¶ Intro / Opening
Welcome to Good Game with Sarah Spain, where we're reminded yet again not to depend on AI.
I asked chatpt for ten names.
I want to hear them.
Sporty Sisters, game changers here, Hose here, O's here, Hers.
You your hose were.
Here?
Hoes Please I can't.
That's actually the new tagline for the sale right here, Hose power.
Players Coract please us the cold open victory fixes No.
Nothing else matters Alex.
Nothing else matters here, Hoes.
Oh my god, never change, Alex, never change, Oh my god. On today's show, we're going to tell you how we ended up at here Hose. Plus we got Cougar's porta potties and a whole lot of tea to spill. Plus we're hopping, flipping and jumping with blind Landing hosts Ari Sapristine. He'll give you the tips in fact, you need for all the gymnastics apparatus finals this weekend.
It's all coming up right after this. It's Friay, and here's what you need to know today.
First of all, Saturday is Mech's birthday, Meche.
How old are you gonna be? Twenty seven?
Ew?
Super gross? Do you have any plans.
Uh right, now, hang out with my parents and possibly go to the park.
You sound like a twenty seven year old. No, sixty seven or twenty seven.
Look, I've been told I give grandparent energy, so that's fine with me.
That's fine. I've been told.
Also, one of my closest friends said, I look like I eat peas, So I feel like it all tracks a.
Good bege big grandparent energy.
Love it, We love it. Happy birthday me, She have a great weekend. Also, shout out to my parents. Saturday is also my parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary, and they have spent like thirty plus years of it almost working together as well. I truly don't know how they did it. It feels unfathomable to me. Put shout out to fifty years Nancy and Rick Spain. Okay, let's get to the sports. In gymnastics, the all around final took place yesterday, with
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Simone Biles winning gold, Brazil's Rebecca Andrage picking up silver, and Sunny Lee coming in with bronze. We're gonna go deep on gymnastics in just a bit on this show, so you know we're gonna get to all.
The good stuff.
But let's just get a few facts out into the world right now. First, with the gold, Biles becomes the first woman to win two Olympic All around titles since nineteen sixty eight. She also breaks a one hundred and twenty year old record, becoming the first US gymnast to win six Olympic medals. Also, Brazil's Rebecca Andrage whose name is Portuguese and actually is Habeka, but we say Rebecca anyway.
She wins her second straight Olympic All Around silver. And get this, she has torn her acl three times and somehow she came back every time and got better.
That's incredible.
Finally, shout out Sonny Lee, Tokyo gold medalist in this event. She's overcome so much these last three years, including two kidney diseases, to return to the Olympic podium and get that bronze. So shout out to Sunny and shout out to her floor music. I freaking love that music. I think I'm gonna start blasting it to clean the house. Gold medal and the dishes, bitch. We're gonna have more on the gymnastics, plus the upcoming individual apparatus competitions coming
up later in the show. In swimming, the US claimed silver in the four by two hundred meter relay, finishing two point seven eight seconds behind Australia. Katie Ladeki swam the third leg of the relay for the US, and with the silver medal, she becomes the most decorated American
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woman at the Olympics ever. That's right, Ladeki now has thirteen career medals, eight gold for silver and one bronze,
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and she still got the eight hundred meters to swim. Also in the pool, Kate Douglas won the two hundred meter breaststroke, setting an American record and becoming the first US athlete to win Olympic gold in the event since twenty twelve Okay. In soccer, the US women's national team finished as the top team in Group B and they'll face Japan in the quarterfinals at nine am Eastern on Saturday in Paris. You can watch on USA Network, Telemundo,
and Peacock. Japan opened its tournament with a narrow two to one loss to reigning World Cup champion Spain, and then they won their next two games, two to one against Brazil and three to one against Nigeria. Japan's six goals have all come from different players. Meanwhile, for the US, Mele Swanson leads the scoring after pool play with three goals. Trinity Rodman and Sophia Smith have each scored two. The past bodes well for the US in this matchup with Japan.
Entering the twenty twenty four Olympics. The US has a thirty one to one and eight record against Japan. The one loss in those forty matches came in a friendly back in twenty twelve, but worth noting, Japan also won the twenty eleven World Cup Final over the un US and penalties, which technically goes down as a draw because of the penalties, but it certainly stands out in the minds of US players and fans as a major tournament match to remember.
