Tokyo 2020 Day 16 Review & Closing Ceremony Review
An epic final day is in the history books, as is another Olympic Closing Ceremony, and we're back for another epic episode to wrap up everything that we saw, loved and didn't love on day 16 of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics! Just why are Olympic ceremonies seemingly getting worse and worse? Did anything actually happen during the Closing Ceremony or are we still waiting? Why was the star of the Closing Ceremony a moth? How excited is Canada to celebrate a gold medal on the final day of competition? Did Australia do anything at all on the final day of competition? And why are we looking forward to competitive jet fighting at Paris 2024 the most? It's one massive episode that you simply can't miss so make sure to get to listening!
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Please note this is an automated transcript that may contain errors.
BEN WATERWORTH: It is Off The Podium, An Olympics Podcast, coming to you today for the final day of Tokyo 2020 Asterix 2021. Day 16 of competition is done. The closing ceremony is done. The Olympics are done. We made it. We did it. It took us a year, but we're finally here. And that's the way we're going to steer, because I can't drink beer. And that's nowhere near what I was meant to be. I have no idea what's going on. My name is Ben.
COLIN HILDING: This intro is never going to end, I fear.
BEN WATERWORTH: I feel that was still more entertaining than the closing ceremony. Joining me to talk about day 16 and the closing ceremony is one half of our beloved duo, who we thought reunited last night, but apparently reunited and it doesn't feel so good. Colin Hilding, Colin, welcome back to the show.
COLIN HILDING: Oh, thank you. I'm thrilled to be here for one final time. And I'm actually thrilled to debate with you because, as I said yesterday, I think my expectations are low enough that I didn't completely hate this closing ceremonies. There's some good stuff in there.
BEN WATERWORTH: Did you watch the same thing? Like, what did you watch?
COLIN HILDING: I did. There's some, there was, well, there's an asterisk to put on the closing ceremonies as there is the opening ceremonies, but, well, we'll get into it.
BEN WATERWORTH: I feel like we should just get over and done with. I mean, kind of, it's fresh on the minds. We're literally recording this just after it finished, and then we can talk about day 16. Yeah, I just, I don't know what's happened to the Olympics. I mean, this is the spectacle. Well, fuck the pandemic. They could do something. Like, I'm sure they had a plan before the pandemic. Like, I mean, I just watched two hours of videos. They didn't do anything in the stadium. They had a couple of buskers. They had a really cool opera singer. I liked her. Even Paris' display was shipped off to Paris. I'm just, I don't, like, I never thought I'd be sitting here after the garbage that was Pyeongchang and the garbage that was Rio and miss the garbage that was Pyeongchang and the garbage that was Rio. I mean, Pyeongchang, I'm still waiting for Cybert. You had K-pop? That was somewhat entertaining. Rio, I can't even remember the Rio closing ceremony. Oh, Mario, what happened to Mario? Shinjo Abe or whatever it was. I'm surprised, you got up at 4 a.m. for this, Colin. And you're all over some- For 5 a.m. I just, I don't know. Okay, fine, blame the pandemic. But I mean, the Olympics happened still. It's not like we didn't get the Olympic Games still happening. It made one of the best Olympics I've ever seen. But book ended by terrible opening and closing ceremony. I said it during the opening ceremony. I'm saying it now. The worst closing ceremony I have ever seen. And I had to bookend that. I was at the Gold Coast 2018 closing ceremony. I was in the audience for that. And I would rather watch that than watch what I watched tonight.
COLIN HILDING: Okay, so I'm not going to disagree with you. But again, there is that disclaimer, we have to say. These opening closing ceremonies would have been radically different a year ago. They had very little time before... Well, the cancellation came with very little time before. So I'm sure that they were well into the way of planning these things. And with all the stops and starts with the Olympics, and particularly just within the last couple weeks before the lead up to this, I'm going to at least say I can completely understand, as I did for the opening ceremonies, why this is scaled back. Because I don't think there's any way this would have been more scaled back than Rio and Pyeongchang, which one other way to say, listen, we're doing this because we don't think we should be burning billions of dollars on a ceremony. Again, kind of understand that thinking. Doesn't necessarily mean it's as entertaining to watch. But with this one, I understand why it's scaled back. For all we know, they could have simply said, listen, we're cancelling the closing ceremonies altogether. We can't have that many athletes in one stadium. So for what they did, I can see why they were cautious. Doesn't necessarily mean it was the most entertaining thing in the world. But I found some entertainment out of some of the musical numbers in there. You got to at least give me that the Japanese ska big band medley, the band thing they had was great.
BEN WATERWORTH: I like that music. I'll give you that. That was fun music. Yes.
COLIN HILDING: The bond dance, which I like. I like the bond dance because I've watched the Karate Kid Part 2. And it was great to see the instructors going around to the athletes, showing them how to basically the exact same scene from the Karate Kid. You know, like this, like this, and all the uncoordinated white kids trying to keep up in the bond dance. That was fun. Other than that, it was smaller scale. Like you were at the Commonwealth Games closing ceremonies. I was at the Canada Games closing ceremonies here in Winnipeg a couple of years ago. Both of those are much smaller scale than the Olympics. And I'll at least say both of those felt bigger than this did. It felt very small. But the change up of how the the the flag bears came in the big circle, it at least felt different. So I feel like with the opening ceremonies, one of the knocks against it is that it was presented the same as an opening ceremonies ever always would have been, but it was much smaller. So it felt more distracting. It felt like more of a letdown because if you weren't watching this, if you're watching this 20 years from now, just sort of looking through like our children, hey, let me look at all the history of Olympic ceremonies. They're not necessarily going to know this was a year of a pandemic. They're going to look at the opening ceremony and say, well, that was lame. With this one, it was very clear they were doing something different. And I think that distracted me less.
BEN WATERWORTH: Look, yeah, I let me backtrack. I understand it's challenging times and yes, you're not going to spend all this money and it would have been different, but it's still it's still the Olympics. It still shouldn't just be a couple of buskers in the middle of a stadium while they spend 75 percent of the time showing video montages. I just I just don't know how I feel about that. I still feel you need to have some sort of element out there that is a bit showy, is a bit flashy. I mean, those athletes looked bored. The ones who did were able to show up looked bored. The moth on the podium to me was the most exciting thing of it. I will say I'll get to the Paris display in a minute. Like, I like the Paris display. The Paris display was epic, but I'm just disappointed that it was a live cross to Paris. Like, I mean, I wanted to see a giant snail walk into the stadium and like, just do something there. Like, the French people in that stadium are probably going like, oh, here we go, Paris. And then they're going, oh, fuck, I'm watching a video. I could have stayed in the village. Like, I mean, I don't know. But like, moth, moth and treadmill, that's all I'm going to remember from the ceremonies of Tokyo 2020.
COLIN HILDING: For the Paris display, I mean, it was incredible. I wouldn't mind if they did kind of accommodation that's going forward. Again, completely understand why they didn't have, you know, a Paris display in the stadium. But if they did something like this, a combination of stadium display and go to the country display, that would be great. I think, again, it didn't bother me as much because I'm fairly certain this is what the Pan Am games do. I know they'll have representatives there, but I'm fairly certain that the Pan Am games will actually have some kind of display on video from the other country.
BEN WATERWORTH: They, from memory, Sochi was the first to do it. I remember in Vancouver, they crossed to Sochi live, and they had sort of a ballet display or a symphony display. And then in the BC place, they still had a bit of a display going on. But I remember them saying at the time, like, oh, this is the first. We are crossing live to Sochi right now. Which, I mean, I thought that was cool at the time. But yeah, I feel like I'm just the negative Nelly coming on here all the time. And like, you know, come on, Ben, like, get it, get it, get it, but like, again, this is Tokyo. If this was, you know, Rio, and I'm not expecting much from Rio, like not to disregard Rio, but like this is a land of technology that we're going to get in five years time. I mean, again, we talked up the display. I would love to go back and listen to our closing ceremony review of Rio, because I'm pretty sure we were like, holy crap, we can't wait for Tokyo. This is going to be amazing. I'll tell you one thing I actually did in the last 24 hours, because I remember when the Beijing opening ceremony was on, everyone was talking it up as like this most amazing opening ceremony, and I was 21 and dumb. I think I went to the dentist that day, so I must have been like half unconscious. And I always remember thinking, Beijing wasn't that exciting. But then I went back last night and I went through the highlights, and holy fuck, that drumming sequence, like it just gives me utter utter goosebumps just watching that. So my only thing right now is thinking that hopefully China, being China, will be like, fuck money, fuck the pandemic, welcome back the drummers from the 2008 Summer Olympics. I've said this after every single opening ceremony we've done. I blame us, we're the curse. Ever since we've been on air, opening and closing ceremonies have been shit for the Olympics. So again, the best opening ceremony we have seen since we have started was the Gold Coast 2018 opening ceremony. And there was a giant whale there, and Delta Goodrum, and surfboards. That was the best. Seriously, you have to admit that. Come on. I know we're an Olympics podcast. We do the Commonwealth Games, sort of. Maybe we have to do more next year for Birmingham. But come on, that's the best. How many have we seen? Four opening ceremonies. That's the best opening ceremony we have seen so far.
