast, Daiane dos Santos. If you don't remember, Daiane, who burst on the scene in 2003 and just shot up at worlds, competed at the Olympics. There's all these expectations going into the Olympic games because she had won gold on floor in 2003 at worlds and then in the kind of world cup leading up to the Olympics in 2004, and there was all this stuff. I mean, just listen to this second sentence in this New York Times profile of her heading into the 2004 summer Olympics. They say, “She began training at the advanced age of 12 and is now a relatively ancient 21. She has the body of a woman, not a child. She comes from South America, not Eastern Europe, and she's Black, not white, but she will be the clear favorite to win the gold.” The headline is literally A Nation's Hope Rises out of Nowhere. The entire framing over her competition was everything that it meant for Brazil and to upend gymnastics, to upend the world of gymnastics, and what it meant.
And there was a hyper-focus on her body. Even her coach was leaning into it and talking about how she has hips and she has an ass, like, she has the body of a Brazilian woman – because it was seen as not only Brazil's hope at this thing that could break open gymnastics for Black girls globally. And she was widely celebrated, and there was a lot of stuff about how a soccer nation was now having this moment where they were caring about her and all looking at her. And going back and reading some of these articles, you could see dos Santos, even at the time, trying to push back against this. She talked about the pressure and she said, “My obligation to the nation is not to bring home a medal, but to do the best I possibly can. I've never promised anyone a medal, only that I will give my utmost.” I feel like reading it now, in that moment, I just hear this way of trying to negotiate pressure already and trying to soften the weight of those expectations, because I can't imagine taking that into competitions.
And then of course, at the Olympics, she landed a skill that then became named after her. But then in the final, she went out of balance on the tumbling pass. She didn't medal. And that became a kind of story of her, of her games. Although in 2008, Brazil got Jade Barbosa, who kind of took a lot of the spotlight from her. And it reminded me of this kind of idea, especially with a lot of Black women Olympians I've been talking to, of like, when you're kind of thrust into the spotlight with these expectations, but like how easily you can be discarded should you fail to perform at that at the highest level. Where's the room for bronze, or fourth? Or like the ways that we…Like, even these headlines have been like, “US settles for silver.” It's a silver medal at the Olympics! It's a damn huge big deal. Like, what are we talking about here? Like, third…Hell, fourth. If I got fourth in the Olympic games, pshh!
Lindsay: Are we supposed to believe, Amira, that you would be okay with losing at the Olympics? [laughs]
Amira: No…No!
Lindsay: [laughing] Are we supposed to believe, Amira, that you would be okay not getting on the podium? [laughs] I’m sorry, I object!
Amira: I think you're right that I'm hyper-competitive, but I think that if I were to go to the Olympics you would also never hear the end of that alone. [laughs]
Lindsay: That is true. I am annoyed just thinking about it. [laughs]
Shireen: But I feel like if Amira was on a team sport, she would seriously be happy and like help everybody through a loss. I think you would do that. I cannot speak to single events because I don't know. [Lindsay laughs] But I feel like team events, you would certainly be a huge part of like the backbone of encouragement.
Amira: Thank you. I love Shireen’s never ending support for me in team functions.
Shireen: I also would not want to play you in a single event, but that's okay. [laughter]
Lindsay: I'm just saying, I would give you some space after a loss. I’m just saying. [laughter]
Amira: Well, the other thing is…I have a clip that I wanted you guys to hear. This was dos Santos, reflecting on watching Rebeca Andrade win a gold, the first for Brazil in gymnastics. And she tearfully talks about how much it means to watch Rebeca do it, to watch another Black girl do this moment. It's in Portuguese, but she's talking about how significant it is that she's Black and what this represents.
Amira: All right, Shireen. We've been telling stories about gymnasts, but other athletes have dealt with this as well. Who is on your mind?
Shireen: I mean, this topic really made me think. And I was like, there's so many that I thought about, but there's one in particular that's even a little bit closer to Burn It All Down, because we've had this Olympian on our show. I don't know if people know this, but two time Olympian Perdita Felicien was ranked number one in the world when she went into the 2004 Olympics. And she crashed on the first…She hit the first hurdle and she crashed in the second, and she's referred to it as quote, “her deepest and darkest moment.” As I said, she was number one going into the race, and she'd set a Canadian record and that still exists so many years later. She won the first two heats and then after hitting the hurdle and falling she said later in an interview that it was complete devastation for her. And she asked, why me, why me?