Be sure to watch the US nine am on Saturday in hoops.
Sunday at eleven am, Eastern Team USA Basketball takes on Germany in their last game of group play before the quarterfinals. Germany has multiple WNBA players on its roster, including Dallas Wings superstar Satusaboly, who put up thirty three points in our teams win over.
Japan on Thursday.
You can catch USA Basketball on the USA Network and in three x three. The US plays France today at seven am Eastern and then Canada at twelve pm Eastern on USA.
They'll close out pool.
Play on Saturday at one oh five pm Eastern against China. They've had a real rough start to the tournament. They got to perform in those three games to have any chance of advancing. Of the eight teams, only the top six make it to the knockout stage. In volleyball, the US indoor team continues its Olympic gold medal defense with a pool a match against France on Sunday at seven
am Eastern on NBC. After beating defending world champs Serbia in a five set thriller on Wednesday, the US can secure a spot in the quarterfinals with a win on Sunday. Track gets going with a lot of qualifying and preliminary rounds today and Saturday, highlighted by the triple jump final and the race for the world's fastest woman get back. Queen Shaker Richardson, the reigning one hundred meters world champion, is hoping to turn that world title into Olympic gold.
The one hundred meter final is Saturday at three to twenty pm Eastern Sunday slate is highlighted by the high jump final at one fifty Eastern. Finally, since I make the rules around here, quick shout out to a dude, Michael Grady, Cornell class of twenty nineteen, who helped tam Usa snap a sixty four year drought by winning the gold medal in the men's four rowing event at Cornell.
We see no gender.
We're all just big red bears.
Okay.
So there's a ton of talk online about the women's boxing competition, and we're going to get into gender testing and the Olympics in detail next week, but for now, I did want to make a quick note on what's causing all this conversation. Okay, So, two female boxers in these Paris Games were disqualified from the twenty twenty three
World Championships after failing gender eligibility tests. At that event, Algeria's Iman Khalif and Chinese Type a's Lin Uting both won medals in the women's competition, before boxing's then federation, the IBA, announced that they'd failed gender eligibility tests and strip them of their medals. In a statement on Thursday, the IOC said that at the World Championship event, the two athletes were quote victims of a sudden and arbitrary decision by the IBA towards the end of the IBA
World Championships in twenty twenty three. They were suddenly disqualified without any due process unquote. The statement then goes on to say, quote, the current aggression against these two athletes is based entirely on this arbitrary decision, which was taken without any proper procedure, especially considering that these athletes had been competing in top level competition for many years. Lynn has been an elite level amateur boxer for a decade
and Khalif for six years. Both also already fought in the Tokyo Games. The IBA Boxing's federation has long been plagued by corruption scandals. It was suspended from twenty nineteen to twenty twenty three, and then fully banished by the IOC last year. This week, the IOC said that both boxers met criteria to compete in Paris and had been
cleared to fight under the rules for the competition. So on Thursday, Algeria's Khalif won her bout against Italy's Angela Karini when Karini stopped fighting after forty six seconds Karani was punched in the nose and shortly afterwards said she didn't want to fight anymore. According to her coach, the fight sparked discussions, many of them started or spurred on by people on social media with many followers but few facts.
Those with a high profile have a responsibility to get things right, and many are choosing not to do the work to get educated or even it would appear read a single damn story before they went on TV to talk about it, for instance, ESPN's Pat McAfee, who spent five minutes talking about transgender competitors, despite the fact that Mark Adams, the ioc IS chief spokesman, said on Thursday, quote the two fighters were not transgender athletes and should not be described as such.
Adams went on to.
Say, quote everyone competing in the women's category is complying with the competition eligibility rules. We'll get into this more next week, including the long fraught history of gender testing and how athletes with DSDs that stands for differences in sex development have been impacted by both changing regulations and the challenges that arise when sports are categorized in a binary way that human beings simply are not I just want to remind and encourage people to handle these topics
with care. They're tricky and they're tough, and I get that, and it is okay to have opinions about some of these things, but it serves absolutely no one to spread falsehoods or attack without facts.