COLIN HILDING: Possibly. You might be right about that. I think times are changing a lot too. Part of the problem is Beijing set the bar so high that where do you go from there? And if we were to go back to Athens, Sydney, Atlanta, it's a lot more on scale with what we've been seeing in Rio and Pyeongchang. So maybe this is going to settle in and be the new norm.
BEN WATERWORTH: I wouldn't agree with that. Like, even Athens is a very underrated opening ceremony. To have a swimming pool in the middle of that stadium, to drain it in two minutes, have boats. We're going to do, we've talked about this, we're going to do opening ceremony episodes. I want this to be a project for us next year that we will watch opening ceremonies, do commentary over them or something along those lines, because there are some ones that you're forgetting. Maybe I'm just being biased with Sydney. I'm sure you had a similar feeling during Vancouver. It was that build up and just the countdown. And as a Canadian, you're watching Vancouver. This is amazing. I will never forget, as a 13-year-old, that build up to that night of Sydney 2000, sitting in my living room, seeing that horse come out the whip and just everything about that opening ceremony lives with me to this day. And look, again, as you said...
COLIN HILDING: So you're saying if we had had a treadmill come out and a whip, it would have enhanced this one.
BEN WATERWORTH: I want a moth.
COLIN HILDING: Run, kid, run!
BEN WATERWORTH: I want a moth with a treadmill on it flying in for the Paralympics. Yeah, look, I guess I'm just being Mr. Negative. Okay, I did like...
COLIN HILDING: I'm negative too, but again, I think there needs to be that disclaimer. It wouldn't have been this way in any other year. And for that matter, I hope that Tokyo gets it back. It's really a tricky thing. Is Japan gonna want to invest in something like this again? Are they gonna be able to get the people? That's the other thing. The big thing that fell apart with Calgary, with Calgary's last bid, was that the public wasn't behind it, like this is too much money to spend. I sincerely hope that they can rally the people behind it, because I know that the IOC, they would give Tokyo another shot at this after this year.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah. Well, the big whisper already I'm seeing on social media tonight is that Sapporo are apparently putting their hand up for 2030. So it looks like Vancouver, Salt Lake, and who else is in the running for 2030? I've gone blank. But for the Winter Games, obviously. So that will be very interesting, because I mean, I would usually say, would Vancouver or Salt Lake get it, given that LA's got it in 2028? They wouldn't really give it to the same continent. Well, I mean, the last three, the last two Olympics have been in Asia, and the next one's going to be in Asia as well. So we're getting three back to back in Asia. So I don't really think that's a problem. I enjoyed the flags in the circle at the beginning. I'm with you there. The montages were cool. Like, don't get me wrong. Like, I like a good montage. They were good and entertaining. And I'll get to the Paris one in a second. But I don't know how your commentators were, but I swear the Channel 7 commentators were asleep for half of this, because when the flag bearers are coming out, it was literally silence. And then all of a sudden, Joanna Griggs was like, and the flags are coming into the stadium. And then Hamish Lockham will be like, that's right, Joe, the flags. Yep, there they are. Get on board, Channel 7. Although I will say, when they showed the Canadians, they straight away were like, wow, and Canada rocking the denim jacket. Where do we get them? Yeah, the merch. Go to Hudson's Bay.ca, Joanna Griggs, and you can get them there. That was cool. The whole light show of the rings was cool. I'm watching the whole time. I was going to add, you probably might be at the same thing, but I'm going, oh, that's so cool, that's so cool. And I'm thinking, that's fake, isn't it? Because then you look on Twitter, and it's like on TV versus reality, and you see literally nothing's happening in the stadium.
COLIN HILDING: Yeah, and I think with Sochi, this was another thing that, that was sort of the first one that used this, you know, 3D effects for the purpose of television audiences where somebody in the stadium is not going to see it, which for these Olympics, fine, but if this just becomes a common thing, I mean, who's going to want to attend opening ceremonies? Like, there's nothing to see, everything's just graphics. I like the way that they integrated it in, though, where you had the real fireworks, and then this waterfall comes down. It looked great on TV, but what was really funny is Jamie was looking at this, and at the point where the waterfall light started coming up and forming the Olympic logo, she's like, that's so cool. And I'm like, well, yeah, but it's fake. And then she's like, what? What do you mean? I'm like, well, lights can't form an Olympic logo. And so she tuned it out. And then when the sequence came up with the Ska band, she wasn't even watching. She was on her phone. I'm like, Jamie, you should be watching this. This part's pretty good. She goes, why should I watch it? You said it's fake. I'm like, lights are fake, people are real, Jamie.
BEN WATERWORTH: Oh, Jamie, well done. Yeah, the Ska band were cool. And I loved that opera singer. Holy craparoni. She was amazing. I mean, I love the Olympic him as it is, but she shot that out of the park.
COLIN HILDING: But one other thing I want to add. Well, first, just quickly touch on this one before I forget the moth, as you mentioned.
BEN WATERWORTH: Is it trending on Twitter like treadmill girl did? I want the moth to be trending. The moth was exciting.
COLIN HILDING: If we can start the Twitter account for Tokyo closing ceremonies moth.
BEN WATERWORTH: news.com.au second headline. Unexpected star steals the show. Yet a tiny insect somehow merged as the event's biggest star.
COLIN HILDING: But I have to ask because I was well ahead of you, which is weird. Also, I want to say I did mention how, you know, in the United States, like the when when I had put up Simone Biles for Athlete Day, which had nothing to do with performance was more just the attention she brought. How in the United States, the ratings are so down for these Olympics, they're not even carrying it live.
BEN WATERWORTH: It's not even on like they're fishing on right now on NBC. Well, isn't that a thing though that I think that's happened in the past, so that like they got a lot of criticism because they would just wait till prime time. Like I feel that's something they've constantly done in BC.
COLIN HILDING: And I know they have, but it's also weird when you're not carrying anything Olympics when you could be. But I don't know who was the same for you when the Japanese lady was talking. First of all, she had a mask on, but do they have any translator for you? Because it was just six minutes straight with no translation on CBC.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, I don't know if you remember Jarrod and I talking about our cultural expert that they get from our multicultural channel SBS. And she was useless in the opening ceremony. This time around, she came in handy because she was translating that.
COLIN HILDING: We had nothing. And to make it worse, I even sent you a picture, maybe a little bit of a racist moment from Canadians, where you have a Japanese woman talking, and the subtitle says, foreign alternative language or something like that. Like, alternative language? It's Japan. It's the Japanese Olympics. It's not hard to guess. And I'm going to have another one when we get to commentary fails later on.
BEN WATERWORTH: It's very alternative, the Japanese language. You know, I think it's...
COLIN HILDING: Alternative.
BEN WATERWORTH: Alternative. I mean, this is the first time I think I've messaged you, so this is the first time I've ever looked forward to something French. But the thing that I found really awkwardly odd about this whole closing ceremony, even the broadcasts, I don't know how it was with CBC, but everything just seemed rushed, and then it just happened like... You kind of expect a process when it comes to the sort of the way it's staggered. So like generally with the French sort of thing, like you've got the handover of the flag, and then they'll kind of play the national anthem, and then they'll go to the display. This one, they integrated the display immediately with the national anthem, and I was kind of, oh, this is a bit strange. But okay, fine, it kind of worked. But like even the national anthem, the way they did it, I was like, oh, this is kind of a bit interesting. And then I'm just waiting, and then I'm like, I'm about five minutes in, and I'm going, oh, this must be the display, because you've got mountain bike girl ride, and I'm like, that's a bit, bloody Paris Hoodlums, riding around all the, you know, the parts of the city. Then, you know, you've got all these other aspects of it. The thing that I loved. Okay, the giant flag on the Eiffel Tower. Can I just put this out? The giant CGI flag on the Eiffel Tower. How did your Canadian broadcasters explain the giant flag on the Eiffel Tower?
COLIN HILDING: It wasn't even mentioned. They were dead silent during the whole display.
BEN WATERWORTH: Okay, so good to know, because our Channel 7 commentators decided to go, and yes, this is a 90-metre flag that is one of the largest in the world, constructed on the Eiffel Tower. And I'm literally going, this is worse CGI than James Bond in Die Another Day kitesurfing. And you're saying this is real. They literally then cut to the live shot of all the happy French people waving their flags going, It's not even on the Eiffel Tower! Like, seriously, I know they get notes given to them, like, hey, here are your official closing ceremony notes. Did the Paris organising committee do this? Did the Tokyo... Or is this just like Jerry in the canteen at Channel 7? Hey, hey, hey, Sean, come here. I'm going to write this on the notes of Joanna Griggs Hamish and that SBS chick, which is flag, huh, 90 metres. Get this, it's so fucking fake, mate. Yeah, yeah, largest flag in the world. Shit, see if they'll fucking do that on air, like, pass it on. They are live on the closer. Yes, and this is the largest flag in the world. It was so fake!