In fact, she's later on to saying in a similar interview with TVO that it was years before she could actually talk about this. Like, she couldn't talk about it. And you know, people manage disappointment in certain ways. And even Lindsay, when you were talking about the vault, I'm like, how come nobody checked it?! How…Why did this happen?! Like, I didn't even know about the story. And like, there's so many of these types of injustices that happen along the way, but these are a little…This one’s a little bit different because this is something that comes from the athlete. So, the level of comprehension, the level of sort of processing becomes very different. But I just wanted you to have a little bit of a listen to the actual commentators.
Commentator: What on earth went on at the beginning! Unbelievable. Let's just have a look from the start. Look at this…She goes to the first hurdle, hits it very badly there with the lead leg – once you hit a hurdle with a lead leg, you are finished. But it's so unfortunate Shevchenko, the Russian, was taken out as well. But that's something that couldn't be helped. Once you hit a hurdle with a lead leg, you’re dead. That’s it. You’re finished.
Shireen: The analyst and the commentator is a bit stunned as well, because this isn't supposed to happen. And I think this is one of the things that we think about in terms of analysis of commentary and event, is that things aren't supposed to happen. Do we really think about room for error? Do we really judge for a room for mistakes or disappointments in that way? And the thing that I wanted to talk about as well as wait on one particular person for a country. And Amira mentioned Christine Sinclair and Canada. We were recording Monday morning – Canada beat the United States 1-0. And if anybody saw the quarter against Brazil was how Christine Sinclair missed her pen and she was sobbing. Luckily for her Steph Labbé saved it, but the weight of the world is on these athletes, and so many of them say that.
And in fact, Michael Phelps talking about Simone Biles, he said you feel the weight of the world. And like, I can't imagine what it's like to carry the weight of expectations of an entire country. And when you layer that nationalism and those expectations, and particularly as a woman in sport who may not get the support and viewership…There’s so many layers of this that happen. There's frustration because Perdita definitely had a storied career, was world champ going in, but this is all people remember. And it took a lot of learning for her and unlearning to process and grapple with it to be like “this is what it really is.”
She said later, and this is something that I've actually spoken to her about, so it was a mother's day special in 2020, and then very recently, 2021, a Patreon special episode that I did with her again for mother's day. Gold would have been a tangible object for the community to see, because it took a community to get her there. And she goes on to discuss this. She actually wrote a book that's called My Mother's Daughter. It's a bestseller in Canada and it's amazing. But she talks about that in a way that she really recognizes how much it takes a village to get her there. So, this quote-unquote disappointment…I like the word disappointment and not failure because certainly getting to the Olympics is not a failure, but when you're ranked number one in the world and you were disqualified and don't finish that particular race, it's really complicated.
Perdita is amazing and went on to become a broadcaster, a sports journalist, and is currently at the CBC and right now doing Olympic coverage and slaying in amazing outfits. And so Penny Oleksiak is Canada's most decorated Olympian, now. She didn't win the 100 meter freestyle, something that she did win in 2016. And can we still celebrate if we don't win gold, and you know, very much…There’s something that Lilly King, US swimmer, commented on, was that we should be able to celebrate silvers and bronze. I mean, it's a silver medal in the Olympics! Like, what? And bronze is amazing. And, you know, there's that adage that you win bronze, but you lose gold to get the silver. And Lilly King was like, no, I'm not. I'm not subscribing to that.
I want to see joy. And when Kylie Masse won silver to McKeon of Australia, she was really excited. There was palpable excitement. And I loved seeing that. I loved watching that. And that again, though, is different to not finishing. So to wrap up my part on this is that this particular reckoning of what happened in your result is different. And Perdita is very honest when she says it went on to be a journey for her in of itself, to learn how to deal with this particular thing.
