Hey besties, Hello Sunshine.
Coming up on the bright Side, we have a very special guest. Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame reporter Andrea Joyce is here with us and with her impressive record covering seventeen Olympic Games, she joins us straight from Paris to give us the inside scoop on what's really happening on the ground and all the behind the scenes with the Olympians. It's Thursday, August first. I'm Danielle Robe.
And I'm Simone Boyce and this is the bright Side from Hello Sunshine, a daily show where we come together to share women's stories, laugh, learn and brighten your day.
We we from Perry Simone.
Our guest is coming to us from Paris today.
This is so exciting. We are going to get the news straight from the source.
Yeah, nothing better than talking to somebody boots on the ground. Andrea Joyce's reporting career has spanned nearly thirty years. She's a vet in She's worked as a sports journalist at ESPN, at CBS Sports, and now she's at NBC Sports. And she's covered Olympic Games in South Korea, Japan, Norway and China.
Yeah, this is her seventeenth time seventeenth time covering the Olympics, so she's truly seen it all. But before all of these amazing accomplishments, Andrea broke into sports broadcasting in the eighties. This is the time when the industry was very much a boys club. And look, the reality is it still is, Danielle. According to the job research site Zipia, only sixteen point five percent of sports broadcasters are women.
It's pretty wild statistic because when I watch TV or I read people's writing, it seems like there's so much more representation than there actually is.
This is still an issue.
And Andrea was one of the pioneers, but she wasn't always a sports broadcaster. She got her start as a weather reporter before going to work as a news and sports reporter in Texas and Kansas and Michigan. She really cut her teeth in local news and she made her debut as a reporter for ESPN at the nineteen eighty eight Summer Olympics in Seoul. So just last year, she was inducted into the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame.
It's a huge honor.
There was one moment from her speech that I think is worth chatting about. She talked about one time having to hide in the ladies room while the news station's anchorman was informed that he was going to be sharing a desk with a woman because people were afraid he was going to storm out of the building. She then called the movie Anchorman a documentary and not a comedy, and she's not wrong.
That is hilarious. Anchorman is one of my favorite movies, and I've never heard anyone refer to it that way. But I can only imagine she knows how accurate that statement is. Totally well. Just this year, Andrea published a book called Legends of Women's Gymnastics, which profiled twenty eight gymnastics champions like Shannon Miller and her Magnificent Seven teammates. All the way I have to present day superstars like Sunny Lee and Simone Biles.
That's right, And now she's coming to us straight from Paris. Andrea Joyce, Welcome to the bright Side.
Thank you, thank you. I'm so happy to be here with you.
We're so excited. This is our first guest straight from Paris. So tell us about what it feels like, what's the energy like, what's your view? We need all the details, do you.
Know I have to say, this is my seventeenth Olympics, and wow, the last two or pandemic Olympics. So this feels like a gift from the gods. Not that it was bad. It wasn't bad in Tokyo, and it wasn't bad in Beijing. It was just different. It was so incredibly different. In Beijing we were in a complete lockdown bubble where we could not leave our hotel. We could only go from the hotel to our venue, no place else. In Tokyo we were quarantined for two weeks and then
we could go out. I had a fabulous time at both places, still because I love the Olympics more than anything other than my family. But to be in Paris the first time the Olympics opens back up, I mean it truly feels like a gift.
You've said that being at the Olympics still gives you goosebumps, even considering that this is your seventeenth time there. So what has been the biggest goosebump moment for you this year?
Well, so far here, I've had a couple. I won't lie. Every time you walk out the door, it feels like you have one. But I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it. Being at opening ceremony was absolutely terrific. We kept thinking, oh,
this rain, people are going to be depressed. And my job, along with Melissa Stark, who is the swimming reporter, our job was to go out at the end of the opening ceremony and we're standing right underneath the Eiffel Tower where the athletes all exit, and Seline Dion has just finished singing on the Eiffel Tower and the athletes come
pouring out, and we thought everyone would leave early. We thought they'd get off the boat and go home because if they were competing the next day, it's a long night. It's emotionally and physically tough for the athletes, so some don't go. The ones who did go, some left early. But the athletes who stayed, they said that the rain almost made it feel mystical and magical, and they stayed till the bitter end. And I stood there with the divers.
