An Episode of Olympic Proportions!

see it? Did you like it? Anyways, because there are so many interesting stories coming out of the two thousand eighteen Games, I knew I wanted to share at least one of them with you on our podcast. So I teamed up with another podcast called The Podium. It's the official podcast of the Olympic Winter Games from NBC Sports and Vox Media. And hey, just a little slice of the Katie Current podcast for good measure. Now by design, this is an episode of Olympic Proportions. It's also the

latest chapter in our Wonder Women's series. So in that big league spirit, we're not highlighting just one woman this week, but an entire team, the American women's ski jumping team that is these amazing athletes have had to fight for recognition and resources. So, with a hat tip to our friends over at the Podium Podcast, here's the story of the scrappy, resilient US women's ski jumping team. This week, women from around the world soared above the crowd at

the Alpensiest Ski Jumping Center. This is just the second time in Olympic history that women could compete in ski jumping. The first was in two thousand fourteen. Getting the women's event into the Olympics took a lot of work, and not just physical training. Men have competed in Olympic ski jumping since the international competition began way back in nineteen and the International Ski Federation started sponsoring additional competitions for

them the following year. Women had to wait for nearly eighty years until two thousand three. That's when the International Ski Federation finally sponsored their first women's ski jumping competition. The worldwide spotlight raised the profile of their sport, and women hoped that would give them a shot to compete at the two thousand ten Winner Games in Vancouver. All the girls got together and we were at my house. That's Jessica Jerome. In two thousand and six. She was

nineteen years old. She had been competing in ski jumping for years, but not at the Olympic Games. We called into this conference call and it was at night because it was in the morning in Europe, and they said that it was not going to be considered, and we we were piste. Jerome grew up in Park City, Utah. When It's g Jumping Club came to her elementary school, she begged her parents to let her sign up. Initially, my dad was not having it. He remembered the agony

of defeat in the wide world of sports. For you young in's out there. That was a sports broadcast that aired regularly on ABC. It's this awful clip of a guy crashing on a ski jump. Then the Yugoslabian youngster's gonna experience you're telling his first jump, looking at whoa baby? What a terrible fault. And so he said, there's no am letting my daughter do that. And my mom was like, hold up, this is this is a great opportunity to get them involved in the local community, and it's cheaper

than babysitting, so let's do it. Her mom went out and Jerome fell in love with the sport. She got really close to her teammates. From the beginning. Her club included boys and girls, all training together. We were on the hill together, we were in the gym together, we were doing field exercises, in playo metrics together. We had the same coaches, we we all did everything together. But that change when Jerome started competing. Her male counterparts just

had more opportunities. There were all these levels of international competition for men, so the way the competition's work and ski jumping is. The highest level is obviously the Olympics, but there is a World Cup circuit that goes on every year, and then there were a bunch of competitions for less experienced mail jumpers. But for women there was just one international competition. It was just the only opportunity

we had to compete against women from other countries. But to get to that one competition, Jerome and her teammates had to overcome another obsta coal funding. The boys got to focus on training, but the girls were scrambling to fundraise and ask for donations. Everything was coming out of pocket from either ourselves or our parents, or donations to try to cut costs. My father is an airline pilot,

so I had flight benefits. He did, my my mom did, and then we would give my teammates buddy passes and we would fly stand by to competitions in Europe, which is not ideal because there there was an instance where we were stuck in the Munich airport for five days because we couldn't get home, but it was the cheapest way that we could do it. The standby flights save the team a lot of money, but they also cause some problems because when you fly stand by, your baggage

is not a priority. So when we would fly with our skis, if anything happened to our skis or any of our bags, our equipment, it was gone. Jerome remembers this one competition in Slovenia when she and her teammates were left in a tough spot between the American girls. We were all missing something, so I was missing a bag with my skis in my suit. A teammate of mine was missing a bag with her boots and her helmet.