Lindsay: I don't think it's surprising that the two sports we're talking about are hurdles and gymnastics, right? Because in the Olympics, I think those are the two sports I hold my breath the most during, you know, where these split seconds in the air can make or break careers. I just think of Lolo Jones and of course the image that in the United States we replayed over and over again. And I think it was 2008, you know, of clipping that hurdle with the lead and just on the floor of the track, just sobbing, and how she's kind of made a career now out of…You know, like, that's kept her going into the winter Olympics multiple times and all of these things. It is not a level of pressure that I think I could ever thrive under, and this once every four years, like… [laughs] Weight of a nation type stuff? No.
Shireen: I think that we talk about happiness and joy at these games and we love it, but we don't really delve…That’s why I'm happy we're doing this segment because we don't really delve into sometimes the pain and the sadness that may never get reconciled, right? Like this morning, I'm on a different level, because the pain and injustice of 2012 and officiating between the semifinal match has been vindicated! I'm going to bring that shit in here!
Lindsay: I knew you were going to do this! [laughs]
Shireen: Will it ever right a wrong? No. Like Lindsay, the vault…And I keep coming back to this, because I'm like, they should have canceled the whole event and wiped it out!
Lindsay: Yeah, they had to start over. That's the only thing you can do, because like, how do you…Ugh. I get mad just thinking about it. I get shaking mad just thinking about it. Yeah.
Shireen: It’s unreal to me. And the other thing with Perdita was in her fall, the competitor from Russia fell because of her as well, so there's an added layer. [Lindsay groans] Yeah, right? There are several cameras on them and they go back, and the athlete that has fallen as a result of that gets up and is like arms in the air, like, can you imagine what she had to go through because of someone else? So it's like, I…It’s rough.
Lindsay: Yeah. And I think, you know, what we're getting at is like behind every disappointment…And we know behind every medal there's a story, right? We know behind every victory there's a story, but the truth is there's a story before and after every disappointment as well. And we often don't know those stories.
Amira: And maybe these other things that we've labeled as disappointments are more revealing about fans, about society, about structures of power in sport than they are about athletes themselves. One of the most enduring parts of the conversations that we've been having in the last week, especially about the intersection of sports and mental health, is what it means about uprooting our very notions of how we play these games, how we watch these games and what they mean; actually stopping, considering the cost of these burdens and expectations and the cost of this glory. But just reaffirming that people are worthy regardless of the color of their medal or if they medal at all, or if they can run or jump or anything. And I think that that humanity of athletes is really inspiring, and here's for more boundaries and mental health awareness and rehabilitating things that have been discarded or forgotten for re-imagining what sports are and what they could be.
This week I get together with a roundtable of podcasters, writers and researchers to talk about the African diaspora at the games – Afro-Latinx folks, Black folks in Europe, basically Issa Rae gif, we’re rooting for everybody Black. We're going to have a whole discussion of how Blackness shows up at the games outside of a United States context. So, diaspora at the games, that's your interview, it's coming to you on Thursday, check it out.
All right y’all, there is no shortage of things to burn, of course. Lindsay, please, please kick us off.
Lindsay: Okay. [laughs] So, this is a very serious burn, but I'm going to laugh a lot as I get through it because it's my coping mechanism. Cole Beasley, Buffalo Bills wide receiver, got up and started training camp and announced in a prepared statement that he said would be his last words on the issue. “I'm not anti- or pro-vax, I'm pro choice.” He went on to talk about how the players just don't have enough information and how he was just really being an advocate for the unvaccinated. He then – that was not his last words on the issue – he then went to Twitter and released a long statement that basically said these are my last words on the issue. And then included in that tweet was a rap. We have a brief clip here we're going to play…
Lindsay: [laughing] Okay. So if you didn't get that, one of the lines in the rap that I feel like is a good summary is “I don't need to get the vaccine, I have the heavy nuts immunity.” [Amira laughs] So… [laughs] A delayed reaction from Amira.
