Episode 235: 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics Preview
In this episode, Burn It All Down previews the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Shireen Ahmed, Amira Rose Davis, Brenda Elsey, Lindsay Gibbs and Jessica Luther cover what to know and who to watch for every event: bobsled, skeleton, luge, Nordic combined, biathlon, ski jumping, snowboarding, freestyle skiing, curling, cross country skiing, alpine skiing, short track speed skating, long track speed skating, ice hockey and figure skating.
On Patreon, they continue the discussion with what event they'd like to see included in the Olympics that is not, as well as what sport they'd like to medal in.
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
Shireen: Hello, flamethrowers, Shireen here. Welcome to another week of Burn It All Down. It's the feminist sports podcast you need. Today on the show, we are doing the Winter Olympics preview. I just want to note, in addition to this, we will accompany this episode with a great interview with Dr. Jules Boykoff.
The Winter Olympics: the parthenon on of athletic feats, stories of glory, moments of despair and defeat, all amidst a winter wonderland. What encapsulates the human experience more than athletes, coaches, medical staff, thousands of volunteers giving us everything, the vulnerability, and the immediate responses of echoing joy all over the world? Also, what about the many people protesting or objecting to the Games? They cite the oppression of Uyghurs, human rights abuses, lack of press freedoms, the corruption intertwined with the Olympics, the continued dangers of COVID-19, and the environmental impacts this mega event will have on China and its people.
There’s so much to reconcile as we balance and accept our contradictions. One loves the purity of sport and para sport, and appreciates the theater that this Winter Games will provide. We remain vigilant in interrogating the injustices. We will hold joy and embrace the stories of success and happiness that may come. Let’s go forth in solidarity and in sport. Jessica, can you start us off in the first category: sleds, sleighs and slaying?
Jessica: Yes, I can, Shireen. Thank you. I have the bobsled. Most people know exactly what I'm talking about. You have a sled and you go twists and turns over lightening fast track. This year in China, the sliding center is the first venue to ever feature a 360 degree turn, and I can't picture that in my mind. Like, does this look like a water slide? Like, how does…What will this actually look like? I'm excited to see. There are going to be four total events: the two man bobsled, four man bobsled, two women bobsled, and the brand new women's monobob, the first bobsled singles event in Olympic history. The monobob is super interesting because it's just the single athlete. They push off on their own, navigate down the track by themselves.
The big rule for the monobob that’s different than the two person and the four person events is that you have to use an identical sled. You cannot adjust the sled design for aerodynamics. So they're all working off the exact same sled as they do it. And I want to focus quickly on the two women drivers for Team USA: Kaillie Humphries, who I interviewed for Burn It All Down back in March, and Elana Meyers Taylor, who I talked to for this show back in February of 2020 when she was still pregnant with her son, Nico. They’re both four time Olympians, which is an incredible sentence all by itself. They both will race in the monobob and the two women bobsled, and they are the best two, like, in the world.
Kaillie Humphries, she's the most decorative woman in bobsled history. If you listen to that interview, you'll know she's Canadian who has since come to America for lots of reasons that I won't get into here. She's won three Olympic medals – two golds, a bronze. She has won 13 world championship medals. She's a four time world and four time overall world cup champion in the two women's bobsled. And she is the 2021 monobob world champion. Okay. So that's Kaillie.
Elana has won silver medals at both the 2014 and 2018 Olympic Winter Games. She's a two time women's bobsled world and overall world cup champion. She's won 19 world cup races as well. And she is now again the overall world cup champion going into the Olympics. After four wins and the monobob this season, she also claimed the women's monobob world series title. We love our mom athletes on this show. I don't know what the rules are about babies at the Olympics, but I did read on her Team USA page that her dream is to get on the podium and to hold her son, Nico, in her arms at that time. So we here at Burn It All Down will be rooting for Elana.
Lindsay: I just want to say, I know that he's there because she noted that she couldn't stay in the village with him, but she's in a hotel with him.
Jessica: Okay, good! Okay. So this could happen. Awesome. So, the bobsled will take place from February 11th to February 19th.
Shireen: Brenda, I thought of this for you, particularly because skeleton, Halloween. So this sport made sense for you to present to everybody.
Brenda: Thank you. It's also the one I'm least likely to ever practice. [laughter] So, the difference between a bobsled and skeleton is that in skeleton you're head first! It’s the worst thing I've ever seen, ever. 80 to 90 miles an hour with your head first!
Jessica: It's one of those where you're like, who invented this? Who did this first and then decided to keep doing it?
Brenda: Definitely someone who thought it was going to be like more 5 to 10 miles an hour, is my guess. But in any case, this has traditionally in the men's been dominated by Latvia, and particularly Martins Dukurs, is his name, and his brother, Tomass is another Olympian. But really Martins Dukurs is a really big deal in this sport. The last three gold medalists in women's skeleton at the Olympics have all represented Great Britain. This year they're taking place from February 10th to February 12th. Going into this one though, Jaclyn Narracott of Australia is the world cup winner, and she is maybe going to really break up this whole Latvian domination/Great Britain domination of the sport.
