The Hobart 2020 Olympic Bid
We bring you a special episode today that you weren't expecting as we apparently find a reason to allow Ben to talk more about himself and learn more about his unsuccessful bid to bring the 2020 Olympics to Hobart. Just how far did this bid get? Was he ever serious about? What was the endgame of the bid? Did he lead people on with it? Why did it stop? And does he believe that smaller cities such as Hobart could ever host the games? It's an episode that you probably will want to miss, but we think you shouldn't as it still is entertaining and informative! So tune in!
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Please note this is an automated transcript that may contain errors.
COLIN HILDING: Welcome to Off The Podium, An Olympics Podcast, or The Olympics Podcast, because we've been on quite a run here, running through interviews with Canadian athletes, Australian athletes. We've talked to sport climbers. We've talked to sprinters. We talked to gold medallists from the Vancouver Games slash host of the Amazing Race Canada. How can we possibly top that? Today, we are talking to an unsuccessful Olympic bidder from 10 years ago to reminisce about his memories of his failed bid for the Olympics, which in all honesty is still a miraculous feat that there was a bid at all. It's actually our host, Ben Waterworth, and as well, Jarrod Loobeek to tell all of his memories about the unsuccessful Hobart 2020 bid from about 2010. From about 2010. First of all, Jarrod, thank you for joining me at this late hour of the evening for you, early hour of the morning for me, and I'm excited to hear all your thoughts on Hobart 2020 and what it could have been or what it might be if Tokyo gets delayed any further.
JARROD LOOBEEK: What could have been, you should have seen the hype in Emu Plains for Hobart 2020 was off the charts.
COLIN HILDING: And Ben, the subject of the interview here today, you're getting the tables turned. Thank you for joining us. You're welcome.
BEN WATERWORTH: It's 5:11 a.m. This is my idea. There's not much I get up at this time in the morning for, and apparently talking about myself is one of them.
COLIN HILDING: This is the most Ben Waterworth thing ever. It is a vanity project that will get him up at five in the morning to talk about himself.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yep, yep. This is it. This is the funniest thing is, is that you think we would do something like this when we're struggling for content. We're in the middle of a great run of interviews with some pretty prominent Olympians, gold medallists, some of the biggest names in their respective sports, and here we are interrupting your regularly scheduling interviews to talk about Ben Waterworth. Jesus, this really is a Ben Waterworth episode.
COLIN HILDING: Jarrod, could you wake up at five o'clock in the morning to talk about yourself?
JARROD LOOBEEK: No, probably not. Five in the morning, that hour doesn't exist, does it?
BEN WATERWORTH: I don't think Jarrod's ever talked about himself. Jarrod's so nice and humble, and I couldn't imagine Jarrod would even get up at midday to talk. He would pass the baton on to someone else. Good on you, Jarrod. Teach me how to be more humble like yourself. Skill can't be taught.
COLIN HILDING: You're just born with it.
BEN WATERWORTH: It's L'Oreal. He's born with it. No, Maybelline, not L'Oreal. Wrong one. Geez, Ben, get your fashion brands right. It's 5 a.m.
COLIN HILDING: It just totally reminded me, Jarrod, when you said that of the... I'm sure you're a fan of The Simpsons, right, Jarrod?
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah.
COLIN HILDING: The one where Bart discovers the comet, I think it is, and he's supposed to report for telescope duty and Skinner tells him something like, you know, report it 5 a.m. or whatever. There's a 5 a.m. now? All right, Ben. Hello, Colin. Hello, Jarrod.
BEN WATERWORTH: Good morning.
COLIN HILDING: Let's kind of set this up. This show goes back about four years now, and I think probably all the way back on our very first episode, Ben, you probably mentioned, as you mentioned many times, that you once started an unsuccessful bid for Hobart Tasmania to host the 2020 Olympic Games, which eventually went to Tokyo. I don't know why they thought that was more appropriate, but they did. But you always sort of said, you know, it started out as a joke on your radio show, and it turned into something really big. And I sort of had in my mind that, you know, you had a nice Facebook group going and maybe a few newspapers threw a mention your way. And now we're, I guess, on 10 years from this, and you send us this link of a newspaper that ran a story today, or not today, this week, let's say, in 2020 about the 10-year anniversary of this bid. And now all of a sudden, all these other things start coming out, where you're showing news stories, like the local news and multiple local news channels covering this, the stories, you're being interviewed. And I realised this actually was a really big thing. And I guess, you know, start us off just by telling us about how this started, what the joke was. Before it became a big thing, what was the joke that eventually spawned this massive campaign to get your hometown as an Olympic host city?
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, again, as we've already mentioned, I like to talk about myself, so let's go back to the very beginning. My parents met on a Wednesday night, and... Olympic ambitions were put together during consummation of love, and a young, beautiful child was born in Hobart. The wind blowing through the air. No, um, he back...
COLIN HILDING: You said young, beautiful child. I'm like, and that young, beautiful child once befriended Ben Waterworth.