And we got together with the girls from the other countries and they all loaned us stuff and we ended up being able to compete in almost any other sport. This would be crazy, think about it. The American team was going to their rivals and asking for help before a major competition. But Jerome says this was the Norman women's ski jumping. They had a larger purpose. They all

wanted the sport to succeed. We had this mindset within women's ski jumping, despite being competitive with these other countries, we were all friends and we were all always trying to help each other are out because we all had one common goal, which was growing the sport and being recognized to be in the Olympics. And we knew that if, for example, the Norwegian girls couldn't compete that weekend, it looked bad across the whole sport. It wasn't about personal results.

Part of trying to get this sport into the Olympics is there needs to be more competitors and there needs to be growth. So even still today, I see this camaraderie among women ski jumpers that I have never seen in any other sport. It might seem obvious why athletes would want their events in the Olympics, right, the medals, the glory, the chance to represent their country, but it

can mean much more than that. Going to the Olympics gives athletes all these other opportunities for sponsorship, so getting women ski jumping into the Games would mean that Jerome could concentrate on training instead of fundraising. Jo Home and her teammates hoped their sacrifices would pay off for the two thousand ten Games, but when the International Olympic Committee announced the new events for that year, women's ski jumping was not among them. We weren't asking for something that

was ridiculous and would have cost millions of dollars. The venues were there, the ski jumps were built, the events for men, they were happening, and we just wanted one day where we could have our event as well. The women decided to take their case to court. The Winner Games were in Vancouver that year, so their case ended

up before a panel of judges in British Columbia. We were in Vancouver within ten days of the beginning of our winter competition season, so while everybody was at home training and getting ready to compete, we were sitting in court. And at the time, I was really annoyed about it because I wanted the luxury of just being an athlete and focusing on being the best at ski jumping that

I could be. I didn't want to have to deal with all this other stuff, and I was very envious of people in other sports who could just do that. They could just focus on what they needed to do and they didn't have to be involved in the politics of everything. The Canadian court actually ruled in the women's favor, sort of. The judge agreed that having the ski jumping competition for men and not women was discriminatory, but the judge also decided that Canada didn't have jurisdiction over the

International Olympics Committee. The court couldn't tell the IOC what to do. Jerome and her teammates had to wait and see if the IOC would change its mind for the next Winter Olympics. So on April six, two thousand and eleven, they gathered together to listen in on another conference call to see if they get their shot in Sochi. Sarah Hendrickson was there at just sixteen years old. She was a rising star in women's ski jumping, and she knew her older teammates had been through a lot to get

her sport to that point. You know, we could feel the tension in the air just because they had been told though so many times, so you could almost feel that they were just expecting that, like they were never really getting their hopes up anymore because they had been shut down so many times. When they started to announce the new sports that would be added into SOCHY and heard women's ski jumping, I mean, it was just I think it was relief more than anything, just to finally

see that green light. Jerome was actually away from her teammates. That day, I was in Thailand in an internet cafe, and I didn't deliberately planned this vacation over this time, but it worked out that way, and I wasn't upset

about it. And I went to this internet cafe and I called in and I listened and they said the following sports will be added to program and they said women's ski jumping, and I smiled and I hung up, and then I went about my day because it wasn't like this huge moment for me where I thought, Okay, it's finally done. It was like, all right, it's about time Jerome and her teammates had done it. Women's ski jumping would be part of the Winter Games, but then

Jerome still had to make the team. More on that in a moment. We'll be right back after this word from our sponsors and out back to Jessica Jerome and her Olympic dreams. We had Olympic trials in Park City at the end of December, and it was made for TV event that the Americans did, and we had a competition for men and women and it was winner gets

an automatic spot in the Olympics, and I won. It didn't really sink in, and I think a couple of days later, you know, I was probably driving where I was in the shower doing some mundane task and I went, oh my god, I'm going to the Olympics. Jerome came in tenth and so chy. She didn't meddle, but she did leave a much bigger legacy for her younger teammates like Sarah Hendrickson. I'm just so overly thankful for those

older girls. Hendrickson competed with Jerome is so chy and she's representing Team USA once again here in pyeong Chang.

