Episode 237: Olympic-sized Sexism at the Beijing Winter Games
In this episode Lindsay Gibbs and Jessica Luther discuss big headlines from week one of the Beijing Winter Olympics. But first, they share their favorite Super Bowl LVI moments. Then, they discuss the some of the hottest topics of the 2022 Winter Games so far, including Eileen Gu, Mikaela Shiffrin and Kamila Valieva, and the ways that the commentary around these athletes is sexist, limiting and often times, just bizarre. They also discuss ski jumper uniform disqualifications, why women's hockey should stay in the Olympics and if athletes are using their platforms to speak to geopolitical issues.
Following this discussion, you'll hear a preview of Lindsay's interview with Julie Kliegman, Chief Copy Editor at Sports Illustrated about trans swimmer Lia Thomas's fight to compete. Then, the team burns the worst of the sports this week in The Burn Pile. Next, they lift up those making sports better, including Torchbearer of the Week, Natalie Geisenberg, a 34 year old German luger who is now the most decorated Olympic luge athlete, with six gold medals and one bronze. They 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
Lindsay: Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to Burn It All Down, the podcast that you all both want and need in your lives. I'm Lindsay Gibbs, the host today. Joining me is the one and only Jessica Luther. Hey, Jess.
Jessica: Hi, Linz.
Lindsay: So, I think our love of the Olympics has scared the rest of our co-hosts away for this week, [laughter] but that's fine. I think for like the past however long Jess and I have known each other, which is a long time at this point, our text threads during the Olympics are a bit…A bit much. A bit excessive. [Jess laughs] So it makes sense that we're here for this today. We're just going to go through today a few kind of hot topics from the first week of the Olympic Games in Beijing. A lot of them revolve around sexism, which will be a surprise to no one.
Jessica: Surprise!
Lindsay: But first of all, there was this thing called the Super Bowl. Jess, did you have like a favorite Super Bowl commercial or moment?
Jessica: So, the Super Bowl was good. Just overall, as a production. Like, the game was good. Halftime was amazing. I am 41 years old – I was the demographic that they were going for with the halftime show! And it completely worked for me. Mary J Blige’s boots deserve a shout out here. I do want to stay, on the commercial front, I could listen to Jennifer Coolidge ask, “Can I eats it?” like 1 million times, like, I think the Uber Eats commercial is weird and off-putting, except for Jennifer Coolidge saying, “Can I eats it?” That is just chef's kiss. Of course, the Michelob ULTRA with Nneka, Alex Morgan, and Serena walking in like a total badass at the end of that commercial. And my other favorite one was the Joneses with Leslie Jones, Rashida Jones and Tommy Lee Jones driving…Uh oh. Some kind of truck? It didn't work, I don't know what company it was!
Lindsay: I LOVE IT! [laughter] I know, but I'm not going to tell you, because this is better. This is better.
Jessica: But I sure did love those Joneses! [laughs]
Lindsay: That was really good. And it's now the Jonases.
Jessica: That was cute.
Lindsay: It was oddly a kind of feminist Super Bowl, like, for the Super Bowl. You had Billie Jean King doing the coin flip. Throughout, you had like the big…It’s always like a big sitcom or drama, getting all the promos and all the ratings. But this time, because it was the Olympics, it was Elana Meyers Taylor and Kaillie Humphries, and the monobob getting all these promos. So, we saw women's sports get the Super Bowl treatment, which was–
Jessica: Elana yelling, “Monobob!”
Lindsay: Monobob! It was so good. And that was really cool. And then we had the wonderful moment where they showed Alex Morgan and her husband, and did not identify her husband, even though he's like a famous soccer star too. [laughs] So I'm just going to count that as feminism and as a win. [Jessica laughs] And so, these are the moments that I kind of enjoy. I love the halftime show. Like you said, everyone is old and I love it. As a 35 year old, I was also the exact demographic. It actually led to a nostalgic group text with some of my high school friends, because we remembered going out and all the songs.
Jessica: My experience was my 13 year old saying, “Who is Eminem?”
Lindsay: [laughs] Oh, god!
Jessica: So, [laughs] the opposite kind of…We felt very old.
Lindsay: I was gonna say, that makes you want to like walk directly into a nursing home. Back to the Olympics. Like I said, we're just going to go through some kind of hot topics that have gotten our text thread bouncing this week. So first, this now seems like it happened 200 years ago, but it was the beginning of the week. It was Eileen Gu, freestyle skier who competes in halfpipe, slopestyle and big air. I talked about her a little bit on our previous show.
Born in San Francisco. Her mother's from China. She's competed for China since 2019. She's only 18 years old. She won gold in big air, and then she has two more events coming up: slopestyle, which might have happened, depending on the weather, by the time you all have listened to this, and also halfpipe. It was really cool to see her live up to the hype and win gold and really live up to that moment. But the coverage of her was a little icky? [laughs] I don’t know how else to put it!
Jessica: Just like super weird. It just feels weird to hear them talk about her.