BEN WATERWORTH: He was arrested and then sent to Canada. Um, back... Jarrod would remember, and we've talked before on the show about Olympic memories and everything, um, a comedy duo in Australia by the name of Roy and HG. They were very prominent during the Sydney Olympics. They had a nightly sort of comedy show called The Dream, became very, very popular, not only sort of in Australia, but a lot of international athletes would come on the show and all that kind of stuff. And they came back for Salt Lake in 2002. And during those games, they started up a joke mock bid for Australia to host the Winter Olympics, because, you know, Canada hosting the Winter Olympics is a thing, of course. You've done it a couple of times. You're good enough to host the summer. I mean, you can host both the summer and winter Olympics. It's a thing. Canada can do it. Lots of other countries in the world can. The thought of Australia hosting the Winter Olympics is pretty ridiculous. Because we have, like, two mountains, basically. And, you know, they're the height of some hills in Canada. So, you know, it was... They had the Smiggins Holes 2010. Do you remember that, Jarrod? Do you remember the Smiggins Holes 2010 Winter Olympic bid? I do, I do. Yeah, so it was kind of like a little joke bid that they did, and they... it took off. They even got, like, Jacques Roig to, like, wear a t-shirt and endorse the bid, and, you know, it was just something like a little bit of a silly, fun campaign. I think it revolved around Australia's highest mountain that still was so much shorter than they needed to be, so they would get every Australian to dump a piece of rubbish on top of the mountain so that by 2010, it would snow over and make it high enough for, like, the downhill. Like, things like that, they would do. So, anyway, a few years later, I had gotten on radio, god knows how, whoever had that idea to put me on radio, well, look what you did. And a friend and I were just like, hey, Hobart, hosting the Olympics, how funny would that be? Let's just start up things. So at that point, it was Hobart 2016. This was, I'm talking 2004, I think this happened. So we drew up a little mock logo, and sure, whatever, and over the years, it just became one of these things, like RowanHD did, they're just bringing up randomly to a guest, so we would get an Olympian on. We were like, hey, Hobart hosting the Olympics, how funny would that be? Oh, ha ha ha! So it just stuck around for a while. And then we switched it to 2020. Then we got a couple of politicians on, a few of them just started kind of chiming in about it. And somehow, and I honestly actually don't know how it happened, we started making the newspaper for it, like somebody contacted us and was like, oh, Hobart hosting the Olympics, that would be funny. I think that went in on the joke still, realising that this was something a bit silly. And then one thing led to another, and then all of a sudden we would get a couple of other people talking about it. Then it got a little bit more out there in the media. Then all of a sudden some people were going, oh, okay, well, could this happen? And could it? And all this sort of stuff. And then before you knew it, it was on national media. We were being contacted by people overseas talking about it. And I mean, you will get to it more in the interview about kind of how far it went. But yeah, I don't I don't actually know how it got far. I'm trying to think. There wasn't like an exact moment. It's not like, you know, Ian Thorpe came on and gave his an endorsement. I don't know. It just somehow overnight it turned into this thing, as you saw in that video. So and here I am, 2020, when we should be hosting it. Come on, it really went to my head thinking that this is a serious thing. Bit sad that currently right now I'm not in Hobart, part of the organising committee, finally living up to my destiny of opening an Olympic Games. It's not happening. So yeah, it was weird. It was a weird sort of 12 to 18 month period when it really, really took off.
COLIN HILDING: So sad that Ben actually fled the country. Just out of disappointment.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, exactly. I mean, I had to go to New Zealand first. That's how sad I was.
COLIN HILDING: So I mean, you do this on your radio show, and you've been posting newspaper articles that existed for this. I found a website that existed. The news stations were covering it. Just off the top of your head, how many different news channels or news stories ended up covering this?
BEN WATERWORTH: Oh, I don't know if I have a number. I mean, so the article that came out this week, the Mercury, that's Hobart slash Tasmania's main paper. Funny story, I worked for that paper for a couple of years. And the guy who ended up contacting me and wrote the story on it in the last week, David Killick, he was my mentor when I worked at the Mercury. And I mean, he's got to, he'd be a fascinating person to actually get on this show. He's worked at numerous Olympic Games over the years as a journalist. He actually helped connect me with the agency that I eventually worked at at the Commonwealth Games. Complete sidebar there. But I think maybe he might have written the very first article when it was a bit of a joke. And then, yeah, so we ended up being in a couple of national publications. So Jarrod would be familiar with a lot of these, like The Age in Melbourne, The Australian, we were in the Canberra Times from memory, you know, the peak of all journalistic integrity in Australia. But I mean, I was, there was a period there when it was really taking off. I was getting at least once a week a phone call from a radio station somewhere in Australia. Like there was someone in Sydney, someone in Melbourne, I think Queensland. Yeah, I just randomly get a phone call. Like I'm from 2GB in Sydney. Can we do a chat with you? Sure. There was a clip in the video that I shared the other day. Jarrod would be familiar with a sports personality called Ken Sutcliffe in Australia, the male model from Mudgee, who sort of used to host a national program for many years called Wide World of Sports, very popular sports program in Australia. So the sort of guy who's almost mockingly saying there's a groundswell of support for Hobart to host the 2020. I can show you the full video of that. They're all but bagging it out. They're all laughing at it. It's not like they're taking it seriously at all. So it kind of went there, and we were in some magazines, I think, talking about it. Not like a spread of me and the bid committee in fashionable suits talking about it. It was just like a passing mention in a magazine article. But we had international... There was gamesbid.biz. I think the name is kind of like the games bidding website. Who would constantly message me, like, how's the bid going? How's the bid going? And they'd run a story on it. We had... There's a global publication where I think every year they sort of put together, I guess, guides for cities. It's sort of like... Say Winnipeg, for example, would have a section in this book, and basically it would just have a list of all your venues. So it would have the Jet Stadium. It holds this many people. The stadium where the Blue Bombers play, it holds this many people. And just basically list all the venues and kind of say that, hey, World Snooker Championships, if you want to choose Winnipeg, these are the venues that are available. And then they would kind of list major events and kind of... So we got contacted by this book saying like, oh, you guys are having an Olympic bid. List all your venues. We'll put it in here. Usually we charge people like $5,000 to be listed in this, but we're going to put you in it for free. It's like, you do realise this is a joke? Yep. Regina Arena is a real thing. It's going to hold 20,000 people. We're not going to just make crap up, and they published it in this book. Things like that. This is the thing. The whole situation just... It blurred this weird line of... It was a joke that went too serious. I will admit I even got swept up in the seriousness of it for five minutes. I was like, hey, this could really happen. And then when you would talk to the media and that, I almost had to turn it on. You'd get certain radio shows that were clearly just taking the piss out of you. Hobart's going to host the Olympics. Whatever, mate. So I would just go, why couldn't we? Why not? I would get defensive. So you get all these media articles of me being like, yeah, yeah, no. We could really hold a 100,000 seat stadium in Hobart and do this and this. Hobart is a city that can't even get their two-lane traffic lanes sorted out at the moment, and they haven't been able to for the last 15 years. There's no way in hell we could have a 100,000 seat stadium. Anyway, I'm going on tangents here. To answer your question, there were lots of media articles that I can't even remember how many there were. I have them all. Of course I do. You know me. I'm going to keep every single one, though, about me.