I was really fortunate with my age and my timing and everything coming together perfectly that I almost I don't want to say guilty, but I guess there's a little bit of guilt that it's like I took something away from them that they put so much work into so I'm religious and saying that I'm so thankful for those girls because they are the ones that you know, paved the way for me, and um, that's why I take pride in pushing the sport even further so that girls

behind me can practice more on the hill rather than focusing on the politics side of things. But Hendrickson says, there are still some battles to fight now. It's kind of hitting me harder, how frustrating it is, like our prize money is thirty three of men right now, and they actually have more competitions than us, and that differential is pretty substantial. And you know, we trained just as hard as them, and you know what, it's not our

fault that we were born female. Hendrickson will have plenty of help in the fight. Jessica Jerome says that when she started competing back in two thousand two, there were just a few dozen young women from across the world competing and ski jumping. Today in the US alone, right now, there are about twenty five girls who are eligible to

compete in international events. At a club level. There's something like two d and twenty now, and that's that's from Park City to Steamboat to Lake Placid and all throughout

the Midwest and even Alaska. And I remember growing up and my idols in the sport were all men, and recently there's this new wave of young women coming up into the sport and they say things like when I was a kid, I idolized Danielle or Ashco or I idolized a Net Sagin And I just think it's so cool that these young women who are starting ski jumping have the option they have girls and guys to look

up to. That's really cool to me. For our second and final chapter, today, I sat down with Karen Krauss and pyeong Chang. Karen is a New York Times reporter who covers sports, and she's out with a new book about how Norwich, a tiny Vermont town that is thought to have produced more Winter Olympians per capita than anywhere

else in America has done it. So when Karen and I sat down in this beautiful library that's part of the hotel I'm staying in in pyeong Chang, the first question I asked her was how did she find this town of Norwich? How did she discover this story? So I was at the soci Olympics four years ago, and I got a random reader email saying, I noticed you're covering the Olympics. You should check out Hannah Carney's story. She's from the small town in Vermont that is an

Olympic pipeline. Hannah is the most successful in the conventional sense, of all the Norwich Olympians, of which there are eleven, by the way, in this town of three thousand. She won the gold and the women's moguls in two thousand and ten, and then the bronze in defense of that title, and sochi and so that was how it started, through just a reader email, and when I went to the

town and started interviewing people what became a parent. I understood without knowing really anything about Vermont, actually the athletic piece of it, because I grew up in Santa Clara in the seventies when it was the epicenter of swimming in not only the United States but the whole world. And so I understood how when you have one or two or three really exceptional performers, they can light a fire under an entire community and get a lot of people inspired and involved. So that piece I sort of

could understand. What I didn't expect was the parenting piece, because what I found with these parents and it was so heartening for me because I've become a little disillusioned by how much money is just permeated every aspect of sports, not even at just the Olympic level, but all the way down to the youth level. That it was nice to find this community where the parents seem to see the bigger picture and pay more than lips service to it, so they get their kids in sports and they almost

have become Olympians by accident. Before I hear more about sort of the parenting philosophy, and I really think it's a community wide philosophy. It's not just fathers and mothers. But it seems to me that it takes a village, as Hillary Glinton would say, to create these athletes who are really you know, stellar individuals as well. But tell me a little bit before we talk about the philosophy of Norwich, tell me a little bit about the demographics

where the town sits. You know, who lives there, etcetera. So it's one of the more affluent cities in Vermont. It's across the Connecticut River from Dartmouth, which is another huge piece of it because it's been able to make use of Dartmous resources, its facilities. It's excellent coaches, the kids who play sports at Dartmouth will volunteer in the community.