Thank you.
Moving on, as we continue to debate the best name for our show listeners, I'd like to thank Leah Kennedy for emailing us and reminding us not to rely on AI. Here's Leah quote high Team, good game, first and foremost.
I love this podcast.
It's sports, it's female legends, it's comedy, it's everything. I wanted to try my hand at ideas for squad names, and as a modern gal, I turned to Generative.
AI to help with some ideas.
I laughed out loud at the top suggestion it gave me, and I just had to share winning wenches. This says so much about the problems with jen AI and our internet conversations about women in general.
It sure does, Leah. Okay, so Leah continues, So.
I went back to my own brain and a few suggestions, taking some inspiration from Julie Foudy's Dope Village for Laughter, permitted another favorite podcast and came up with one Good Game Nation, two Spainer's Gamers, three Spain Squad.
Okay, thank you, Leah.
Winning Wenches is literally insane, but your other suggestions are cute.
I'm trying to keep the name about the show and not me, so less.
Spain and more Good Game But Spain Gamers does have a really nice ring to it. So okay, I put together a shortlist of finalists and we're all gonna pick together, probably unless I make this a Chicago election and I stuffed the ballot box vote several times and make sure that my favorite wins.
We'll see.
Okay, drum roll please, Good Game Nation GGN for short gigin gig Giggling Giggles, the Gigglers, the giggles, Good Game Nation. Some form of that breakers as in glass ceiling breakers and game breakers, not to be confused with Olympic breakers, because I know not all of y'all can move like that.
That might be tough.
Spanish Armada goonies for the win slices as an orange slices that you get after a good game.
My little slices. I love saying my little slices. I think you know what my favorite.
Is, but I'm open to the vote.
Okay, we're gonna take a quick break.
Grab your leotard and chock up those hands, because when we come back, we're talking all things gymnastics.
With Ari Saperstein joining us now.
Is the creator of the award winning podcast Blind Landing, a journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, Vox, The New Yorker, and The Advocate. He used to be a chainsaw crew member for the Southeast Conservation Corps, and he's an artist who makes tote bags, cartoons, animated shorts, ceramic bulls and more.
It's Ari Sapristine. What a renaissance man.
I'm trying not to laugh too loud as to make the audio levels go crazy spiking for that's That's That's definitely my favorite intro I've I've ever gotten. You got every side job, side hustle I've ever had in there. So thank you, Sarah, and thanks for having me.
You and my producer Alex can chat about being multifaceted in your in your expressions of art. She's an artist as well, so I was obviously creep on your insta. We're here to talk gymnastics, though, and you've done a
lot of gymnastics reporting for your podcast Blind Landing. I'm wondering when you were watching either the team final or the all around, is there a factor story that popped into your mind, like, Oh, this is making me think of that conversation I had or that fact I learned, or I'm so glad I talked to this person because now I know X as I'm watching this.
Yeah, I think that the number one headline thought that I have had watching gymnastics at the Olympics so far is that we are just seeing a new era of gymnasts that are challenging every presumption that we had historically as lay viewers about gymnastics. We're seeing older gymnasts than we've you know, comparatively than we've seen in an extremely long time. The majority of the US team is returning Olympians. The majority of them are in their twenties. They're the
best team in the world. I think that says a lot about how the sport and the culture of the sport are now benefiting older athletes. We're seeing more athletes of color, We're seeing more expressions out there on the floor of different artistry and different identities. We're seeing a level of difficulty, of course, led by Simone Biles, that just is leaps and bounds from where the sport was fifteen years ago. I always it's impossible to talk about
gymnastics without making a million unintentionalspins and turns ahead. Yeah, exactly, so you know, yeah, it's that's my big headline from what I've been seeing out there at the parischemes.
I've seen it too, and what I've loved is the joy. It used to feel so clenched. Everything felt so tight and clenched, and I've liked how even in the moments where Simona's had a little mistake, she has this smirk that she sends either to coaches or family or teammates on the sideline, almost to say, I'm disappointed, but I'm going to smirk my way through it, and then I'm going to smile because I'm leading this new culture of joy and freedom while performing, which is so much better to watch.
It makes me happier for them.