COLIN HILDING: I mean, he's had them printed on T-shirts, bedsheets.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, sell them on our website by the Ben Mortimer's media book.
COLIN HILDING: Oh, if we ever start a Patreon, we will actually give you a free tattoo. Yeah, you don't get a choice.
BEN WATERWORTH: We'll just show up to your house with a tattoo gun. Tattoo the Mercury article on your nose right now.
COLIN HILDING: When you mentioned the stadium thing there, that's interesting because some of these articles you've been posting are mentioning that there are plans for a stadium. Now, was this part of the joke, or at some point did somebody in city planning say, hey, you know what, if you want to make this work, we will put an architect on it and do a quick mock-up?
BEN WATERWORTH: Just to clarify, in no way did we ever have any city, state, or federal backing for this. I mean, we would get them politely in the media saying like, oh, this could be good, or you would get, there was a news, like a longish news story that went and they kind of spoke to our infrastructure minister. And he's kind of like, I knew him, like he'd come on my radio show all the time. He was, you know, a fun guy, but sort of on the record on the actual TV news, he was kind of like, the government at this stage is no longer, is not considering, you know, supporting the bid, but we wish them the best of luck, very proper. So, yeah, none of that support, but so basically what we had done, like to sort of go from the joke stage to some of those images you saw, we literally at some point Googled stadium concept plan, right? Found the most obscure website thinking like, well, no one's going to sue us if we steal this idea for what a stadium looks like. Found some random, so for a good, I don't know, year or so, we had these images of stadiums that I don't even know where I stole the image from, right? But that's when all of a sudden TV channels and newspapers started printing this concept image saying, this is what the David Foster Stadium is going to look like. And I think, fuck, we're going to get sued for this. We never did. No one, whoever did those concepts, no one ever... I'll get one in five years' time.
COLIN HILDING: Until now.
BEN WATERWORTH: Until now.
COLIN HILDING: Here's your subpoena. That's the real purpose of this podcast, is to serve you with your subpoena.
BEN WATERWORTH: It's a secret. It's a secret in general. So we, at one point, we ran a competition, because our Facebook page took off, and I think this was back when they weren't even pages, they were still groups. If people remember Facebook, before pages became a thing, it was all about the groups. But we got upwards of 10,000 followers or something like that, ridiculously quick. Yeah, right? I can't even get 100 for this show, yet somehow I can get 10,000. What the fuck? And we're actually good, are we? I don't know, maybe not. We're talking about me, of course we're not good. At some point, we ran a design competition. We were like, hey, we're sick of sharing this dodgy image we stole off the internet, so let's see if people who follow it would like to design it. I don't know, we didn't get that many, maybe like 10 different designs. Maybe like seven of them were just sort of like stick figure stadiums. But we got a couple of good ones, and the one that constantly gets shared, like in the newspaper article, that sort of blue kind of one, was done by a design student from a university somewhere in the mainland. I think her name was Lindy from memory. And yes, she won, so what did she win? I think she won a t-shirt and recognition. I'm like, we didn't have any money, so we couldn't exactly fly to Hobart for all expenses, paid tour of where the games will be or something like that. But that, I mean, that, when that got released, you know, we drew up professional media releases. You know, we'd send them to all the media organisations, and we'd get the phone call, and, oh, you know, how's this gonna go? And kind of all that sort of stuff. And funny story about the mock-up of that image is that the one that kind of you see, I guess, the distant shot where the stadium's kind of by the waterfront and you see the city in the background, like anyone who hasn't been to Hobart, it looks great. Trust me, it looks fantastic. There is no logistical way the positioning of that stadium would work. The girl who won, Lindy, sort of... I showed her whereabouts in the city it would be, and she kind of placed it in a very small section of land in which I don't think you could fit like a two-bedroom house. Not to scale, not in a very good position. I'm surprised no one's ever called me out on that and blamed me for it. Like, you're destroying environment in Hobart, because that's a very Hobart thing. But yeah, so that was a design competition that won. I think we might have had some done up for, like, the David Boone Centre or one of the... This is the thing, like, some of our buildings that we named them right, like, Jarrod, I heard you chuckle before when I mentioned Regina Arena. Now, for anyone who doesn't know what that is, Colin, you have no clue, unless you read the article. But basically, maybe the most famous reality contestant in Australia for a long period of time was the winner of Big Brother in 2003, Regina Bird. She's now Regina Sorensen. To this day, any Big Brother fan would say the most popular Big Brother contestant ever in Australian Big Brother. She was so famous. She was Tasmanian. And in 2003, like, when reality TV is that big, like, she was a bonafide celebrity. I'm not kidding. We had a street parade for the winner of Big Brother in downtown Hobart to celebrate her winning. I was part of a human sign that said, Go Reggie, so that when she returned to Hobart from three months on the Gold Coast, they flew over a section of our city with a sign of a couple hundred of us. I'd skip school to be part of the Go Reggie sign so that she could come back. That's how big she was. So as part of the joke, we thought, well, how funny would it be to name the weightlifting arena Regina Arena? It works, right? It actually works. At the peak of this frickin bid, they rang up Reggie on a radio station to interview her about how she thought about having a legitimate stadium named after her for an Olympic bid, to which she's like, Wow, this is such an honour. I never thought this would happen. This is so incredible. What the hell is happening? It's Regina Arena named after the winner of Big Brother. And you think this is real?
