Good morning and welcome to this week's episode of the Sports Curious podcast where we are so excited to give you a crash course in the Summer Olympics. We have so much to talk about. We've actually going to split this podcast into two parts because the amount of information and the amount of sports happening is absolutely crazy. 24 sports happening on the first day. And here to talk about this is my favorite Olympian, Olympic hopeful, Scott. Scott, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you for having 2024 is not my year to make the Olympics, but I'm hopeful for 2028. So we're gonna keep training. I mean, I see you ribbon dancing. I think I showed you my routine over the 4th of July and I guess it just wasn't good enough. Well, I'm not a judge, therefore I really, I can't test the skills of that. I call Will Ferrell from old school, he can test your ribbon skills.
Now we're going go back to the drawing board with Will from his routine in old school and we'll get back to So very exciting. We are rolling into the Olympics. Friday is opening ceremonies. The cool thing is for those of us who can work from home, we get to watch these live. They start at 9 a .m. Pacific time. So you can have your coffee with opening ceremonies. You don't have to wait until 8 p .m. that night.
Which is really, I think, well, we've kind of talked about this a little bit on the sidebar, but This will be huge, I think, for ratings because people will actually be watching, but with multiple options, right? It's going to be either during the day or at night. And the past Olympics have really not been that great for US ratings. They've taken place during a pandemic and obviously inconvenient hours for American viewers.
France is only six hours ahead of New Yeah, I think the the time difference is gonna be huge with ratings like you said I think they were in Tokyo they're The time difference is so bad for America that most of us were asleep. And I think NBC with Peacock and showing on regular NBC channels is going to have a lot better coverage this year as well. So that's going to lead to better think it'll be really cool. And I was just kind of thinking about it. Like, what does our weekend look like?
We can watch the Olympics during the day. We don't have to stay up till midnight to watch Olympic coverage. Exactly, and it was okay for us insomniacs that don't sleep, but for most normal people wasn't the best viewing times. Well, I was also just thinking about it even like younger fans coming into the Olympics and this being a chance for them to watch. They're not going to stay up till midnight, but you're now creating these fans that four years from now will be of a certain age.
Maybe it's driving age, whatever it is, but it's really, really cool. So did you know this is the first time that Paris has hosted the Olympics in a century? I did not know that. I assumed that they were in the rotation every 20 years or something like Well, so it looks like Paris previously hosted Summer Games in 1924, 1900, but they will be one of the only cities, London and Paris are the only cities to host three editions of the Olympic Games.
LA will be that third as well when it comes to Summer 2028. was kind of crazy to join that exclusive club and haven't hosted in like almost 100 years. in 100 years. I mean, how cool is that? I did not realize that in the least bit. So that was a really cool fact to find. And France has really, Paris itself is going all out when it comes to these Olympics. But what's really cool is they've really put a sustainability message into some of it, what we're gonna talk about today.
But they're really mixing up the opening ceremonies, which could be, sounds like a security nightmare to me, but I think it'll be really cool to watch. Normally we watch the athletes walk into a stadium across the track and you know do their little lap with the flag but this year in Paris they've switched it up completely and they're going down the is it the Seine River? This the Sen like Zen Sen. Sen River.
So all the countries are going to be on boats and they're going to float down the river as they introduced for the Olympics. So it's really something we've never seen before and I don't know logistically how they're going to pull it off, but they've had many years to figure this out. Well, the interesting thing will be as a flag bearer, you know, typically you had to wear that big belt harness situation and carry this flag through the whole thing, right?
You do your lap, then you've got to carry it. I mean, it's incredible to see how that turns out because, well, LeBron is carrying the American flag for the men for the Olympics. And it's the first time they've ever had a male basketball player. carry the flag in the opening ceremonies for Team USA. And that's big for the men, as we did specify men because there has been two women.