For me, what I was really interested in is the helmets. Because of the nature of this sport, they really care about the helmets. And there's a great video over at the Olympics channel, and it sort of details how important and personal the helmets are to these athletes. So, Ghana's Akwasi Frimpong describes his lion-eating-a-rabbit-helmet, which I'm really sad about, because rabbits are my patronus. But he really feels strongly about this.
Akwasi Frimpong: I definitely think that if you can go 80, 90 miles per hour head first, you're already a superhero. A little bit of a crazy superhero, obviously. But we are always trying to strive for perfection. You know, we are wanting to make as least a mistake as possible, any way that we can finally go faster.
Brenda: He talks about how one woman has her mother on her helmet. And I would just like to say the least endearing helmet that I saw was in fact Latvia's Martins Dukurs, the most decorated skeletoner, which is just all black. It's sort of like the villain that you would expect. So, take a look at that if you get a chance. Ghanaian helmets are amazing. But I'm not getting one anyway, no matter how cool. This is terrifying.
Shireen: I think you should have a Burn It All Down helmet.
Jessica: With flames on it. That would look so good going down the ice.
Shireen: Totally.
Brenda: For a bike! For a tricycle. Yes, I did put a Burn It All Down sticker on my bike helmet, but I'm not going on a skeleton.
Shireen: Okay. So, I have luge. I love this, because luge in French actually means small sled. And luge debuted in 1964. Singles are feet first, face up – as opposed to skeleton headfirst. So, it's exciting and also looks insanely dangerous. Lugers can reach speeds of up to more than 130 kilometers, which is 80 miles. And the track for luge in particular is about 4.8 kilometers, three miles. And luge, along with a sliding events, are actually being held at the new Yanqing National Sliding Centre. The temperature of these sliding centers is optimal at -8 degrees Celsius. I have no idea what that is in Fahrenheit. I feel like it's like 40, 30. I don't know.
Jessica: Fucking cold, is what I hear. So that's all I need.
Shireen: [laughs] For luge, there’s four different categories: men’s singles, men's doubles, women's singles, and then team relay, which is men and women. The team relay was introduced in Sochi in 2014. So what's really fascinating about the team relay is on the way down you have to reach up and hit a button in order to open the gate for the next luger. [laughs]
Jessica: What if you don’t?
Shireen: The gate doesn't open. It's part of what you have to do.
Jessica: Holy…
Brenda: Trust fall! [laughter]
Shieen: It’s wild. It was unbelievable. I went to YouTube and was watching the races from Pyeongchang. So, Germany dominates the sport, and in Pyeongchang Tobias Wendl and Tobias Arlt won the second consecutive gold in the men's doubles, and they're known as the Bayern Express, which I thought was actually quite funny. Then the most decorated woman luger athlete is Natalie Geisenberger of Germany. And she's also in the relay. She will be looking to medal for a third time. And Germany, Austria, Canada and the US are the top faves. Now, concerns with luge: sled tumbling over is always a concern and a problem. [Lindsay laughs] Declining speed and feet hitting the ice is also a problem. So we're looking for safe and clean runs…Lindsay's face right now! [laughs] So, of course I found luge puns, and the best one I found is: even if you win a luge event, you're still a luger. [laughter]
Jessica: Oh, no.
Shireen: Sorry. It was too good to pass.
Amira: That's funny.
Shireen: Next category: double trouble. Dr. Davis, please start us off.
Amira: Yeah, I will. So, this is the Nordic combined, which I have my entire life been calling the Nordic combined. So, there you go. You already know something new.
Lindsay: Do we? [laughs]
Amira: It’s two sports in one: the combination of ski jumping and cross-country skiing. Now, it's one of the original sports that’s happened back since the inaugural games in 1924. It used to be that they would start with the cross country skiing and then at the end of the that you would jump, but people were too tired skiing. [laughs] And so they've now changed it. So what you do now is you jump first, some people getting heights as many as 400 feet going 60 miles per hour. And then based on how well you score in the jump is where you start for the ski portion. So if you win, if you have the highest score for the ski jump portion, you get to go first. And everybody else is staggered based on their points. There's a short hill, so they do like a jump off a short hill and then this long race. They do a large hill, and they also have a team large hill competition.
But I do want you to know that this is the only Olympic event without women in it at all. This has been something that they have been pushing for, to add women into the Nordic combined, and actually added it at the world cup level back two, three years ago, with the idea that it would be included in the Olympic Games. And then they decided 18 months ago, oops, nevermind, we need more quote-unquote “development” in that area. Let me tell you, the women who have been pouring their heart and soul into this are very mad.
I just want to read you a quick quote from Annika Malacinski, who is training in this event. And she was like, “I think it's insane that we are living in the 20th century and we are still experiencing inequality not only in our daily lives, but over a sport that we put our souls into. Doesn't feel good at all. As much as I love Nordic combined, it's absolutely awful having to fight with other girls on my side to get it out to the world how we are the only Olympic sport that doesn't have both men and women in the games for no reason at all.”