COLIN HILDING: Jarrod, do you have any questions you want to chime in with?
JARROD LOOBEEK: I want to know more about the concept of did we get to the stage of opening ceremony and guests and ideas, and how far down the track did we get?
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, this is the thing, because when people would ask me that, when people are like, What are your ideas? I would come up with completely ridiculously stupid things. I actually interviewed Nikki Webster. We were talking about this off air, because at the time of recording this, it's 20 years since Sydney, so Nikki Webster is back in the media again. Of course she is. She appears every now and then. But I remember when I interviewed Nikki Webster, and we were kind of still on the joker, we were like, Hey Nikki, 2020, we're going to get you back in the Olympics. We're going to recreate you flying out there in your little pink summery dress and doing all this. And we were just kind of outlandish things. And I don't think we ever fully came to a conclusion about the cultural aspect of it. Because this is the thing about Hobart. I mean, this would only be 20 years removed from Sydney. I think Sydney did a great story of showing Australia's history. It would be more of a sort of a regional thing by that point of showing Tasmanian history. I mean, it'd be pretty boring, I think. So no, we don't really have any famous singers from Tasmania, all our famous people are either cricketers or people who lucked into marrying the Prince of Denmark in a bar during the Olympics, or people who win Big Brother. So, I mean, maybe as I created it, it'd probably just be a two-hour tribute to me. I don't know.
COLIN HILDING: Could we have had like Noah Groves and Fatty Esther doing the National Anthem?
BEN WATERWORTH: I think so. I think we would have had no choice.
JARROD LOOBEEK: The tribute to Regina would have just been amazing as a whole section of the opening ceremony recreating her Big Brother victory.
BEN WATERWORTH: The fish and chip shop owner from Cambridge putting in an audition. Here she is walking down the street, putting a VHS. I mean, this is the thing. When I got interviewed the other day for this story, the question David asked me was like, what would the opening ceremony be? And I literally said like, oh, I don't know, Nicky Webster emerges from a can or of Cascade beer or like, I was just basically coming up with the most outlandish things. I basically said, we will have a tribute to the luckiest woman in the world, Mary Donaldson, who became Tasmania's Kim Kardashian, who is basically famous for just being famous because she met a prince. And we would have David Boone, because like little sidebar story for this to make sense. David Boone, one of Australia's most well-known prominent cricketers, one of Tasmania's famous, probably Tasmania's top two, top three most famous people ever. He was renowned for drinking beer. Of course, he would be as an Australian. What else would you be renowned for? And on a flight from Australia to England in the 80s or 90s, I don't know how many he drank. He drank something like 20 or 30 cans of beer on one flight and survived, and it was legendary. It became myth in Australia about David Boone's drinking exploits on a flight to London. So I said in this article, and we would recreate David Boone's drinking exploits on the thing. And Ricky Ponting, another very famous Australian cricketer who's from Tasmania, he went on to Captain Australia for many years, Tasmania's first ever captain of the Australian cricket team. When he first started out, he was a bit of a rebellious young person. I think he got into a bar fight in a nightclub when he first made the Australian team. He got up to all these stupid things before he calmed down. So I was saying, and we will recreate Ricky Ponting's rise from a rebellious teenager getting into bar fights to leading his country to victory in cricket. Like, come on. What does Tasmania have to celebrate outside of that? I don't know. Mona?
JARROD LOOBEEK: The poo machine? Ricky Ponting hitting a flaming cricket ball to light the cauldron on top of Cradle Mountain. I don't think anything could have topped it.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, I said, when they asked me about the flame, I think I said David Foster. So David Foster is a woodchopper, and arguably the Wayne Gretzky, the Ian Thorpe of woodchopping. Like, just if you follow the sport of woodchopping, you know who David Foster is. And I mean, seriously, he's actually a very popular Tasmanian. He's a very fun personality. I think he won like a thousand world championships. I think at the time he became the first athlete on record to win a thousand world championships. Something ridiculous. There's a museum to him in his small little town in Tasmania. So we were going to name the stadium David Foster Stadium, even though woodchopping is not an Olympic sport. But okay. And I think I said, the torch will be lit as David Foster chops down a giant piece of hewen pine that will fall into a flaming barrel built by Mona as David Walsh recreates the poo machine from our most famous museum. Just crap like that. And people bought it, so good for them.
COLIN HILDING: But you know what's funny is that, you know, you're obviously telling these stories about, hey, we were very outrageous. This clearly should have been clear to people. It was a joke. But then you find other stuff where maybe this is what you're talking about, where you got caught up in it as being serious as well. Because half of the time, you think how was anybody buying that this was supposed to be real? And then half the time, it's like, well, were you leading them on? Because just before we went on the air, I found your, I guess this is your Facebook group or Facebook page or something like that. It was Hobart 2020 Olympic Bid on Facebook. And there were videos of, which would have been your pitch videos. Now, they're not professionally done. They're very 2010. Not even professional for Ben Waterworth, but they're not playing it as a joke. It's like people and heart and community and all these people holding up signs. And it looks like maybe a low budget version, but it looks like a real Olympic bid. There's no joke about it. Now, I spot you in one of those videos. So I want to know, was this at the point where this was a serious part of your Olympic bid, a joke part, and who are the other people? How did you get together to actually put together these real Olympic bid videos?