I'm covering diving, and they just were all beaming, you know, just from ear to ear, so excited and just being able to meet athletes from other countries and just listening to them talk about their experience. That was my first goosebump.
Moment.
My second one really came the first day of diving, which was the first day of competition last Saturday, and that was when the Americans Cook and Bacon won the silver medal in the three meter platform synchronized. I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it. They were so excited and it happened to be the very first medal for Team USA, which they did not know until I told them, and they just it's screaming, you know, how.
Cool to be able to deliver that news in that moment.
Oh, it was amazing. It was amazing.
Andrea, having covered seventeen of these, where do you think the goosebumps come from? Because I think of like big sport moments in America, you know, like if somebody wins the college national championship or any big moment, it's exciting, but it's different when it's the Olympics. I think the goosebumps are different. Where do you think that comes from?
Well, I'm just going to put a little asterisk on this because I'm a University of Michigan graduate. I am a very act of alum.
And are you a Wolverine.
I'm a Wolverine, I believe. Oh, I bled a Maze and Blue, and I was there for the national championship game when we won in January, and that was truly a goosebump moment. But you're right, it is different. It's a different kind. It's a different sensation. You know, when you watch athletes competing for their country, it's a completely different feeling. I've been watching the tennis today and the Americans are having the American women in particular are struggling
and having a bit of a tough time. And I think some of it ends up being about the emotion that you're putting into it because you are competing for your country, and I think that the stakes feel so different, and then when you do win or lose, it's just all magnified. We were saying that the other day that everything feels bigger at the Olympics, the emotions feel bigger.
Earlier today, I was talking to Delaney Schnell and Jessica Prato, who were the ten meter platform syncro team, and they said, you know, when we got here, it seemed like it was bigger. It seemed like it was taller. They knew it was ten meters, but it seemed bigger because everywhere you look their Olympic rings and you can't escape it. So all of that factors into those emotions, I think, and it just makes everyone feel everything on a different level.
Just this week, the women's US gymnastics team won the gold. It was so exciting to watch. And you've been covering gymnastics for years. What did it mean to you to see the team win this year? What was the feeling?
I think I was so happy to see them come back and do this because of what had happened in Tokyo. Because let's not forget that even though it was Simone who had the twisties and had to drop out, the whole team was affected. Obviously. It was so emotional for everyone, and for them to do as well as they did in Tokyo was quite remarkable. For Sunny to step up and win the all around, for the team to win
the silver team medal, it was incredible. But for them to come back, you know, for Jordan and Jade and Simone and Sunny to come back and do what they did, I just thought that was extraordinary and I was so happy for them because of what they had been through.
You, in addition to covering Simone Biles, you mentioned You've covered so many legendary gymnasts in your new book, Legends of Women's Gymnastics. I want to hear more about these women. I've always been so inspired by these women, specifically dating back to the Magnificent Seven. I mean that was such a cultural touchstone for me. Are there certain traits that you see across these gymnasts.
What do they all have in common. It's a quality that all of these women in the book, all twenty eight of them, if somebody said no, you can't do this, they said, watch me. And this goes back to women who were trying to compete during World War Two when they were there was a Jewish Hungarian woman, Agnes Coletti, who has to flee the Nazis. She's right there in the middle of the Holocaust, has to flee the Nazis. Then she gets injured when she could finally compete, then
something else happens. By the time she gets to be in her first Olympics, she's like in her thirties. You know, it's incredible, but she kept saying, no, I'm going to do this. One of my other favorite stories and this is way before all of our time, but from the Soviet Union was Larissa Latinina and she was the most decorated Olympian in history until Michael Phelps came along. Wow. And then she said, I'm gonna go to the swimming event in London and she said, I'm gonna be there
when he wins the medal. That's going to break my record. And she was there and she cheered him on and she said something kind of funny like, well, it's nice that a man could finally break my record. So it's just you know, and then of course you know you've got you know, Mary Lourettin in the book. And then I covered gymnastics for the last four champions, the all around champions for the US, Carly Patterson, Nacia Lucan, Gabby Douglas, Simone,
and then Sunni. Actually it's five and I was there for all of those and it's just been remarkable to watch them what they've done.