Amira: I’m just trying to watch you do this with a straight face. [laughter]
Lindsay: So, I feel like the burn speaks for itself, but I just want to say the virus is ramping up. It's only getting more and more serious. One of the most disturbing parts…Well, nothing is more disturbing in that rap. But of what's going on in the NFL right now, there are teams still like around the 60% vaccinated threshold, which is just ridiculous. And one of them is the Washington NFL team, which the head coach, Ron Rivera, just went through chemotherapy and survived cancer last year. So, severely immunocompromised. And it's it's pretty despicable that we're still seeing so many players and people in the NFL and people in general pushing the anti-vax agenda. And you know what? I would say, Cole Beasley is a spokesman you deserve, anti-vaxxers! Burn.
All: Burn.
Amira: Shireen, what do you have for us this week?
Shireen: Folks, my pot is brewing and it is overflowing. So, I wanted to start off with the absolute fuckery of coaches. Now, this burn pile was sort of a living document and constantly crappy things were happening this week. So first of all, I'm going to start and hold space for people – and trigger warning for abuse. The Canada rugby sevens, a couple of months ago, the women's side, had talked about how Jamie Cudmore, who's a former Canadian rugby player, was bullying, was abusive. Now finally, after they lost a match, he went public with his comments, with the hashtag #survivorsmyass, belittling his own team for losing. Finally, Rugby Canada felt compelled to fire him mid-Olympics. So, one thing. For the athletes to have to endure this kind of abuse and bullying and maltreatment from this coach…And again, we see a federation and association that did not listen to their athletes, because despite the complaints against him he was still coaching at the Olympics.
I'm following this up very closely with more horrible, deplorable, racist behavior, in this case, by Patrick Moster, who is the German cycling coach, who, during the event, racially abused other cyclists. One, Azzedine Lagab, and the other one is Amanuel Ghebreigzabhier. And he literally said something like, “we don't want these camel jockeys.” So, this is a coach in an Olympic event belittling and racially abusing other athletes. I found out about this from Team Africa Rising’s Kimberly Coats, she's part of Team Africa Rising, the cycling community that's based in Rwanda. And she wrote an open letter – we’ll attach it in the show notes. So if you can get out there and show support online for these cyclists, this is horrendous.
Now, ending this terrible burn pile, because people just can't stop being their racist selves and showing who they are. There was a commentator who is Greek and decided that it would be really important for him to say something about one of the table tennis athletes. So, basically you've got Dimosthenis Karmiris, and he said this about Jeoung Young-sik, who is a table tennis athlete. He said he was surprised at the wind because he said their eyes are narrow, so I can't understand how they see the ball moving back and forth. So, friends, this happens all the time in the Olympics and we would be remiss if we didn't call it out and talk about how terrible it is, and how it actually has no place.
Think about these athletes that are out here, that are hustling, that are doing their best. They are working and they have to endure this maltreatment from coaches or this racist abuse that we know from seeing Black women in track and the way that they're commented on, this is not new. So please, if you see it, I would love the solidarity from everybody to literally make this known. We don't want people to be doing this with impunity, these racist folks showing themselves. It's disgusting and it takes away from the joy we have. So, I want to take all of that and I want to take it and throw it into the burn pile. Burn.
All: Burn.
Amira: Alright, this trigger warning for brief mention of sexual assault and racism and terribleness. So, obviously there was a heap of right wing response to Simone Biles that was predictable and basic and not worth our time on this show to even burn. What I feel very important about speaking out about and against though is the jokes that – and “jokes” is in quotations – that Saturday Night Live co-head writer, Michael Che, wrote at Simone's expense, and they were appalling, on his Instagram. He wrote he had a bunch of Simone Biles jokes. He talked about really wanting to get them off his chest, that he was going to go record them, and then proceeded to post jokes that other people were making and giving them space on his platform.
These jokes included a really horrific one, referencing her sexual assault at the hands of Larry Nassar – one that he rated a 9 out of 10. It included one joking that they thought Black didn't crack. He rated that an 8 out of 10. When people pointed out how despicable this was, he wrote a post saying oh, I was hacked, you know I only do jokes about white people and cops. It's all good. And it was so clearly not even an attempt at even like a half of a non-apology. In the days since he’s only doubled down on Instagram posting a pop-up show that sold out, talking about this is why they call him a sell out, not to mention talking about how he's turned into a damn martyr for doing this.