Lindsay: Yeah. I mean, so, on one hand, they’re like fawning over her. And by they, I mean it's usually these older men talking about her story. And it's like, a lot of model minority, I feel like, you know? I mean, it's her life, but they're leaning into these model minority stereotypes. They're saying her SAT score, they're talking about how she also plays on the piano and–
Jessica: She’s going to Stanford, but she deferred a year. I know all about it!
Lindsay: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Jessica: Which is amazing!
Lindsay: Oh, and she's also an actual model, you know, she's very conventionally attractive, has done lots of modeling. But then to up the ickiness factor, there's this talk about who she chose to represent. And Claire McCaskill, former Democratic senator from Missouri, literally tweeted, “I don't get it. And never will. I think it is wrong for an American to compete for China. China is [sic] represses free speech, is well-known for human rights violations. Did she abandon her US citizenship or not? (China does not have dual citizenship.) Ugh.” That’s literally how she ended the tweet! [laughter] And then right after that, followed up with a tweet that said, “Sorry for typo,” which, I just…You tweet that, and you're sorry for a typo? Anyways. Jess, how are you feeling about the coverage of Eileen Gu?
Jessica: Yeah, well, I mean, I tweeted that I thought it was very weird that I know her actual SAT score. [Lindsay laughs] To which I got a bunch of people who were like, “But it's such a good score,” or “You don't understand that she's the child of a Chinese woman and she's an immigrant of Asian-American family and…” I guess, but these are like two white dudes talking about her. So it just doesn't feel like it's her mother up there talking about her, which would maybe be different. But I think she's really complicated. I think part of what's hard about her is it's hard to know how to talk about her. I feel weird right now trying to figure out how to talk about her, because she has faced a ton of criticism for representing China and the fact that she and her mother will not talk about China at all.
So, when John Branch…He has a great profile. I feel like I'm going to talk about John a lot. He's in a lot of good coverage at the New York Times. Her mom refused to talk on the record because he was going to ask about China. And so he put a paragraph in there about it. She refuses, like in the interview, will not answer any questions about politics and China. And I think…I don't know how I feel about that. Like, I don't think she should have to, necessarily. At the same time, you know, it's rough. There’s a lot happening in that country, and she doesn't want to discuss it. And then at the same time, Claire McCaskill's out here saying that.
And I will just say, we just had the Super Bowl in Los Angeles, a mini mega event that is really like a preview for what's going to happen when the Olympics come to LA. And part of what happened is that customs and border protection, ICE, secret service, FBI, other federal and state level security agencies that joined. LAPD in a spectacular performance of security theater in Los Angeles, as NOlympics LA put it, right? Like, we have issues in this country. It's not genocide and I don't want to act like it's the same thing, but the idea that you can just boil this down to like “one country good, one country bad” also seems unfair to put on an 18 year old who…Like, her mother is from China. She goes to China all the time, speaks Mandarin. I don't know. I don't know. She's complicated.
Lindsay: It's very weird. It's very weird in sports, the way we do nationality in sports. [laughs]
Jessica: Yes! The nationalism of it.
Lindsay: It's weird. And it's like, the thing that can't be spoken of, but there's money. And I mean, it seems like she grew up in a wealthy family. But like, representing China is going to open up a lot of money for her, right? Like, that is a big money market.
Jessica: Yeah. Already has.
Lindsay: Lots of money, right? You know, we live in this world and that's part of it. And I don't necessarily ever look down on anyone for making money where they can, because it just is what it is. But also, she does have a lot of privilege, and it seems like she's getting exceptions to a lot of rules that China has for the rest of its citizens in order for them to get the glory of her competing. And she's not necessarily grappling with that publicly. And would it be nice for her to? I think yes. But I don't have any right answers here either, except like, I just maybe wish people would just calm down a little bit. Maybe take a breath. I don’t know. [laughs]
Jessica: Yes. Calm down and take a breath. Yes.
Lindsay: And I'll be rooting for her in her next events, for sure, because she's 18 and she's really good. And that's fun. I don't know. So, another kind of story on the kind of media coverage of women front is Mikaela Shiffrin. She's been a huge story the first week – not for the reasons we thought she would. Obviously she came in here, you know, most successful skier really ever, already, like, with the most…You know, she's only 26, already with the most world cups, already three Olympic medals, supposed to kind of win everything she competed in this year. And instead, on the slalom and giant slalom, two of her best events, she skied out, which means she high up in the race missed a gate, and that was it, because you only get this one chance and that's it, which is just exceedingly cruel. [laughs] I don’t know. Just like, no margin for error.
But you know, the media was in shock. There was a lot of I think comparisons to Simone Biles or different situations with both being the face of the games and unable to compete to their top ability. Mikaela, after skiing out in her second event, went over to the side and just kind of sat there for a long time. And the race continued. But NBC didn't show us the race continuing. They just for like, through multiple commercial periods–
Jessica: Like 30 minutes! I don't know. It was long.