So Simone is now the oldest gymnast take home gold since nineteen sixty four. She has five skills named after her. When I think about what she's accomplished, it makes me think of where this sport started and how far it has come and how much it has evolved specifically thinking about the difficulty level. I came across this clip the
other day of the men's gymnastics team. I forget which country they were competing in the nineteen twenty four Olympics, and they were doing pyramids where they were standing on top of each other's backs. Like that's what gymnastics used to be. So I'd love to hear you talk about this a little bit, just how far the sport has evolved in terms of the skills that the athletes are capable of.
So the evolution of gymnastics is truly remarkable when you look at it, not just physically the skills that they do, but how they look and how they appear. You know, we went through the fifties and the sixties when the women were elegant looking. They had you know, bubble hair, and the were tall and thin, and it was more about this graceful, elegant appearance, and then it became more athletic and merely really kind of brought that in. She
really for the United States. She really brought a more athletic look and it was so fun for us in two thousand and eight to see Sean Johnson and Nastia Lukean. The two of them were completely completely different. Sean was very powerful and very compact, and Nastia was more like an old fashioned gymnast. It was long and artistic and tall. So to watch them compete neck and neck for a couple of years and to see what they did, some of it is preferenced, but what they both did was incredible.
And for them to be best friends and then to end up one two. I mean, that was a remarkable Olympics to watch two thousand and eight. But you're right, though, when you look back and you see some of the things that they did, it's just completely different. And I think that there are things that simone that no one ever ever expected to see. Tim Daggett covered Olympics for NBC for gosh over thirty years, I think, and he said, I never ever in my life thought I would see
some of these things. I covered gymnastics and figure skating for a long long time, and figure skating is going through the same kind of evolution. We're seeing things in figure skating that we've never seen and no one ever thought they would see. So I don't know where it ends, though, I don't know. I mean, at some point like, can you really do? How much more can you do?
We have to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with Andrea Joyce. And we're back with Andrea Joyce.
Okay, Andrea. I actually went to Paris about a month ago, and it was so cool just to get to see the rings emblazoned on all of these iconic mindnuments of the city. I want you to paint a picture for us of what your day to day is like on the ground.
These games are spread out, and so I'm up at diving, which is up in San Denis, right across the road from where the track and field events are. So we're up here. We're ways away. I can see the Eiffel Tower from my room, but it's way way over. It's several but I can see it when it lights up
on the hour at night. But we get up. We're lucky because our events, our diving events, are all during the day, so then that frees us up in the evening to either go see other events eventually we haven't done it yet, or we can go out to dinner, which never happened for me. When I did gymnastics for twenty years, the events were always that always took place
in the evening, so you prepared during the day. You did your event, back to the hotel, had a glass of wine, went to bed, and just repeat, rinse, and repeat every single day. Diving is a little bit different, a little spread out. The synchronized events that we start with are short. They only last about an hour hour and a half, and then we have work that we have to do afterwards to clean up stuff and everything else. But we generally go over first thing in the morning.
We're done sometime in the afternoon. I get back to the hotel and I start preparing for the next event. I try to get a little bit of a leg up. But we've been lucky. We've had some free time, and I've taken the Metro, which is unbelievable. The Metro is like the subway for Paris, and it's the easiest, easiest,
easiest system I have ever. I've lived in New York for thirty five years and I still don't change trains because a train and I say I'm going to walk a mile if I have to, because I don't like changing trains. I went out the other night and my college friends were all here, and I changed trains three times and got to dinner with them in a half an hour. I mean, it was so wow. But the great thing about it is that it's interesting to me because people always say, oh, French people are so aloof
and they're not friendly. I don't know if somebody gave them a refresher course or what. Because I haven't been to Paris in many years. Everyone has been so unbelievably nice.