COLIN HILDING: I actually, I was thinking the same thing as you, but I'm thinking it's more likely that it was the French playing the joke. Let's send the note out to everybody. What's your display going to include? The largest flag ever constructed. 100% real. Make sure they sell that it is 100% real. And then they just work in that shot where it's suddenly gone, just to make everybody look like bulls. That's what the French would do.
BEN WATERWORTH: The French comedian, Pierre, people think French is not funny. I know Jean-Paul. They think we're like the Hungarians. I tell you what, let's make jokes. Okay, I don't know, they're German-French. I know, largest flag in world. Wee wee. I have to say, I loved happy French people. And they've got Olympic gold medallists there who were just dancing. There was that one, she had the two around her neck. She's like, I'm French. Everyone's like, COVID's not a thing in Paris. I thought they were pretty bad with it. But then probably my favourite bit is, let's zoom in on French president Emmanuel Macron saying like four words. He's like, un, deux, trois, un. And then zooms out from the Eiffel Tower. And it's all like, Biondeux, Paris, tout, tout, tout, tout fort. I'm expecting to see Roger Moore and May Day jump off in the background. They've got the flic. Let's rewind five years ago to Rio. Japanese Prime Minister Shinji Abe, dressed as Mario in the middle of a stadium, everyone falls in love. Japan, magnificent. Paris 2024, the French president can say four.
COLIN HILDING: You know what would be even better is former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger putting on the LA display.
BEN WATERWORTH: Holy crap, Bob, can we just say that the LA display is going to be brilliant in four years, three years.
COLIN HILDING: Let's not gloss over the Top Gun crew coming out for the Paris display like, wow.
BEN WATERWORTH: Since when does French have an air force? Like, they're usually running away. They've usually got like the planes to cart people out of the country. The Germans are coming. This time around, fuck, they finally got an air force. That would have come in handy like 80 years ago, France. Jesus.
COLIN HILDING: Also, not to end on a downer, but whose idea was it to end the closing ceremonies on a downer? They have the fireworks display. It goes to a commercial break. I'm like, it's over. And then they cut back, and they're like, we wanted to pay respect to all the people who died in Munich. Let's have a moment of silence.
BEN WATERWORTH: Again.
COLIN HILDING: And that's the end? Like, open with that. Why are you closing on a downer? All these athletes, like these athletes, our comment is like, these athletes needed a chance to party. These athletes needed to enjoy themselves. How do you want to send them home? A lot of people died 50 years ago. We didn't even get that. Like, seriously. You didn't even show it?
BEN WATERWORTH: No.
COLIN HILDING: That was the closing moment.
BEN WATERWORTH: The weird part of, like, the Channel 7 coverage. And I've never seen, like, I think for winter games, I've seen this. Never for summer. But, like, this is where we'll kind of, like, you and I were arranging this, and it's like, oh, I might be a little bit, you know, recording this. So, like, they'll do a wrap up, and they'll show the montage and all that sort of stuff. Literally, you've got the word of arigato or whatever it is. And then, literally, there's sort of this silence, and then you go, well, as they say in Japan, sayonara. We'll see you next time. And then, also, they cut straight to the montage. I'm like, what? That's it? And then the montage, which is always my favourite part of the Olympics, is, like, three minutes long. I remember when Channel 9 had the Olympics in London. They had a really, really shitty montage. It went for about four minutes. It was to the Willie Nelson version of The Scientist by Coldplay, a really brilliant version of that song. Seriously, look it up. Like, it is amazing. Made my top 100 songs of all time. It is a beautiful version of that song.
COLIN HILDING: Eww.
BEN WATERWORTH: It was so short. That's weird. But, like, this one was even shorter. Like, the end of, like, Olympics montage just goes to, like, ten minutes. This is, like, three minutes and done. So, no, we didn't see that. But they did that in the opening ceremony. Like, are they just that apologetic?
COLIN HILDING: CBC decided to re-air it, but so then if that's the case, you know, okay, it's not bad closing ceremony. It's just bad production on CBC's part. Let's send people out with a smile.
BEN WATERWORTH: Bad CBC, bad. I did, like, the fireworks at the end were cool. They didn't just go for longer, though, because, like, you talk about setting the standard high for fireworks. Sydney 2000 did that with the massive fireworks display they did in the closing ceremony, and that was Sydney's renowned for its New Year's Eve fireworks, but the one they did for the Olympics was just, like, incredible. So I know pretty much every Olympics have kind of tried to top that since. But this one, like, the way that kind of like around the stadium, and it was amazing, but it was done. So, oh, that's it. Cool.
COLIN HILDING: So at one point, I love, though, that it looked like the entire stadium had exploded. There's so much light that I'm like, oh, they just blew up all of our athletes. This is going to be a controversy.
BEN WATERWORTH: Terrorist attack. We don't like you. I will say just some of the other things. When the athletes came out, did they show the CBC coverage, the boxing kangaroo that the official Tokyo account was going? I loved it. It was like, what's the closing ceremony without a boxing kangaroo? And I'm like, I don't know. Probably still a closing ceremony. They showed our decathlete guy, the bronze medallist. I think he'd picked up because he had some blonde on his shoulders, basically dancing, and now Channel 7 people are like, oh, look at him go. He's just completed the most grueling event in the world, and he's still got time to put another girl on his shoulders. I'm thinking, are you serious? He's getting lucky tonight. She's quite attractive. He's going home with an artistic gymnast or something like that. I don't know. He's lucky. And then they kept cutting to the Americans, and of course the Americans are on camera with their medals. They're going, hey man, red medal! Like Americans. And then I think at one point, they cut to the Sri Lankans, and they're just going like, yay, Sri Lanka. They got this little flag. Hooray, Sri Lanka, we're at the Olympics. I don't think we won a medal. I think they did win a medal. Maybe, I can't remember. But outside of that, I've got nothing. I've got nothing to add on the closing ceremony.
COLIN HILDING: There was another good moment that Jamie had during one of the kind of flexible... I can't remember exactly what it was. It was like a flexible gymnast type display during the closing ceremony. Jamie was like, wow, that's really impressive. And then she just paused like, can you imagine someone could do that during sex? Thank you, Jamie, better than the CBC commentary.
BEN WATERWORTH: And now Jamie knows why Ben Waterworth likes gymnasts.
COLIN HILDING: When the Canadians came up with the jean jackets, the Canadian commentators were like, how about that? Look at this. This is what everybody's talking about. And then one of the commentators, who I guess was a little bit older, she was like, you know what? It's like, I got to tell you, to me, this is a dream outfit. When I was in eighth grade, and I looked at Madonna in a jean jacket, I said to myself, I want a jean jacket one day.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yes.
COLIN HILDING: They were trying to fill air at one point. And I've been talking a lot about Andy Petrillo, who's one of our anchors here, who's just amazing. And one of the athletes that was with her asked the question. So these athletes, it has nothing to do with what's going on the screen. It's just all of a sudden, they have very restrictive diets. You got to imagine when it's over, you're going to eat a lot. Tell me, Andy, if you were an athlete, what would you eat? She goes, you mean if I was an athlete and I had to restrict my diet? Yes, she goes, well, I'm not an athlete. I don't have to restrict my diet. And I'm eating pizza. I'm eating lasagna. I'm eating fries. I don't care. I'm like, dude, that's what I want out of an anchor. Somebody who plays off, you ask a dumb question, I'm going to give you a dumb answer. I'm not an athlete. I eat whatever the heck I want. Give me a pizza right now.
BEN WATERWORTH: Shut up. Bill, I was actually the channel seven commentators at one point who were praising the Canadians more. So like when they, after the, I think it was the jean jacket comment, they got there and they're like, let's talk about Canada, shall we? What a games they've had. Seven gold and who can forget their women's football team? And they're like, oh yes, what a performance that was. So yeah, they were talking up Canada. They were loving the Canadians, the Australians there. So they didn't talk up Britain or France or New Zealand. Actually, they mentioned Lisa Carrington like once. Oh, look at Lisa Carrington. Yes, by far their most decorated athlete. Oh, and there's Canada.
COLIN HILDING: Let's talk more about the Canadians.
BEN WATERWORTH: I swear that's what they were more excited about. One thing I wanted to say like the was this the first time we've ever had the female marathon ceremony, which I thought was a nice little touch, although they probably got to say some time about playing the national anthem for both athletes at the same time. It was the same national anthem. But can I just say, Thomas Bach, or should I say Olympic medallist fencing, because I swear every single time his name gets mentioned, it has to be like, is that Thomas Bach doing that? He's gone, yes, every time I walk in the room, ah, ah, ah, you must say Olympic champion, ah, ah. Like I swear it'd be like you'd walk into McDonald's, like, ah, yes, Thomas Bach, excuse me. Oh, sorry, Thomas Bach Olympic champion fencing is in the room, everyone. Like, he at least looked engaging when he presented the medal. Sebastian Koh, Jesus Christ. Could he be anywhere else? Like Chandler, he didn't want to be there at all. He was just like, yeah, have your medal, fuck off.
COLIN HILDING: One thing that really bothered me, though, during the speeches, why were they all wearing masks? Like the athletes are allowed to remove their masks to pose for pictures. We see during all these Olympics, like everybody's been tested a million times. Yeah, they have the mask thing kind of as a thing of respect, but I have not seen anybody keep their masks on when they didn't have to. The commentators, you're not hearing commentators in the booth say, I even told you guys. I'm like, forget about the Japanese, about having no translator, get us a translator for Thomas Bach. We can't understand him without a mask, let alone with one.