Lindsay: It was wild. Just showed her sitting there. Jess, what were your thoughts, and also, how do you think Mikaela has kind of handled all of this?
Jessica: Yeah, I think that coverage of Mikaela with the slalom where she sat on the side and someone eventually came and sat with her, she was clearly very upset. That was her event. That was her event. She was supposed to get a gold medal in the slalom. And it was really frustrating, I will say. Like, it felt weird. It felt like we were all creepers watching her in this really sad, difficult moment. NBC clearly had no backup plan. Like, talk about the nationalism of coverage. Like, they had put all their eggs in the Mikaela basket and they didn't know what to do after that. And I think the thing that really pissed me off the most is I saw people tweeting all over the place, they thought the race had stopped, that she was blocking the course because of where she was sitting, and they hadn't stopped the race, but NBC was literally not showing it.
And so not only are you getting this intense focus on this person in one of the worst professional moments of their career, but then you get all these people who think she's being selfish and sitting on the course because NBC is doing nothing to correct it. I immediately went over, when I saw this, to Peacock, to the slalom event, and it's happening. But like, NBC just didn't show it. It was really strange. I will say, Mikaela, for her part, phenomenal. Like, she did all the media hits after both races, talked at length. She did a long interview with NBC talking about all this stuff. And I think she's just been incredibly honest, and I don't think we get a lot of that kind of honesty from athletes.
I think it's hard to process even as an individual, alone. And so to see her process it in front of the cameras for all of us… She kept apologizing, as if she owed us something. That part made me really sad. But she was just very honest about how hard this was. After her first race when she skied out, she said to NBC, “This makes me second guess like the last 15 years, everything I thought I knew about my own skiing in slalom and my own racing mentality.” That is a…Whew. That's a lot to give the public. And just credit to her for being so open and vulnerable when she definitely didn't owe us that.
Lindsay: Yeah. And I think it's tricky, right? Because I'm a member of the media. I want athletes to talk to the media, right? I think too often we kind of treat athletes with kid gloves sometimes about, you know, should they or should they not have to approach the media? At the same time, sometimes athletes are going through legit mental health stuff and I don't want to punish them for not speaking to the media, you know what I mean? Like, it's a fine line. And I do fear that Mikaela Shiffrin's vulnerabilities now are going to be used against future athletes who don't speak to the media or aren't as generous with media. “Well, Mikaela Shiffrin did it.” And I don't want that. But it seemed like what helped her process was processing this out loud. Seems like she has a great support system around her. And it was her interview after the super-G, which I think will stick with me for a long time, when she came in ninth but felt really proud of herself for competing and like getting through the race.
And you could tell she felt like, oh, I was afraid I'd lost all my instincts. You know, I'd completely forgotten basically how to ski. That wasn't my best race, but this felt closer to myself. Like, my entire life's work isn't gone in an instant. But she was talking through it and she said something which was, you know, it is failure. It's okay to say that when talking about her first two ski outs. And I think because we just treat failure as something of shame, we often have these girlboss means to like, you know, “It's only failure if you don't get back up again!” Do you know what I mean? Or like, you know, ways of sugarcoating disappointing results. And I just loved that she…Like, it empowered me that she was just like, yeah, I did bad, that was failure, that sucked. I'm still here, I'm still going, and let's call it what it is.
And her Instagram post and Twitter post, it said, “The girl who failed could also fly,” like, that's the top of it. And that's so cool. That's so cool! It's true. And also, just back to NBC real quick, give the audience a little bit more credit. Like, tell us other stories, tell us other things. We can handle it. And no one person is bigger than an event itself, right? Like, we tune into the Olympics not just for these stars. I do understand pushing stars. I get that. But like, to see somebody win, right? So give us a chance to see other people win and see other people achieve the best day of their lives. Jess, can you talk about this next topic on our roundtable, which…
Jessica: This is a journey, everybody. Kamila Valieva, Russian figure skater. She burst onto the scene just four months ago when she competed in her first senior level international competition and then immediately started setting world records for points with her quadruple jumps. In the team competition, she skates for Russia, ROC. She landed two quads during her free skate – the first time anyone in the women's competition has landed a quad at the Olympics, and she did two. So, ROC won the gold medal in the team event on February 7th. I'm giving you that date for a reason. The next day, February 8th, the medal ceremony was supposed to take place for the figure skating team event, but it was mysteriously postponed. A legal issue was happening. News broke that Valieva had failed a doping test. It turned out that on December 25th – so, last year – the Russian anti-doping agency RUSADA took a sample from Valieva to test for doping at the 2022 Russian figure skating championships in St. Petersburg.
But the results for that sample didn't come until February 8th, when a WADA lab in Sweden found trimetazidine in her sample. It’s supposed to help with chest pain due to reduced blood flow to the heart. According to the New York Times, anti-doping experts disagree on whether or not it can actually enhance her performance, which is why it's prohibited, because there are people who think it can provide an unfair advantage in increasing oxygen carrying capacity. So, it could increase your stamina, which would matter when you're doing a long-ass free skate with a bunch of quads in it and you need to be able to sustain that, right?