Of course, they set the standard eye with Dawn Staley, you know, and Sue Bird, two basketball legends, so they've done it in the past. They would likely fit under bridges with the flag. I can't speak to the height of every bridge, but I assume if LeBron with a flag would be about eight and a half feet tall. So I don't know the height of these bridges, but he may have to duck under a few. Possibly, it's all possible.
Now, as of this recording, they have not released the female flag bearer, but you had a really good idea who you think it will I mean, I think it's unanimous who it should be. I think it should be the GOAT gymnast, Simone Biles. She's back. She's in an unprecedented Olympics for her age for gymnasts, so she's breaking barriers there, and she's won pretty much everything you can win. So I don't see why she wouldn't be. Right, this is, in all fairness, probably her last Olympics.
I know I disrespect any of the other incredible athletes from the USA, but I think she's earned the right. And I think the height difference between her and LeBron would be very hilarious. that's going to be that he's she's gonna be like half the size of the flag because she's so And her flag likely will not be taller than the brawn. So I think just from a visual perspective, it will be fun. Mm -hmm. am here for this. So we obviously have talked about what a nightmare this is.
Organizers have recruited thousands of security guards. Only 300 ,000 spectators are permitted to attend, which is obviously more than attend a normal opening ceremony, but that's in a arena, typically like a track stadium. And this one will not be. So it'll be really interesting to see how they pull this off. I am super excited. We do, where we get takeout from a bunch of different restaurants. So we have sort of like a global.
take out situation and we'll watch that and enjoy it with a little bit of all kinds of food. Some baguettes, perhaps? I guess it was not on my list, but it should be now, now that you mention Well, there you go. Become cultured, yeah? pizza, Thai food, Mexican food. We just pulled it all together. How can they only allow 300 ,000? Can you block access to see the river? Is that what they're going to do? Yeah, they look like they're going to block access to the river.
if you've ever been to Paris, it's not impossible. It's going to be a traffic nightmare, but Paris is a traffic nightmare in general. So it'll be really interesting to see that. that kind of leads me into actually the... I'm going to kind of jump around a little bit. But it leads me into the fact that they have Olympic Village, right? And the Olympic Village is going to be about four miles north of the city center, which I think will help everybody with traffic.
because we talked about the sustainability factor of all this. And it's the fact that this is like one of the greener things they're doing because out of those 16 ,000 beds they're preparing, there are 14 ,000 residents, they all train within 20 minutes max of the site and they can even train within 30 minutes of where they sleep. So it's such a huge thing that they're not going to be sitting in Does a 20 minutes factor in traffic? Do we know? This I'm not sure.
Out of having 24 sports running the first day, I'm sure there are not police escorts. I mean, it's true when you look at Palace of Versailles, it's 20 minutes from the city center. So if no traffic, so it's possible. 20 minutes of traffic in LA could be four hours. So I don't know if it's similar. This is true. This is true. So it'll be interesting because we're talking about obviously Let's go back. I kind of sort of took us off a loop but opening ceremonies. I got kind of excited.
Sorry opening Opening ceremonies. So we we have obviously there's going to be a lot of special guests Talking special guest commentators on the Olympics throughout the whole Olympics, but opening ceremonies We'll see Kelly Clarkson Peyton Manning Savannah Guthrie Copy from The Today Show, Maria Taylor, Melissa Stark, Andrea Joyce, but we haven't heard anything about any special performers. They have kept this a secret.
They posted a cryptic social media post recently of someone in like an outfit but didn't reveal their face. And internet sleuths have kind of connected the dots as the internet does. And Lady Gaga has been spotted in Paris recently. And many people on the internet are saying it's going to be Lady Gaga. That'll be really interesting. I don't quite know why Lady Gaga, but we'll go with I mean, she transcends nationalities, countries.
She's just... person of the world, so why Yeah, that'll be really cool to see. what's interesting about, let's go back to a little bit of Team USA. mean, Lady Gaga, technically part of Team USA, even though I know she's Italian. we have 653 participants in Paris, the largest representation. Can you guess the state that has the most athletes from that state? I'd love to say Nevada, where we're from, but I don't think that would be accurate.