But it's interesting because for all of its affluence, Norwich has this communitarian spirit and this generosity of spirit, and this feeling that your child is my child, and one child's successes, everyone success. And when I was talking to social scientists about that, they said, you know, it's really quite extraordinary for a down that is a fluent to have that, because when you get a measure of wealth,

you tend to become more isolated. You are behind um gated communities, and maybe you are giving your children private lessons so they're not in and around their peers. Maybe you're taking them out of local schools and putting them elsewhere. So the social scientists I talked to said, this is really actually amazing that this town, as it's outgrown its agrarian roots, has been able to maintain the agrarian ethos of you know, we're all in this together. What do

people in Norwich do for a living. So when the first Olympian, Betsy Snipe, came along. In the fifties they were mostly farmers, and it has since changed where the people in Hanover will refer to Norwich as the bedroom community for Hanover, which the Norwich people do not look kindly upon because they see themselves as wholly separate. And I lived there for six months and can speak to that.

It is not a bedroom community of Hanover. Even though many of the adults in Norwich now are employed by the Teaching Hospital or Dartmouth, so the demographic has shifted, although you still can find some farms, all organic of course, and so they seem to have the best of both worlds. I talked to people who live in yurts, I talked to people who live in Norwich and don't have indoor plumbing. Um, so you let professionals, you have farmers. You have a

real mixture. Everyone is united in their belief in you know, we're all in this together. One of the Olympians, a summer Olympian, Katie and eight hundred hundred renner Um Andrew Wheating, gave me a quote that I thought summarized the town so well. He said, most people it's survival of the fittest, and Norwich it's survival of all of us. Reading this book,

it made me want to move to Norwich. And I know somebody wrote a blurb on the back saying, you know, be careful, Norwich, everybody's could be moving to your town. But it sounds extraordinary. Let's let's get to sort of the where sports and community meet. How have they really encouraged these Olympians, because, as you said, they have this incredible track record of building great athletes without really making them be singularly focused on one sport or their sport.

So it starts so early. They have a no cut recreational league, which I didn't really realize until I started researching this book how increasingly rare that is. So it starts with that their parents, from a very young age, try to temper it by letting them know that being

the best isn't everything. There is that it's more important to show good sportsman ship, to be empathetic for those who aren't as good as you, to even recognize that you have a gift that some aspect of this sport comes easy to you and maybe not as easy to others. And um, Hannah told me this great story that what these no cut leagues did for her was give her a friendship group that she would not have otherwise come

in contact with. These girls that she grew up with from kindergarten through sixth grade, who would not have made teams, they were not athletically inclined, but she got to know them and do you know they're her best friends to

this day. And when she was in the Olympic bubble and struggling and you know, around people who were myopically focused on winning and second places, the first loser, these women that she had met and these no cut leagues were there to pick her up and give her that outside perspective of Hannah, you're great, we're proud of you that you're even at this level and representing our town and just you know, chill out and we'll take you

to dinner when you get home. And so she said that because of this unconditional support, not based on you know, how well she was doing, that it enabled her to get over disappointments so much faster than she normally would have. Let's talk about sort of the parenting philosophy. Obviously you can't generalize for every parent in the town, but how that creates excellence because you know, the big beef these

days is parents are too coddling. They're too almost too supportive, if you could say, towards their children and not letting them understand disappointments. So how do how do the parents in this community balance at well? And it's tough and and their helicopter parents in Norwich don't get me wrong, And I totally understand how tough it is for parents. It is hard to see your child suffer. It is

hard to see your child face disappointment. But the thing with the Norwich parents is they see sports as a piece to the larger puzzle of developing into adulthood. And so they see that there are all these life lessons to be learned um discipline, delayed gratification, teamwork, taking direction well, um perseverance, persistence, resilience, and so they're really committed. I they are supportive, but in a hands off way. They very much let their kids. The kids are behind the wheel,