So, if you still want to watch this event and you want to watch the men, Eric Frenzel is the German GOAT and he is vying to be literally the most decorated and greatest Nordic combined athlete of all time. I myself am cheering for Akito Watabe, who’s like the only non-Nordic player in the race. [laughs] He’s Japanese, and he scored silver at the last few world competitions. So, he’s getting there. He's very close. We'll see if this is the year. And of course, Jarl Magnus Riiber is trying to restore glory for Norway. He was forced last off the podium at the last two Olympic and world cycles.
And lastly, you should know that Norway invented this and dominated it for much of the 20th century. The German team has swept the medal stand in the last years. This is like a huge rivalry. And so Baby Face Riiber – that's what they call him – Jarl is trying to restore Norway's glory by breaking into the medal stand at this Games.
Shireen: Damn. Just these Norwegian-German rivalries are so fascinating. [laughs] Lindsay?
Lindsay: Yeah, so, I've got biathlon, which is a sport that is cross-country skiing and rifle shooting – totally normal things to combine. [laughter] So, the shooting portion of the biathlon race is known as a bout. The shooting bout, you are either standing or in the prone position, which, prone means on your belly. I actually did not know that. And if you miss a target or targets during a bout, you're penalized by either adding minutes to your time, or by having to ski a fucking penalty loop near the exit of the shooting range. This whole thing is just like a torture. [Shireen laughs] You might be shocked to know that it used to be called military patrol. So, you know, we've really got some military origins here. There’s an individual event, a relay event, a sprint event, a pursuit event, a mass start event, and a mixed relay.
There's lots of sexism, of course, woven into these, even though there is an event with men's and women's races. Just the women's distances are just arbitrarily shorter than the men's distances, like, just so men can be like, “We men! We strong! We better!” [laughter] The pursuit race is 12.5 kilometers for men and 10 kilometers for the women. Mass start is 15 kilometers for men and then 12.5 kilometers for women. So the women can do 12.5 kilometers in the mass start, but in the pursuit only 10k? It’s just so fucking dumb. I'm sorry.
But anyways, these biathlon events are going on all throughout the Games: start on the 5th, go through February 19th. This is the lone winter Olympic sport in which the US has not won any Olympic medals – which is shocking, because we love our guns! So, I don't understand! [laughs] I don't really think that's going to end this year. Germany, France, Sweden, Norway, the usuals are supposed to dominate the medals. So, for the pursuit race, that happens always after the individual and sprint events, and the starting order for pursuit is based on your times in the individual and sprint events. So, I learned that. I'd always wonder what the difference was.
Shireen: Thanks so much for that. I only know about this because Canadian Myriam Bédard, she was like a very decorated Olympian. And I just remember the closeup on her after she finished the skiing, she would be heaving and then have to lie on her stomach and shoot. It was unbelievable. You could see her whole body trying to calm itself. I mean, this is not necessarily a sport for people with anxiety. Anyways, moving on. [laughs] Tricks and ups! Jessica Luther?
Jessica: Ski jumping. It's been in the Olympics since 1924. Amira talked about it a little bit before. You know, we all know what this is. You speed down the ramp, launch yourself into the air, and then kind of fly until you hit the ground. Of course you're awarded based on how far you jump, and there's a target for landing. And so it's like, you do better based on how much farther away from that target landing you are. But you also get graded on your style and how you land. There's a five judge panel. So you want a clean landing with your skis parallel in order to score highly. You’re penalized if you turn your skis inward for balance, or if you stack them, which is you sort of go on your side and this one ski’s above the other.
You can get 60 points. The points are awarded or subtracted based on the wind at the time. So if you have a lot of wind at your back, you know, they take that off so that it's more fair for everybody. Each athlete goes twice, and then they add their two scores together. There you go. On the men's side, the one to watch is a guy named Kobayashi Ryoyu. He's Japanese, he's sitting atop of the world cup standings right now, and he might have a gigantic Olympics.
I do want to mention that the best in the world for the women, Maren Lundby; she's Norwegian. She's not going. She's been the best for the last three years, won gold in South Korea. She says that she's gained weight in the last year or so, and doesn't feel like she can compete. And it's a big deal for her to talk about this publicly because this sport in particular has a horrible history of eating disorders among athletes, because you need to be as light as possible, so people go to extreme measures.
So to have the very best woman in the world talk about this publicly has been a big moment in this sport. Like, for ski jumping, it's on the level of Simone Biles or Naomi Osaka. So, we will be missing Maren Lundby, but you know, credit to her for having this conversation. I do want to say that our Lindsay talked to Lindsey Vonn back in episode 41. She's American ski jumper. That's from February, 2018. So if you want to know more about women and ski jumping, please go listen to that.
I do want to say, this year women get a second event. So they were only one before and the men had three. Now they have a mixed team event. So, women get to compete in this. It'll be on the normal hill though, of course, and not on the large hill, because the women aren't allowed to be on the large hill. Four athletes will be on each team. They have to jump in a specific order with the female athlete going first and third, male athletes going second and fourth. They'll add them all together. Ski jumping begins on February 5th with the men's normal hill and ends on February 14 with the men's team competition. The women's final is February 5th and the mixed team final is February 7th.