I'm going to guess California just based on population and talent that comes out of there from various sports. you would be correct. That is the right answer. California is going, it has a hundred and what I just lost, 120 athletes. Next one on the list, 42 from Florida. That makes sense. I'm going to Texas is probably number That sounds about right. More people, more athletes. Yes, I think with 46 states represented, it's pretty incredible.
There'll be enough support around the country to cheer on their favorite athletes. for sure. Now we also have some new sports happening. We've talked a little bit about this before. We've talked about this on our last podcast about making Team Yosei, but we have breaking, skateboarding. Well, breaking is brand new. Skateboarding, sport climbing, and surfing came back from Tokyo.
And unfortunately, they did take out baseball, softball, and karate, which all my karate training goes out the window for this year. That's why you're an Olympic hopeful. Olympic hopeful, ribbon dancing karate. But interested to watch the new sports. I think you've probably watched some highlights of breaking. It's pretty intense. It's awesome. I'm so excited about breaking. I think it'll be such a cool thing.
And it's really, think I read somewhere today that the competition itself is a total of five hours. It's quite I think it'll be like the breakthrough sport that everyone's talking about kind of when we're done. In five hours, is it five hours straight of dancing? No, but it's like between the qualifiers all the way to the finals is like five hours. So it's incredibly, incredibly short.
So you have to have some extreme stamina since they're not spacing out like basketball or soccer or anything like Right, basketball is obviously going to be the whole Olympics. I guess we can, let's talk a little bit, we're going to not talk about basketball quite yet. Let's talk about the Olympic Village, right? We're 14 ,000 athletes, residents. Costs .8 billion to build.
What's really interesting about the venues in general is Paris won because 95 % of the events are being held in existing sports structures. They've built an open air facility, which the climbing facility. And the only really permanent new facility was the Aquatic Center. They're repurposing the Olympic Village. They've taken an area of Paris that was a bit dilapidated. They've built this. so people will move in, residents will move in after the Olympics are over.
That's pretty incredible compared to the previous Olympics where they build all these structures and then they just never use them again and they turn into rainforest like they did in Brazil. actually provide some use and have people move in to maybe stay where Olympic gold medalists stay. Yeah, it's really interesting. And I haven't seen anything about the costs of these Olympics yet. I need to dive a little bit deeper overall because, typically everyone blows their budgets by like 50%.
And so I'll be intrigued to see how this comes into play because they've done a lot of cleanup, but they haven't built a lot of things. Also happening this year that didn't happen in Tokyo is they've relaxed the intimacy ban. So Paris has now stocked their Olympic village with 300 ,000 condoms. Which did you know was a tradition since 1986 in the Seoul Olympics? I did not realize that soul was the the trailblazer in this practice Well, there you go. See, this is something we know.
But they will still have the cardboard, as they call them, anti -sex beds that they had in Tokyo. Same ones that were literally made of cardboard. Which I'm very curious, because there's some big athletes like shot putters and things like that. Like, what's the weight limit on that bad boy? Maybe they order like a, like maybe there's 30 rooms that have like California king size beds that are reinforced or something.
but I would imagine, mean, unless you're shooting for the gymnastics ladies and some of the track women, like, or like there's not athletes in general, aren't that small. So they're not going to fit in a twin XL. Maybe two cardboard beds together for some of the bigger people. I twice. Yeah. point. They will provide here some facts for you. I thought this was incredible. They'll provide 40 ,000 meals a day, lots of grab and go, no alcohol will be provided. I know, right?
I guess you probably wouldn't want that anyways. then there's Australia who's bringing three of their own baristas, of course, a stash of Vegemite, Wheat Bix and pies. The US and some other countries are bringing their own air conditioning units because The floors provide under -floor cooling, so it's definitely not going to be cool enough if you're a little, I wouldn't say high maintenance, because you're performing at the top of your game here.