BEN WATERWORTH: And he's still going. He doesn't shut up. I think this might have been his shortest ever speech ever, to be completely honest with you there. Yeah, no, that's a very good point. Yeah, I'm just so... I don't know. Oh, and the other thing I was going to mention, the flag coming out, the Olympic flag, and they're like, yes, and introducing these legendary people, here's blah, blah, blah, Olympic champion judo, and blah, blah, blah, youth Olympic champion break dancing, and Olympic medallist, and Olympic this, and oh, and here's doctor. Oh, yes, fantastic. The last one, blah, blah, blah, fashion model. Great. She's made it. Like, again, they're taking a leaf out of Giselle from Rio. Like, that was a prominent thing. That was her last walk. Like, she's strutting through the Rio Stadium, the Macarons, look at her go. They've just got, like, great Japanese people. Karen, the man has had Mr. Yagi from the fucking Karate Kid movies, whatever his name is. Like, blah, blah, blah, fashion model. You got a doctor who saved countless lives. You've got Olympians, champions. All these Japanese people at home got... Oh, there she is. Thanks to her.
COLIN HILDING: Fashion model.
BEN WATERWORTH: Thanks to her, I've got bulimia.
COLIN HILDING: Only other thing I want to add on the Canadian commentary is this was a great day for Canadians being mildly racist. So when the one really good section started, the Ska band, there was just this moment where they're like, and they're going with the Ska routine.
BEN WATERWORTH: Hmm.
COLIN HILDING: Yeah, this is a very Jamaican sound that they're paying tribute to here. I'm sorry that Japan can only have traditional, you know, ethnic Japanese music, that music doesn't exist in Japan unless it's... We had the Canadian closing ceremonies with freaking Nickelback, Avril Lavigne. You're telling me that that is the definition of Canadian sound?
BEN WATERWORTH: Isn't it? I mean, you ask anyone in Australia, and they make famous Canadian music, they're going with Avril Lavigne and Nickelback. So I don't know what you're complaining about. We weren't embarrassed in Carly Minogue performed at the closing ceremony in Sydney. Yeah, that's Australian pop music.
COLIN HILDING: Why is... But again, that is pop music, pop music that is popular in that country. The assumption that Japanese people are still listening to traditional Japanese music on the radio. Are you telling me that rock music was not invented in Canada, but Nickelback headline, you know?
BEN WATERWORTH: Let's not forget during Turin.
COLIN HILDING: Oh, Jamie, whoa, she got heated with Nickelback. Not Canadian.
BEN WATERWORTH: My most memorable traditional music of all time was during Turin, when they used traditional artist Ricky Martin from Italy to close out the Turino... Do you remember that? Ricky Martin. And Bon Jovi was Salt Lake. They're American. That's embarrassing. Actually, can we talk about underrated ceremonies? Go back and watch the closing ceremony of Salt Lake. That is like the creme de la creme of amazing music. Like Kiss, Bon Jovi, I think. Was it NSYNC or in the opening or the closing? I think they were in the opening. But like, holy crap balls of Salt Lake. When I used to watch the Olympic channel, and I'd just be flicking on, whenever the Salt Lake... I was like, because I remember the T-Rex heads. They were great. Oh, God, I can't wait till we get to that one. The one thing I'd like to mention too, our commentators get there, when the Greek national anthem is being played, let's start talking all over it. Oh, yes, blah, blah, blah. It's like, be respectful to Greece. Without them, we wouldn't have the Olympics. Would you talk over the Australian national anthem? Like, what is that? Like, I'm not even Greek, and I'm offended.
COLIN HILDING: Like, everybody please rise and continue your conversations amongst yourselves.
BEN WATERWORTH: And the one thing, which I should have mentioned this last night, it gets brought up on every single closing ceremony, winter or summer, when the athletes come out together. I'm like counting down the clock until somebody says it. The idea for this came from an Australian back in Melbourne, 1956. Like, I don't know, whatever his name was, you know, Jack Smiggins, wrote to the IOC and were like, why do we have to have the closing ceremony so formal? Why doesn't everyone come out together? So they adopted it for Melbourne and have had it ever since. Literally every Olympics here in Australia, it gets mentioned at every closing ceremony.
COLIN HILDING: Wow, you know, you might as well just claim credit for creating the Olympics.
BEN WATERWORTH: Bloody hell, Pierre de Coubertin, very astray. G'day mate, my name's Pierre de Coubertin. That's me, yep, yep. This is my mate, Bazza, and my other cousin, Thomas Bach, Olympic champion fencing.
COLIN HILDING: Oh, I know we have to move on to the final day's events as well, but one more thing. Tell me that your day was not made by watching Thomas Bach give elbow bumps. That's what my life needed was Thomas Bach. Yeah.
BEN WATERWORTH: I mean, that man, I mean, he doesn't shut up. He counts like the count. And actually, sorry to correct yourself, Colin. Tell me your day wasn't made by Thomas Bach, Olympic champion fencing, giving elbow bumps. Come on, Colin, get it right. But I mean, that was the same point where Sebastian Koh is so bored. Like you stuck up hoity-toity British wanker, like giving medals out, you know? Jesus Christ. Yeah, I've got an interesting thing that happened during the coverage before, but I'll save that for like our commentary things, because I thought that was kind of interesting along the way there. But outside of the closing ceremony, we did have a final day of competition happening today, day 16, the final day. And while Australia didn't win anything, we didn't expect to win anything. That was it. We're still recovering from the boomers and all that kind of stuff. Canada won a gold medal, Colin. This was, I'll be completely honest with you. I saw her, so Kelsey Mitchell in the women's sprint, I saw her second race in the semi. And I'm like, oh, she's one up. Here we go. And I saw her like well and truly get beaten. I'm like, well, there you go. She'll probably end up finishing fourth. So I turned it off and I went and made lunch. Came back later. I'm looking at my phone, Twitter. It's like, Canada's won their seventh gold. I'm like, how? She got thrashed. I mean, what happened? But great result. Was this something that people were predicting or was it a bit unexpected? No.
COLIN HILDING: Yeah, this was an unexpected one. It's so unexpected that even when we ended off yesterday, a lot of the social media stuff you saw was like, hey, we've got a few more chances tomorrow. And they're mentioning her along with every single athlete. It wasn't even like, here's our best shot. It's like, she's got equal chance to the guy who came in third last in the marathon. You know, that's how big of a talk about what she was. But what's exciting about it is I had mentioned this RBC training ground thing that they started around the time of Rio, where what they wanted to do was improve, you know, Canada's medal hopes in Olympics by identifying athletes, even if it's not their sport. And she was like a soccer player who just tried out for this. And they said, hey, you might be good at cycling. Let's see if we can coach you and develop you. And literally within a few years, she's a gold medallist. Like, that's completely unprecedented. And what's so great about this, we look at, oh, yeah, well, Canada's done much better at the Olympics. A lot of people are saying, it's like, oh, it's because the women decide to compete. Well, women were always competing. It's because Canada got behind summer athletes and said, let's do something to shake it up. Let's figure out where we're not genetically not any different than the Americans. So let's figure out what we're not doing that they're doing.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which comes like in 180 days time in Beijing, if Canada underperform at the Winter Olympics, they're all going to get shot. They're basically like, look at our summer athletes, you pathetic winter fools.
COLIN HILDING: During Sochi, where everybody underperformed and they'd always cut to Putin, and he was like, you know what? Your house is going to be burned to the ground when you get home. That's what Trudeau is going to be doing in Beijing.
BEN WATERWORTH: I love all these tweets like, Trudeau is doing this sort of stuff. He's literally during Beijing, like the men's hockey team go out in the quarterfinals. Fucking pathetic. Don't even show your faces at home, JT. I love the positivity of world leaders. The Indian Prime Minister is being going crazy. I'm sure Scomo has. I don't really follow Scomo, but I want there to be a super... I'm sure the French guy there with these four words on the Eiffel Tower, is going, Oh, pathetic bullshit. You cannot even beat Germany on medal tally.
COLIN HILDING: Fuck you.
BEN WATERWORTH: I want honest world leaders. The Canadian Beach volleyball players go out in the quarterfinals. Trudeau, pathetic world champions. Don't even bother showing your face in Canada.
COLIN HILDING: Well, now we know why their homecoming is in Winnipeg. It's like, you know what you get for this? We're sending you to Winnipeg.
BEN WATERWORTH: Do you have to pay to go to that? I went to the Team Canada app. Well, in Toronto, you've got to pay for it, because I haven't even talked about the fact that on the Team Canada app, it's actually pretty cool. And Australia Olympic Committee doesn't have one. This Olympics around. There's a little two bit video game on the Team Canada app, Colin. You can play that. But it's got like the welcome home thing. You got to pay like $17 for it. Like what? You got to pay tickets for it?