Shireen: Bren, you’re next with: snowboarding!
Brenda: Yeah. This is a weird one for me, because I don't care about snowboarding. I never want to go. [Shireen laughs] I keep getting ones that I don't have a passing interest in, and that's why this show is so great because then I get into it and then I care. And then I'm like, wait a minute, I'm going to watch this! So basically, snowboarding has been dominated by the US in both men's and women's categories, but there's others coming up. In the men’s, the Japanese and Swiss, and in the women's there's been important strides by Australians and Germans. So, we may not only have a US show this time around. So there's several events. One is called the parallel. It's a very, very long hill that they go as fast as they can on that one snowboard ski thing that they have.
There are two identical tracks and they have about 25 turns. So the idea is you'll see them – it was pretty fascinating – get as close with their body to the ground as possible. So when they tilt, they put their body weight on the other side and they get, you know, within centimeters of touching the ground, which is very impressive when you're watching it. There’s also big air – this is new to the Olympics! And Beijing has the only permanent track for it. It's a judged sport. It is considered – and this is just hilarious, because, like, how is this not every single one? It is called by the Olympic Committee a “very high risk injury sport.” [laughter]
Amira: What?
Jessica: Oh, no! [laughs]
Amira: Well, you know the bar for that must be fucking high as hell!
Brenda: No kidding! So, you’re going along this giant thing and then you catapult in the air and it's like originality and the air you get and the tricks you do. So it's a judged sport. Then you land, I don't know how. Hopefully on the ski thing...Snowboard thing. [Jessica laughs] It's wild. It's beautiful. It's really impressive. You've got the half pipe; the two big personalities from the US, Sean White pursuing his fourth gold medal, and Chloe Kim will be back looking for hers. But look out for 15 year old Sonora Alba to debut in this event this time around. I have a 15 year old and I can't get her out of bed. [laughter] So I don't understand who this Sonny Alba is, but I plan on showing her to my teenager and be like, what's wrong with you? You know? I mean, look, she's out there. She brushed her teeth this morning.
Amira: I like how the Olympics have just become our parent-shaming. [laughter] This is like us in skateboarding in the Summer Games. Like, look, they're 13! You're behind schedule! What’s happening?
Brenda: Exactly. Anything. That's how desperate one can get. Okay. Snowboard cross has a new mixed team event. It's a mixed gender event. Also an individual. It starts on February 12th. It is called border cross, not snowboard cross, by those who know – meaning the founders of the game, who rejected the International Ski Federation as their governing body and trademarked the term. So you will hear athletes say border cross instead of snowboard cross. Which, you’re welcome. That's going to get you into all the cool parties there. [Lindsay laughs]
And finally slopestyle, which is tricks plus obstacle course. That just seems like you just threw in the kitchen sink, just everything. Can you do everything on a snowboard? The veteran and dominant force is Jamie Anderson from the US. She’s won the last two golds in the event. For right now, the one that’s dominated is Red Gerard, also from the US. He is famous for having won as a youngster in 2018 in which he bragged about being hungover and watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine, whatever. And so his love of Netflix and partying is pretty much in keeping with my image of the sport. But good luck, all you snowcrosser-boarders.
Shireen: Lindsay.
Lindsay: All right. So, I have freestyle skiing, which is very similar to the snowboarding events, except skis, you know? [Jessica laughs] That's important. I'm just going to go over the six events, because I know Brenda just went over them in snowboarding, but there are little differences and these are all the descriptions from the New York Times. And I liked them, because they helped me remember what events were which. So, in freestyle skiing, you've got the moguls. And in moguls, they ski over a bumpy course and are judged on turns, jumps and speed. Aerials is new for skiing. This is a brand new event. Sounds like it's similar to like the big air, but skiers launch themselves off a ramp and perform flips and spins. You've got ski cross, in which they race against one another in groups of four – it’s one of my favorite events every time. Slopestyle, where they ski down the course with rails and jumps. And then of course half-pipe, where they perform in a U shape bowl.
I wanted to kind of talk about an athlete that you're going to hear a whole, whole, whole lot about in Beijing. This is Eileen Gu, who is China's most promising medal hope by far. She was the only prominent Chinese athlete to compete in the 2020-2021 world cup season in any winter sport. She’s going to compete in three freestyle events in Beijing: big air, halfpipe, and slopestyle. She's secured a world cup victory in 2021 in all three disciplines. So, definitely a medal favorite. And then she's 18 years old. She's born in San Francisco to an American father and a Chinese mother. Goes to Stanford, speaks fluent Mandarin, started to represent China in 2019.
She's literally a model. I mean, she's just like catnip to media. So, be very familiar with her. She seems to be handling the pressure pretty well. On China's TikTok there was a viral video after she lost at the X Games being like, Chinese fans, let's not put too much pressure on Gu. And Eileen responded directly to that with a crying faces being like, why don't you just have more faith than me? [laughs] So, she's ready to go!