in the driver's seat on this journey. They're writing shotgun. That brings me to my next question, Karen, because I remember when my girls were little, I talked to someone who was a physical education teacher at their school and I said, gosh, I think my kids are pretty athletic, but I don't know what to do in terms of sports. Should they be well rounded and play a lot of different sports or would you recommend I really focus on one And she said, oh no, I think you should

do a lot of different sports. Who knows, my kids might have been Olympians if I hadn't listened to her. Garrett, I'm kidding, But I guess the question is what about this multi sport approach, because that is highly unusual. There are so many studies saying that you know, kids when your bones and joints are developing, and by the way, they all develop at different rates, so it's not like

your joints and bones are all developing together. That if you are just doing one sport, a repetitive motion, it is causing such a glut of overuse injuries, not to mention the emotional, you know, burnout. Um. I was reading about doctors who are saying they're doing Tommy John surgery on twelve year olds now because kids are pitching and pitching and pitching at such a young age. So all the scientific research suggests that a multifaceted approach and sports

is are the best. Now the Norwich kids had no choice because there are certain sports you can't do year round in Norwich, so you have to change with the seasons. And Julia Crass, the slope style skier, her coaches in the wake of her really fine performance, and so she were saying, you have got to go and do fall conditioning with us. Um, we're going to go to South America,

New Zealand, you need to be with us. And she said, no, no, no, no, I want to lead my team to the soccer state championships and I'm gonna get great conditioning and cardiovascular work that way. And so she supplemented it with her own training. But again there's that sort of push back against the

what is now known as the system. Well, I was going to ask you about that, Karen, because obviously, as a sportswriter for the New York Times, you've covered a whole slew of Olympians, And how does the approach in Norwich contrast with sort of a typical Olympian and and what if you gleaned and learned from observing them. So I was really heartened that Michael Phelps blurred this book because here he is a twenty eight time Olympic medalist, and he was a kid who he would have liked

to have done more sports when he was young. He did, I think play some lacrosse. I think he actually played one year at football, which is crazy to consider. But he got funneled very early into swimming, swimming, swimming because UM, when he was twelve years old, his coach Bob Bowman said, you know what, I think you have the talent and the potential to do something that no one's done. But

this is what it's gonna take. It's going to take training and swimming seven days a week for um ten years, unending. And so look, his success you cannot argue with, but a huge piece of it went missing, and that was the personal development. Is Michael Phelps mad at his mom? Is he mad at not being sort of more more multidimensional? And and tell me about some of the you don't have to name names, but at least some of the other athletes who you feel have not benefited from this

in the long term. I will tell you. I did a story on Michael back in September when he talked about the anxiety and depression that he's suffered. And there there were times after UM, a couple of his most successful Olympics where he was almost suicidal. And that's the piece of it that I think gets lost in the performance side of it, like, oh, he won eight gold medals and lived happily ever after. But no, it's so

much more complicated than that. And so I think if Michael had it to do over again, he would try to find a little more balance where he was developing as a person. He never attended college. Um, he took a couple of classes at Michigan. But he told me

something that was so sobering, Katie. He said that, imagine from the time year fifteen, which is when he made his first Olympic team, you are never able to make a first impression on someone because everyone you meet already thinks they know everything about you, because you already have this public profile. You've dealt with that. Say, I can relate to that a little bit. And you know what that's like. I think, you know obviously when I became

a public person in my early thirties. But you think about these kids, and you think about I think about life for them after the Olympics. When I see these extraordinary athletes, I think what happens after this? Because I wonder, you know, after the cameras leave and the gold medal or the silver or the bronze or no medal. You know, they have these memories, which I'm sure extraordinary, but I think, gosh,

where do you go from here? And if you don't fall into like being a commentator on television, I think it must be really hard. You know, Michael, everybody thought they knew who he was before he knew who he was, and so his self identity and as much as he had one was as Michael Phelps Olympic champion. So what happens when you are a twenty eight time medallist and you retire and now you're not Michael Phelps Olympic Champion.