Let's talk about the joy for a second here, because I just on blind landing had on Olympian Denusia Francis, who is on the board of British gymnastics that's also been going through cultural changes, competed at UCLA Gymnastics, a collegiate team known for their joy She's really been this person that's been a part of a new generation of leaders who are gymnasts that we're competing in a more joyless time ten to fifteen years ago, who've really wanted
to change that. And so it's not just a coincidence or it's not just specific to the US team. It's an international thing and it's a concerted effort led by the generation that competed under a much more joyless time. That's thought, I think the sport doesn't have to be
this way. And so we're also seeing USA Gymnastics now led by former gymnasts who also competed ten fifteen years ago, these people under the Marta Corole era, of course, under the Larry Nasser era, who are coming out of it and saying, yeah, we're going to make the sport safer in terms of physical abuse and sexual abuse, but also this emotional mental health aspect that we need to change
involves this shouldn't have to be so stressful. So walking on eggshells, especially when there's so much pressure already, and so we're seeing Simone out there high fiving and dancing with their teammate Geordan Childs, who's like the poster child for that attitude.
We're seeing it swinking mid event. Yeah, absolutely, how she's loose.
Yeah, so you know, I think you're right to note that that it's It doesn't sound right related obviously to what we're seeing in the field of play, but it really is, because if you're more comfortable, you're gonna perform better.
We've been talking about that across multiple events. We just had runner Nikki Hilts on the show and they talked about how just being fully and transparently themselves helped them run faster, compete better, fight harder at the end of tough races. Like it's just a truth throughout life, across everything. And it's been really really, really, really really fun to watch with this US gymnastics team. Okay, the big ones
sort of are over. We got the team competition out of the way, we got the all around out of the way. Do you have any last minute thoughts on all around you got to get in or should we move on to individual apparatus?
Of course that's top of mind for me because I just cannot believe how exciting and how close this competition was because we saw a gymnast be a true challenge to Simone Biles, who's been undefeated in her senior competition for the past eleven years. This gymnast, hebeca andraje who if Simone Biles wasn't around, we would be treating her like Simone Biles. She is, in my opinion, the second
greatest gymnast who has ever lived. And we saw them go head to head at their physical peaks here and Simone, you know, ended up taking the title and winning her second Olympic all around, but man, the closeness of that race was so thrilling. And then the third place spot was three gymnasts who were all neck and neck right there. So you know, I mean, I think this is going to go down as one of the most exciting all around finals that we've seen in a very, very long time.
I agree, I don't like being nervous for Simone, but when she wins at the end, I'm like, oh, good, competition, that was fun.
That was fun.
I was so nervous for everyone, the whole competition for everyone.
Okay, so we've got the individual apparatus competitions this weekend and on Mondays. So help us be smarter while we're watching them. You got to give us one non American athlete to look for in each apparatus. It can be someone contending for gold or just someone with a great story, just something that will make us smarter. For the vault, bar's beam and floor.
First up vault, it's the shortest event. It's you know, you just do one scale pushing off the vault table. And of course Simone's there. She's got her eponymous skill, the your chinko double pike that is about a point more than almost any other vaults, so that's why she's able to fall potentially and still wins. So whether or not she puts that to her feet will be interesting. She has fallen a couple of times in the past
year on that scale. There's hebec Andreje again. A big theme of this Olympics is the matchup of Simone and Hebeca on multiple circumstances. And Habeca has been working on a new vault, the triple twisting your Chenko, and that would be named after her if she successfully competed it. We'll see if she goes for it. A couple gymnasts have submitted it over the past decade and no one's been able to put it to their feet in competition.
You know, two more things with vault to pay attention to is that Jade Carey for the US is going to be in the vault final and we expect her to be a metal favorite. But at the last Olympics she balked on her final vault and just kind of did a tuck in the air. It seemed to get her steps wrong or something didn't metal. So this is part of this redemption tour. That's the phrase the US
has been saying. And one other thing about the vault final lookout for is a South Korean and a North Korean gymnast qualified with the same score into it, and it's rare that we see North Korean people outside of North Korea, and the Olympics and sports competitions are really one of the circumstances. But it's just kind of fascinating to look at it through that geopolitical ends of foreseeing of course this political undertones out on the field of play.
