Episode 210 Part II: Tokyo 2020/21 Mega Olympic Preview

The Tokyo 2020/21 Olympics are the Pandemic Games. Even so, over two episodes (210 Part I and II) Burn It All Down will preview EVERY sport with excitement, cynicism, awe and critical thinking. In Part II, Brenda Elsey, Amira Rose Davis and Lindsay Gibbs cover who to watch and what to know about the following events: swimming, track, modern pentathlon, beach volleyball, surfing, wrestling, shooting, fencing, boxing, gymnastics, diving, sport climbing, equestrian, skateboarding, basketball, handball, rugby and indoor volleyball. They also discuss what sport 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

Brenda: Welcome to Burn It All Down, the feminist sports podcast you need. I'm Brenda Elsey and I'm joined today by my wonderful co-hosts, Lindsay Gibbs and Dr. Amira Rose Davis, for part two of our mega-super-giant-ultra-uber-gargantuan Summer Olympics preview, where we try to prep you for a tournament we didn't want to happen, but we are also riveted by. News is coming and coming; it’s been kind of sadly predictable. On the one hand, already people are looking forward to Paris 2024, possibly LA 2028, thinking about what it's like to have these mega events in places with infrastructure, a little different than we see, for example, at the coming 2022 Qatar World Cup. And yet we're right in the middle of a pandemic, and COVID has already compromised these games.

This week tennis player Coco Gauff tested positive, announced she will not be competing. The AP reported former distance runner Tegla Loroupe, the chief mission for the IOC’s refugee Olympic team, many of which will be featured in this episode, has tested positive. And so two people knowledgeable of her condition have already told the Associated Press, and it's unlikely she will be able to go to Japan. The first positive test reportedly of South African men's football players have come from inside the Olympic Village. So, it keeps going just sort of the way that we thought it would, and that's really awful to watch.

For more on our analysis of the politics of having these games at all, see our recent episodes, 208 and 206. But if you search burnitalldownpod.com, you'll be treated to dozens of our episodes and takes on this, as well as interviews with our friends like NOlympics folks and expert professor Dr. Jules Boykoff. So with that all in mind, and heavy hearts, we are still going to press forward, and thinking through what these Olympics might bring for us, what we can still get excited about, and the people that we really want to cheer on. Just like with the first episode, we've broken them into categories. And the first category is: speed demons. So I'm going to start with you, Lindsay. Give us a sense of the aquatics, swimming.

Lindsay: Swimming. So, swimming is going to be a big deal this first week. July 24 through the 31st will be the aquatic swimming, and then I've included open water in here. That's August 4th and 5th. Biggest thing is there three new events in swimming: the 1500 free for women – they decided women could last that long and would not combust. And that means the men get the 800 meter free. And then there's also a 4 x 100 mixed medley relay, the first time there's been a mixed relay in swimming in the Olympics. I love mixed events, period. I'm so excited. Back, breast, fly, and free: two men and two women, and each nation can choose which legs are swum by women and men. Basically, one of the themes of this event is US versus Australia kind of battling for dominance in the pool. That's just an overarching theme to look out for.

No Michael Phelps, no Ryan Lochte this year. So, going to be looking for some new stars – one of those is going to be Kristóf Milák of Hungary. He is the 200 butterfly world record holder. He might break 1 minute and 50 seconds in the 200 meter butterfly, which is an unfathomable record. The only other athlete to even eclipse 1 minute and 52 seconds in the event is Michael Phelps way back in the tech suit era of 2009. So that's just like a big number to be looking for. Even if he can get under 1:51, that would be huge. Caeleb Dressel, the United States, might be the star of these shows. He's a favorite for gold in at least six events. He broke Phelps’ record, winning eight medals at the 2019 world championships in South Korea.

Katie Ledecky, Katie Ledecky, Katie Ledecky: distance queen! Overwhelming favorite to win the 1500 meters. She needs three goals to tie Jenny Thompson atop the list of female Olympic swimming gold medalist. But it is not going to be quite as easy as you think because Ariarne Titmus, a 20 year old from Australia they call the Terminator, has challenged Ledecky in the 200 meter and 400 meter free. Titmus is actually the favorite in both events and also a challenger in the 800 meter free. We're also looking forward to watching 15 old Katie Grimes. Allison Schmidt, fourth Olympics. These are all US people, I'm sorry. Swimming is pretty US-centric here. Breaststroker Lilly King…I don't know if you remember her finger wag from Rio, a little attitude.

And of course we'll be cheering on Simone Manuel in the 50 meters. They are still appealing to get the Soul Cap, which is designed for Black hair, to be able to be used in this Olympics. That appeal is ongoing. We are rooting for that. Just a quick thing about the open water swimming, which will be for triathletes and 10 kilometer open water swimmers. A foul odor has been reported at the swimming venue, [laughs] and raising concerns about elevated levels of dangerous E. coli bacteria, and heavy rain is forecast in Tokyo for July which increases the risk of sewage leakage into the bay. Fox Sports Australia referred to it as 'stinky bay’ and headlines have said that it smells like a toilet. [laughter] Tokyo organizers however have assured everyone that the E. coli levels fall within “agreed limits” on most days, so–

Brenda: Oh my god! [Lindsay laughs]

Amira: Define “most days”!

Brenda: Most weekdays? Most total days? [laughter] Most holidays? 

Amira: Most days ending in ‘y.’ [laughter]

Brenda: Oh my god. Holy…

Lindsay: So, that’s swimming. [laughs]

Brenda: I think that's really important to know. Thank you for drawing our attention to what should be a bigger story. Um…

Lindsay: Perhaps! [laughter]

Brenda: Thanks, Linz. So, moving on with our speed demons. Amira, tell us about track quote-unquote “athletics.”

Amira: Athletics. I know, track and field is one of the most popular events of course of the Olympic games. I'll be talking about the track side. One of the things that we've seen in the wake of the conversations not only around Sha’carri but also for instance Brianna McNeil, who had to talk very openly about her abortion to try to overturn disciplinary actions that she was receiving, that was unsuccessful. And in the wake of all these things many people online, especially Black people, were saying, all right, I'm out, I'm not watching the Olympic games.