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, that's where the lines got blurred and kind of where I did get caught up in it sometimes. And yeah, there was definitely parts of me that led on. I mean, that all came through the groups and the pages where we'd have an idea. So I should say, myself, my co-host at the time, Josh, we were kind of the ones who did it. Josh kind of had moved away, so then whoever was my co-host on the radio that week would generally get involved because I went through enough of them. Both of you would know that I go through a lot to co-hosts because people hate working with me.
COLIN HILDING: Like fiancees.
BEN WATERWORTH: Exactly. It's very true. Co-hosts and fiancees, people who are closest to me. There's a message in there somewhere. So we would come up with ideas like, hey, now that we've gotten a few thousand people on Facebook, let's put together a bit video. Why not? We're getting a bit of attention. This would be fun. So we would just literally say like, hey, 10 o'clock this Friday at this park, we're going to put together a bit video. If you're around, show up. And 20 people would show up. Holy crap. We even had a rally on... Salamanca is like a little prominent area in Hobart. There's a big market there on a Saturday morning, and there's kind of outside of our Parliament House, Tasmania's Parliament House, there's lawns there. So if people want to protest, and it's like any city, really, I'm sure, Colin, you have protests in Winnipeg in front of your legislature building and things like that. So we had a little day there where people came along, and we had, like, she's now the opposition leader of Tasmania, funnily enough, but Rebecca White, she was only a very new politician at the time, she kind of showed up to show her support and some other politicians and things like that. So we had that day. And I mean, other things that came from it, too, that kind of, when we would do things like that, because then the video would go out there, people would see it. And like, we had, it wasn't just Hobart, though, like, it's not like, the thing is like, people in Hobart, I think, got the joke. So when we would have like a rally like that, where we're in public, you know, we're in a public event, you would hear people just like walk past and just crack up laughing, like, are you fucking kidding me? Like, what the hell are you talking about? We can never host the Olympics, you know, people will abuse you and fine. But then like, I had people, you know, from around the world, it's like, oh, so we had a t-shirt, can I buy one? So then we would sell them a t-shirt, and then they would send us a picture, like there's a, you know, I've got a, I was going through the photos the other day, we've got people wearing the Hobart Olympic t-shirt in front of like the Capitol building in Washington. I've got some of people standing in places in Mexico City. I think we had some in London, things like that. I think my very first trip to the US and Canada in 2010, I have all these photos of me holding up like the Hobart logo in front of like the Empire State Building and the CN Tower and all these kind of things. And then we, I don't even know how we had pins made. We actually had like Olympic pins made. I think a company might have contacted us and said like, hey, we create pins. We've created them for these Olympics or, you know, these bids or all these kind of things. And they offered to make us Olympic pins for free. So they did. And all of a sudden, we had Olympic pins and we sold them very cheaply. We only ever got 100 of them made. But to this day, randomly, I will get messages asking if we've still got any pins left. I have seen them for sale on eBay going upwards of $100. Ridiculous things like that. And it was just, again, it was a blurred line where it was kind of... It was definitely a joke that went too far. I got too caught up in it because you get a bit of attention. And I was thinking, well, okay, this is possible. But I think realistically... I mean, okay, other little things really inflate my ego as well to say how much this got taken far. I was then myself getting nominated for... I made the finalist of the Australian of the Year Awards for basically, you know, supporting Hobart, basically putting Hobart on the map or something. I was a finalist in the Young Tasmanian of the Year Award and ridiculous things like that. And yeah, I think at the end of the day, the thing that I really, I guess, was trying to achieve with anything when it kind of took this far was that it was a lot about getting Hobart a little bit more recognition on the global stage in terms of we're not just this small city that people laugh at and nothing can ever happen here. It was kind of more of a like, hey guys, Hobart is a great city. We are capable of hosting something, maybe not the Olympics. But yeah, and kind of that's where that line of seriousness getting caught up in the moment, leading people on the true message there, I think that ultimately it was about achieving was that. And I mean, we had a little mini bid committee formed and we'd have meetings and things like that, but we never knew what we wanted. I mean, we did contact like the Olympic committee, the government. I had a meeting with Jetstar, one of Australia's websites, and there's a mock logo that I've got that Jetstar wanted to come on board as the official airline of the Hobart Olympic bid. I actually have that logo still, and I didn't make that up. Jetstar sent that to me. I don't know why it never got released. I think they probably chickened out at the last minute, thinking, OK, this is kind of stupid, guys. We're not going to really do this. But we even got, at one point, we wrote off to get sponsorship. Don't know why. We got caught up in the moment, and we wrote off to companies, and some of them were just write back a letter going, like, no, thanks. But Blunsten, a very prominent shoe company, which people have heard of. I've seen Blunsten sold here in Canada. A lot of people probably aren't aware that it is a Tasmanian company. They actually wrote back to us and was like, oh, we're not in a position to support you financially, but we would like to provide each of your bid committee members with a pair of Blunsten's. And Blunsten's are $200 shoes. They're expensive. So we all, like, there's five of us, and we all just got a free pair of Blunsten's, because we wrote him a letter saying, support our bid. So things like that happened. I don't even remember the initial question, Colin, but anyway, I'm talking about myself. So I don't know, is Colin back? Have we lost Colin or?
COLIN HILDING: I'm here. Hello, Colin.
JARROD LOOBEEK: The truth comes out, it was all about the perks, wasn't it?
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, I want a free Blunsten's. That's all I wanted.