It's really unclear why there was a six week delay. The Russians are saying COVID in the lab, that like people were sick and they just couldn't get it done in time. And so Valieva was provisionally suspended by RUSADA on February 8th, and then immediately challenged the provisional suspension the next day. And RUSADA lifted it. The international skating union appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, CAS, to put the suspension back in place. CAS though, last night…We're recording Monday morning. So, in the middle of the night here in the US, we found out that they have upheld RUSADA's provisional suspension, and she's going to skate in the women's event starting tonight.
Here's how Washington Post explained CAS's ruling: “Valieva is considered a protected person under the World Anti-Doping Agency's code because she is under 16 years old. She is a 15 year old girl, and the World Anti-Doping code treats such competitors with different standards of evidence and offers no specific guidance for provisional suspensions for them. She would suffer irreparable harm if suspended and then later found innocent. CAS found serious issues of untimely notification, meaning that Valieva did not have time for a full legal process before the Games.” Oh my gosh.
So, the IOC is pissed, and the way we know this is that they said if she medals – which she should, she's a phenomenal skater – they’re not going to do a ceremony. They just won't have a medal ceremony. This will play out over months, whether or not this doping sample actually affects her. It's wild. I don't really know what to do with all of that. The last thing I'll say: her coach, Eteri Tutberidze, she is a problem. She has long been known for being incredibly hard on her skaters. She often shows up to the Olympics with 15 to 17 year olds. They skate the hell out of their programs, they medal, and then they disappear because they cannot maintain the level once they hit the age of 18.
So, I was reading a piece at Yahoo about her, and I just want to read this: “Two of the three women on Tutberidze’s quad squad–” So, this group of 15 to 17 year olds who she's taught to do quads, “–they are nursing unspecified injuries that might be due to over-training. Two others were left behind in Russia because they recently broke bones, preventing them from qualifying for the Games. Another skater, 15 year old Daria Usacheva, in November suffered a hip injury so severe while warming up that she returned to Moscow in a wheelchair and withdrew from further competition.”
I think this matters. We're talking about a 15 year old girl. Her defense is that her grandpa apparently uses this drug and somehow transferred it to her. Okay? We know that that sometimes happens. There's the kissing thing with doping, where they say that their partner used something and they kiss them and somehow they got it in their system. They're saying that she shared a glass of water with her grandpa? Like, something, same glass, and somehow she got this drug in her system. I don't know. It's such a mess. And I expect her to go out there and win a gold medal. Like, I assume she'll be on the podium and it will just continue. And I just feel terrible for everyone involved, except for Tutberidze. It's really sad to me that figure skating still embraces her the way they do.
Lindsay: Yeah. She like just recently won a coach of the year award, which is just staggering. And, you know, part of this just reminds me of years ago when the Chinese gymnasts were coming into the Games at like 12 and 13, right? Underage, and they were falsifying their thing and they were winning all these things because they were doing things that bodies could only do when they were kind of like that young.
Jessica: Prepubescent bodies.
Lindsay: And it's like, this is what they're trying to do. And I think it's a tough thing in women's sports. So, it's been really depressing for me personally to find out more about what's going on behind the scenes in Russian figure skating. Look, I want to see women's figure skating pushed. I wanted to see the quads done and everything in women's figure skating. But if this is the only way to get the quads, is with illegal medications and pushing the body to the point where it's so malnourished and so overworked that it's breaking down at the ages of 16 and 17, then fuck that!
Jessica: Yeah. And I'll just say, like, it's hard for me to watch the NBC coverage of her skating because, I don't know, they don't do the kind of critical assessment of Tutberidze that I would like to hear. And I think that sucks.
Lindsay: Yeah. And I hope that this forces their hand.
Jessica: Me too.
Lindsay: I'm going to be very, very curious to see how NBC…Who, I love Tara and Johnny, actually. I love their commentary. I learned so much by listening to them. They seem so well-educated, but they have not been criticizing. There's been so much gushing over bringing the quads to the women's programs, and I really hope that this is the end of that until we can see it done in a healthy way, which, I hope like we’ve seen Simone Biles in a stronger body as she gets older push gymnastics much further ahead than it was with the 12 year old Chinese gymnasts. And I hope that that's how figure skating will develop, but it's got to be like that, right? Like, there have to be healthy ways. This fucking bullshit cannot continue. And I don't understand how she's able to compete. I don't want her to be punished, but also I don't get it.
Jessica: Yeah, me either. And I'll just say, Tara Lipinski was a teenage gold medalist and apparently had hip surgery, like, still as a teenager, to deal with all the damage to her body. Like, these are people who can really speak to this in figure skating. And I hope that they choose to do that.
Lindsay: Moving on. We could talk about that for the entire episode, but a couple more little hot topics we want to get to. Jess, what's been going on in ski jumping?