So it shouldn't get any hotter than 79 degrees at night in the apartments. Like, that's pretty warm. Yeah, if you think to like, what do you enjoy sleeping in and we're not athletes, I don't think I could, I don't think I could sleep in 79 degree room while I'm hopeful for Olympics. Nope, nope, this is a true statement. So it's really, I mean, it's cool though, this whole thing will have 24 hour fitness center, hair salon, shopping mall, green spaces.
I mean, they're building two schools in it just because that's what they're gonna do for the 6 ,000 residents that came in. So that's really cool. But speaking of people moving in and out, I didn't realize until doing some research last week that when you're done your competition, you're out of your room. You're not hanging out in Paris. in your athlete village bed, cardboard bed, you're out because the next person's moving in because there's kind of two phases of the Olympics.
But then the Paralympics come through shortly after and they also use the Olympics, or excuse me, the athletes village. I've never thought about that, that they make people move out. There's some sports that think they medal on the opening day. They get medals, so they don't get to have any fun. They just get kicked They're out, they're done. It's kind of... sad. It is kind of, I mean, I guess it is, but you got to do what you got to do.
But there's a couple, there's a couple of teams that will not stay there. Obviously, as no one probably thought about, there's not a lot of surfing in Paris. So the surfers are in a floating Olympic village, a 230 passenger ship in Tahiti. And then it looks like the men's US basketball team will not stay there either. mean, the surfers kind of have it made, Like they're on a cruise ship in Tahiti. That sounds pretty sweet.
I you don't get, I guess you don't get the Olympic, like the Olympic hurrah like you will in LA when you can really be kind of around all of it. yeah, so talk to me, why don't the men stay there? Like, are they just too big for the beds? Well, yeah, I'd probably take about four cardboard beds to get Joel Embiid into an Olympic Village room. And not only just their size, just their popularity worldwide. NBA is so popular everywhere.
you know, you see videos when they go overseas, like Tokyo and Japan, like there's just hundreds of thousands of people swarming them. So they cannot stay in the Olympic Village. Just due to pure popularity, they never... get anywhere. think probably the best thing they did, they stayed on a like a cruise liner in Brazil. I remember that. Was that Tokyo? No. Okay, Brazil. off the coast, just from a security standpoint and just being able to get logistics down to travel. That's incredible.
But also, mean, we're talking, the one thing I thought was really cool about the men's basketball team, obviously, it was, what was it, the 80s when they started allowing professional athletes. And that's really, for the most part, the only sport that has, well, hockey, but there's very few sports that have professional athletes.
What I thought was really cool, and I'm sure you probably saw this, but they obviously wear their Team USA jerseys, but on their bags they all get that have their numbers on them. they say who's worn that number in the Olympics, which I think is really very cool. Like Jason Tatum got to wear a number 10, which was Kobe Bryant's Team USA uniform. It's really cool that they have that tradition, I think.
Yes, I mean there's very limited numbers when they play for the team USA they don't have the you know the super high numbers that some of these guys wear so they're all limited so there's been some legendary players to wear all these numbers and a guy like Jason who I think we've previously discussed was Kobe was kind of his idol and his mentor and worked with him quite a bit before he ultimately passed so that's an incredible honor for him and all the all the guys that are on the
Yeah, it's super, super cool. We are getting close to our normal time. So I'm going to dive into a couple other things. The actual Olympics officially starts on Wednesday the 24th with soccer. And so we are rolling right into it. And I guess people probably don't understand that, that soccer and quite a few other sports start before the opening ceremonies. And we won't see Messi, we talked about this in last podcast, we won't see Messi playing for Argentina, who's playing first.
on Wednesday because soccer allows professionals but they have to be under 23. Yep, under 23 and they get three exceptions for somebody over 23 years old, but given we just had the Euros and Copa America, we're not going to see a bunch of big name superstars playing, which kind of takes away some of the hype and the lore of the soccer tournament. But it's good to see future talent. I hope the USA has a better showing than they did in some previous tournaments.