One athlete who ran to Twitter to say, “Wait, no, still watch! We need your support!” is Gabby Thomas. And I think Gabby Thomas might be one of my favorite people to keep an eye on. She's a Western Mass athlete, Harvard grad. She’s now doing her masters in public health at the University of Texas. So we basically have the same geographies. She studied neurobiology and global health, and she really wants to be an epidemiologist. She looks at racial disparities and health. And for her, she was like, oh, running's just my side thing. Well, her side thing saw her post the second fastest time that we've seen in history in the 200! And she is looking well poised to threaten that record. And that really might be on the women's side at least the story of the sprinting events, which is we might see many records be threatened.

So of course, if we're talking about records falling, your eye on is Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce from Jamaica. She has run the fastest time ever, besides from Flo Jo, in the 100 meters. She ran a 10.63 recently, which is wild. She's probably the best chance for that record to fall. She's also a mother now, and she is vying for that rare third golden medal in these events on the women's side. She didn't compete in 2016 of course, to have her baby, but she won the medal in 2008 and 2012. And as much as Jamaica has had success in track and field, she was actually the first Jamaican woman to win gold in the hundred meters. So she is definitely one to watch there.

So along those lines of records to watch, I want to briefly take you over to a longer distance. I'm talking about the 10,000 meters. But the 10k is super popular, and here we have already seen in the lead up to this event the world record fall, not once but twice in the same week! And so we had Ethiopia's Letesenbet Gidey taking the world record down to a 29:01.03, which works out to be about 4:41 as a mile split. Just two days earlier a Dutch runner who's also Ethiopian born, Sifan Hassan, had gotten that down to 29:06.82. So we're now in the low 29s in the 10k, and that is something to keep your eye on as we go into the Olympics.

The other thing to know about track is they actually have this really interesting mix of people who are fresh out of college, who are young phenoms, and returners. So as a team we're sending 13 returning medalists from the 2016 games, but we're also seeing up and comer folks who are, like, Athing Mu in the 800 meters, Noah Lyles and Erriyon Knighton, who are both coming out of not only college programs, but Noah Lyles turned heads when he was the fastest high schooler. This is the Sydney McLaughlin story, that she was a youth phenom, and a lot of people expect them to burn out. But what we're seeing at these games, that they're actually on the team and really in position to fulfill that kind of idea of track prodigy. So there's both veteran presence and these really exciting folks coming up.

Really fast while I still have you here, there's just three other people I want to make sure are on your radar. One is Quanera Hayes, who you might have seen in the picture with Allyson Felix, both of them had their kids hugging right after they made the team in the 400. She actually took first place at the US trials. She's a bit overshadowed by Felix because she's running the same event. Hayes, also a mom, had her kid right there, and you hadn't heard anything about it until that moment. And the other reason why I really want to shout her out, she did her entire career at a Division II HBCU, Livingstone College. She took time off in 2018, 2019 to have her son, and she's also on the comeback into the Olympics.

Along those lines, Aliphine Tuliamuk, you might have heard of, who was waging a battle with the IOC to be able to bring her nursing child to the Tokyo games, had her daughter, Zoe, just a few months ago; recently won the ability to take her daughter Zoe with her to the Tokyo games, and will be competing there in the marathon.

And last but not least, I also wanted to shout out Japanese racewalker, Yusuke Suzuki, who is the reigning world champion in the men's 50 kilometer walk and the current world record holder in the men's 20 kilometer walk. He did not go to Rio because he was injured, and so it's a really sweet comeback story to have him competing again in his home nation, and he's competing for gold at the 50 kilometer distance. So if you're into racewalking or you want a hometown hero to root for, Yusuke Suzuki is the one who I would keep my eye on.

If you're trying to make a viewing plan for track at the Olympics, know this: they start July 30th, and it goes to August 8th. You have many days of trials, which are going to be super fun to watch, many heats. But if you're looking for the finals where you're going to see medal events, the first one you're going to see is July 31st in the women's hundred meter – that's the first big one that happens. On Wednesday, August 4th, you have the 400 meter hurdle finals. Hopefully you'll see our girl Anna Cockrell, who was on our special episode, (Black Women Athletes Take Action), a friend of the show. On the 6th you also have the 400 meter finals and both relay finals. So if you're going to tune in any day, that might be the day to watch. 

Brenda: Whew. Take a breath, Amira. I take a bow. Also, just as a runner myself who is incredibly slow, look as Amira said for the marathon records to fall this go around in both men's and women’s. People have definite eyes on them. Also fuck the IOC forever for battling an infant child and their nursing mother. [laughs] Wow. Just when you think you haven't heard it all, but buckle in, flame throwers, because we're not done. I get to do the modern pentathlon, which is an OG event of the games created by the founder of the modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin. This is fencing, 200 meters of freestyle swimming, 15 equestrian show jumps, pistol shooting, and a 3,200 meter run – for those of us in systems with irrational measurements, that's like a two mile.

So, the big story is it's a total crapshoot, according to those in the know. Some of the top competitors aren't back to defend their titles, due to babies (yay) and doping (boo). There’s British Kate French, who was fifth at Rio, but looks really good this year in different meets. And the favorite is Michelle Gulyás of Hungary. On the men's side, French duo Valentin Belaud and Valentin Prades are top ranked, as is Ádám Marosi of Hungary. He had captured his second world title just last month. And for your outside candidates who may win, keep a close watch on Jun Woong-tae of South Korea, and Britain's Joe Choong, who earned a silver at worlds in 2019.

Hungary does appear really prominently in this sport, and it would be great to see some of these athletes get to the platform and give some support to the LGBTQ community there after horrible legislation was passed in Hungary's parliament last month, prohibiting the dissemination of education about alternative sexualities (quote unquote) in their school system, in addition to some other restrictions. The gold medal moments: women's final on August 6th and men's final on August 7th. Okay. We don't do a drum roll now to move on, but maybe the sound of a ball on the beach? [Brenda makes a whoosh sound effect]

Amira: What is that noise?

Brenda: I don’t know. How do you make sand into noise? 