Jessica: Ugh. Sexism? [Lindsay laughs] This sport always finds a way to be sexist. It's kind of wild. The Olympic debut for the mixed team competition – we talked about it on our preview – five female competitors were disqualified from the event by officials who said their jumpsuits didn't comply with the rules. These were jumpers from Japan, Austria, Germany, Norway, like, very good jumpers. According to NPR, the disqualified athletes’ jumpsuits were reportedly too large, potentially giving them an unfair advantage as they soared through the air – which, sure. At the same time, some of these women had already competed in these exact suits in the Olympics. It's like, of course this is happening. Ski jumping, what a mess.
Lindsay: And what’s wild is I was reading about it, and apparently there's always been controversies with their outfits because the ski jumpers used to have to have an extra panel sewn into the hips!
Jessica: To be more shapely, right?
Lindsay: Yeah. Like, they said it was so they “fit the women better.” But Sarah Hendrickson, who’s a pioneer in the sport, says they were trying to come up with a way to accentuate our hips and curves a little bit more. And it was this really annoying thing to have to sew in this extra panel. And I mean, look. This mixed event was supposed to be the second event, because men get to compete on more events in ski jumping than women do right now. So this was supposed to be an inclusive moment for the sport because ski jumping just got allowed into the Olympics in 2014 for the women, even though it's been around since the 1920s for the men. And still they've only had one event, compared to the men who get more. So it was just a really dark day for the sport, is what the women said, and just like, what the fuck?
Another what the fuck thing that's been happening is we’re barreling towards a USA-Canada gold medal, and to celebrate that we've got Rosie DiManno over at the Toronto Star writing a fun article, “Why women's hockey doesn't belong in the Olympics.” Look, I love supporting journalism, but I was not going to subscribe to the Star for her troll article, so I can only read you the lead. [laughter] I refuse to do that. I will subscribe to the Star at another time. And she says, “Only two countries at the Beijing Games can play women's hockey at an elite level. That's not good enough. Canadian women have outscored its opposition 23-2 and outshot them 118-44. That's not sports. That's abomination domination.” [laughs] Jess, does women's hockey belong in the Olympics?
Jessica: This is such a ridiculous conversation. It always is. Whenever there's domination within women's sports, we have like endless conversations about whether or not to get rid of women's sports, where we don't do this on the men's side. Like, if this is really about that, then we would get rid of cross country skiing because Norway wins all of them. Germany is dominating luge. Like, at what point are we…How are we making these decisions? I will just say, Courtney Szto, friend of the show, flamethrower. She wrote a piece at Hockey and Society about this, and it's really good. Go read the whole thing.
She makes four good points. The fourth one is the one I want to highlight. She says, “If women’s hockey doesn't belong in the Olympics, where does it belong? There's literally nowhere else right now where women's hockey gets this kind of stage. The fact that there is any development and growth in women's hockey around the world is because of the Olympics, not in spite of it.” So if you are coming out against women's hockey in the Olympics, you are coming out against women's hockey. End of story. That's it.
Lindsay: And here's the thing: people love watching USA-Canada in the Olympics.
Jessica: Yes, they do.
Lindsay: The CBC in Canada, there was a peak audience of 1.3 million watching the first Canada-USA game, which didn't even start til close to midnight on the east coast. And that wasn't a medal round game. [laughs] Like, that wasn't even for a medal!
Jessica: Right. Or elimination!
Lindsay: It was just a round robin prelim. And then for the gold medal game in 2018, which the USA – hey, Shireen! – it was at about 4:00am on the east coast, because I remember I was up watching it, and over 2 million viewers watched it live on NBC at 4:00am. So, people love watching this. It is good for the sport. If you want to argue something, argue for more investment for women's hockey globally, and that's how you grow it. All right, finally, we just want to do a quick geopolitical check-in. You know, there's still a genocide of Uyghur Muslims going on in China throughout these games. We did not expect many athletes to speak up because they could get jailed. So, Jess, have we had any updates here on people speaking up for the Uyghurs?
Jessica: Yeah. Like, we had one. We had Turkish ski jumper Fatih Arda İpcioğlu who put an East Turkestan flag on his skis and lots of people believe that this was in support of the Uyghur people, but he will not actually say that, which makes sense. As Lindsay just said, you can get actually get in trouble in China for that. Perhaps we'll hear more from him once he goes home and is able to talk more about this, but everyone's interpreting that as support for the Uyghurs.
Lindsay: You know, we want to also mention that during the opening ceremonies it's always a big honor to be kind of the final people lighting the actual Olympic torch in the torch relay, and one of the people in this this year was Dinigeer Yilamujiang who is a 20 year old cross-country skier and is a member of the Uyghur minority. NBC, I thought, did a good job handling this, because they specified that the things they were reading were directly from Chinese state media, talking about, you know, quotes from her about how happy she was to be there and quotes from the state of China, about how this was a unifying moment.