When I was down by the Truckadero where the Eiffel Tower is, where the opening ceremony was, I stayed down there for a couple of days because you couldn't get anywhere near it if you were coming in that day to work, So I had to stay at a different hotel, and I was walking around and I had some free time, and I sat at a cafe and I had an April spritz.
It's europe aperol threads. I think it's the best cocktail in the world. It tasted it tasted different.
Let me tell you come and have one here, did you when you came and visited.
Oh my gosh, I had way too many to count. Yeah, they're so good.
It tastes better here. And I'm sitting outside, I'm seeing all by myself. I'm looking around, I'm eating They always bring you wallives. And I sat there and I thought, how lucky am I? I mean, this is unbeltable. This is a pinch me moment. It is it is. And just walking around, you know, down in the metro and I was looking at my phone and I was trying to find this one, making sure I was going the right way, and two people stopped and said, can we help you? Can we help you? I mean, it was
just it's been been lovely. It's been absolutely lovely. The weather has been beautiful until a couple of days ago it got very, very hot, but I think it's cooling down.
It doesn't matter though. People are in great spirits. The thing about the Olympics is that, even though this one is a little bit spread out, no matter where you are in the city, as you said, there are Olympic rings everywhere, and there is this sense, as corny as it sounds, that you're all part of this world community and you sort of remember that, you know, we're more alike than we are different, and you see people and everyone.
When I was talking to the athletes after the opening ceremony, they talked about the athletes, they had met from other countries and how that made them feel and how inspiring it was for them to be around these people who care as much as they do, who work as hard as they do in any sport, whether it's fencing or team handball or tennis or gymnastics, diving, it doesn't matter. They all have this commonality and it's just it's it's it's hard to explain, but it's it's breathtaking. Really.
I have so many random questions about day to day with these athletes. So if somebody trains for a marathon or a triathlon, there's sort of protocol and like it's different for everybody, but like you don't really train that hard the week leading up to the race. When it comes to these athletes, are they training.
Once they get to Paris?
Oh sure, Oh sure. Gymnastics and gymnastics has well, they all have specific times when they can train. So gymnastics has what they call podium training, and that would be like the day or two before they actually compete. And when they call it podium training, that means that they're actually on the kind of surface that they're going to be on during the company petition. Because the training gym
doesn't have that. But for diving. I mean, there was an open diving session right after our competition today and I'm going to tell you that half of the people who were in the competition stuck around and took advantage of that open open diving session. So they are training. Yes,
I know what you're talking about. I mean some people I think that swimmers also taper off how much training they actually do close but I think that these divers are watching them one after another like they can't wait to get back out there.
Well, I saw part.
Of opening ceremonies and like the excitement when the Olympics started, was everybody gathered on that boat that Lebron waved the flag on. What is that called? Is that specific thing? Was that part of opening ceremony?
May he was the flag bear.
He was the flag bear.
So what they did they did they did a different kind of thing. What we're all used to seeing at the opening ceremonies that the athletes march into an arena, they march into the stadium. Country Greece is always first, you know, so that's the way that they do it. But this time they decided to have all of the countries on boats. So a couple of boats had a few countries if they only had a few athletes, but they kept they keep them in alphabetical order pretty much.
And so the flag bearers were Lebron James and Cocoa Goff, the tennis player. So in any other Olympics, they would have been the one leading the delegation. So they on the boat and they were at the front of the boat, I think, with the flags. So they were the flag bearers. And that's voted by your fellow athletes. So to get that honor is like the coolest thing in the world. And what they did it was it was really I love the way they do this. I mean, I'm such
a sucker for this stuff. Weep every time I see it. So when Cocoa Goff, she had to be nominated by someone to be the flag bearer. So she was nominated by another tennis player, Chris Hugh Banks, So he nominated her and then she got it. So then what they
do is that they gather their team. Their team was somewhere together, not all the athletes, but the tent all the tennis players were all together, and Chris Eubanks gave a speech and he talked about Coco and then he revealed that she had been chosen to be the flag bearer. I'm nice thinking about it. It was just so because she was so shocked and so honored, and it's just such an amazing thing and the way that they do it. So NBC shot that, of course, and so you know
everyone at home got to see it. You know during the opening ceremony that in five hours of coverage, it might not it might not have seen it. But the way they do it is so special.