Amira: Like… [inscrutable onomatopoeias]

Brenda: Splat! Ksssshhhh. Whoosh. 

Lindsay: Crashing of the waves.

Brenda: Lindsay, take me out of this by explaining beach volleyball at this Olympics, please.

Lindsay: Okay. Beach volleyball. I love it, it's fun to watch. The two biggest storylines I'm looking at for beach volleyball are, on the women's side, American April Ross is trying to finally get her gold medal. This time she is teaming with Alix Klineman. She's come up short in the last two Olympics. She's the elder on this team, 39 years old, and it would be great to see her finally get that gold. But yeah, I'm going to be rooting on April Ross and Alix Klineman for the women. And for the men side, two people I want you to pay attention to are Qatar's Cherif Younousse you news and Ahmed Tijan, they're looking to become the first Middle Eastern team to medal in Olympic volleyball history. They have really surged onto the stage. They are a medal favorite. I mean, they are not a long shot at all. I think they've won the most on tour all year long. And so I'm really rooting for Cherif and Ahmed to make it to the medal stand.

You might've seen a story this past week about Norway and the bikinis and refusing to wear them on the beach. First of all, this was not an Olympic team. This was Norway's beach handball team, not beach volleyball team, a different federation. And I just think that's important to note. So there were these headlines that were like, “Team USA wearing bikinis in Olympic prep, despite Norway refusing to.” And I was like, that was at the European handball championships, and we're here in Tokyo! But of course I think uniforms for beach volleyball for women will continue to be a talking point. They're very revealing. But there are a lot of women who, because this is what they practiced in and this is what they've trained in, this is what they know, this is what they feel the most comfortable playing in.

So as always, it is a more complex issue than any headline will refrain, and I think it just comes down to let's not force women what to do with their bodies in any way, shape or form. Wear as much material as you like, or as little as you like and feel comfortable in. But yeah, I'm excited for beach volleyball. It's always fun to watch her in the Olympics, and those are the two teams I'm rooting for. 

Brenda: Excellent. And now we move on to a new sport that we have in the Olympics. Amira, tell us about surfing. 

Amira: That's right. Surfing makes its Olympic debut now in 2021, but this is not some new push to include it in the Olympics. Actually, we can go all the way back to 1912 during the summer games in Stockholm, when surfing pioneer Duke Kahanamoku started lobbying for surfing to be included in the games. Kahanamoku of course, a huge swimming medalist, but also the godfather of modern surfing. You'll remember this, of course, if you revisit Shireen's interview with Bonnie Tsui on colonization and the history of surfing back in episode 71, but really in 1995 to present day you have the International Surfing Association really go ham to try to include this sport in the games. And so here we are.

I bring up and start with Duke because this is an inclusion of mixed feeling for a lot of native Hawaiians. On one hand, exciting that surfing, a sport that they originated and invented, has made it to the Olympic games. On the other hand, feeling like it's been whitewashed along the way. On the World Surfing League, which is the dominant competition for surfing, Hawaiians actually compete under the Hawaiian flag. And so at the Olympic games, they will not be competing under Hawaiian flag. They will be rolled into the US flag. Currently two members of the four competing for the US surfing team, John John Florence and Carissa Moore – Moore being the only member of the roster who's actually native Hawaiian – one of the conversations that’s happened is this push to have them be able to compete and have Hawaiians compete under the Hawaiian flag, à la Puerto Rico, falling into this kind of nebulous colonized category. The IOC didn't consider this at all.

Moore said, “The hurt and wounds go back really far. I usually compete under the Hawaii flag all year with the World Surfing League. For me, that's not a huge focus right now. I think I can represent both, even if I'm not wearing the flag on my sleeve, I'm wearing it in my heart.” The organizers of the surfing competition of course have said that they are planning to do a commemoration or emphasize the connection to Hawaii. The head of the surfing competition said, “It's impossible to detach Hawaiianness from surfing. The ocean doesn't care about war, governments. Surfing is that way, too.” Despite all of these pronouncements, the family of Duke Kahanamoku have not been contacted and talked about how they feel like that's very performative.

But I also wanted to quickly leave you with an understanding of how this is even going to work. So, there's one serving event for men and one for women. As we've documented on the show, there's a long fight for equal pay for equal waves for the women. So, currently the surfing event will be one for men, one for women. The initial rounds will be 30 minute heats featuring four or five surfers at the same time. They have to use this surfing etiquette about who has the right of way on this wave and all this stuff. They can ride up to 25 waves and their two highest scoring ones will be counted.

If you're watching for underdogs, don't root for the US or Australia. The Brazilians have been on the rise, and Japan, Peru, and France, round out those who have traditionally dominated the sport. This is going to take place over four days. Currently the gold medal matches are scheduled for July 27th, 8:30pm Eastern, and then 9:15pm Eastern. I say all this to say, all of those times are subject to change, because the thing about surfing is you cannot control the elements, and so they will basically wait and see how the surf is to move both of those initial heats around or even the gold medal matches.

Brenda: Wow. That sounds kind of like a nightmare to judge and govern going forward, but exciting to watch, if terrifying. All right, I get the next one. And I'm going to talk a little bit about wrestling. There are two types of wrestling at the Olympics, freestyle and Greco-Roman, and wrestling has undergone a really dramatic few years. There's constant threats that it should be dropped since the mid 2010s – and this is like sort of perpetual, even though it's one of the nine original sports from 1896, because it doesn't really have any recognizable stars in the US or in Western Europe, and also because of their slow adoption of gender equity. Top athletes went on hunger strikes in reaction to this, and even a couple returned their medals. So, they were gratified to see it back in competition. It does seem a fascinating and murky world. One of the top athletes, a gold medalist, is a Russian politician who is on the run and currently wanted for murder.

Lindsay: What!? [laughs]

Brenda: Yeah. Yeah. It's just–

Amira: That took a turn.