But a lot of people, I think correctly, read it as a big kind of middle finger to countries like the United States who had a diplomatic boycott of it because of the treatment of the Uyghur minorities. And she has competed in her races but has not been available to media, been made available to media. And the IOC has…You know, you're supposed to do the mixed zone. You're supposed to talk to reporters after your events. There've been reporters waiting in the cold to talk with her after her events. And IOC has not said anything about it. So, not great.
Jessica: Can I mention one other athlete who actually did, I guess, political stands? A Ukrainian skeleton athlete, Vladyslav Heraskevych, he flashed a small sign that read “NO WAR IN UKRAINE” to the cameras when he finished a run. And he said, “It's my position. Like any normal people, I don't want war. I want peace in my country and I want peace in the world. It's my position. So I fight for that. I fight for peace.” The IOC had to come out and say whether or not he had violated their no politics rule. And they said that in fact advocating for peace does not violate that rule. So, good on that Ukrainian skeleton athlete.
Lindsay: Whew. I agree with that. No war. [laughs] Alright, Jess, let's do a quick lightning round. Some of our favorite moments, a lightning round of joy. What are a few of the moments at this Olympics that have just made you text me exclamation points? [laughs]
Jessica: This is so hard, but I will say, Nathan Chen winning the gold medal. Like, his free skate was great, but really, his short program is one of the most beautiful things. I could just watch it all day long. Nathan, adorable. Chloe Kim, she went down in the pipe. Her first run was spectacular. It was non-dramatic, the half-pipe competition, because she just killed it immediately. But I do want to mention the men's halfpipe, which was maybe one of the most exciting things that I watched. Kaishu Hirano, he set the world record for height in the halfpipe. He went 24 feet above the halfpipe, which means that he was 44 feet roughly in the air. Four stories in the air, on his snowboard! Incredible. And then his brother, Ayumu Hirano, won the men's halfpipe doing a triple cork, which apparently is super, super hard. That was amazing. And just, of course, Elana Meyers Taylor won the silver last night in monobob.
Lindsay: Yay!
Jessica: She was bested by Kaillie Humphries, her teammate. It was just thrilling. Elana had to come from behind to get up to the silver position. And she posted a video this morning of Nico rolling around on the floor with the silver medal. And that is just everything.
Lindsay: Their smile…Oh, that was so cool. For me, Lindsey Jacobellis finally getting her gold medal in snowboard cross, and then again in mixed snowboard cross! Which is like my favorite event now, like, that was just so much fun.
Jessica: It was.
Lindsay: Like, let's have mixed events where we get to see the men cheering on the women as their medals hang in the line, like, always and forever. [laughs] That was just really great. And Erin Jackson winning 500 meter gold. She's the first US woman to win a speed skating gold since Bonnie Blair in '94 and the first Black woman, period, to win an individual medal in speed skating at the Olympics, so, huge deal. And of course that was a great story where her teammate gave up her spot so that she could qualify to even be there for that race, and seeing her teammate, Brittany Bowe on the side, cheering her on, just a little emotional as well!
Jessica: So good. It’s so good! [laughs]
Lindsay: It’s so good! [laughs] Loved ice dancing, always love ice dancing. That was also fun to watch tonight. And I just want to give a shoutout to old people. So, I'm 35, and people older than me never win anything. And so I'm really reveling in this. In the past like 24 hours we've had the oldest Team USA women to ever win a medal: Elana Meyers at 37 years old, and then Lindsey Jacobellis and Kaillie Humphries, both at 36. So, you're telling me there's a chance?
This week I speak for our interview with Julie Kligman, the chief copy editor at Sports Illustrated, about trans swimmer Lia Thomas and the NCAA’s new policies limiting the ability of transgender athletes to compete.
Julie Kliegman: Sports are seen as like lowbrow or frivolous or unimportant. But you know, that couldn't be further from the truth, because as Chris Mosier, you know, a trans athlete and activist himself, told me, these bans are about erasing trans people from everyday life. And so they need to be taken really seriously.
Lindsay: All right, Jess, ready to burn?
Jessica: Let’s do it.
Lindsay: Alright, I'll start. This is a familiar burn, but there's new additions to it. So, this week, Molly Hensley-Clancy, the great Washington Post reporter, unveiled a 25 year history of abuse by former NWSL coach Rory Dames. Of course, Hensley-Clancy’s reporting of Rory Dames’ abuse in the National Women's Soccer League while he was head coach of the Chicago Red Stars, her investigation into that caused Dames to part ways with the team last year. And her latest report says it goes back, like I said, 25 years. She spoke with 14 former youth players who alleged Dames sexually harassed, verbally and emotionally abused them when they were only teenagers. One anonymous source said Dames began grooming her when she was only 14 and then coerced her into a sexual relationship when she turned 18. He used his power within the system in order to be able to keep abusing people.