Shireen: Next category: sticks and stones. I'm going to go first with curling, and you all know I lowkey…I'm very, very subtle about my love for curling.
Jessica: You have no subtle in you at all, Shireen.
Shireen: [laughs] So, curling – and I didn't know this – the International Olympic Committee first granted medal status to men and women's curling. So, it was introduced to the Olympics at Nagano in 1998. And this is one of the first and only sports where men and women came into the Olympics at the same time, because traditionally we'll see men's events go first and then women catch up. Curling for me is one of the best sports at the Winter Games. And things you need to know about curling: sweeping is essential. And according to the World Curling Federation, good sweeping can allow a stone to travel two or three meters, almost six and a half to 10 feet, further than if not swept. Sweeping is essential, people.
The skip is the captain who throws the stones. That's when they glide – and the stones are the big rocks – and guides the sweepers. So, each team has four players, except for mixed doubles, which is one man and one woman. Now, there's rounds, and those rounds are called ends. Like, we would know them as rounds, but they're actually called ends. So the teams alternate throwing the stones, and the objective is to get your stone as close to the center as possible while knocking other team's stones out from the sheet. It's riveting to watch. It’s literally riveting.
So, gold medalists from Pyeongchang: men's were the United States, for women it was Sweden, and the mixed doubles champions were Canada. And the reason we talk about this is there are the Brier Cup and there are the Scotties, which are essentially the biggest tournaments. But everything was up in the air because of COVID. And so they literally were competing very recently to qualify for the Olympics. I'm very excited for all of it. And you will be kept abreast with all the important information. Next, Amira: cross-country skiing.
Amira: Yeah. Cross-country skiing is one of those things that confounds me, because when I think of cross country skiing, I think of like you're alone in the woods with your skis, you're going slowly, you’re moving straight. But actually, cross country skiing has some of the most exciting finishes in the Winter Olympics, like, wild finish as everybody's kind of skating alongside each other to the end. And if you liked the collapse and chaos at the end of the men's triathlon at the Summer Games, then this is your sport because they all just fall over the line because it's so hard. So, there's other things about the sport that I want to draw your attention to, because I think even their rules are a little bit chaotic. And that's because there's actually two styles of cross-country skiing.
Your first style is called your classic style. This is the easiest to learn. If you've ever tried it, this is usually what you're doing. It's like you're walking in skis. Both feet are in the little lines and you're just chilling on the skis and moving forward. The other more modern style is called skate skiing. It became popularized in the 80s, and this is more in line with ice skating. And so you're pushing off with one ski, but it allows you to get faster and it allows you to build up momentum. It also takes a lot of core strength and is seen particularly as harder to do. Now, could cross-country skiing just be like chill and be like, okay, do whatever style? Absolutely not. They actually rotate what styles they use at major competitions.
So, at world finals, certain events would be skated in one style and they flip for the Olympics. So actually to be at the top level of the sport, you have to be good at both, especially if you're doing the skiathlon, where you literally do one lap in the classic style, change your skis, change on the fly, into the different skis and poles, and do the second lap in skating style. Absolute chaos! As Lindsay mentioned before, the women just arbitrarily have smaller meter events here. And so there's five. So like I mentioned, the skiathlon, women do 15 kilometers and the men do 30. They have a sprint. They actually both do 1.5 kilometers for this. And then an individual event, 10 kilometers for the women, 15 for the men. And then they have a relay. And then the real mayhem is the mass start event.
Now, I do want to note: the Norwegians have absolutely dominated in this event, but they also are experiencing a massive COVID outbreak. Two of their cross-country skiers, including their star, Heidi Weng, tested positive, and they're now isolating in Italy. Now, their isolation would be up February 3rd. They can still fly to Beijing and get there before competition starts on February 5th. That is the hope, anyways. They’re crossing their fingers. Two days later, however, the male skier Simen Krüger, who is the defending champion, also tested positive. Because it was two days later, it puts his quarantine up on the 5th, leaving it virtually uncertain for him to make the event in time to compete.
Shireen: This is like The Amazing Race! They’re gonna rush to Beijing now.
Amira: I mean, this is pandemic games for you. Their team doctor and their team coach gave a press conference, and the coach was like, “None of this is fun anymore.” It’s over. And they also don't know who next on the team could get it because all of their roommates are now also in isolation.
Jessica: Oh my god.
Amira: And so the top competitors from the Norway team, which basically were on the medal stand on all five events, everything about them is in doubt. So we're definitely going to see a shakeup. I'll leave you with a story to watch on the USA side. You might remember Jessie Diggins, who, along with her teammate Kikkan Randall in Pyeongchang, ended a multi-decade drought of the United States in this competition. And you might remember it because the call on it by Chad Salmela was one of the best calls you could ever imagine.
Chad Salmela: They’re all completely gassed! They’ve given it everything on the klæbo-bakken. And Stina Nilsson leading Jessie Diggins into the final turn! Can Diggins answer?!