Lindsay: Yeah! [laughs]

Brenda: Yeah. That's not just one, like…Start to just Google gold medals in wrestling, and the whole thing looks a lot like, you know, a worse version of horse racing. I mean basically, end of story, it's going to be in the Olympics. And more or less, the rules in scoring of Greco-Roman and freestyle are the same. The biggest difference is that in Greco-Roman wrestling, holds below the waist are prohibited, and neither wrestler is allowed to use his or her legs actively to perform any offensive or defensive actions. So, they rely much more on their upper bodies to gain advantage, compared to freestyle wrestling. Like the WWE – and I'm just going to say, title holder Bad Bunny – the core objective of Greco-Roman wrestling is to pin both of the opponent’s shoulders to the mat, or to accumulate more points.

So anyway, for those of you that haven't seen it, it looks really hard. There's six weight categories, but still more medal opportunities for men because there's not women's Greco-Roman. The Japanese and Chinese pretty much dominate the women's game. And so there's a few exceptions, or if you're looking for underdogs, Canada, Iran, US. In men's wrestling, it's very international. I mean, that's one of the fascinating things about it. Especially strong though in Eastern Europe, former Soviet union, which really pushed that as part of public education during the Cold War. So, kind of interesting legacies that are always there with us. You just can't shake off history. So, that's it for wrestling. Now, the next category is: weapons.

[sound effect of person snarling]

Amira: [laughs] I just felt like it was aggressive! 

Brenda: It's definitely aggressive. I mean, your voice is a weapon, Amira. That’s right.

Lindsay: We’re all awake. We’re all awake.

Brenda: Okay. And I get to do: shooting. You know, it's funny, because you might think with my politics and my general view on the world that I dislike shooting, but I actually really like skeet shooting. Do you too, Linz? Is this something that you do?

Lindsay: Well, I’m southern, so there have been many family events that have involved skeet shooting afterwards. A lot of my family's hunters and stuff, so it's the only thing that they can get me to participate in, you know? Like my cousins and stuff. So…

Brenda: Amira, how do you feel about shooting, skeet shooting? 

Amira: I don't know which one that is.

Brenda: It's like when you yell, “pull!” and then that thing goes up in the air. 

Amira: Yeah, no, I haven't done that. I've done rifles in camp growing up and then like regular gun shit.

Brenda: Okay. So…Regular gun shit… [laughs]

Lindsay: We can interpret that in so many ways. [laughs]

Amira: Like, you know, in a range.

Brenda: No, I know what you mean. [laughs] But here's the thing. I can't believe the skill with which these people actually are able to hit targets. So, I enjoy skeet shooting. I will say that I've done it my whole life. I am no good, and the biggest problem I have is that I can't shut up. And that means when you tell something to pull and the target goes in the air, I'm the most annoying person in the entire range, because I'm like, hey, hey, did I tell you about this one thing…? And everybody is just like, shh! So anyway, it features three types of guns: rifle, pistol, and shotgun. In the rifle and pistol events, athletes shoot at stationary targets at indoor shooting ranges, but shotgun is outdoors and the shooters have to aim at targets hurled into the air, which is more like the skeet shooting that I'm talking about. Again, one of the first Olympic events, 1896. The founder of the modern Olympics, not friend of the show.  Baron Pierre de Coubertin, also was a French pistol champion. So, this is the heart of the Olympics. It should tell you a lot.

And so the first medal will be one in shooting. That'll be on day one of the games, the 24th of July, even though some events start earlier. The medal will be given in the women's 10 meter air rifle. So, they're shooting over a distance of 10 meters, and that could be won by US student athlete, University of Kentucky's Mary Tucker. 41 year old Korean Jong-oh Jin is the only individual four time Olympic champion in shooting. He is the most successful male ever in the event, and he is very favored to continue to win many golds, but men's 50 meter pistol is his thing. Shooting has a lot of different countries that could do well though. Germany is a perennial favorite; Russia and China, particularly in the team events.

I would like to feature Luna Solomon. She qualified from team refugee. She's an Eritrean refugee who fled her country on foot and arrived from Eritrea to Switzerland in 2015. She's also an athlete mother. While she was living in Lausanne she met Niccolo Campriani, who is a three time Olympic champion sport shooter from Italy. He basically offered her a chance to learn shooting, beginning in 2015, 2016, and she has qualified from team refugee. So Luna, we are super rooting for you. Lindsay, in other weapon sports, can you tell us about fencing? 

Lindsay: Let's start with a fun fact. I want to give a little history, because I'm here with historians. I take that very seriously when I’m on with the doctors. So in Stockholm, 1912, France boycotted the entire fencing competition after its proposal to include the upper arm as an attackable surface was rejected. Man! But then the Italians refused to participate in the épée events after their federations proposal to lengthen the weapon’s blade was denied. So much drama in 1912. So, this is a sport that the Europeans traditionally dominated. This year however, look for South Korea. It could be a breakthrough event.

As a new thing, there are team events for men and women in all three fencing disciplines for the first time. Until now only two men's and two women's disciplines had team events at the Olympics on a rotating system. And then we actually have a lot of fencers we want to shout out. First of all, brother-sister duo, Khalil and Kamali Thompson. Kamali, who's an alternate, is Amira's college friend and a doctor doing her ortho residency at their alma mater, Temple University. Are they both competing for the US, Amira? 

Amira: They are, but Kamali is an alternate because she missed the last event, which was canceled because of COVID. 

Lindsay: Okay. Well, fingers crossed. Then we also have American Race Imboden, who you might know because he took a knee atop the medal stand at the 2019 Pan-American Games to protest racism, lack of gun control, and mistreatment of immigrants, and a president who spreads hate. And so, you know, we want to send our support to him and his girlfriend, a French fencer, Ysaora Thibus, and she is a former Burn It All Down guest in episode 157. So if you go back and listen to that, we have a great conversation about gender equity in fencing and a lot of different things. So, got some Burn It All Down connections all around in the fencing world!

Brenda: That is so exciting. I hope he gets some BIAD medals. 

Lindsay: Yes!