And it's just…It's just so predictable in many ways that this Black man, this comedian would punch down, would see this moment with Simone and think, hmm, I really need to get jokes off right now. That is absolutely what I need to put into the world, is to joke about her sexual assault, when one of the reasons she's talked about putting herself through this, one of the reasons she's there at the Olympic games, one of the reasons why she's putting her body and her mind through what she's putting them through is because she says “I'm the last survivor of Larry Nassar, and if I'm competing it makes it much harder for USA Gymnastics to move aside.” To flip that into a joke and to try to sidestep it like you're not the one making it? You’re giving it a platform, you're rating it, and you're rating it high! What the fuck is wrong with you? Is the likes that important to your ego? Is the attention that soothing? At night, that keeps you warm?
You're good with getting a whole bunch of followers who just love to hate on a Black woman, who they can't even fathom doing half of what she does? It's so disappointing. And it's a reminder that even at the moment where we are seeing an outpouring of support and a recognition I think of Black women's voices and the burdens they carry and what they're saying they need, we are also reminded about the persistence of misogynoir and what it looks like to have to continue to exist in a world where this dude and dudes like him would take that opportunity to make a joke at your expense, because you're a joke to them, is fucked up. And I find that really disgusting. Yeah. Burn.
All: Burn.
Amira: After all that burning it's time for some torchbearers of the week, and I will give you a heads up. We will rip through this, but we have a lot of people to celebrate, so let's get it going. Shireen, fire it up – who are first time flames?
Shireen: This is so fun. Thank you. Hidilyn Diaz, the weightlifter, won the Philippines their first ever gold medal. Flora Duffy wins a triathlon gold for Bermuda, which is the second ever medal for Bermuda – their first gold, and that makes Bermuda the smallest country to ever win a gold medal. And weightlifter Guryeva wins Turkmenistan's first Olympic medal. And most recently, Fiji's women's side wins the first Olympic medal for Fijian women in the rugby sevens.
Amira: And a late entry! [Amira plays music from Big Pun.] [Shireen laughs] That’s right. Jasmine Camacho-Quinn won the first ever gold medal for Puerto Rico in athletics and the second gold medal overall – the first being in 2016 by Monica Puig which was just like, look at Puerto Rican women just shining on the Olympic stage! She won it in the 100 meters. She was out, nobody was touching her. I just have to take that moment to big up her and to say, congratulations! Wepa! Like, so much pride. And also, the back of her uniform was so cute. It has little coquís on it, and it took me literally a day and a half of watching it on replay to see.
Oh – and then I'll go right from there to the wait, what of the week? And that's literally because I don't know how else to describe what I'm about to tell you, but we wanted to shout out Austrian cyclist Anna Kiesenhofer, who is a mathematician who does not have a coach. She does not have a team. And she still won gold in the women's cycling road race, the first cycling medal for Austria in 125 years! And one of the biggest upsets ever. Amazing. Linz, who's our valiant vaulter of the week?
Lindsay: This is my favorite story. 46 year old Oksana Chusovitina retired after competing for Uzbekistan in her eighth straight Olympics! Her first Olympics was ’92 in Barcelona! Process that! You can't, you can’t process that!
Shireen: Were you guys even born?
Lindsay: Yes, we were born, but we were young. [laughter]
Amira: I was like, were we? [laughter]
Lindsay: We’re ’80 babies. She took her final Olympic bow before a standing ovation in Tokyo this week. And just, wow. Wow. Wow wow wow.
Amira: That's amazing. Now, from our seasoned vets to our young upstarts, our young shredders of the week, I want to give a shout out to the entire podium of the women's street skateboarding event because the collective podium age was 42. That's right. 42.
Lindsay: Younger than Oksana! [laughs]
Amira: Yes, exactly. That's wild. Momiji Nishiya from Japan, 13 years old, took gold. Rayssa Leal, a 13 year old from Brazil – you might've remembered her for her viral fairy tutu video that Tony Hawk shared a few years ago – she got silver. And Funa Nakayama from Japan who was 16 got bronze. That's a collective 42 years of pure excellence. Congratulations. Now Shireen, we have another underdog story that is just amazing here. Can you please tell us who you have next for torchbearers?