COLIN HILDING: Yeah, here it's just in the like in the centre court of our biggest mall. And it's probably a way for them to try to, hey, let's get some people back in the mall. You know, you don't have to be scared to go out in public anymore. But they're also going to be live streaming it here. So it's 100% free here.
BEN WATERWORTH: So this is Team Canada homecoming with Josiah and Elijah. Elijah Woods. Elijah Woods is hosting us. Wow, 1695 at the CF Sherway Gardens, the West Mall, Toronto. There you go. So Toronto, typical Toronto. But if you're not seeing this, look, Sport Smasher. Like you can play it. Can you see that there, Sport Smasher?
COLIN HILDING: Slightly.
BEN WATERWORTH: Let's play it. This has got some cool like two bit sounds. I don't know if this is going to come across here on the your microphone, but it's kind of, I was playing this the other day and I didn't do very well. It's loaded. This is great podcasting. People can see it. Are you ready for this? Tap to start. All right. Cool, funky music. All right. And I've got two little athletes here. I'm going to tap to start. Oh, and I'm shooting a tennis ball.
COLIN HILDING: And ping and pong and ping and pong.
BEN WATERWORTH: Anyway, Sports Smasher, download now. You're on your iPhone or other ones. I loved the only Australian athlete today that got any notoriety was Matthew Glatzer in the men's Kieran. He finished fifth. But apparently all of Malaysia officially hates him and Australia, because at some point during the race, he, I think, let through Jason Kenney, the eventual gold medallist and Britain's most decorated Olympic athlete, his seventh gold medal in Olympic history. I didn't watch. I was reading this. He did something which allowed Jason Kenney to overtake the Malaysian and basically went on to win. And to the Malaysian, Moed Arazalasi Awang, who was a world champion and got the silver. Malaysia has never won an Olympic gold medal, apparently, which is amazing. I would assume Malaysia would have won a gold medal. And so all of Malaysia apparently have ripped into Australia on Twitter, saying that our cyclists cost them their first ever gold medal. So on behalf of Australia and Malaysia, I'm sorry.
COLIN HILDING: I'm going to say, let's give that Australian the athlete of the day. Yeah.
BEN WATERWORTH: I like Malaysia. I've been to Malaysia twice. Better than a Brit. Outside of Canada's gold, we should go over the final medals for the day and the Olympics. The other big one today was the men's marathon. And was it Uliad Kipchoge? Is that how you say his name?
COLIN HILDING: Aliad Kipchoge.
BEN WATERWORTH: Not even close. The greatest long distance trainer of all time, according to Bruce McEvaney, took the gold ahead of the Dutch and the Belgium. The basketball, surprise, surprise. Women, America, they won it ahead of Japan. France got the bronze. The boxing, so no surprise in the men's lightweight. Andy Cruz, who beat Harry Garcide in the semis, he waltzed away to the gold. Did you see actually, just in the boxing, we should have mentioned this yesterday, but I only saw it today, so probably not my fault. The Brazilian who won the gold yesterday actually got it in a knockout. So he was getting smashed by this Ukrainian, like absolutely getting pulverised. And then in the third round, he just went smack, knocked the Ukrainian down and won the gold on knockout. It was pretty cool. Check it out. I wish I had to see that because I would have given him Athlean of the Day yesterday. It was incredible. So Andy Cruz got the gold ahead of Kay Sean Davis of the US. In the super heavyweight, the big boys, Uzbekistan got the gold. Bacchadia Jalilov ahead of the US is Richard Torres, Britain and Kazakhstan with the bronzes there. In the women's lightweight, Ireland took the gold. Kelly Harrington ahead of Brazil, Thailand and Finland got another medal, yay! In the boxing and women's middleweight, Lauren Price for Britain ahead of Kuan Li of China. The Dutch and Rock got the bronze. As I said, the Kieran, Jason Kenney, officially. So we've had a few countries now, got their new officially highly decorated athlete of all time, Australia, Canada, UK, New Zealand. Jason Kenney now with seven Olympic gold medals to add to a bunch of other silvers and bronzes he's gotten. Malaysia silver, the Dutch, the bronze. The women's Omnium, yep, I still don't understand it. Jennifer Valente got the gold for the US. Japan silver, the Netherlands bronze. And the women's sprint to Kelsey Mitchell, gold for Canada, Ukraine silver, Hong Kong bronze. The rhythmic group all around. And upset, Bulgaria took it ahead of rock. Italy with the bronze. The handball, I watched this one today, I loved it. France took the gold ahead of rock, and Norway got the bronze. Women's indoor volleyball. Now this is one I might bring up a little bit later on. The US won the gold, their very first gold in women's volleyball. Didn't realise that. They beat Brazil, they thrashed Brazil. I watched all of that today as well. Serbia with the bronze, and the water polo, which was the last event. Men's ice hockey is generally the last gold medal of the winter. So the water polo is the last event of the summer. Serbia took the gold ahead of Greece and Hungary, which means the medal tally. And I will say, we've posted already on our social media, the Day 16 medal tally, but we will be posting the full medal tally on our social media. So get excited for that. But the US came out of nowhere, did not lead this medal tally, all Olympics. And what did they win today? Three, four gold medals? Three gold medals. China won none. So they've done a bradbury. The US have won the Olympics. 39 gold, 41 silver, 33 bronze. Three in a row for them. Because if China had done it, that would have only been the second time they had done it and the first since Beijing. So 113, the only nation to get over 100. So well done, America. China, they led at all Olympics. But they, I think, a couple of days Japan did. But 38 gold, 32 silver, 18 bronze, 88. So unfortunately, all of their athletes are probably going to be shot on return to Beijing. Japan, their most successful Olympics ever. 27 gold, 14 silver, 17 bronze, 58 in total. Britain end up in fourth, the bastards. 22 gold, 21 silver, 22 bronze, 65 in total. Rock, great debut Olympics for them. I look forward to seeing how this emerging nation goes in future Olympics. 20 gold, 28 silver, 23 bronze, 71 in total. Obviously, we know Australia will eventually be made into fifth once Rock gets disqualified for all their drugs. So we finish with 17 gold. The silver let us down. We were the only country in the top 10 with single-digit silvers. God damn it, Australia, get more second places. 7 silver, 22 bronze, 46 in total. And Canada, you got 11th. 7 gold, 6 silver, 11 bronze, 24 in total, which is so fascinating to see. 11th, 12th, and 13th. So Canada, Brazil, and New Zealand, you all got 7 gold and 6 silver. But luckily, the Canadian gold got you into 11th place because you got more bronzes. 11 bronzes, 8 to Brazil, 7 to New Zealand. Now, I want to go over some of the country's performances in the top 10 compared to other Olympics. And maybe we can sort of do that in a bit of a mini wrap-up we'll do today, because we'll do a main wrap-up tomorrow. But in terms of, again, Canada's perspective, so this is your most successful Olympics outside of LA, 84. And again, we know they don't really count. But, I mean, how is it being talked about now? Like, I know it's only the closing ceremony just finished. I'm sure you're not watching CBC mornings with Jax Miggins. But like, I mean, is this... Clearly, it's got to be talked about as a massive success. I mean, seven gold, your highest amount of gold since Barcelona. I mean, generally, you could barely struggle to get beyond three. But you basically double that in these Olympics.
COLIN HILDING: Yeah, I mean, Rio was our most successful last time, I believe, because we had hit 22. And just looking at the medal table from Rio, we were in 20th place overall. So we went from 20th to 11th, which is... It's easy to say we won two more medals this time, but I mean, the amount of golds we won is the difference. The overall performance start to finish is the difference. You know, we've had a lot of Summer Olympics where our braggart is London. London was a good games for us, and we won a single gold, Rosie McLennan. That was it.
BEN WATERWORTH: Two gold.
COLIN HILDING: What was our second gold in London?
BEN WATERWORTH: Is that when you got the weightlifting? Was that a drug one given to you afterwards?
COLIN HILDING: Oh, yeah, yeah, that was a posthumous. Which actually, that was interesting, because I think we mentioned that on the episode, and I'm like, no, that didn't happen. And I think, oh, wait, wait, that was like... Because that was a couple of years ago. It took like six or seven years.
BEN WATERWORTH: We got that in London, too. We got an extra gold, because the race walk to our talent got the gold, because the Russian probably in first was disqualified a couple of years later.
COLIN HILDING: Yeah. But I mean, like, it's... Now we're starting to see it. I think it was yesterday or the day before where you were mentioning, like, oh, is the fact that Canada's just broken their medal record being talked about? I'm like, no, not yet, actually. Now you're seeing it everywhere. It's just this, the amount of medals displayed everywhere on social media. I think the other thing that's really exciting about these games is that typically you'll get a lot of people who just sort of look at the headlines and they don't know what's going on. People are educated this time. Like, you can tell Canadians are really watching. They're paying attention because they not only know the names of everybody on the women's soccer team, but they can tell you why Damian Warner was the flag bearer. Like, I don't think I've ever seen a more unanimous agreement from the public when they've named a flag bearer as Damian Warner. People were like, of course that's a flag bearer. Like, how could it be anybody other than him? And yet, you know, they still know Evan Dunphy. You know, they know Kelsey Mitchell. They know all these names. Overall, I think this is going to be a breakthrough for Canada because we've, I think, mentioned yesterday, we're slowly transitioning towards being a winter and summer nation. Rio, it was like, wow, that was unexpected success. For us to actually follow it up and do even better this time, it means it's not a fluke. Because there's a lot of times where, you know, a country may surprise. Italy surprises in the sprinting. Well, we'll see what happens, you know, in Paris if they can actually hold that through.