COLIN HILDING: Before we wrap up with a couple of little topics here, Hobart and other small Olympic cities. Jarrod, any other questions you had you wanted to ask?
JARROD LOOBEEK: Venue-wise, I've seen a map of proposed venues. What do you think? I want to know the hardest event to run in Hobart. What's the surf like? How is the surfing going to get off the ground in 2020?
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, you've got to remember when we had this bid, surfing wasn't a sport yet, so we'd never even thought of that. In all seriousness, there's actually a very famous surfing spot called Shipstone Bluff off the Tasman Peninsula, where I think Kelly Slater has come there. It's not a very accessible spot. It's not like you can go from a beach. You literally have to be helicoptered into this point because it's like off rocky cliffs and has huge breaks and everything like that. So that's a great question, actually. I think that, yeah, the athletics in front of our 20,000 seat stadium, we'd need a bigger stadium. I mean, we generally do have some venues that at many points have hosted. Tasmania hosted the World Rowing Championships up at Lake Barrington, so that was a go-to. Our aquatic centre, when it was built in the 90s, we hosted, I want to say the World Short Course Champion. We hosted some really big short course championship, but that wouldn't take much of an upgrade to get the swimming there. But I mean, sailing would be easy. We're the end of the Sydney to Hobart yacht race. That's not really answering your question, Jarrod. I mean, I don't know how the handball scene is in Tasmania. So that might have been a bit of a challenge. I mean, a lot of our indoor venues, you know, are not great. So when it comes to basketball, gymnastics, volleyball, badminton, things like that, there'd be significant upgrades required for those.
COLIN HILDING: A lot of high school gyms would have been the most famous.
JARROD LOOBEEK: Which is our wood chopping in, right?
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, exactly. It'd be one of those, you know, back in like 1956 how Melbourne had Australian rules football, because, you know, we could, we would have things like that. I mean, we did kind of switch focus to a youth Olympics bid because that became a thing halfway through the bid and, you know, smaller scale venues and that you could probably do some of those things there. But yeah, I don't know. There's not one, I think a lot of the events I can really think we would make do somehow. Like, if you're talking about the Winter Olympics, then yeah, okay, we might be fucked. But I think for the most part, off the top of my head, I feel there would be ways and means, Hobart ways of making ways for these events to happen. The Equestria might just be in my backyard or something like that, I don't know.
COLIN HILDING: So obviously, there was a ton of support for this. A lot of people did take it very seriously. But how did it start to wind down? Was this just a slow progression where people stopped covering in the media? Or was there a moment where it's like, you know what, we are withdrawing our bid. We concede Tokyo, you've got one up on us.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, exactly. No, Tokyo one, we were done. When we started switching focus to the Youth Olympic bit, I think things at that point were kind of legitimately serious. There was no joke involved in that anymore. And I still honestly believe Hobart could host the Youth Olympics. I genuinely believe with a bit of support, it could be possible because this might lead into what you want to talk about to close this episode out. Smaller cities hosting the Olympics, the IOC we know is kind of looking at ways to make Olympic bids more manageable in the future. And a lot of that around the Youth Olympics is kind of that model. So I think a lot of it just became a bit too serious. And the people who were involved in the bid on our committee, I mean, one of them, she's now an MP in state parliament, so she went on to a political career, and we just kind of all went different directions. And in all seriousness, this sounds like I'm making this up, or this is a convenient excuse, but this I think legitimately is a thing. So all of this, I was doing all of this before I got into podcasting. I was kind of, you know, just on radio at the time. And because this was around that period, around 2010, 2011, that this was kind of like my main side hobby that I was doing out of, you know, uni at the time, radio, working. So it was kind of just something that I enjoyed, kept me busy in that. Then 2011 was sort of that period where I got into podcasting with Survivor Oz and everything like that. And that kind of really all of a sudden took over my life outside of, you know, those things. So I think I'd found something new to focus on. I was getting attention for something else. Here we go. No one's caring about the Hobart Olympic bit anymore, but fuck people listening to Survivor Oz. Well, there you go. They want to talk about me.
COLIN HILDING: And that was all positive attention, right?
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, well, until Worlds Apart, but yeah. So I think just a whole variety of factors. And we kept the page. The page is still there. But I mean, the page is literally something that now I just jokingly will put something like the other month. I'm like, fuck, is the opening ceremony tonight? I better get started. Just things like that. And then all of a sudden, you get contacted by David Killick at the Mercury who wants to interview you, and fuck, maybe I should repost about this. I don't know. So, yeah, it's just one of these things that just stopped. And here we are now on a podcast with less than 100 fans talking about it.
COLIN HILDING: What is the population of Hobart?
BEN WATERWORTH: About 250,000. It depends on how you classify, but I was 250,000, give or take.
COLIN HILDING: Because just doing a little bit like quick research here, you'll find a lot of small places hosting the Winter Olympics, like Pyeongchang is very small for population. Summer Olympics is a little bit harder to come by, but you do have Atlanta, which I never realised is as small as this. I mean, Winnipeg is about twice the size of Atlanta. Atlanta, to this day, is still under 500,000 population, and at the time in 1996, even smaller than that. I think the one thing you find with a lot of these small cities that host Olympics is that they have big surrounding areas. So especially now, as you were saying, where multiple cities host, it does make it more realistic that a small city can host the Olympic Games. Are there enough surrounding areas around Hobart where you could share the bid with Snug or something else?