Yeah, I think they'll hopefully they'll show up. It's gonna be soccer, women's basketball. We got it all covered. They're all gonna be great. Speaking of great, let's talk women's gymnastics. The men's start Saturday, the women's start Sunday. They both run until around August 5th. But let's talk about women. We have to talk about Simone Biles. We have to talk about her teammates, Jade Carey, Suni Lee, who was on the team last Olympics, Jordan Chiles, Hesley Rivera.
It's gonna be really, really exciting. And something that people, didn't know that, but people don't know is, I kind of learned from people asking questions, is every gymnast has a specialty. So Simone Biles, her specialty is the floor and her, I would call her weakness, quote unquote, is her worst event is bars. But everyone comes in, they pick two athletes for the gymnastics team that win and come in sort of as a chosen with scores.
The others are picked Yeah, so they have to fill certain slots. with who they pick, so they have to be very selective on who gets to go. I think four out the five were on the team in the last Olympics, I'm not mistaken. I believe Hesley is the newcomer. Yes. Yeah, that sounds about right. kind of the future generation of these four. Kind of repeat their veterans. They have a lot of experience, so we should be set up for success here. I think it's gonna really great.
Well, I mean, let's talk about this, right? Simone Biles has not lost an all -around competition since 2013. She's won her sixth title last year's World Championship. I mean, we really expect her to come back full force. She has got her head in the right space. I'm actually watching her documentary. It's on my list to start tonight because I wanna catch it before we start the Olympics. But one thing that's really cool is they released leotards ahead of time, which I don't normally do.
But these things are like fantastic. The sparkle in these are absolutely insane. think it's 47 ,000 crystals were used on these leotards that athletes get to choose. Mm -hmm. So they're gonna be shining and sparkling while winning gold, hopefully. I think I read somewhere it's like something along the lines of 30 or 40 ,000 more crystals than they had the last Olympics. There's one leotard in particular that's called the Luminous Legacy leotard. It has more than 10 ,000 crystals.
The White Freedoms Grace leotard has almost 1 ,000 pearls per leotard that have to be hand placed. So they're going to definitely show up looking good. Are we going to have like a jeweler on hand just in case if you fall out? do we know that process is going to be like, yeah, in the background? Because I imagine with all those flips, it's going to be tough to keep all those. I would think so.
I think about my dance costumes and no matter what you put on there, they're still gonna fall Yeah, so we'll something else to watch forward to see how intact they can stay. It's gonna be awesome. Now let's wrap ourselves. I think we're here, if we wrap this, let's talk about dressage. Okay, now dressage is one of the three equestrian events. And it's essentially, for lack of a better word, it's teaching your horse a dance routine, right?
The whole idea is controlling the horse and training them so that they can execute a preconceived, a prepared routine. It's typically done, sometimes done to music, but it looks like chorus dancing. It's one of the more impressive things in the Olympics, you're this massive horse to do a routine.
And there was a certain horse last Olympics that went viral, blew up and became like the most famous athlete in the games thanks to Snoop Yeah, I remember that when he was like, the whole thing about is the horse Crip walking and it's Mopsy is back in Paris, I understand. Mopsy aka the Ray Force. Based on its incredible EDM routine, it caught Snoop's eye and all signs point to Snoop meeting the Ray Force at some point during the Olympics because he is a commentator.
So you know he'll be providing his incredible insight into Well, the funny part was, did you see him getting his official headshots taken? Yeah, he has like official Team USA headshots now. I'm quite sure he will be a commentator for Dressage because let's spice up a sport. Has anyone heard of Dressage before that? Probably not unless you're in the horse world. It's a pretty exclusive group of athletes and individuals that participate. So Snoop opened up a door to an entirely different audience.