Amira: As she rounded the corner and came from behind on the last hill climb, he started screaming “Here comes Diggins!” and like lost his voice on air.
Chad Salmela: Here comes Diggins! HERE COMES DIGGINS! DIGGINS!
Steve Schlanger: Diggins, making the play around Sweden! Jessie Diggins–
Chad Salmela: YES! YES!
Steve Schlanger: –to the line!
Chad Salmela: YES! YES!
Steve Schlanger: And it is Jessie Diggins–
Chad Salmela: GOLD!
Amira: She is returning, along with brother and sister pair, the Pattersons. And everybody else though on the team is brand new, so we've 10 newcomers on the men and women's side to cross-country skiing, and we will see what they can do in a topsy-turvy year.
Shireen: Whew. Jessica, can you take us and calm us down with Alpine skiing? [laughter]
Jessica: Yeah, sure, obviously. We all know this, this is skiing down a hill! It's been in the Olympics since 1936. We're talking about races where people are winning by tenths of a second. You will see the skiers navigate colored gates spread across the mountain slope, and they're like zigzagging back and forth, but they get so fast on these skis. They're going about 150 kilometers per hour. They can get up to that. That's around 93 miles per hour, that they're flying down these mountains. I did learn that skiing is the fastest non-motorized form of transport. And I just want to tell you that the men’s speed skiing world record is 157 miles per hour. Isn't that wild? Not in the Olympics! You won't see this in the Olympics, but I just need you to know that number.
Okay. So, there's six events. There's just straight up downhill. You're going as fast as you can into speed event. The slalom, which is more of a technical event. This is the one with the gates and the really sharp turns. It's the shortest course for the downhill skiing. You know, you miss a gate, they add time to your overall time. And so it's still the fastest down, but you do have to hit the gates. The giant slalom is also technical. The gates though are a little farther apart, so it's more like, you know, it looks prettier. It's not quite as, you know, they're not hitting the corners as hard. And then you have the super-G, which is the super giant slalom, but it's mainly a speed event. They have the same technical thing. It’s not as steep as the downhill, but the gates are closer together than the downhill.
But this is the wild thing about the super-G: you get one shot and you do not get a warmup. This is special to this event. You get 90 minutes to walk the course with your coach, analyze it, and then boom, you go down the hill, and that's it. One time. You also have the combined, which is one run of the downhill, one of the slalom, combine those together. The winner is the fastest with the combined time. And then they will have the mixed team parallel slalom. I remember this from last time. It is so much fun. So you have 16 best teams in Alpine skiing. They're seeded in a single elimination bracket. So we got a bracket, which you know we love in sports. There's a round of 16, quarterfinals, semifinals, final.
From olympics.com, I'm just going to quote this to you, this is what they do. “Each team may include up to six skiers, and during every round four skiers from each country (two men, two women) take on four skiers from another country. As with other parallel slalom competitions, two opponent ski at the same time on two identical courses, which sit side by side on the slope. The victor of each race wins one point for their team. If both skiers fall or miss a gate, the skier who progressed the farthest wins the point. The country with the most points after four races wins. If the score is 2-2, then it's the team with the best aggregate time.” I mean, it's what we want in sport. They're like literally next to each other, going down, trying to be the fastest.
Okay. All eyes easily on two time Olympic gold medalist Mikaela Shiffrin. She's going to be the endless talk of Alpine skiing this year. She competed in 2014, 2018. This year, she's going to compete in five of the six events: slalom, giant solemn, super-G, downhill and combined. If she gets on the podium for three, she'll then tie the record for most Olympic medals won by any female Alpine skier, ever. Obviously if she gets four, she will take over that record. She claimed her 47th world cup women's slalom victory this month, breaking the record for most race wins in a single discipline. She is just like a phenomenal, a phenomenal skier. It'll be really exciting to see if she can break these records.
They start the men's downhill on February 2nd. They will be skiing all the way until February 18th. And that is when we will see that fun team parallel slalom.
Shireen: Next category, we move on to: blades. Brenda?
Brenda: Okay. So, I have short track speed skating, which is–
Amira: There's Black people in this event! [laughter]
Jessica: There are!
Amira: I mean, this and bobsledding is all we got, okay? So…
Brenda: Well, skeleton.
Amira: Yes. The sleds, all of them.
Brenda: It's actually really fun to watch. It's very jostly, but there are 10 events. And it is again, a gender difference that is really stupid and arbitrary, that the relay for men is 5000 meters and the relay for women is 3000 meters. Just shrug those shoulders. No idea why. These events have traditionally been dominated by South Korea, by China. Canada has a good number of medals. It's, you know, a very cold country place. There's US, Russia, throw Italy in there, I guess. But for the most part, we see South Korea and China, Canada, really at the top of all of the predictions.
I want to talk about just one thing though, and not about anything else, which is that Shim Suk-hee, who is the two time gold medalist, won’t be there, even though she's 24. She had joined the national team at 15 in South Korea. She was a record holder for 10 years – is still the record holder in the 1000 meters! And in 2019, after Pyeongchang, she came forward with one of the most horrific cases of sexual, emotional assault by the national team coach that I have ever heard. And it is just harrowing. It was considered very important in the Me Too movement in South Korea.