Brenda: Okay. Next up: boxing. So boxing, like wrestling, has found itself mired in controversy. In this sense, boxing is really unique because most Olympic sports rely on international governing bodies to deal with qualifications. Sometimes that's bad, sometimes that's good. We talk about that a lot. But the judging was considered so poor and controversial by everyone at the 2016 Olympics that actually there is a special commission that was formed to totally sideline the international boxing association. And this is going to be really interesting to see how this goes. It's organized, the boxing competition, in weight classes. The number of weight classes has changed over the years, but there's currently eight for men and five for women. The US, then Cuba, and then Great Britain top medal counts. I just quickly want to give another shout out to team refugee Wessam Salamana, a Syrian refugee who will fight in the lightweight division. He is a 35 year old father who's been training in Germany for the last few years and has high hopes of competing, though he is moving a weight class.

And just without a doubt, Mary Kom, I don't know if you've heard of her, is one of the most fascinating athletes on the planet. She was born in a poor region of India, agricultural family, at a very young age decided she wanted to be a boxer, and left and found a local coach to take her on. She’s won a medal at all eight of the AIBA world boxing championships since its inception for women in 2001. She's risen to number one in world rankings for a flyweight, competed in London 2012 and won a bronze there. And she's the first Indian woman to win a gold medal at the Asian Games and at the Commonwealth Games. But she's a trailblazer in more than one way. She is a mother of three children. She runs a sports club in her native Manipur region of India, training youngsters to box for free. And she is a member of the Indian upper house of parliament. 

Lindsay: Whoa! [laughs]

Brenda: She has announced this will be her last Olympics – because there is an age limitation on boxers! So, you cannot be older than 40. She has said she's not going to fight that, and this will be our last chance to see her at an Olympics The next category is: acrobatics. Amira, take on gymnastics, please. 

Amira: Well, I will attempt to. [Brenda laughs] 

Lindsay: We gave Amira the tiny category. [laughter] 

Amira: The tiny one! Exactly. Well, so, by now you've already heard that Kara Eaker, a member of the US gymnastics team, an alternate, tested positive for COVID, and now the entire US team is in isolation. This of course, as breaking news, terrified everybody who I think is trained to this, to see Simone Biles, the greatest of all time, add to her medal count. And so if you're looking at gymnastics, that’s probably what you're tuning in to watch. And Sunisa Lee and Jordan Chiles, and the rest of the team as well. The men's finals on the 26th, the women's finals on July 27th. The men's all around finals on the 28th, with the women's all around final on the 29th. And then for the next three days you'll have individual medals. So you get a solid week there of the gymnastics that you probably are most familiar with.

I just want to take the rest of the time to talk about the other two parts of the gymnastic acrobatic category that get a lot less attention, and that is rhythmic gymnastics. The Try Guys recently posted a video to the Olympic Channel, trying their hand at this. I highly recommend it. But I also want to let Eugene from The Try Guys best sum up what rhythmic gymnastics is, because this is exactly how I feel about the chaos that is rhythmic gymnastics.

Eugene Lee Yang: You’re telling me some sports god said, “Gymnastics, isn't hard enough. You know what we're going to do? We're gonna make them dancers, and also throw crazy objects.”

Amira: That's exactly how I feel, because the staple of rhythmic gymnastics is throwing those crazy objects. That includes ribbons, balls, clubs and hoops. The one part of rhythmic gymnastics that I really find fascinating however is that you have the individual categories like we're used to, but you also have the team portion on the floor. This is like a synchronized routine. Think of a synchronized floor routine, but they're throwing balls and clubs to each other and also flipping and dancing. They're judged on their artistry, on how well they do the movements, on not dropping the shit that's thrown their way. It's only one of two events in the Olympics that are women-only events, the other being synchronized swimming.

This is the first time in the 37 years that the United States has sent anybody in rhythmic gymnastics that they're fielding a full team. What that means is you have Laura Zeng, who is the most decorated rhythmic gymnast in the United States, leading this team. You have individual competitors, but you also have for only the third time that the US is also sending a rhythmic group, and they will be competing in the group portion of rhythmic gymnastics. So, if you like gymnastics but you want to like crank it up a notch, watch rhythmic gymnastics on the 6th through the 8th of August. The other people to watch, if you're watching that, are the Russian twins, Dina, and Arina, who are projected to sweep everything, and my Gemini self absolutely loves these twins for the simple fact that they were asked in an interview to describe each other, and the first twin said, “She's an angel.” And the second one said, “She's the devil.” But together they become a force that are expected to go one two in almost every category that they're entered in.

So, the last thing to watch for in gymnastics that you may have overlooked is trampoline, which is exactly what it sounds like, is jumping very high on the trampoline and doing all sorts of flips and shit. The US trampoline team is like two people. I'm pretty sure it's one man and one woman. It's Nicole Ahsinger and Aliaksei Shostak. They both train together at a gym in Missouri. And if you want to check out them on trampoline, that is a very short competition with trials lasting on the 30th and finals on the 31st. 

Brenda: Whew. That is amazing. Okay, Linz. Diving.

Lindsay: First of all, diving is to me one of the most terrifying sports to watch. I am convinced they're going to hit their head on the diving board [laughs] every single time! Every single time I'm convinced they're just going to hit their head. How do they not hit their head? I do not know. Anyways, I think China is by far the favorite country to dominate this sport. They won seven of eight gold medals back in 2016 and took 12 of 13 events at the 2019 world championships. Via the AP, Chen Yuxi is a 15 year old from China. She is the favorite on the 10 meter platform. She won the world title two years ago when she was 13 years old. I took a long detour in research watching her dives, and I highly, highly recommend it.

Another big duel to look forward to in diving is between the current world champion, China's Yang Jian, and a face that might be familiar to many of you, four time Olympian Tom Daley of Great Britain, who has been in the Olympics since I think he was 15 years old. This is likely his last Olympics, and so hopefully he can get back on the medal stand and maybe even win that elusive gold. And look, friends, I'm here to serve. Now, I was on Instagram looking at these divers, and I just want to point out a diver who caught my eye: Yona Knight-Wisdom, a Jamaican diver – which, you do not see many Jamaican divers – and in 2016 in Rio, he became the first male Olympic diver to represent any Caribbean island. He competes in the 3 meter springboard event and, you know, I think team Burn It All Down is rooting for him. It is a whitewashed sport, and he is fabulous.