So we're excited to see. I want to see if Snoop can get on the rave horse and kind of do a little routine. You think he's been practicing? I know he's been practicing. I bet they filmed ahead of time, not so they don't screw up the Yep. Or snoop in the pictures I saw appeared to be all in one, all intact. So, I mean, there's so many sports happening in the first half of Olympics.
And the reason we've kind of, like we said, we split this because swimming and gymnastics highlight the first half of the Olympics. Obviously we start off with things like basketball and soccer. And some of those sports take almost the entire time or do take the entire time to cover the full gamut. So we don't have the medal ceremonies for basketball until the last two days of the Olympics. And so we're gonna kind of split the Olympics in half.
We'll cover track and field the next one because there's so much going on there and obviously give updates. the first full day of action has 24 sports. So I need you guys to all go on and look at programming because it's absolutely insane how much is happening. There's a lot of content to take in if you perhaps work from That's right. And if you get Peacock to watch the Olympics, keep it because you can use it to watch the NFL in a couple of weeks.
Yep, it's coming up soon, so get your money's worth with Peacock. There you go. Not that we're promoted by Peacock, but Peacock, us if you want to sponsor us, or just at least give us free Peacock. Is there anything else that you want to add that we have coming up here in this set of the first half of the Olympics? I just want to discuss some of really cool venues that we have coming up.
There's so many historical sites in Paris, they've done a very good job of using venues that exist already, like we spoke about. So Roland -Garros, where the French Open happens, the clay courts, obviously there will be tennis, which the clay courts has caused a lot of people to drop out based on the schedule, but they're also doing boxing at Roland -Garros. So that'll be... pretty unique venue to watch boxing and I guess I've thought about that on a tennis court.
know Beach Volleyball is going to be probably the most picturesque venue. It's the base of the Eiffel Tower. When I was there last summer, they were starting to set it up and it's incredible. The pictures are incredible. It's going to be the coolest venue. They must have a good sand guy to get all that sand in there. Everyone's got a sand guy. And is it correct that the PAL server size is being utilized as Yeah, I know they're doing the equestrian events at the Palace of Versailles.
So that'll be really neat too. And that's a little bit outside of town. And then they're also doing fencing in Taekwondo at the Grand Palace. So that'll be really cool to see. They've utilized, like we said, a lot of these venues. They've thought outside the box instead of building brand new facilities, they're using 95 % of them they've already had. So which is really, really cool to see. And actually I was reading Architectural Digest the other day.
and it was talking all about the Aquatic Center. No big deal. I actually just look at the pictures in all fairness, but they did have an article on the architects behind a new Aquatic Center. And that's really cool. But that's the only one that's not going to, that's good brand new and it will be utilized as swimming and other sporting events. I think they're putting in maybe it's pickleball courts.
So they're doing some other stuff with it afterwards, but it's really cool to see how they've done that. And it'll be a lot of pressure, LA, to show up for 2028 Summer Olympics. And think LA probably has every venue pretty much already built too, minus the fact they're sending softball and canoeing to Oklahoma City. There's gonna be some people in For Root Awakening when they pitch open Oklahoma City. With all due respect, yes. Where are the Hollywood Hills? They're not here.
Anyways, we digress. That's what we have for the beginning crash course for your Olympics. Stick with us on social and at lastnightsgame .com. We have a whole Olympic section. We are going to have some great sports simplified videos up on our social that'll help with some of these events that we don't know a lot about. Maybe it's water polo, maybe it's handball, maybe it's dressage. You now know a little bit about dressage or breaking.
And so keep an eye with us, hang in with us on social media for all the things Olympics because we are going to have a lot of great content we've planted out today and it's going to be incredible. check us out, Last Night's Game, lastnightsgame .com. And of course, always comment in our DMs or on videos. If you want to see more, hear more about stuff, we will catch up with you soon. Thanks for joining me, Scott. Go USA. Go USA.