BEN WATERWORTH: We should have mentioned, Damian Warner was your flag bearer because of course that was announced in the period between there. But yeah, it's very interesting to see how that goes because, I mean, yeah, seven gold back in Barcelona, you went three, three, three, three, two, four, seven. So pretty incredible for that there to think about that. I mean, Australia, it's not at all a hidden secret that we've had a very successful ones. I mean, our most gold ever equal with Athens. So we won 17 back in Athens, 17 this time in Tokyo. So a record in terms of gold, equal gold. And in terms of total, it is equal third. So we equal the amount of medals we won in Beijing with 46, only Athens with 50, and Sydney with 58. We won more medals in total. Look at Sydney, 25 silver. Geez, that's one where you wanted to translate a few of those into gold. So I'm calling this now. It's 11 years early. But I'm telling you, we will get to 20 in Brisbane. We will finally reach the magical 20. We've never gotten that many. So that'll happen in Brisbane. I'm telling you now, if it doesn't, I will get a tattoo of Nickelback on my shoulder blade. Hopefully I'll be dead before then now that I've said that. But anyway, but yeah, I mean, the thing is, just while we're on the topic, I mean, so many countries had their best ever Olympics. We talked about India. This is actually India's best ever performance at an Olympic Games. They ended up with a gold, two silvers, and four bronzes. So again, for a country like India, I think that's kind of weird, like that they got that little medals, but that actually is their best ever performance ever at an Olympic Games. New Zealand as well in terms of total, 20 in total. Now, they got seven gold, which is only second to LA, where they got eight, but again, LA doesn't count. But I mean, even then, that's pretty crazy to think that New Zealand can walk away with seven freaking gold medals for a country their size. The one that I wanted to point out too, actually, because I know in Athens, Australia got talked up a lot, so we were the first ever country to win more gold medals in the Games after we hosted it. Because generally, like a country would do so well in the Olympics, they host, and then they sort of fall down the wayside. I know the UK have kind of bucked that trend a lot as well, but Australia was the first. I want to mention Brazil. Brazil in Rio got seven gold, six silver, six bronze for 19. Tokyo, they went seven gold, six silver, eight bronze, 21 in total. So Rio helped them to get two more bronze medals. So well done, Brazil, because they're kind of a bit Canadian-esque, but they got a lot of threes there. Go back to Sydney. Brazil did not win a gold medal in Sydney at all. So that's a pretty crazy look at that. France ahead of the ones they're hosting in a few years. So they got a bit of improvement. They got 10 gold in Rio, 10 gold in Tokyo. They went from six in Rio to 10th. The French are running away from the top 10. How typical of them. Italy improved. They went from 28 medals in Rio to 40 this time around, 10 gold this time around to eight. Germany, I believe, fell. They got five less medals than Rio, but got one more gold. The great Dutch, who were predicted to win everything by grace note, well, they got two more gold. They got 10 gold compared to eight in Rio. So they went from 11th to 7th. So they're best showing since Sydney, although they got 12 gold in Sydney. And Rock, how did Rock do? Actually only got 19 gold in Rio, Russia. And so whether they got 20 this time, it's actually better. I guess the drugs do work. But Britain, Britain, Britain, Britain. 29 in London, 27 in Rio, 22 in Tokyo. They went from second. Can you remember they got second in Rio? Jesus. To fourth in Tokyo. So I'm sure they're doing that. But the US, even though they won the Olympics, again, I've got to say, underperformed, Colin. 46 gold in Rio, only 39 in Tokyo. So come on.
COLIN HILDING: It's all on you, Trevon Bromwell.
BEN WATERWORTH: Exactly. And China, though, 26 gold in Rio, 38 in Tokyo. Big improvers. The Chinese, that's what I'm talking about. The two that I quickly wanted to point out, though, that I feel sorry for on the medal tally. The Ukraine. Now, they finished in 44th. One gold, six silver, 12 bronze. 19 medals. This is, again, the Ben Waterworth theory. Reward the total, not for gold. You think that's bad. Let's go down to greatest country in the world, Kazakhstan. Zero gold, zero silver, eight bronze. 83rd place, because they got eight bronze. I mean, Bahrain finishes like 10 spots higher than them, because they got one silver versus eight bronze. I mean, Jesus Christ, Borat is going to be like flogging him when they get back to Kazakhstan, isn't he?
COLIN HILDING: There's no running of the Jews in the Olympics.
BEN WATERWORTH: No, exactly. Apparently not. What did you watch today, Colin?
COLIN HILDING: I watched the full marathon. It's actually the first time I've ever watched the marathon. Usually, I'll start it, I'll tune out, I'll check back in around 30 to 35 kilometres. I watched it start to finish, which was incredible. I mean, I think that part of it has to do with how brutal the conditions were. We'll get to it a little bit later on. I'll have more to say on it. But I think a typical drop-off rate in the marathon in the Olympics is about 5% to 10%. Interesting, our good friend Abdi, who we interviewed recently, finished 41st, which you would think that's not great. Well, when you consider that almost 30% drop-off rate in this Olympics is ridiculous. The fact that you finish, I think, is a gold medal for anybody, especially finishing at 44 years old.
BEN WATERWORTH: He's got a season's best.
COLIN HILDING: Yeah, the guy's 44 years old and he doesn't plan to retire yet. I want to see him back. Let's do it for Paris, Abdi.
BEN WATERWORTH: I saw his social media post that he was happy. I think his teammates did well. But I got excited when I first saw the results because I saw in silver, Abdi, Nagia, and Bashir.
COLIN HILDING: Abdi!
BEN WATERWORTH: Wrong Abdi.
COLIN HILDING: It threw me off so many times throughout it, yeah. That was just an incredible race all around. You know, Eliad Kipchog, who, obviously, you can't pronounce his name, but won the gold greatest of all time, it was runaway for him. But the other three who are battling it out, or I think the other four who are battling it out for the silver and bronze, like that was a race to the finish. And what makes it all the more impressive is, I believe they said that only five, again, disclaimer on this, you're not going to set a world record time in the Olympics. And Abdi kind of shed light on this too, because I was sort of asking him, how do you run in the heat? Because I always know that the Olympics are in August. And he says, well, traditionally, you don't do full marathons in the summer. You know, you save it for the fall, you do it in the spring. That's why you don't really have world records in the Olympics. But five people in Olympic history had gone under two hours and ten minutes. Five people in this race alone, I believe, went under two hours and ten minutes. So that's just to show in this heat with... Oh, they may have the time wrong on CBC.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, the other ones are close to two ten, weren't they? The bronze guy got two ten exactly. Fourth got two ten, two, and fifth got two ten, sixteen.
COLIN HILDING: So we're basically... Let's just say, they're basically under... If we were to look at the top times of all time now, almost 50% of the top Olympic Marathon times of all time are going to be in the hottest Olympics ever, where there was the largest dropout rate ever. That's crazy. And then I also watched the women's volleyball too. Are you going to say something, Matt?
BEN WATERWORTH: Oh, no, I thought you'd finished, so I was jumping ahead, but continue.
COLIN HILDING: I watched the women's volleyball twice. It was great. Once because I fell asleep watching it the other time because I wanted to finish it. The boxing, a little bit of the boxing. I didn't have time to catch up on all of them before the opening ceremony, or sort of the closing ceremony started. I'm still going, and it's almost opening ceremonies for Paris, but closing ceremonies, almost finished before that. And then I did catch the cycling. And I don't know if you saw that one really big wipeout in the, what do you call it, the 90-lap event or whatever that went on?
BEN WATERWORTH: Oh, the Omnion, you need a physics degree to understand. Yeah, there was a couple in that one.
COLIN HILDING: Yeah. Yeah, there was a massive wipeout with, I don't know, probably about six or seven riders. It looked like some of them almost got run over. And I was surprised because I think one of them was Australian. I thought that you were going to be really upset that nobody came back to check up on them.
BEN WATERWORTH: Australia tuned out on Day 16. We'd won our medals. We knew there was no chances. I was just going to quickly add that one thing we didn't mention when we're talking about the 1500 last time, I guess we weren't aware because we were recording while there, I think it was the top five or top six ran faster than any other. Like, Stuart McSwain, who finished seventh, I believe, had he run that time in Rio, he would have won the gold medal. So that's how fast that race was last night. So that was pretty incredible. But I didn't, I unfortunately didn't catch the marathon, but I got up and I saw the replay and the replay and the replay because channel seven were like, Oh, day 16, so much live sport, but let's check out our skateboarding gold medal. But I ended up catching the volleyball and the handball. I think I saw a bit of the women's basketball match, but I was, yeah, I was hanging for the handball, and then I was hanging for the volleyball and both didn't disappoint. They were both very entertaining. And then I watched the board and closing ceremony. So that's generally lots of more replays of Channel 7 stuff going on. Do you have any other Canadian results at all, Colin? Any that's outside of your gold medal? Obviously, not a lot going on today for a lot of results, but...