Also in diving, we are rooting for Jennifer Abel. I know Shireen would kill me if I did not give her a shout out. She is the most decorated female diver in Canadian history, the record tying eight world medals, and back in London she became the first woman of color in the world of diving to win a medal at the Olympics. It was a bronze. So, this is now her third Olympics, so we will be shouting on her as well, because if there's anything more ridiculous than diving, it's synchronized diving – how do they do that?! I will never, ever know. 

Brenda: And we got another new sport, in climbing.

Amira: Yes. Sport climbing is another one of the six new sports at the games, and it is chaos. It is already going to be my favorite, I can tell you, and it's probably going to be your favorite too. Part of the reason why it is chaos is because of how they decided to structure it for the Olympic games. So, it's going to feature three combined disciplines: speed climbing, which involves two athletes competing as fast as they can to climb a route on a 15 meter high wall, the goal of course to be the first one to the top. And then you whittle it down from there. If you want to know about how fast these Olympians scale this wall, for the men about five to six seconds, and women's events are usually won in seven to eight seconds.

The second discipline of sport climbing is lead climbing, where you try to climb as high as you can within six minutes. If they reach the exact same height, then the person who got to that height the fastest is declared the winner. And then the last part is bouldering, which is basically fixed routes on a four meter high wall and they try to scale it in specified times. These routes are called boulder problems. So, one of the reasons why I noted that this was chaos was because for climbers, they usually do a combination of all three of these things and they don't usually compete in this format. So, this format is very new to the Olympic games. Czech climber, Adam Ondra, who is one of the leaders in the field, was like, listen, we are all new to this. This is going to be completely unpredictable.

If you want somebody to watch, I want to point you to 17 year old, Colin Duffy, who qualified, who's still in high school! And one of the reasons why I love him is because he talks about how he loves math and he's a puzzle solver. And the way that he thinks about scaling these walls, yes you need the physical aspect, but for him, he was like, but you also really need to be good at math and solving puzzles. So Colin Duffy, one to watch. The other person I want to tell you to watch is Brooke Raboutou, who is the daughter of two world cup champion climbers. So, her and Duffy grew up climbing walls together, and so this seems to be just a fun friendship to kind of watch tackle this new format at the Olympic Games.

Brenda: And now, on to the equestrian events. There are three kinds of equestrian events. Dressage is demonstrated through a performance of tests that judges evaluate and there’s scores, so there is an element of subjectivity involved there. Eventing, which people describe as the equestrian triathlon, and jumping, which is jumping. The events are set for the 24th of July through the 7th of August, and there's an individual and a team medal for each of these categories. Men and women just compete together, so I kinda think that that's really interesting to see. And you should know in terms of the horses that Warmbloods are the favorite breed. Hundreds of horses worth a shit ton of money have already been blown in. “They are not simply horses, they’re Olympic horses,” said Takahashi Koji, the administrator of Tokyo's international airport. He said, “It's a really big night for the airport.” End of quote. [Lindsay laughs] I’m really sure it is. [laughs] Hundreds of horses are just arriving.

In any case, lots of attention has been paid to the daughter of Bruce Springsteen, Jessica. The Boss's daughter will compete for the US team. The leading medalist is Isabell Werth of Germany. She has 10 medals altogether, six gold. And Anky van Grunsven, the Netherlands. There's also a really strong showing in Germany, which overall tops the medal ranking, as well as Sweden and France and Canada. Despite what is seemingly just an incredibly high brow and white and imperialist sport, there are a few scheduled to make their Olympic debuts that you might not expect, including Israel, Estonia, Latvia, Singapore, and Sri Lanka. So you can keep your eyes out for those maiden voyages. Okay. Onto…Amira, you're getting all the new stuff.

Amira: I love the new new. 

Brenda: Oh man. It's cool. You get skateboarding!

Amira: I do. So skateboarding, again, another one of these new additions to the Olympic Games. I'm at the Olympics, how it will work, there's going to be two parts of the competition. There's the park version of the competition, which will basically be like an empty skating bowl thing, right? You see that at the park, it's just the skating bowl. [laughs] I don't know what else to call it, but it's that like, a skate park. I just got that connection. I just heard it in my head. Okay. [laughter] Hush. Okay. We're all there together. So, at the skate park portion you have 45 seconds to basically perform tricks. They are graded and you move on, advance from that. The other version of the competition is street skateboarding. In street, the course looks more like, well, a street. It has curves and benches and stairs, and you have 45 seconds to run through it, and you should throw about five tricks.

I know you want to know who to watch for, so I'm going to tell you. A few people who already have huge international followings, and we've seen them in video games like Tony Hawk: US athlete Nyjah Huston, who is one of the world's most popular and decorated skateboarders, a 12 time X Games gold medalist and three time world champion. We will watch him in the street side of the competition. Also super popular, who you might know if you play video games, 28 year old the Leticia Bufoni from Brazil, who is also very decorated, has her own reality show in Brazil, has sprung to fame through her appearance in the ESPN body issue, a massive follower count and has really been one of the kind of torchbearers for women skateboarding in recent years.

Two people you might not have heard of but I really want to put these young women on your radar: Sky Brown, who will be competing for Great Britain. She is also born in Japan, part Japanese. She just turned 13, I'm telling you, probably like last week. So, she is an up and coming star and definitely one to watch. Joining her in the young folks who are phenoms is Misugu Okamoto, who is from Japan. She is 14 and has become one of the most dominant skaters in the field. She will be on the park side of the competition. She's won all five of the international competitions that she competed in prior to the pandemic. So if you want to watch it, the prelims for the men is on July 24th. The women's the next day on the 25th. And that's the street competition. And for the park competition, the women's prelims and final are August 3rd and the men's are August 4th. Skateboarding, welcome to the Olympic Games.

Brenda: All right. Linz, you get basketball.