Shireen: This is one of the most wholesome moments in the entire entire Olympics for me. 18 year old Ahmed Hafnaoui is a Tunisian swimmer, only the second swimmer ever from Tunisia to qualify for an Olympic swimming final. He was ranked 16th in the world. And this young man won gold in the 400 meter freestyle. What I love the most about this is the video of his family watching went viral, when you really can't see anything beyond shrieking and a shaky camera, but just still the joy of that moment was unbelievable. And also when he realized that he won, it was unbelievable. So, yay. Yay for happy stories.
Amira: Absolutely. Our courageous choreographer of the week is Costa Rica’s Luciana Alvarado, who raised her fist and took a knee during her gymnastics floor routine, finding a loophole in the IOC's draconian rule. She did it in support of Black Lives Matter, an ongoing, global struggle against anti-Blackness and racial injustice, including in Costa Rica, where there has been a long history of mobilization there. Shoutout to you, Luciana. Linz, who are our allies of the week?
Lindsay: Team USA men's epee team deliberately wore pink masks for their opening match to stand in solidarity with sexual assault survivors. Their teammate, who was right there next to them wearing a black mask, Alen Hadzic, he is under investigation for sexual assault. The allegations are horrific. And kudos to his teammates for taking a stance.
Amira: From allies taking a stand against teammates to women gymnasts who absolutely are just…The spotlight has been on gymnastics as it always has been, but really intense this year. The storylines around Simone, but also just talking about what is harmful within the sport. And then despite that, or perhaps because of that, we've also seen a huge level of sportsmanship between all of the gymnasts actively, very loudly cheering for each other. Hugs, high-fives. Suni won her all around gold. Rebeca Andrade took home Brazil's first medal and gymnastics, had a great showing on the floor as well. Simone screaming, screaming from the stands for literally every gymnast. You could hear her.
Vanessa Ferrari, Angelina Melnikova from Russia. I just collectively want to shout out the competitors in women's artistic gymnastics that we've seen. They were absolutely a sight to see. And speaking of sportsmanship, also shout out the men's high jump final. They decided to split a medal instead of going to a jump off. If you haven't seen this video of longtime friends, Italian and Qatari competitors, deciding to share the gold, jumping into each other's arms in jubilation, absolutely your must watch of the day. And now, can I get a drum roll, please?
[drumroll]
Our torchbearer of the week goes to US shot putter Raven Saunders, who got the silver medal in the shot put, hit a quick twerk for y'all on TV, even though they cut away, full of joy and jubilance, took the medal stand, threw up her hands in an X on the medal stand, representing in her words, “the crossroads where all those who are oppressed meet.” Saunders, who is Black, who is queer, and who talks openly about mental health struggles and about being depressed, has been a vocal, outspoken person on all of those things. Her stand was also the kind of first biggest public defiance we've seen of the IOC’s rules about podium protests. They've already tried to come at her. Saunders tweeted, “Let them try and take this medal. I’m running across the border even though I can’t swim.” But more seriously, Raven's been an absolute light and her voice is so important, and I'm gonna let her take it out from here.
Raven Saunders: We keep pushing, we keep pushing. We keep fighting, because I'm not just fighting for myself, I’m fighting for a lot more people. I want to give a shout out to all LGBTQ community, everybody that's dealing with mental health issues. Everybody who’s Black. I'm giving a shoutout to everybody, yo. We can do it. We can do it. If you keep pushing, you keep grinding. Keep looking forward. You got it.
Amira: All right, y’all. What is good in your worlds? Shireen.
Shireen: Okay. So Andre de Grasse, Canada’s sprinter, decided to show up and be the one man that contributes to our medal count. Congratulations to him and the 100 meter winning bronze. I don't know if you guys know, but the Canadian women's soccer team beat the US this morning and is advancing to the gold medal. That is bringing me an inordinate amount of joy–
Amira: You may have heard. You may have heard.