After the investigation was published, top US women's national team stars did sign a letter speaking out against this, calling for accountability within US Soccer. And of course the owner of the Red Stars came out and admitted – and shocked no one – that he did zero background checks when he hired Rory Dames, but claims that he still should be the owner of the Red Stars. Just would like to throw Rory Dames, the systemic abuse in soccer, particularly in the youth system, right into the burn pile. Burn.
Jess: Burn.
Lindsay: Jess, you’ve got also a familiar face here.
Jessica: Yeah. On February 9th, Marisa Ingemi, an NHL beat reporter covering the Seattle Kraken, tweeted, “On January 28th, I was fired by the Seattle Times without warning. I'm shocked and disappointed, and wish I had more answers. I have much more to say, and hopefully will be back writing soon.” And a followup tweet, she wrote, “I used everything I had to move out here. So Seattle has become my home.” She told Defector, “I just want people to know that I was not warned about this and I didn't do anything wrong. If there was legitimately a problem, I wish they would have told me that. I would have taken it very seriously, and my track record shows that. To this very moment, I do not know what I did to cause being fired. I loved my job and every single day I was the happiest person in the world getting to cover the Kraken, and every day I miss it deeply.”
We all learned of her firing on February 9th because her former boss at the Seattle Times, Paul Barrett, tweeted a job posting for what everyone knew to be her job. The guild that represents many Times staffers, the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild, tweeted about this, noting that Marisa had two weeks until the end of her six month probationary period. She was apparently on the probationary period because she was a new reporter. So the Times didn't actually have to give a reason for firing her. Both Marisa and the Guild have said they don't know what the reason actually is, which seems wild to me. 70 Seattle Times members signed a petition demanding her reinstatement – that did not include Ingemi’s beat partner, Geoff Baker, who put out a long, mealy-mouthed statement on February 12th, basically saying he wouldn't sign the petition because he didn't know why she was fired, which…I guess, dude, sure.
This is all worth burning on its own, but that was actually only part of it. After the news broke about Ingemi, fucking asshole Dave Portnoy who lives in the burn pile, the Barstool dude that Lindsay burned last week for once again being reported as a sex pest, has apparently held a grudge against Marisa for something she wrote about Barstool that was negative, which, like, haven’t we all? He tweeted about her firing, clearly happy about it. There were like little champagne emojis as part of his tweet. Then the site's fucking CEO, Erika Nardini, retweeted Portnoy, and wrote quote, “IMHO, Marisa is one of the forces holding back women's hockey and hockey in general. No one but the old guard is good enough, rarely open to new people, new ideas, new fans, or anything short of absolute ideological perfection. In a nutshell, not inclusive.” The irony. What? Like, what the fuck? [Lindsay laughs] This is one of those, like, you should be inclusive of the bigots too? This isn't a surprise.
Lindsay: The notoriously progressive and new guard, hockey. [laughs]
Jessica: Yeah. I mean, at Seattle Times, Marisa was one of three women on the sports staff, just like, there's nothing progressive here. And certainly not wanting to include Barstool in anything does not make one regressive. It's not a surprise. It's still sucks. Not only does this show again and again and again how aligned Portnoy is with Barstool, just like in general, but Nardini is one of these, like, “you have to be nice to all the women or else you're not a feminist” kind of woman. She loves that kind of shit. But then she took this moment of course to just shit all over Marisa. But we also know that Barstool is no friend to labor. So, in that way, this totally tracks. Barstool just has a very specific ethos and it's a shitty one, and they just keep showing it to us. And it just was garbage that they use this moment around Marisa being fired in this terrible way to go after her.
I just want to make a small note: Amira pointed out to me last week that Nardini will be appearing on a featured panel at South by Southwest here in Austin, titled, Meet the women dominating sports media, with Stephanie McMahon from the WWE. And I just want to say on the record, fuck that. I want to burn all of this. Burn.
Lindsay: Burn! All right. We've got torchbearers this week, and caveat: we're in the Olympics, there's a lot going on! [laughter] Make sure you've got a long, you know…If you light a match with this, make sure it's a long one, or you've got extras. [laughter] Or else you're going to be in trouble. Jess, can you get us started out with some non-Olympic sports category news?
Jessica: So, the Los Angeles Rams, for winning the Super Bowl 23-20 over the Cincinnati Bengals in a very exciting game came down to the last march down the field, Matthew Stafford getting it in end zone. Tennis player Anett Kontaveit, who won the St. Petersburg title by coming back to beat Maria Sakkari at a nearly three hour match! This was Anett’s fourth straight indoor title. And finally, Natasha Cloud, who notched the first Athletes Unlimited triple double with 17 points, 10 rebounds, and 10 assists. It was also the first triple double of the Washington Mystics guard’s career, and she did this while serving as captain of her team. Congratulations, Natasha!