Just like two months ago, she was banned by the South Korean federation for “disgraceful conduct” because text messages where she made fun of her teammates in a personal chat between her and another friend from four years ago were leaked. So fucked up! It's so incredibly fucked up that I just want to root for everybody else. Her fellow athletes have not spoken out in solidarity. You can see the kind of federation they have. I don't know that I would expect them to. But yeah, so, we won't see the best in the world at these Olympics, and her ban is so obviously retribution.
Shireen: Lindsay. Speed skating?
Lindsay: That is infuriating, Brenda. I'm kind of shaking after hearing that. So, speed skating is obviously in the same family, but it's not on the short track. It's on the longer oval. You go two at a time for all events, except for the mass start where, well, that's self-explanatory. [laughter] We don’t need to…But it's a lot more like the track than like a free for all in short track. This has been the most successful US winter sport in history. But since 2010, it's been pretty much a drought. And there's been a lot of allegations of mismanagement and abuse and just terrible planning. The skaters in the US have not felt taken care of in speed skating, but it looks like things are back on track.
I don't know if you'll remember the 2014 Games, the drama with the suits, whether or not the suits were as good as they were supposed to be, and then they hadn't trained in the right conditions at training camp. Anyways, I was writing about the Winter Olympics for Bleacher Report at the time. So, I got all into that. But anyways, there are three really big medal hopes for the United States. Brittany Bowe, ranked number one in the world in the 1000 meters, the gold medal favorite, and she really needs an Olympic singles medal to cap her legendary career. Joey Mantia is the number one in the world in the 1500 meters, and also a three time world champion in mass start.
And then Erin Jackson, former Burn It All Down guest, she is the number one ranked skater in 500 meters. She's had such a successful four years after just switching from inline to speed skating on ice soon before the Pyeongchang Olympics. She's now the favorite, but she stumbled in qualifiers at the US Olympic trials, and it ended up being that she didn't qualify for the team. She finished behind Brittany Bowe and another athlete, but Brittany Bowe gave up her position in the 500 meters to Erin Jackson because Erin Jackson is that big of a medal favorite. But, because good things happen to good people, because of how the quotas worked out, Brittany Bowe now actually gets to skate in the 500 meters as well. So, that's good news. We'll be cheering them on.
One other person I wanted to note: at 49, Claudia Pechstein of Germany will be the oldest woman to compete at the Winter Olympics, and the second athlete and only woman to compete in eight. She qualified in the mass start. So, we'll be rooting her on, because that’s...That’s incredible. [laughs]
Shireen: Just want to start by saying: ice hockey. We've had a lot of Americana on this episode because, you know, understandably, four of my beloved co-hosts are American. Let's shine, folks. Ice hockey! The USA versus Canada is arguably the most hyped rivalry in women's sports. WoHo technically starts before the Olympics with games commencing on the third. While Canada are the current reigning world champions, the USA are the gold medalists from Pyeongchang. They beat Canada in an absolutely heartbreaking, devastating win in OT–
Lindsay: Thrilling, incredible, enthralling! [laughter] Amazing!
Shireen: I brought my own script, obviously. Finland won the bronze. But just wanted to include that I had the pleasure of interviewing Monique and Jocelyne Lamoureux on March 4th, 2021. And they're the American legends who retired soon after. But, I just want to say this: there’s only two groups in ice hockey. It's going to be a really intense, wonderful competition. Group A is USA, Canada, Finland, the Russian Olympic Committee, Switzerland. Group B is Japan, Czech Republic, Sweden, Denmark, and China. Now, some of you all are like, China? China actually has a pretty burgeoning women's hockey league that was expanded in offseason from the CWHL. We had players playing over there. I think it's also important to talk about how very recently, and a lot of people didn't know this, Canada did beat the United States off the stick of Marie-Philip Poulin in overtime to win us the world championship.
And I will just keep repeating this, because right now I have the mic. Anyway, so men’s. Let's move on to men’s. I mean, honestly, men's hockey…You know, there's so much going on there all the time. But in Pyeongchang, I will say, the Olympic athletes from Russia won gold against Germany in OT, and Canada won bronze. So, both gold medals from Pyeongchang were in OT. The NHLers are not going to the Olympics this year, in what was essentially a controversial decision, and boiled down to which sports mafia was protecting their money the most. And the NHL won there.
So, for the men, Group A is Canada, US, Germany, and China. So now China are the least likely to be decimated, because the NHLers are not actually going. Group B is Russian Olympic Committee, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Denmark. Group C is Finland, Sweden, Slovakia, and Latvia. Of course, top contenders are always Russia, US, Canada, Sweden. I'm excited for this. I'm excited for all the hockey, and you will hear and see me commenting in CBC studios over the Olympics. So, look for that. And to bring us home, Dr. Amira Rose Davis and the figure skating.