COLIN HILDING: No, we had one other cycler, Alison Beveridge, who was in the Omnium, the physics degree, is what he said. So I think she was knocked out before they even got to the finals. So ninth place overall, I think, is her finish. And yeah, I guess in the marathon, the Canadians who were running, at one point, Cameron Levin was actually in a really good spot. He was like in the top 25 spot for a good chunk of the race. He ended up dropping down to 72nd. I think only 74 or 76 finished overall. So yeah, he ended up in, what would that be, the fourth or fifth last place. But again, finishing the race when 30 people didn't, that's not bad. The other Canadians did a little bit better. Ben Preisner, he was in 46 overall, and Trevor Hoffbauer was just behind him in 48th.
BEN WATERWORTH: Sounds like a very, he did well in Germany. Hoffbauer! Or is that David Hasselhoff and Jack Bauer's love child? Like, there's a love child.
COLIN HILDING: Damn it! Some people stand in the dark.
BEN WATERWORTH: Running down the beach. Yeah, Australia Today, Annette Edmondson was the one who crashed that you mentioned in the Omnium. She finished 12th overall. In the Matt guy that all of Malaysia hates, he finished 5th out of 6, so we made a final, so we could have technically won a medal today, but did we? No. And we had a couple of runners in the marathon. I believe we had the first retiree. Jack Rayner was classified last. He was the first one to pull out. Brett Robinson finished in 66, and Liam Adams in 24th, which I think most Australians would take. I don't really know how we... I don't think we've ever won a medal in the marathon. I doubt we would have, but yeah, that was how that played out. Athlete of the Day. I'm intrigued. I've got a couple of ones here, but I feel one of mine is going to be the same as yours based on today.
COLIN HILDING: Well, I was going to say Elliot Kichogue for the marathon. I guess just to put an exclamation point on him, he already has the world record. He technically is the first man. Nobody has ever run in the world's history, nobody has ever run under two hours before in a marathon. He did that, but it wasn't counted as an official result or whatever because it wasn't a qualified race or whatever. But we're talking about the fastest man in history, and he completely ran away with that race. He would be my main one. Although I do have to say, hearing your story about the Malaysian, I'm actually kind of intrigued on that if that's one of yours.
BEN WATERWORTH: No, he's not. He had won gold, he would have been. But the other ones that, I'm never going to give it to a Brit, but I've got to give Jason Kenney an honourable mention. I mean, come on. I mean, let's not be those people. I mean, I should have mentioned before during the Paris' play. I kind of want to go to Paris. I'm kind of on board the French train. What's happened to Ben Waterworth? Jesus, five years ago, you would have never gotten that out of me. Now, I'm sort of giving a Brit a potential nod, but Jason Kenney, good for him. The other one I wanted to mention is Yumi Kajikara, who got the silver in the Women's Omnium. That is Japan's first ever track cycling medal. And I thought that was a pretty interesting one. But if I can sway you on this one, I'll sway you. Otherwise, I'm happy to go for our marathon guy. Captain of the Women's Volleyball Team, Jordan Larson. This is a woman who's won everything. She is one of the most decorated and highly successful volleyball players in the world. Got a bronze in Rio, a silver in London. She was absolutely bawling her eyes out. She just was there. And if I could give it to a coach, I would give it to the coach of this team. He was like a beach volleyball and an indoor volleyball gold medallist. He's like the Phil Jackson of US volleyball, it sounds like, in terms of the coaching ranks. And he was bawling his eyes out. I was actually quite emotional watching America win a gold medal. I'm like, Jesus, this is a country that's won the Olympics. But I'm so happy for this team. And I got goosebumps listening to their national anthem. I'm like, oh, this is great. But yeah, I think Jordan Larson. I know he gave it to an American yesterday, so maybe that kind of cancels it out. But I will say, we've also given it to athletics people before. We haven't given it to anyone from volleyball yet. So, you know, just saying.
COLIN HILDING: I still think that team sports is a little bit tricky. Although I do like the story you had. I'll leave it to Ben Waterworth for gender equity in the Olympics. You know what? The women's volleyball, let's give it to their male coach.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, you know, I would have given it to a woman's coach. Is there any female coach of any men's teams? I don't know.
COLIN HILDING: I'm actually more interested in the Japanese cyclist. Have we given it to a Japanese athlete yet?
BEN WATERWORTH: Actually, no, we haven't, because that was going to be my argument until I watched the volleyball. Because I'm thinking like, well, no, we haven't given it to a Japanese. I mean, this was I think it's pretty interesting. It always fascinates me, particularly at home Olympics, when you win medals in sports you've never done it before. I'm sure you had it in Vancouver. But I know in Sydney, Simon Fairweather winning gold in archery is still one of the most randomest gold medals. It's up there with Chloe winning it in modern-mentathlon. This is a sport we had never medaled in, never. And out of nowhere, not only do we win a medal, we win a fucking gold medal. And it's just like one of my favourite Olympic moments of all time is Simon Fairweather winning that. You always have these events, and that's when I think we won our first ever judo medal, like just random sports that you would never equate us winning a medal in. And we did. So for Japan to get a track cycling medal, I mean, that's pretty exciting.
COLIN HILDING: Yeah, you know what? Honestly, I think that a gold medallist would almost be more fitting for the final day, but I also have been sort of saying from the beginning, my argument from the beginning is let's spread it out, let's recognise athletes from all over the place. And I think it's appropriate to give it to somebody from Japan on the final day. I mean, it's been an incredible games for them. So I'm all for that. I'll just say as long as when we do our Athlete Games, which you and Jarrod will reveal tomorrow, I'm definitely putting Elliot in my list for that one now, just so he kind of gets an honourable mention. But yeah, let's go Japan. Like seriously, there have been a lot of times in these games I've wanted to put up a Japanese athlete because you keep looking at those stories. It's their games. It's a tough games for them. They keep talking about how tough it is for the Canadian athletes, the Australian athletes, the American athletes, the Chinese, everybody, because their family's not here. We're talking about people in their home country and their families can't be there. Like that's even tougher. So yeah, great games for Japan. Great, great, great event. Whatever your name is, you're an athlete.
BEN WATERWORTH: You mean Yumi Kijihara. No, I don't agree with you because I mean, again, that's always the fun of a home Olympics is watching the home nations. You always see those stories and everything. And again, like I can list 100 from Sydney that every Australian would remember. I mean, even as a, you know, I didn't have much of a connection back to Canada in 2010. But I mean, you know, I can think of it's weird that I always just have this weird connection with Canada that even I get like those weird fuels in me when I think of certain gold medals back from Vancouver. So yeah, it's always that. It's such a shame that you don't get to see that in Tokyo that unfortunately, yeah. And like the thing I really should have mentioned last night when they won the gold in the baseball, they won both the baseball and the softball, and in both, they beat America. So pretty good for Japan to bring those in when they did exactly what they expected to do. So Australian Rules football, Brisbane 2032, it's in.
COLIN HILDING: And also, one more thing to kind of add, I think I was talking about one of my athletes to the day's suggestion yesterday was the Japanese guy who won the kata.
BEN WATERWORTH: Oh yeah, and he had his mum, the frame and his mum. That was quite sad.
COLIN HILDING: Yeah, well, I think I'm pretty sure that they dropped his name as the flag bearer. So, I mean, good consolation prize. You missed the athlete of the day, but we'll give you a flag bearer. So, it's a step down, we know, but it's a consolation. It's a good consolation, right?
BEN WATERWORTH: Actually, wasn't he the flag bearer in the opening ceremony? Is that what they said in our coverage? Or maybe they got that wrong.
COLIN HILDING: I don't know. I mean, he was flag bearer somewhere.
BEN WATERWORTH: He carried a flag at one point in his life. Good for him.
COLIN HILDING: I'm just watching this Cuban lightweight gold medallist dancing.
BEN WATERWORTH: Andy Cruz. Oh, he's great. He's going to beat the Aussie. Yeah.
COLIN HILDING: Yeah, let's put him up instead. Forget the Japanese.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, I mean, Cuba again had another great game. There are so many countries. And again, record number, 93 nations won medals. This is a record.
COLIN HILDING: I think that's important because I wanted to mention a couple of times throughout. But for me, basketball is a really tough sport. I like basketball. But when you just have one country dominating so much, it's not fun to watch. You can't get invested in it. I got really invested at the end of the men's game the other night when it looked like they might lose, or at least it looked like it was close. Closer than you expect to see in basketball finals.
BEN WATERWORTH: It was the closest men's gold medal match since 1972. So it was close.
COLIN HILDING: So that got me a little bit more invested, but it's tough. And I think that our commentators even mentioned that. They're like, it's good for the sport when it's even close like this, because it is hard to get invested when you just have countries below. We talked about with the Winter Olympics last time how hard it is to actually get into women's hockey when it's just Canada and US. Well, every once in a while, you get a shakeup, and it surprises you, and that piques people's interest. So to have the game so spread out with all these countries having their best results ever, and this isn't me knocking America, but to have them kind of not deliver in the sprinting the way that they were expected to. The Simone Biles thing, have them not deliver in gymnastics the way they were expected to. It opens it up, and it's a little bit more exciting because you don't know what's going to happen.