But here's the thing, Okay, I so appreciate how special it is, and I could feel the energy watching, But as a warrior, I'm looking at all of these athletes on a boat in close proximity, thinking what if they get sick. They've been training for four years, what if their immune system is like how are they around all of these people?
Why aren't they isolating in their dorm room.
Why can't you just take in the magic of the moment, take it, enjoy the opening ceremonies.
Stop worrying.
I'm very I.
Want them to be able to compete at their highest level.
Danielle, I'm with you. I'm a warrior. I'm a total worrier and you know, you do you look at them all close together like that number one. A lot of athletes who were competing the next day decided not decided not to go. They decided not to go. So are our divers who won the silver medal. They said, we're not going.
The right Lebron.
I get why Lebron goes because it's like he's been there before, he's.
Been a USA. He can enjoy.
If this is my first Olympics and I'm really trying to go for it, I am not on that boat exactly.
So Cassidy and Sarah decided we're not going. So I said, well, what are you going to do? I was in touch with them that day and they said, we're going to have our own opening ceremony at the athletes village with all of these other athletes who aren't going to march. So they put on their whole polo outfits, everything that they were supposed to wear for the opening ceremony, and they kind of paraded around a little bit and they, you know, they had their own little celebration and it
was very cute. We used the video in our coverage. But many of them decided not to go, and then another big chunk of athletes decided after the boat because once they got off the boat, they got into this It wasn't a stadium. It was a sort of a makeshift stadium right at the truckadero there, and they all filed in and they sat in the seats for all of the ceremonial stuff like the oath, the reading of
the oath, and the raising of the Olympic flag. And then when they come in with the flame and they light the torch and you know, and they do all of that. That takes another couple of hours. So a lot of athletes got off the boat and my right or left and got off and went home and got onto a bus and went back. They only did the parade on the boat and then they went home, but especially because it was raining. But for those who stayed, though, I have to say, it was a big chunk of
American athletes stayed. And we did a lot of interviews afterwards, and nobody was complaining. They all.
You know.
And it was funny though, too, because it stopped raining second it was over. The second it was over, it stopped raining, and we're all standing out there, everybody's drenched. We all look like wet rats, but there was not one single complaint. Everybody was just grinning ear to ear. But I hear what you're saying. I mean, it's it
is taxing. It's taxing, not just physically to go to these things, to be on your feet for that many hours, but it's also taxing emotionally because there's so much going on and you can either take that and let that feed you and be inspired by it, or you could just basically go home and say I'm exhausted. I probably
shouldn't have done that. So a lot of the athletes who didn't go, like the gymnasts, the US women's water polo team was competing the next day, so they left right after the boat, so they you know, they went home. A lot of them will be a closing and they'll all get that experience then from closing too, which is pretty special.
I'm for another short break, but don't go anywhere because we'll be right back with NBC Sports reporter Andrea Joyce, and we're back. You mentioned all the emotions that are pumping through everyone's bodies during this time, and I want to ask you about those emotions because you do meet these athletes in some of the most significant moments of their lives, when they're recovering from a loss or celebrating
a win. And I spend as a journalist, I spend you know, eighty percent of my career thinking of the right questions to ask? How do you think of the right question to ask these athletes in those moments?
So I've been doing this for a really, really long time before any of you were born. I mean, I'm the oldest woman still doing sports on TV. I'm going to be seventy. I'm going to be seventy in August, and I'm proud.
Amazy Kay longevity, Okay, career longevity.
I should we should also mention you're a hall of famer.