You know, you're that's in the past. So what do you do to reinvent yourself and to get back to the Norwich athletes. That's where they really have this figured out in a way that I just wish. I wish every Olympian could read the Mike Collin Jeff Hastings chapter because these were two ski jumpers who made the Olympic team in eighty four and they are in their fifties and are still so involved in ski jumping in their community. They work really closely with the high school team in Hanover.

Imagine going to a high school ski jumping meet and seeing Jeff Hastings, who finished fourth in four it remains the highest finish by a US born ski jumper in Olympics ever, And he's doing the public address, he's announcing, and then at the bottom of the hill, grooming the hill is Mike Collin, who set a world flying record in five. When you're a teenager and you see two of the best athletes in your sport that this country has ever produced, and they're not acting as if they're

better than you, They are in effects serving you. They are making your meat runs smoothly. They are making sure the hill is smooth for you. They're doing the public address announcing. What kind of message does that send that you can be an Olympian but you're still very much a part of the community. And I think it helps the Olympians too, because instead of feeling so isolated when they're done, they're just welcome back into this cocoon of community that they've always in a part of. What did

they end up doing after the Olympics. So Mike works in finance and he said, you know, I had no idea, but he had to raise money to keep his career going because this might be um, this might be a news flash to people, but ski jumpers do not make much money in the United States, so he was actually getting poorer by continuing his sports. So his dad said, you're going to have to support yourself. You know, I'm not.

I'm going to support you in all the emotional ways, but I it's up to you to finance the sports. So he had to fundraise and do all of this stuff that at the time seemed really onerous. And then he said, oh my gosh, it prepared me so well for my job and finance. You know, I can't let you go without talking to you about the community too, and how important this this is to building really great people,

not just great athletes. And there's a woman you talk about who is the librarian of the town named Beth Reynolds, and you know the story of how she shapes these young minds I thought was so moving. So she gets to know the kids because they come into the library

a lot. She gets to know their interests and so when they come in, she will suggest books that they might enjoy, knowing what their interests are like, she'll maybe suggests something that's a little bit outside their comfort zone, and so she's broadening their worlds without them even knowing it. They think they're getting a really cool book from Mrs Reynolds. You know, they're really excited. And she still keeps in touch with these kids when they come back from college

and have their own kids. And there's a lovely PostScript which again just tells you so much about the DNA of the people in this town. Hannah. In two thousand and ten, after she won the gold medal um the owner of the general store was so excited he made up these bumper stickers exalting her event and her gold medal. Well. He made a couple hundred dollars profit and felt terrible, like,

I can't keep this profit. This is Hannah's money. So he gives the check to Hannah, who immediately with no prompting or prodding from anybody, this was her own idea. She marches over to the library with that check, gives it to Beth Reynolds and says, here, I got this money. Could you just use it to buy sports books that you think teenage girls would be interested in, or that

would you know, spark their interest in sports. So again, how many athletes do you know what that would have been their first thought of, Oh, I just got this unexpected check for a couple hundred dollars. I'm going to take it over to the librarians so she can buy books. Before we go, you mentioned how you were be coming dismayed by the amount of money and in sports, but you even said at the level of kids, what kind of money are you talking about when it comes to

kids in sports? I mean, I knew that at the Olympic level or at the professional level there is just a sports industrial complex, but what about kids? That sports industrial complex is perfectly worded. Um. So this is what I'm seeing is that sports is becoming, like so many other things in our society, and activity for those who have money, and if you don't have money, you're left out. Um. I went to a swimming an age group swimming last month.