Yeah, okay, those are awesome.
Give us the bars, the leader on bars far and away. I know I'm saying a lot of hyperbolic titles. Greatest of all time here and there, the unquestionable greatest, uneven bars gymist who has ever lived is gonna win this title if she doesn't make a major mistake, even if she makes a major mistake, as long as she doesn't fall. And that is Khalia Nimore. And this is an athlete with a fascinating story that people should go look up
the details of. But the thirty second recap is she is a French gymnast born in France who was competing for France and had a really contentious relationship with the French Federation. They wanted her to leave her gym train at the national gym. She didn't want to do it. She felt comfortable, again we're talking about what makes athletes feel good training with her coaches and they were being by all accounts, kind of spiteful and not putting her
in to play. And so she switched nations to her dad's country of Algeria, and she's been competing for Algeria for the past year. And what she is doing for not just the nation of Algeria, but African gymnastics for the entire continent by making these finals by just showing up and being the first gymnast to represent Africa, the first gymnast to represent to win a medal for any African nation has just been so incredible. So watch her routine.
And the one other routine I want to say to people is there's another gymnast in the bars final named Becky Downey, who competes for the UK. This is her third Olympics. She's thirty two years old, she's twice the age of some of the other finalists, and she's also a real medal contender. How to score in the team final that would put her on the podium. So those are two gymnasts. I think we all need to keep her eyes.
Only quick aside before we move on. Please, I'm obsessed with watching Olga Corbett's band routines on the bars, and I realized that they look absolutely terrible for your body, but they're also incredibly thrilling to watch.
If Olga Corbett we're.
Competing now based on what we saw in those routines, do you think she would be the best ever? Because I'm struggling to put wrap my head around anyone being better than those band routines.
Olga Corbett was a gymist that was competing in the nineteen seventies who really innovated on the uneven bars, and right around that time in the seventies, gymnastics is at a turning point where it starts to look more like it looks today. But to be honest, what we saw fifty years ago, someone that's like really good at CrossFit could probably do. And now what we're seeing on bars, it is only several people that you know.
So if Olga lived now and we taught her if oga again things based on what we saw all the way back then, she would be crushing I did she.
Did Olga Corbett have the talent, have the preternatural talent too, if she lived in this era, make it far? You know, I think that that is very interesting hypothetical, And I imagine that honestly, any great Olympic champion like Olga Korbett, like not either two nice like Mary.
Lou Rett hashtag team Olga. Okay, let's get to the balance beam.
What you got in the balance beam final. There's a little known gymnast who's just kind of rising onto the scene that people should keep her eye on. Her name is Simone Files. I don't know if it's sort of ringing a bell for you, I think it's be lace belece. Yeah, I'm not quite sure. I haven't heard it, you know, many times in my life. So Simone is a you know,
qualified into the beam finals. The interesting thing about watching Simone at the Olympic Beam Finals is that at the last two games, Rio twenty sixteen Tokyo twenty twenty one, she won bronze in the beam final both times, and the first time it was seen as this disappointment because it was the one gold me that she didn't win at those games, and people kind of like wouldn't mention
it and she felt like ashamed of it. The second time she won the bronze, it was the one eighty opposite because that was the one event that she was able to come back to the Olympics after getting the twisties to do and compete, and so it had this total different meaning to her. I think if she got the bronze a third time, that would kind of feel like amazing in full circle, but I think that we
could very well see her get the gold. So it's fascinating because it's almost like, no matter what color medal she may get it would have such meaning and significance.
And her teammate Sunny Lee back at Olympic Trials, when I was talking to her in the press zone, she was saying that this is really the medal that she would love to win gold on, in particular, that she feels like has been a little underrated in her career, maybe hasn't hit in the most high pressure moments, and she feels like she could possibly do it.
Okay, floor exercise, we.
Got another Simone.
Hebeca matchup.
I mean, the audience is just tired for me saying that again and again and again, but it's just the truth. This is a case where it's definitely Simones to lose. As we saw in the Olympic all around final today, Simone scored one point higher than hebeca on floor. A fall is one point deduction, so it means that the cushion that Simone has going into a floor final is pretty significant. But the routine that I think folks should keep their eye on is another US competitor, Jordan Chiles.