I am. I got inducted into the Sports Prodcasting Hall of Fame in December. And when people ask me, like, what's the key to your longevity? I truly truly believe it's not that I wasn't ambitious, but I truly believe that it a lot of it is because it never ever ever was about me, and it was never about my desire to get some breaking news, you know, some unbelievable quote from someone. It was truly about just talking to this person and trying to find out what's going
on for them? What is this like for them? You've just watched some own biles for two hours, and you've watched her compete, But what was it really? What was it like? What was going on in her heart? What was going on in her head, her stomach? You know? I mean, like you just you're trying to get inside and find out things that people at home wouldn't know unless you ask those questions. So I take a lot of pride. I'm a little bit neurotic. Actually, I'm very
neurotic about how I prepare. And it's funny because I show up for events and I have stacks and stacks and stacks of notes. And I've worked with some people and they say, really, you're on for like a minute and a half, and I say, I know, but I have to have the right question. I have to have I need all of this because I need this background
because it gives me some place to go. And I always make it about them, it's not about me, And I think that you get a richer story that way, you get a more authentic story, and athletes are more likely to tell you things. One of the things that I've learned over the years is that if I've done that homework, they know it. And if they know that, they know that I care enough to spend the time to do the research, to do the homework, to be able to say to them, you said last month that
you were a nervous wreck. You know what was it like for you out there today? I rely on all of that information that I've gathered, and when they know that you've done that work, you're going to get better answers too, because they trust you. And you know, especially for a sport like diving, that we don't cover until we get to tell the trials for the Olympics, so you're covering it once every four years. Gymnastics we had a few more events, figure skating we've got a couple
of events during the year. But a lot of these sports you don't cover it for four years and you show up and there has to be a trust, I think, to be able to get some kind of real answer and real information. There are athletes who don't want to talk. There are athletes who are closed books. But I think that you can you can break through that wall if you ask the right questions in the right way, with sensitivity and with curiosity, it's truly about being curious. That's
the number one. You have to be curious. You have to care of that person in order to do the job right.
Well, when I think about your work, two words come up. One is curiosity and the other is compassion. And I think that's part of the reason that people have loved watching you for so many years.
Oh you're nice. Thank you.
Well, when you think back on your career, is there a period of time that stands out to you as being really joyful?
Honestly, I wake up with a smile on my face every time I'm working. I know that sounds so corny. I'm so annoying to the people I work with because I'm a freaking and even at my age, like I show up and I'm like, you know that, let's do a show. I mean, this is so much fun. Who's listened. I went to University of Michigan. Our former football coach, you know, Jim Harbaugh, always said, who's got it better than us? And that's my attitude. I show up for work,
is who's got the work? I'm getting paid to do this? I mean it's I feel like this has always been joyful for me. And I almost feel like it's even better now because you know, you get to a point and you say, this could be the twilight of your career, you know. I mean you're of an age where you may not wanted to. Well, I feel like I would want to do it until I can't, but they may
not want me to do it, you know. I don't know, but I feel like every time I go in and I've said this to myself for years, every time I do an event, I say, you know what, this could be your last one, you know, so you soak it in, you soak it up, you enjoy every minute of it because you don't know when you're going to get to
do this again. And in that sense, I sort of feel like, maybe that's the only thing I have in common with the world class athletes, is that so many of them come to an event like the Olympics and they say, this might be it for me. This might be the only Olympics I ever get to come to. So I'm going to really embrace it and enjoy every minute of it. And so I have that in common. That's about it.
Andrea, thank you so much for sharing your time with us, particularly while your booths on the ground in Paris.
We're really really grateful. This was really nice.
Oh, I'm so happy to talk to you both. This is really fun. Thanks.
Think of me when you have your next Apperall Spreads. Andrea Joyce is a sports reporter for NBC, the author of Legends of Women's Gymnastics, and a member of the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame.
That's it for today's show. Tomorrow, we're popping off with journalists and co host of the beauty podcast Gloss Angeles. Kirby Johnson will be here with us. Listen and follow the bright Side on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Simone Boye.
You can find me at Simone Voice on Instagram and TikTok.
I'm Danielle Robe on Instagram and TikTok.
That's ro Ba.
Y see you tomorrow, folks. Keep looking on the bright side.