This is the very bottom run of the competitive level, Katie. I saw eight, nine, ten eleven year olds wearing two d fifty three dollar high tech suits. Um. It's as simple as that. Their parents, however, well meaning thinking like oh well, if I buy them the most expense of suits. I want to do everything I can so that they will be successful. But at eight, nine, ten, eleven, they should just be learning to a love the water, love competing, get their stroke technique down. I mean I saw some

of these suits. They look like, um, they had sharp pay skin because they just could not fill them out. These poor children. But it goes beyond that of just the private coaching and the traveling teams and all of this is so expensive. And you know, here's the big lie that we probably in the media don't make clear enough. There are far more Olympic athletes living near poverty than

there are making millions of dollars. The Lindsay's and the Michael's and the Michaela's, they really are the exception, not the rule. There are so many more athletes like Tim Tetra, a combined Nordic um racer who is from Norwich. She said that one year the most he ever made in a single year was twenty eight thousand dollars off his sport, and some years he made less than fifteen thousands. So I wish parents could take a step back and go, you know, my kid, if he or she turns out

to be the next MICHAELA. Schiffrin or Michael Phelps fantastic. But even if she or he doesn't, there's so many great things that can come from sports, and let's you know, take a step back. This book is giving parents permission to exhale and to like reign in the insanity that has overtaken youth sports to where the kids are losing their childhoods, the parents are losing their minds. It doesn't

need to be this way. If you wanted to give any town, or any family, or any community advice, then what would you say is the secret sauce of Norwich that they really could it adapt realistically to their parenting and to their attitudes about competition, a communitarian spirit and boy, in this time of divisiveness and discord, we all could use to be a little more community oriented and we

oriented as opposed to me oriented. So all of us, no matter our stature or position, we all have something that we can give to someone else, whether it's time, money, expertise, even little things. Mike Colling got started in scheme because Jeff Hastings outgrew his jumping skis and gave them to Mike.

You know, a simple gesture, but look at it spawned an Olympic career, and parents, I think we need to stop looking at sports as a zero sum game where from my child to succeed, your child must fail because your child is in the way of my child's success, and realize we're all in this together. And you know, again, you can be petitive, but also remember that at the end of the day, sportsmanship matters. You can help others

and still succeed. And in fact, a lot of people find a lot more happiness when they get outside of themselves and do something good for someone else and that you know, makes them feel better than any metal would. And I think that's the piece of it that Norwich has that I wish that we could take out and spread through communities, or at least start the conversation, are

you going to be moving to Norwich, Vermont permanently? Although I you know, they probably have, I don't know whether they want to, um, you know, bless me or curse me at this point if I'm bringing all this attention to their town because they're not attention seekers. I remember the first time I talked to Jeff Hastings and Mike Collins separately, they each told me, well, a book. Well, I'm happy to help you and talk with you, but I can't imagine you'll more than one or two pages.

They just don't see themselves as extraordinary. They the town collectively and the individuals in it see themselves as ordinary people living ordinary lives. And maybe that's something we should all take away from it too. Words to Live by Karen Krauts. The book is called Norwich, One Tiny Vermont Town,

Secret to Happiness and excellent must read. This is Katie speaking, I think for every parent, and certainly for people who love sports but also love their kids and want to make sure that they're happy and healthy throughout their lives,

not just during one chapter. You can hear more from me throughout the two thousand eighteen Winter Olympics On the Networks of NBC, Jonathan Hirsch produces The Podium, the official podcast of the Olympic Winter Games, along with executive producer Nische kerwa extra specially well thanks to senior producer Jillian Weinberger for producing the heck out of this story, and thanks as usual to my producer Gianna Palmer and audio engineer Jared O'Connell. And lastly thanks to Rebecca Chapman, John

how Aileen Socol and Tess Quinlan. You can find more episodes of the Podium on Stitcher or Apple Podcasts. You can watch the Winter Olympics on the Networks of NBC, and you can stream every event live on NBC Olympics dot Com and the NBC Sports app. As I mentioned in the break, don't skip our ads people, you might miss something. We'll be away next week. Come on, give me a break. I need to recover from this trip, but we'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming the

week after that. Talk to you soon everyone. Thanks for listening. As always,