This is someone who I mentioned UCLA Gymnastics before about my co host Dinusia for the last pine landing episode that she went there UCLA gymnastics has been a main collegiate program that has been very big about supporting people who also compete elite at the Olympics and is really known for the dance on floor and the funness of
the routines and the intricacy of the choreography. And so Jordan Chiles on Floor is going to go up last be the last gymnastics routine of the entire Olympics, and it will really be one to watch because it's arguably the most fun floor routine. I've got Beyonce in there. It's really a routine that she's had to push back against some officials that have told her to not use traditionally black music or some of the choreography that she does,
fearing that it won't score well internationally. And she's kind of said, yeah, I don't know, man, I just want to be me out there and kind of gone against the grain to put together this routine that could definitely get her on the metal stand. She finished in third, qualified in third, and we could see her take that metal home.
We love that.
We love it so much and we love that Beyonce sent them all shout outs and then they got to do that opening ceremony video, the talking back and forth with her, which I can only imagine the mind blown situation when they got the call for that.
Ari, thanks so much for the insight.
I'm so much more excited, and I already was very excited to watch all these apps, Barradas Finals. Everybody check out blind landing the podcast. Also some figure skating on there. If you're a figure skating fans, you get gymnastics, figure skating, all the good stuff.
Maybe is even some chainsaw talk.
Thank you, Ari, Thanks so much for having me really appreciate it.
Time to pay the bills, time to make the donuts. When we come back, we find out who looked around and found out Welcome back. Okay, So you heard me and Ari talking about the culture change in gymnastics, particularly
a shift after the Marta and Bella Corola years. Well, a gymnast from those days Tokyo Olympia, Mikaela Skinner criticized the current gymnastics squad, and while we're totally empathetic to how our years in the toxicity and pressure of the Corolis might influence her opinion, we're just never here for unnecessarily taking shots at fellow athletes.
Because when you do that, you might end up here. That's right, It's time.
For figger around and find out Friday around and ooh.
Buddy, this one's a doozy.
So in case you don't remember the comments from Skinner on her YouTube channel back in July, here she is questioning the work ethic of Team USA's current gymnasts. I mean, obviously a lot of girls don't work as hard.
The girls just don't have the work ethic to get towere you need to be in gymnastics, you do have to be.
I feel like a little aggressive and a little intent.
Well, she couldn't have been more wrong.
After the US one gold in the women's team final, Simone Biles took to Instagram posting a picture of herself and her teammates with the caption quote lack of talent, lazy Olympic champions and current and former teammates chimed in on the comments. Sunny Lee wrote, put a finger down if Simone Biles just ended you ed Mikayla Maroney, not to be confused with Mikayla Skinner wrote, it doesn't get more iconic than this.
She surround and found out for real.
Feels like I need to apologize just to redeem my first name.
Yeah, people do not message Mikayla Maroney, she is not the one.
Also, according to a post on Jordan Childs Instagram, Mikhayla Skinner has since blocked Simone Biles. After the team win, it was revealed that this year's gymnastics squad has a nickname of both the Golden Girls, a nod to their age and no doubt thanks to Mikayla Skinner, another nickname team around and find out.
Ef around and fine find out.
Let me just say, y'all loved seeing these absolute legends shut up Mikayla Skinner, including at a little leader on Twitter, who wrote, I can't express enough how much I love that Simone Biles stayed focused, took care of business, but did not forget to come back and take care of a hater as soon as she got her work squared away. May we all also at Joe moo Lungma on Twitter wrote in male sports, they would call what Skinner said
bulletin board material. I'm fine going with that for female sports, but if women want to come up with their own term for it, please go right ahead. It'll almost certainly be better than bulletin board material. That's your key listeners. Send us your better version of bulletin board material at good Game at wondermedianetwork dot com, send it to me on social at Sarah Spain on Twitter. Try to beat this at Agent's nine hundred suggested vision board material or
pinterest eaten good, which is absolutely incredible. I don't know if we can stop pinteresting good. It's so good, Okay fun. Little side note to shout out to Lindsay.