Lindsay: I love it. So, first of all, we've got a few Burn It All Down episodes to refer you to. We've got Cheryl Reeve, who is he assistant coach of this team, on episode 103. Elizabeth Williams, who might be on Team Nigeria [laughs] – we really aren’t sure what's going on with Team Nigeria. Who knows! Maybe by the time you're hearing this the tournament started and we'll know. But anyway, she's on episode 68 as well as a special episode from March of 2020. And then Kia Nurse, Shireen has had on twice, episode 70 and episode 152. She’ll be playing for Canada. And United States, favored in both the men's and women's traditional basketball tournaments, but both have struggled, looked a little less than a given during their lead up tournaments. Both teams lost to Australia in exhibitions. The men also lost to Nigeria, and the women also lost to team WNBA in the All Star game.

Nevertheless, the men are the favorite going for number four gold medals in a row. Although also watch out for Spain, Australia, and Nigeria as a wild card. I'm also keeping out for Slovenia with Luka Dončić. I think they could be fun. The women are going for the seventh gold in a row. Do not dare call the US soccer team the most dominant women's team in the world, or dominant team in the world. It is the basketball team. But once again, it's not a given this year. Liz Cambage withdrew from the tournament, but even without her there very scrappy and very talented. Serbia could get on the medal stand. Also look out for Belgium with Emma Meesseman, who is the WNBA finals MVP.

Canada going for their first Olympic medal behind Kia Nurse, Bridget Carleton, Natalie Achonwa, and crew. You also got Gabby Williams on Team France, and Nigeria as we mentioned, they might have…They’ll at least have one Ogwumike sister in Erica. They might have Chiney and they might have Nneka as well. They might have Elizabeth Williams, but they might not. All this has been left to the last minute–

Amira: Let them play! Let them play! 

Lindsay: We want them to play, but I do not have time to get into the specifics of this now.

Amira: It's a mess, is the short version. 

Lindsay: Google is your friend. So now I really want to get into 3x3, which is a new thing. And I'm going to go to friend of the pod Ava Wallace, who wrote about this for the Washington Post. This is a different basketball tournament, 3x3. Teams will compete in 10 minute first to 21 point games, where flashy shooters are rewarded and play will move at breakneck speed in part because the court is smaller. It’s, you know, to attract younger viewers. If neither team gets to 21 points after 10 minutes, whoever's ahead wins. If it goes to overtime, it's still the first to 21 points. Or I think the first to score two points. The court is just 11 meters by 15 meters. It's about half the size of a traditional court. Buckets scored inside the arc are worth one point, buckets scored outside are worth two. I don't know. I've never seen this. 12 second shot clocks. It seems like pure chaos. But we love it. Why not?

USA men did not qualify. No NBA players were kind of allowed in the competition here. So, that just happened. Apparently the men's favorites are Poland, Serbia and Latvia, according to USA Today medal predictions. So, the US women's team is Kelsey Plum, Stephanie Dolson, Allisha Gray, and Jackie Young – Jackie on the last minute substitution for Katie Lou Samuelson, who just had to withdraw because of COVID, which is really sad. Keep a look out for teams France and China. And a fun fact: Mongolia’s women's squad qualified, and this is the first time that Mongolia has qualified to compete in a team sport in the summer Olympics. So we love that. 

Brenda: Awesome. Moving on to other balls, there's handball, often called the coolest sport you've never seen. Women's handball has only been around in the Olympics since 1976. Denmark, South Korea and Norway have been dominant. In the men's game France, the former Soviet Union and now former Soviet countries, and Croatia have topped the medal counts. 12 teams of seven will compete. Having watched highlights and some live games, I will say – and please don't be mad at me – it's like soccer or football with hands, a smaller ball and a smaller net. I guess there are probably going to be, you know, some handball fanatics out there that beg to differ, and that's cool. You can come on, you know, and clarify that for me. But that's the way it looks from, you know, a lay person's perspective here. It's pretty exciting. It's high scoring, scores are into the like thirties and forties. So if you've complained that football isn't high scoring enough, this is a much smaller court.

Some exciting things so far as I can tell is in the men's tournament Japan may come home with the medal, and that would be great, hometown. But also who I really want to medal are Egypt. This Egyptian team is really cool. If you start reading about them and Googling them, they're kind of like household names, like Mo Salah for football in Egypt. And they're really hoping to become the first ever non-European team to claim a medal in this sport. So it looks really cool and exciting for them. They just barely lost at the worlds, so it looks absolutely possible and within reach. For rugby, take it on, Amira.

Amira: Awesome. So this is the second time we're going to see rugby sevens at the Olympic competition. In line with what my co-hosts have talked about, IOC’s efforts to make the Olympics cool and young and hip, rugby sevens is absolutely in that vein. Rugby sevens is, well, with seven people, which is of course half of the normal 15 people on a rugby pitch. Also, instead of playing longer halves they're only seven minutes. And so it is intense. It is chaotic, as you can imagine, but it's also really engaging and a lot of fun. A few huge matchups to keep our eye on that will be really exciting: right off the bat, you have host nation Japan hosting the Olympic champions Fiji. If you remember, in 2016, Fiji's win was their first ever gold medal for the nation, it was a huge deal. Traditional powerhouses like Australia and New Zealand, it was kind of shocking that they didn't do it. It was very much an underdog story. But they also did it by beating Britain 43 to 7, so take that, colonizers!

Brenda: Ha!

Amira: Rock on, Fiji! It was very exciting. So, Fiji on the men's side, gold medal champions playing host nation Japan, on July 26th. We also will get New Zealand and Australia in action together on the 27th, a huge rivalry on the Olympic stage. It will be really exciting. In terms of the women, host nation Japan also gets the women’s gold medalists, Australia, on the 31st. That will also be something to look forward to. The other cool thing about rugby sevens this year is that they flipped the order, so the women's final will be on in prime time.

I just recently talked to Naya Tapper, who's a Black woman on the US sevens rugby side, who talked to me a little bit about how the sport has responded to the last few years and particularly the last year in terms of talking about Black lives mattering, and representation within rugby. And one of the things that Naya talked to me about was how important this representation was, not just for the sport, but Naya specifically pointed to the kind of younger emerging generation of Black rugby stars, both in the United States and globally, and what this representation could mean for the younger generation knowing that rugby is an accessible sport, a welcoming sport for them, and taking a sport that's popular globally and figuring out if they continue to grow it on the US side of things. So, best wishes to you Naya and to all the rugby seven competitors heading into the Olympics. It's definitely on my watch list. 