BEN WATERWORTH: I think, look, if you were realistically to have a bid from Hobart, you would have to share it with another city, or it would just be a Tasmania bid. I mean, anyone who knows anything about Tasmania would know we do have a problem when it comes to sharing anything with Hobart and Launceston. That's a big detriment to why we've never had a team in the AFL, things like that, because the North hates the South, the South hates the North, the North always thinks they should host everything in the South. We can't agree, basically. So it would be a Tasmania bid. We've got abundance of space, I guess, where you could have these places. It's just around, we're a very environmental state, so it would be very difficult to clear this land, to build a stadium that people would say, well, this isn't going to get used out. And that would be another problem too. We would have a lot of white elephants. It would all be well and good to host an event like this, but I think we would end up being like Athens or Sarajevo, places like this that end up having just these Rio, things that never get used, because Hobart wouldn't have a purpose for 100,000 seat stadium after hosting the Olympics. There would be no need for it. I mean, it might open the door, but Australia in itself only has one 100,000 seat stadium. The Sydney Stadium was 100,000. They reduced the capacity of that by 30,000, only holds 80,000 now, and they're looking at reducing that even more today. So even on a grand scheme of the country, we don't have stadiums like that. So look, in all seriousness, down the line, if Melbourne ever, say, got the Olympics again, and Melbourne would be in a very good position to host the Olympics tomorrow, shove the sailing down to Hobart. Give us a football match. They did that obviously in Sydney. They spread out the football, the soccer. They played games in Melbourne. They played games in Adelaide, Brisbane. They spread it around the country. Give us a game. Hell, if I could look at seeing Hobart host one type of Olympic event, I mean, hey, I've achieved my goal. But yeah, I mean, size wise, sure. Population and infrastructure wise, there's no way Tasmania, Winnipeg, seriously, Colin would be in a much better position to host an Olympic game than Hobart or Tasmania. The whole population of Tasmania, you have more people in Winnipeg than the entire state of Tasmania has. And where I'm living right now, Vancouver Island, an island that's a quarter the size of Tasmania, they've got nearly double the population of Tasmania. So, you know, to put that into perspective, that's kind of how you look at it.
COLIN HILDING: Well, this is the exciting thing for me. You know, I've never really thought about, you know, can smaller cities host and everything, and then realising there are a ton of Olympic host cities that are smaller than Winnipeg. And Winnipeg has had... What's that?
BEN WATERWORTH: Antwerp. I looked up. Antwerp's, I think, got about the population of Hobart. I mean, 1920, showed a little bit different Olympics back then, but still Antwerp is an Olympic city. They can always have that.
COLIN HILDING: Well, and with Winnipeg, you mean, we've hosted the Canada Games recently, which is like Youth Olympics for Canada, but we had the Pan Am Games, and the most recent city to host the Pan Am Games is Toronto, so I don't think we'd be out of it. But I think there's something different, and this is what would be interesting just to talk about really quickly before we go, especially now with COVID and everything. It almost feels like they would have been better off having a smaller city to host 2020, because you could control how many people are there more. And obviously, there's benefits to having a massive 100,000 seat stadium, and now they would have to space it out, so you're fitting 50,000 people and 100,000, or you just go with smaller venues because you want more crowd control. I mean, all sports now are sort of leading towards let's have no crowds or limited crowds. I mean, Jarrod, do you think that this is something that could affect host cities going forward, that we have more hope for smaller ones so they would just limit the crowds?
JARROD LOOBEEK: Yeah, I think it's definitely a consideration at the moment. It gets me a little bit excited for the Flimflon, what, 2026 Winter Olympic bid. Yeah, I think it's definitely a good idea, and I think we'll probably see more of that joint bids kind of in the future to space things out and share the load.
COLIN HILDING: Because this isn't something that's going to be over with right away, so Ben, your thoughts on it?
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, I mean, I think a perspective I have on it is, having been at the Commonwealth Games in 2018, I mean, I remember when Gold Coast actually won the rights to that. It was kind of one of those weird things where it was like, wow, the Gold Coast, okay, didn't realise that they could host it. I mean, different kettle of fish. I mean, anyone who's been to that part of Australia would know that Gold Coast and Brisbane almost connect into one of each other. They're all of almost, you know, the same city. And having lived there for when I did, I mean, it just felt like one giant city to me. So, but experiencing that games, I mean, the Gold Coast itself is a smaller city. And I mean, the opening ceremony there, I mean, that only had what, like a 30, 40,000 seat stadium and coming off the back of the last Australian Commonwealth Games where there was 100,000 seat stadium in Melbourne. So, I mean, I know it's not the Olympics, but I'm living in Victoria right now in Canada and the last Canadian city to host the Commonwealth Games. And if you came here and didn't realise they'd hosted a Commonwealth Games, you'd kind of always question, like, how did they host a Commonwealth Games here? It's very similar to Hobart. Very similar size, very similar feel. So, I mean, it is possible for these cities to kind of do that. And, I mean, the Commonwealth Games are struggling to find hosts, really. Like, no one wants to host them, and the Olympics are kind of having that issue too. So, I kind of do like this with the IOC and Thomas Bach and all that kind of stuff, where they are looking at these cities or trying to, I guess, give opportunities because, you know, a lot of controversy was around Rio and kind of, oh, can they host the games? I realise Rio is a very big city, but I think that was a great thing that they decided to give it to a part of the world or kind of almost like, I guess, not a, you know, what's the appropriate thing to say here? A first world country, essentially, you know, a country that's a lot of not quite the infrastructure and that that people will be used to because I think it's about opening those doors. The Youth Olympics in all seriousness, again, like Dakar is having them now in 2024. They've delayed them. But, you know, things like that, smaller places, 2026, sorry, Dakar has them. I apologise. Yeah, open the doors. Basically, I'm saying, like, give opportunities, co-bids as well. Like, I think the Olympics have always steered away from co-bids, but we're seeing that with Milan Cortina for the Winter Games. So, you know, the possibilities there. I know a lot of 2032 cities are obviously looking at co-bids, dual bids. I mean, the Australian bid is a Southeast Queensland bid. It's not a Brisbane or a Gold Coast bid. It's sharing kind of two cities. So I think that's gonna be the way they're gonna go, because we have so many issues now, don't we, with Olympic Games, and everyone puts their hand up, and then they realise, fuck, this is gonna cost a lot of money. No, we don't want them anymore. And then you end up having two cities bidding for them. And then in the case of 2024 and 2028, you only had two left. So, okay, well, we might as well just give the next two to you guys, because the last one is standing. So, yeah, it's the way of the future. I think it will happen.