Shireen: Yeah. You may have heard. Also, the NBA draft happened last week and my babies the Raptors have drafted at Scottie Barnes, who is so excited. I love Scottie Barnes. And to my son Sallahuddin who said, mama, you never heard about Scottie Barnes before the draft – but that's not the point! The point is that I love him. Shoutout as well to the Canadian women's rugby sevens, who are wearing orange as nail polish or ribbons as arm bands as some part of their uniform at the Olympics to pay respect to Indigenous communities all over Canada, and I just love all of that. The Blue Jays are back in town. I'm excited. Also somewhere along this I am writing my thesis and finishing it up. So, please send some happy vibes, positive vibes to me. Last thing: it is peach season and Ontario, and Niagara peaches are the most spectacular thing in the entire world. And I love all of that.
Amira: I'll jump right in on that because I have a peach related good thing. Jessica Luther's favorite ice cream spot that she put me on too called Lick – it’s the ice cream that I brought her after she hurt her back. They have a new seasonal flavor called honeyed peach and rosemary, and I was feeling adventurous and I tried it and I really liked it. So that's good. [laughs]
Shireen: Rosemary, rosemary and peaches…
Amira: Yeah. I mean, there are flavors like…They have a goat cheese and honey and thyme, and I'm not an adventurous eater. And I was like, sign me up for a scoop of that. So, that's really my what's good. I dragged Jess and Aiden to an escape room with me and Samari, [Shireen laughs] and it was Jess’s second and Aiden's first escape room, and we escaped with like 15 minutes to spare, which was huge. But we came out of the escape room and they presented me with a signed card – because Shireen, I told this story about when we were in Nashville and the guy ended up recognizing me from like years before, and they were like, oh my gosh. And the lady was telling me all about how she does escape rooms for deaf and hard of hearing people and signs through it. And we had gotten into this really great conversation. So after we escaped, they surprise me in the lobby with a signed card from the escape game.
Shireen: You mean like the company that runs it gave you a personal card…? [laughs]
Amira: Yeah. It's a card with like the signatures of all the people who are working that day, and they gave me a pin and they gave me a free Escape Game Austin shirt that has a taco on it.
Shireen: Oh, I love that for you!
Amira: It was like a care package and it was like a welcome to Austin and also thank you for escaping all the time.
Shireen: Oh my god!
Amira: And I like cried in the lobby of The Escape Game. So, it was really nice to be back at my happy place and to be there with Jess and Aiden and Samari.
Shireen: Oh, I love that. I just got goosebumps because I can see you…
Amira: Yeah. It's my little random what's good, but it was something that absolutely brought me joy. And also shout out to Gwen Berry making finals for hammer on a monstrous 73.19 throw, and Anna Cockrell, clipped a girl at the line, is going to the 400 meter finals. And so I love to see my friends win and the shine, and these women have done so much on and off the track and field, and so I am thrilled for them. Linz, bring us home.
Lindsay: I don't really have much. It has been a really rough week, but before that I got to see some friends in DC. There was a great wedding. So that was good. Everyone – some prayers for my mom's health, if you don't mind. And you know, we got another week. So keeping on keeping on. Got some more early morning wake ups.
Amira: Early morning wake ups, keeping on keeping on, and sending lots of love and prayers to Lindsay and her family at this time. What we're watching this week? Well, a little thing called the Olympics from dusk till dawn, or dawn til dusk. It doesn't matter, we’re up all the time anyways. So keep checking your Olympic listings. We have the second week of Olympics track and field, and then of course some gold medal games in team sports. I would highly recommend checking out women's volleyball. It has been feisty between USA and Russia and China and Italy. Phenomenal volleyball happening, if you need a new sport to get into.
That's it for this week's episode of Burn It All Down. This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is on our web and social media, and we're of course part of the Blue Wire podcast network. You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram; like and listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. For show links, transcripts, I'm gonna give you a picture of my Escape Game taco t-shirt. You can check all of that out over at our website, burnitalldownpod.com, and also a link there to our merch on our Bonfire store. A special thank you to our patrons – me and Lindsay really enjoyed talking with y'all for our pregame pop-up. Maybe we'll have another one coming up, stay alert to our Instagram and our Twitter for those announcements. All of you flamethrowers, it means so much to have your support and to have your flames lit beside ours. Together we are definitely making an impact. From me, Shireen and Lindsay, that's it for this week. Burn on and not out, and we'll see you around, flamethrowers.