Amira: Yeah. Figure skating is obviously one of the most watched and beloved events at the Winter Olympics, and it consists of the women's skating program, both long and short form, as well as the men’s ice dance, pair skating, and now the team event. Now, the team event is one of the efforts to bring gender parity into the Olympics. And so it features basically a selection of a man, a woman, and a partner. And they do a short program and then it's like all wrapped up together and then they get to do a longer free skate program. The top teams move on. A lot of what I have my eye on is what we could see historically go down in terms of actual tricks and jumps thrown in competition.
On the men's side, of course, you have two time reigning Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu from Japan, who is attempting to be a three time Olympic champion, and one of the best figure skaters ever. He is also vying to land a quad axel – that is four and a half revolutions in midair and then landing. He has attempted this before, but he fell on the landing. So it was downgraded to a triple axel. So, this is why it's so important. If you don't stick the landing, they will undercut your rotations, which is why it's so hard to fully land a quad axel because you actually have to stick it. He has a rivalry going on with American Nathan Chen, who didn't have a great trials, who fell and still won handily. He is really the only gold medalist option on the United States of America side. And he of course had a disappointing finish in Pyeongchang. And so a lot of eyes will be on the two of them.
The other fun thing of course about Yuzuru is that the things thrown on the arena after he skates are huge Winnie the Pooh dolls, the Japanese version of Winnie the Pooh dolls. And the IOC, because there are no fun losers, won't allow for him to bring his big character doll and like put it with him in the skate corner. But a lot of people are still sneaking in these Winnie the Pooh dolls to throw after his program. And hopefully he lands that quad axel. And then we can just have a rain of Winnie the Poohs in celebration. [Jessica laughs]
But on the women's side, probably we're going to see the first official quad jump, which is four rotations. It has been attempted twice before. And I know that we all think about Surya Bonaly for her backflip, but actually the trick that she spent a lot of her career working towards was this quad jump. And she's actually said that she thought this was much more difficult than flipping backwards and landing in skates. She gave some quotes this month; she was very excited to see that some people were going to be attempting this. She said, “It's good that finally, after 30 years, somebody says we need to step it up and upgrade. You can't just keep doing triples and the same jump over for the rest of eternity.”
She was like, I was really ahead of my time! Triple? I could do that with my eyes closed. And so you have had people like Miki Ando from Japan attempt it, but she fell, so it was graded down to a triple. And men are allowed to do them in program, but the women, one of the reasons we haven't seen it attempted so much is because it's outlawed from their short skate program and they only can do it in the free skate. But there are two, maybe three Russian skaters who all could attempt to throw this quad.
Something that you'll notice, this question about age. We know figure skating, like gymnastics, is one of those sports that skews really, really young, whether we're talking about like Tara Lipinski when she was 15 and stuff like that. But even now, you have teenagers represented everywhere. In fact, the United States team is actually much older than most of the field. Mariah Bell is now officially the oldest American figure skater to go to the Olympics. How old is she, you might ask? That would be the very old age of 25. 22 year old Karen Chen joins her. Both of them are older than every gold medalist ever since 1932. [Jessica laughs] And there's only one person before 1932.
In that vein, the people all vying for medals are really coming out of Japan and Russia, and they’re all 15, 16, 17. We have had some COVID pull-outs on the men's side, in the Russian Federation, something to keep our eye on. Actually, I read one report that was like, the Americans don't really stand statistically to be able to medal in damn near anything if you're not Nathan Chen – except COVID is the variable here! So maybe they will actually make the medal stand if enough people get sick. Which is like not the best take, but also I think points to how far ahead of the field a lot of the Russian and Japanese pair skaters are. So if you want to watch people just push athletic ability to the max and do so in sparkles with music, then figure skating of course remains the event for you. And I, of course, will be watching for Winnie the Pooh rainstorms to see if Hanyu can pull it off.
Shireen: Thank you for that. I just also wanted to mention, on the figure skating, I spoke with Asher Hill last month for an interview in Burn It All Down, and he shed light onto what would happen at the Olympics. Just want to point back to that.
What we're watching this week! We are watching the opening ceremonies that are on Friday, February 4th, although curling starts tomorrow, February 2nd. And of course the women's hockey games on February 3rd, freestyle skiing as well starts Tuesday, February 3rd. Also watching the Women's Asian Cup in India, which is totally hype. The semifinals on February 3rd, the finals on February 6th. We're also watching the Africa Cup of Nations, AFCON. The final is Sunday, February 6th. We also have a really fun quiz, which AFCON teams should you root for? The quiz can be found on our social media. It’s been posted to Instagram and been tweeted out. Some of the teams may be out by the time you take this, but it's still fun to do anyway.
That is it for this episode of Burn It All Down. This special episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our web and social media wizard. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network. Follow Burn It All Down on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Listen, subscribe and rate the show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play and TuneIn. For show links and transcripts, check out our website, burnitalldownpod.com. You'll also find the link to our merch at our Bonfire store. And thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you to our patrons. Your support means the world. If you want to become a sustaining donor to our show, visit patreon.com/burnitalldown. Burn on and not out, and keep warm.