COLIN HILDING: Okay, so revisiting Hobart never happened.
BEN WATERWORTH: What an episode.
COLIN HILDING: It is an interesting episode, because I think you always told the story, and it's like, well, that's interesting. And we're realising now it was much bigger than either of us expected to be, and probably bigger than you thought it would be too. I guess before we kind of close out here, do you know exactly what our next interview is going to be that's airing at the time that this goes out?
BEN WATERWORTH: I do, Colin Hilding, because we've decided to drop this episode basically as a bonus episode in the midst of our interviews. But the next one that we will air will be a chat I had recently, and one that Jarrod, I'm sure you're very excited for on not only the Olympic level, but of course you would know her as well from Survivor. Ziggy Zagame, she's now Cotterill. She's an Olympic water polo who won a bronze medal in London and was part of the Rio team. And yeah, it's a great chat. It's actually really interesting because I think now when you Google her, everything that comes up is Survivor, because she was on Australian Survivor. And I mean, I seriously interviewed her a couple of times about Survivor, but the last time I spoke with her, I said, like, hey, we've got an Olympic show. We'd love to get you on to talk about the Olympics. And she loved it. She sort of says in the interview about how like, yeah, no one ever wants to talk to me about my water polo crew anymore. They only want to talk to me about Survivor. So she's like, this is great. This is refreshing that we can come here and talk about my, you know, the thing that I put in like 15 years of my life towards, not that I was on TV for like 12 weeks. So yeah, it's a great chat, very informative. And I learned a lot about the true underwater tactics that they're allowed to do in water polo and why it is an amazing sport that I feel we all need to watch more. Just the hand grabbing and the wedgie pulling and things like that. They go under the water. So it's a fun chat.
COLIN HILDING: All right. And then after that, we got a couple of the big ones coming. The really big one I'm excited about is Jamie Soleil, the figure skater, Paris figure skater who had the big scandal in Salt Lake City, which Ben and I were both on that interview. We'll just tease people a couple of weeks out on that. That is, in my opinion, maybe the best interview we've ever had on the show. Except for this one. Well, no, let's be honest. It's better than this. But I was really surprised. Not only was she on the line with us for quite a while, I mean, this might end up being one of our longer interviews, but she goes into so much detail about Salt Lake City. She's very honest, she's very open, very emotional even at one point in the interview. Hands down, if there's one interview people have to listen to, not to knock any other ones, but this is the one I think people really have to get excited about. I agree.
BEN WATERWORTH: And yeah, I mean, I don't know if I really went too much into my super fandom with her in that interview. I was trying to remain calm. But I mean, I was so in love with her and David Peltier after those games. I think we've talked a lot about on this show about what was our favourite Olympics or kind of memories. I know, Colin, you talk up Turin as one of your best games that you remember watching. I always go back to Salt Lake City as maybe my favourite Olympics I've ever watched. You know, that or Sydney, you know, clearly. So I have so many great memories from when I was a kid watching Salt Lake City. And her story was one of them. So such an honour to interview her. And it really is a great chat. She was a fantastic person to speak to. And a lot of people will definitely be very interested in that one. Jarrod, you too. Sorry that you weren't available. I guess we didn't really invite you on that day. But do you have any interviews, Jarrod, that you have lined up that maybe we should know about?
JARROD LOOBEEK: I don't, but stay tuned for the Emu Plains Olympic bid. Great. I'm inspired.
COLIN HILDING: All right, so lots of stuff still to come. We're going to have interviews to carry us through the summer. We're recording another one in merely a couple of hours, which will probably be here for a couple of weeks. And I'm sure we'll be back in 2021, or we'll be back before 2021. We've got a couple of ideas of some episodes to talk about, maybe some revisiting of Sydney and Vancouver since we're on anniversary years, but lots of exciting stuff still to come. Ben, thank you for regaling us with your stories of scamming people and taking corporate perks and all the exciting stuff of Olympic bid.
BEN WATERWORTH: You're most welcome. Thank you very much. I'm glad we could work this out with my manager to find a time that we could all come together.
COLIN HILDING: And Jarrod, thank you for being here and giving us hope for Emu Plains or even Flynn Flawn. Flynn Flawn is the big one. Thank you for once again giving us hope of Flynn Flawn.
JARROD LOOBEEK: Look out, people. Flynn Flawn is going to be epic.
COLIN HILDING: All right. Thank you, everybody, for joining us. And do we have a closing thing on this? Do we sing along to the song? I'm turning Japanese.
BEN WATERWORTH: I don't know. Have we been pulled up that it's racist yet? I don't know. We will eventually.
COLIN HILDING: No, not yet.
BEN WATERWORTH: Not yet.
COLIN HILDING: Until one of our guests does their interview.
BEN WATERWORTH: I don't know if it's racist or not. I literally Googled, he's turning Japanese, considered racist. And like 50% said yes, 50% said no. But yeah, so it's not a deliberate ploy, people. It's just the only song that came to my head about Japan. So it works.
COLIN HILDING: Then tune in next time where we will go through all of our listeners' thoughts on whether or not our song is racist. Thank you for joining us. Good night! Good night.
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