Brenda: And Lindsay, you are going to take us home with volleyball. 

Lindsay: All right. So this is indoor hard court, indoor volleyball, and not the beach variety. USA Today has told me that the US women are a favorite for gold, followed by China and Brazil. And the US women have actually never won gold in indoor volleyball, which I was surprised by. They won a few silvers, but that would be really great to get them that gold medal. The US men have won a couple of times. They're not medal favorites. This year you want to pay attention to Poland, Brazil of course, and France on the men's side. We want to give a shoutout to Chiaka Ogbogu, who was a Burn It All Down guest on March 2020, on a special episode. Amira actually caught up with Chiaka lately for a Slate piece, and you can hear that now. 

Chiaka Ogbogu: And it's just like I said, this wide range of emotions, because obviously I’m so excited to have been selected to compete in this Olympic game. But I feel like there has to be an asterisk attached to it because this is not a normal circumstance, not a normal Olympic game, but it's hard, right? Because on one hand, I think about all of the athletes who've dedicated and sacrificed so much to get to this point. But on the other hand, you think about it's life, and it really is life and death. We're dealing with this pandemic. So it feels a little selfish to want this, in this moment. So that's where the wide range of emotions comes in, right? 

Lindsay: But I just kind of want to wrap us home by saying that women's volleyball debuted in the Olympics at the Tokyo games in 1964, and I'm going to read you this article…And first of all, I’d just like to say this is the official name, this is not my white woman's spin on this. This is the official name that they went by, that the documentary is called. But the name of this Japanese women's team that won gold in the 1964 Olympics, the debut, were called the Oriental Witches. And I'm going to read just the lead for this, which is 57 years on. It still remains the most watched sporting event in Japanese television history. That's ridiculous!

“On the 23rd of October, 1964, a nation tuned in to witness pan beat the Soviet Union in straight sets for the women's volleyball gold medal of the Tokyo ’64 games. People went home early from work, the streets emptied. Everyone was glued to the set. According to the public broadcaster, ratings at one point in the match surpassed 80% of the population. They would forever be known in Japan…Cast a spell on that country that remains unbreakable to this day.” The Japanese women have a chance to medal again, I think they're ranked fifth in the world, and so we will be rooting for them. We have a couple of links in the show notes to watch a little short documentary on them and to read the full article because I was captivated. 

Brenda: Witches. Let’s go, witches! 

Lindsay: Please don’t cancel me. [laughs] 

Brenda: I would just like witches to be a more common mascot, you know? So, my beautiful co-hosts, what would you like to see included as a sport that hasn't before? Lindsay.

Lindsay: I would like dogs to get Olympic medals, we need dog shows in the Olympics, period. [laughter]

Brenda: That's amazing. I think you've explained it all. You’ve set it up. Okay. Amira?

Amira: I literally think Olympic sports should be made of everything I'm good at. So, anytime I do something that's hard, like number of things I carry from the car in one trip. [Brenda laughs] Make it an Olympic sport. Securing interviews for a piece, make it an Olympic sport. But if I really had my magic wand, I would make something called extreme escape room, which is a combination of like the floor is lava and escape room, that has agility and brain power. It would be so exciting and I would of course medal in that.

Brenda: That would be amazing. I totally agree. I would like a pentathlon of yard work, because I feel like it would give me motivation to keep doing it and not complaining. So maybe we could have, you know, basic mowing racing, obviously. You could have leaf blowing, you could have snow blowing, you could have raking. Competitive gardening is actually a thing – if you ever go to Oxford, they consider that a sport. That's hilarious. Those would be mine. And the next one I want to ask you both really quickly, is what would you want a medal in? If you could medal in anything. Linz?

Lindsay: I have two thoughts. My first is: whatever the first one is, so that I can just enjoy the rest of the Olympics as a fan. [laughter]

Brenda: Anxiety management.

Lindsay: I’m there anyways, so my anxiety is done, and as long as it's not like I have to like go back to the US and do a lot of press or whatever, I'm going to do my press on site.

Brenda: It's the 10 meter air rifle, just so you know. That’s the first medal in this Olympics.

Lindsay: But then my second one is the opposite, which is whatever…There’s always one event that's the last event, and that medal ceremony is at the closing ceremony. And I mean, come on! That's cool, to be…That’s cool. 

Brenda: That is really cool. That sounds really fun. Amira?

Amira: All the things, because, you know, I like recognition. [laughter] But I mean, I guess like a team event or whatever, like soccer you know, that was my sport. But like, you know, you get to have those memories as a team, like a BIAD event. I would love to have the memories of doing something together. But like, okay, I also need a sprinkle of individual glory. So, a sport that combines that. And now that I'm saying it, I realized that's clearly gymnastics, which is not the sport I actually want a medal in. Like, I just want a sprinkle of individual glory. So I kind of am feeling like maybe what it would be is I’d be a two sport athlete. So we'd do soccer and get like the team camaraderie, and then like an individual event that I can just like have my sprinkle of individual glory and have it both ways. But just like whatever gives me recognition I'm cool for. But like, not bronze medals. I don't like that.

Lindsay: That checks out. That all checks out. [laughs]

Brenda: You know, why settle for an Olympic medal when you can get two, in different sports?

Amira: Or three, or four.

Brenda: Okay. Alright, Jim Thorpe, I see you over there. [Amira laughs] Besides last time, I said pinball. Also soccer or archery, because that feels really cool. 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 Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play and TuneIn. For show links and transcripts, check out our website, burnitalldownpod.com. I'm not kidding when I say we have a million episodes on this Olympics.

You’ll also find a link to our merch at our Bonfire store. And thank you, thank you, thank you to our patrons. Your support means the world. We think about you every week and the fact that it enables us to do this show. If you want to become a sustaining donor to our show, visit patreon.com/burnitalldown. I'm Brenda Elsey, on behalf of Burn It All Down, especially my co-hosts Lindsay Gibbs and Dr. Amira Rose Davis: burn on, and not out.

Shelby Weldon