Lindsay: All right, we've got some just good people, good Samaritans, good allies of the week. Wanna first congratulate new England Patriots special teams captain Matthew Slater, who was the 2021 Art Rooney sportsmanship award winner for the NFL. Also wanna just give a shoutout to the more than 300 current and former NCAA Team USA and international swimmers and divers who signed an open letter to the NCAA in support of Lia Thomas, the transgender swimmer’s right to compete on the Penn women's team. And then once again, the US women's national team stars led by Christen Press, who wrote an open letter in support of the women who came forward with allegations of abuse against Rory Dames, and in the letter really called out and held US Soccer's feet to the fire for their failure to act and protect. Jess, got some exciting Black gymnast news? And maybe an excuse for a plug here. [laughs]
Jessica: Yes, this is great news. Fisk University is launching the first women's gymnastics program at an HBCU this fall. This is wonderful. Obviously, I've been working with Amira on American Prodigies season three, which drops next week. There's a trailer out now. So go find it. The first episode drops next week, and I can promise you that we will be covering this at some point during the season.
Lindsay: Yay! All right, we're going to go towards the Olympics right now. All the athletes we mentioned in our last conversation, all torchbearers – Chloe Kim, Nathan Chen, Eileen Gu, Mikaela, Elana, Kaillie, Lindsey Jacobellis, Erin Jackson, literally all the Olympians, like, you're our torchbearers. We're in awe. I do want to highlight kind of a few athletes who've been a little bit under the radar here in the United States. So, wanna give them a shoutout. First of all, Norway's Marte Olsbu Røiseland, who won the 10 kilometer pursuit biathlon on Sunday. This was her third gold medal and fourth overall in the Beijing Games. She's the only woman to one to ever win for biathlon medals at a single Olympics. That sounds exhausting, and incredible. [laughs]
Dutch speed skater Irene Schouten, who won the women's 5000 meter pursuit skating event on Thursday, setting an Olympic record in the process. She's the sixth woman to win gold in both the 3000 meters and 5000 meters in speed skating at an Olympics. Also, another Dutch speed skater, the legendary Ireen Wüst, who won gold in the women's 1500, becoming the first athlete to win an individual gold in five Olympics. And this was her 12th Olympic medal overall and her sixth gold. [laughs] Wow! All right, drumroll, Jess. We gotta be big. Just the two of us.
[drumroll]
All right. Who is our torchbearer the week?
Jessica: Natalie Geisenberger, a 34 year old woman from Germany, cemented her legacy this week, winning women's luge singles in the mixed gender team relay. She's the first female luge athlete to win three straight golden medals in an individual event in the winter Olympics. And with six gold medals and one bronze, she’s the most decorated Olympic luge athlete of all time and officially the greatest female luger of all time. This Olympics has been extra special, as she mentioned after winning women's luge singles,“I'm a five-time Olympic champion, but it is the first time as a mother. It's just great,” said Geisenberger, who took a year off to have her son Leo. “Training was done around my child. I think we did a really pretty good job as a family. To have another gold is just amazing and a very special moment.”
Lindsay: Jess, what's good?
Jessica: Well, I already mentioned American Prodigies, but please everyone go check out the trailer.
Lindsay: Yes!
Jessica: And then subscribe, so you get the first episode next week. It was romcom weekend, so I watched JLo's new romcom Marry Me. And then there's a new Jenny Slate romcom on Amazon Prime called I Want You Back. I liked both of them very, very much, but I will basically…I like almost all the romcoms. And then I just want to mention, we're recording on Valentine's Day. Aaron and I are not big gift givers, but I'm just super proud of the gift that I gave him, which, there's a local baker here in town, and she made these cookie kits around TV shows. And so I got him the Ted Lasso one, which was Roy Kent. There were two cookies and one says, “I KENT get enough of you.” And the other one says, “Oi, I fucking love you.” And that cookie is amazing. So that's what made me very happy, was my own gift to Aaron.
Lindsay: Yay! [laughs] I love you. That's incredible. I gotta admit, this was a week where it was really hard, but I will say, Friday night, I went out with my cousins and it was back down to like 30 degrees in North Carolina today, but it was randomly 60 degrees that day. And we sat outside at a bar with a heated patio and drank beer and there was live music, and it really felt like the first normal day in quite some time. And it's starting to get light a little later and I'm just very ready for winter to be over, and that was a good reminder of why. And so, yeah, that was good. And I don't know, got a lot of women's basketball trips I'm trying to manifest over the next couple months. So, fingers crossed!
All right. This week we're watching obviously the Olympics, obviously Athletes Unlimited, not football, lots of great women's college basketball. So check your local listings for that as well. That's it for this episode of Burn It All Down. This 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, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play and TuneIn. For show links and transcripts, check out our website, burnitalldownpod.com.
You'll also find a link to our merch at our Bonfire store. Still can't get over how cool it is that the store is called “Bonfire.” And thanks to our patrons. Your support literally makes us possible. If you want to become a sustaining donor to our show, for as little as $2 a month – we are not tough to buy stock in! Visit patreon.com/burnitalldown. And, unlike the crypto ads you saw at the Super Bowl, we're not going to scam you. So, patreon.com/burnitalldown. Burn on, not out.