Gibbs, who we love and has an incredible women's sports newsletter called power Plays. She reminded us that MICHAELA.
Skinner also made news last summer because she had an elaborate gender reveal party with her husband Jonas Harmer, and they had a giant balloon covered light up sign that read.
Baby Harmer.
You know, like baby Harmer, but it just said baby Harmer. Just absolute gold, which you know is what this lazy ass team won. So I guess sip on that girl. Woof all that tea spill and it's given me a taste for more. So let's spill a little more tea ahem cafe in Paris. We've gathered some of the wildest juiciest, most dramatic stories we've.
Heard come out of the Games.
So pull up a chair, grab a croissant, and let's goss. First, a terrifying encounter for Canadian rugby captain Olivia Apps Okay, So, six weeks prior to the start of the Games, she was attacked by a cougar while hiking the animal. Guys, not Courtney Cox and Busy Phillips or me for that matter, Misha Okay, Olivia, her hiking companion, and their dogs all managed to escape, using bear spray to fend off the cougar. She was treated for a cougar byite and airlifted out
of the park. And get this, she was back on the pitch mere days later, and now less than two months after the big cat bite. She and Team Canada secured as silver medal this week.
Pretty good, Okay.
Next up twenty six year old Egyptian fencer Nada Hafez, who revealed after her competition ended that she was seven months pregnant while competing in the individual women's saber competition at the Olympics. In a post on Instagram on Tuesday, Nada wrote, what appears to you as two players on the podium. They were actually three. It was me, my competitor, and my yet to come to our world little baby. It's giving Serena at the Australian Open, It's giving Rihanna
in the super Bowl. It's giving women could freaking do anything. She lost in the round of sixteen, but still she was seven months pregnant competing in the Olympics.
And here's a fun fact for y'all.
According to the Olympic Nerds over at Olympdia, at least twenty five athletes have competed at the Olympics while pregnant, but Hafez breaks the record for most pregnant athlete.
Is that an official record? I feel like it should be.
Also, with all those like swords around, it's badass. Last, but not least a lack of movement that would have made me move some bowels back. At US track Trials in June, before her semi final race in the four hundred meters, runner Kendall Ellis found herself trapped it a porta potty, pleading for someone to let her out. She was finally able to alert someone and made it to a race, which she won in a personal best time.
Then she topped that mark in the final, winning the event and earning her spot in the Paris Olympics and the cherry on top of the near do do Sunday. Kendall has since partnered with Sharman toilet paper to keep her backside covered at the games. Gosh, we love a clever sponsorship. Enjoy the go Kendall, or enjoy the games. Okay, we love that you're listening, but we want you to get in the game every day too, So here's our good game play of the day. Vote on those listener names.
This is it.
I promise I'm not going to add anymore. Those are the finalists. Unless someone suggest something like no, no, no.
I'm done. We're done. Those are the finalists.
You have to vote on them at Sarah Space on Twitter, good game at wondermedianetwork dot com. You can even leave us a voicemail pleading for one in particular. Eight seven two two o four fifty seventy. It'll probably be a democratic process, but much like our country, I can't promise that. Also, don't forget to subscribe, rate and review. It's easy watch Free Shit, rating eleventy out of five stars.
Review We love free shit. Thank you to Breaking.
Tea for sending everybody on the show tons of awesome women's sports gear. Misha and I are both wearing our shirts today. Thank you, Breaking Tea. Also, this is not an ad and we haven't been paid for this, but if you send us free shit, we might talk about it, especially if we love you like Breaking Tea.
See how easy that was. Now it's your turn, rate and review.
Thanks for listening as always, Happy birthday, Happy anniversary, Mom and Dad.
Good game, Ari, Good game Heroes. Fuck you Misha twenty seven? God damn it? What's up is this?
This game? Good Game with Sarah Spain is an iHeart women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. You can find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Production by Wonder Media Network, our producers are Alex Azzi and Misha Jones. Our executive producers are Christina Everett, Jesse Katz, Jenny Kaplan.
And Emily Rudder.
Our editors are Jenny Kaplan, Emily Rudder, Brittany Martinez and Grace Lynch. Production assistants from Lucy Jones and I'm Your Host Sarah Spain