BEN WATERWORTH: I really actually like it. Yeah, maybe this is obviously we're getting you to do a bit of a rap because we'll do more of a rap tomorrow. But I mean, 93, that's pretty, that's incredible. That's nearly half the countries that compete at the Olympics, whether it's 204, 208 or something along those lines. So you're only 10 or so away from half the nations. I mean, you're never going to get out in a winter games when you've got like 80 something countries and what 30 might win, 20 might win. It's just incredible to show that spread and to see countries, you know, obviously Burkina Faso, San Marino, Turkmenistan, won their very first ever medals. You know, Philippines, Qatar, Bermuda, their first gold medals. Just like, it's incredible that this is happening. And yeah, I mean, we're very close to potentially getting 100 countries win gold medals at an Olympic Games, which is just insane. I mean, yeah, OK, you can argue. Well, you've gotten the most events in Olympic history. Sure, that equates it. I get it. Like more events mean more medal chances. I mean, Fiji were never going to win medals until they introduced rugby and fine. But still, like it gives him that chance to do that. So, yeah, it's great. I mean, I don't know what the great nations of breakdancing are. But, you know, France, clearly, I didn't realise the French are so good at breakdancing. I realise they're good at breaking, but like I didn't realise breakdancing. So, you know, good for them.
COLIN HILDING: But like, you know what, if we're going to introduce anything in Paris, why is it not free running? Let's have parkour as an Olympic sport.
BEN WATERWORTH: Finally, fun fact about that, Colin, I was having a conversation with our New Zealand correspondent, Nick Chista, about this recently. Kind of ironic you bring this up. He was actually telling me that the head of the World Parkour Foundation is apparently a Kiwi, and apparently gymnastics are trying to steal parkour to put it as part of their federation so they can include it in the Olympics. But parkour are like, no. So they're apparently winning this fight. But yeah, because apparently Nick was saying that parkour was never really intended to be competitive. It was more kind of like, hey, we're just rebels jumping on buildings and shit.
COLIN HILDING: But it was never intended to be competitive, and look where it is.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah. Thanks, Tony Hawk. Like, you know, commentary, again, I don't really like calling these fails commentary moments, I guess. Do you have any? I've got I've got a few from both TV and closing. Well, the same thing, but that sports and closing. That's what I mean.
COLIN HILDING: There's one that wasn't Canadian, but the men's volleyball, which I think that's another thing. I think it might have happened yesterday. But France winning that, which was just groundbreak because they never made it past the quarterfinals was incredible. So this is a day late, but it was great because the British commentators from the French one, I don't know if you saw, but immediately their their victory celebration was they started playing the cancan music and all the guys were like, duh, duh. It was hilarious. And the British commentator was like, can can you name that dance? And then he goes on to say, if you ask anyone in volleyball who you want to have for a good night out of the town, they're going to say France. The only Canadian one to get going along with our mildly racist comments. There was one point early in the marathon where Kipchoge and one of the Brazilians were right at the front of the pack. And they did like a fist bump, and someone knew each other. And all of a sudden, the commentators are like, did you see that? It's like, I think they just fist bumped each other on the course. And they go back, they cut to a replay, and I think the Brazilian gave them, or Kipchoge gives them a thumbs up, like, yeah. And then the Brazilian goes for the fist bump, and at first he ignores them, and then eventually, as they're running, boom, like that. And so the commentators are going on over that. They're like, oh, that's fantastic. The Kenyan and the Brazilian, your comrade on the course. And then there's a pause, and there's like, I couldn't tell you which is which, though. One is clearly Kenyan, and one is clearly Brazilian. Not to mention, if you can't see colour, they've got the country's names, and their names on the bib. You can't tell who's who.
BEN WATERWORTH: Bra or Ken? Usually gives it away. One flag's green, the other's like black and red. Kind of different.
COLIN HILDING: One guy's black, one guy's South American.
BEN WATERWORTH: Wow. Any more?
COLIN HILDING: That's all I got.
BEN WATERWORTH: For the sports ones today, I mentioned already Channel 7 inflate their own tyres. Day 16, so much live sports. Let's check out a replay of the skateboarding from a couple of days ago. I do love again that I've mentioned this a few times. At Channel 7, every single time we would win a gold medal, it's like, show the medal, Tally, we're in fourth. Look how good we're doing. Today, it was, let's look at the medal, Tally. Oh, Tally, Schmally, it doesn't tell the story of all those other medals. It's because we've dropped down. I did love the confusion around Yumi when she won the track silver. So we've got Anamies, and I think it's Scott McGrory in the commentary box. And I think it was Scott said, and that's Japan's first ever track medal, to which Anamies goes, oh, is that Japan's first medal of these games in track cycling? It's just these awkward pause. Actually, apparently, it was a record too for most nations to win medals in track cycling, 16 countries, most ever in an Olympics. The volleyball was weak, so I'm watching it on the app, and we got, I don't know, just the standard world feed. It was some British guy. And like I talked about the Scottish commentator for like the taekwondo drop and puns. He was on board. This British guy, like I don't know if he knew what he was doing. He was like, yes. And here come the medallists. Of course, those in third, the bronze medallists. And in front of them, the second place getters who will of course get a silver medal. And there are the champions. They are the number one. And that gives them the gold. But then I love that when they get there, they're like, yes. And these are the three teams that are the medallists for volleyball. They all did their best. Like, well, one team did. They got the gold.
COLIN HILDING: I want this guy in like the opening ceremony. And here we have under the A's, Algeria, followed by alphabetically, Argentina, also under the A's.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yes, and that is a country that, of course, is on the planet.
COLIN HILDING: We like to call Earth.
BEN WATERWORTH: One thing I want to mention, I think Jarrod talked about it at one point, and I completely keep forgetting about Rock. Like, I've talked about finalising a Canadian gold medal ceremony. You know, I saw an American one. I saw a French one. I saw the handball. Can we rank national anthem of the world? That's a fun episode. But I finally saw, because Rock played France in the handball, and they do this stupid national anthem for the thing. I finally saw the Tchaikovsky, and it's so weird because you've got like the French girls, like, oh, they're proud. And you've just got a bunch of like, I don't know how many women are in a handball team, let's say 20, awkwardly just going. Why you've just got like, there is no tears then? I got to say, I honestly kind of do feel sorry for the Russians who are clean, because like, I mean, it must be awkward going to an Olympics, like the peak of sport, you've done nothing wrong, your country's fucked up, and you're there wearing a half-assed effort at your own country, and you're like, you finally reached the pinnacle, and you're using... Again, please Tchaikovsky lovers, do not complain that that is not Tchaikovsky, I don't know. But it was kind of awkward. The closing ceremony, outside what I mentioned, the thing I've got to... Channel 7 just got to inflate their own sport. So Jarrod and I had a bit of a whinge the other night about kind of the ads, and one ad that they've shown, which is really cool. They've got like this Smoke On The Water epic trailer track, and they're showing like, these are the sports that are coming up in the next six months. So you've got, you know, you've got a promo for the AFL finals. You've got our big car race, the Bathurst 1000. You've got the cricket coming up, you know, just really pumping it up. You've got the winter, like it's really good. Gizzy Goosebumps, great montage. Channel 7 thought, well, how about, how do we advertise? How do we do this? How do we do something before the closing ceremony that we can get famous people and make them advertise for us by not only advertising what we've got coming, but how great our coverage was of these Olympics. So they got Joanna Griggs, I love Joanna Griggs, great TV host in this country. They got her on a Zoom call to which she got basically stars from each of these sports that are coming on a Zoom call to talk about their favourite moments of the Olympics. He had Mark Winterbottom, his actual name, a V8 supercar champion, a very solid racing car driver in this country, to which he's like, oh yeah, I loved Rowan Browning winning his heat because I'm a racing car driver and I like going fast. Curtis McGraw, one of our Paralympians because they'll pump out the Paralympics as well. Yeah, Jess Fox, like, you know, she won a canoeing medal and I know her. It's like, great, cool. Everything was like, watch the Paralympics, Comic Spin on Channel 7. You had Tim Payne, the captain of the Australian Test Cricket team, proud Tasmanian. Who do you think he chose, Colin, as a proud Tasmanian? Who do you think he chose?
COLIN HILDING: Titmuss.
BEN WATERWORTH: Of course. And he said, oh, Ariane Titmuss as a fellow Tasmanian. It was great. He did it. Fantastic. One that you'll know, Brit Cox, getting there, ready to advertise the Winter Olympics. There she was on the Zoom call, looking all fresh and bright and wishing she never came on our show. Talking about our boxer, Skye Nicholson, because the sad interview she gave, and it was inspirational, and Brit's there going, oh, and I really just can't wait for Beijing because we're going to get all the Tokyo people and we're going to pump our time. Great. And then you had Patrick Dangerfield, who is an AFL footballer, plays for Geelong, very good football player. He's talking about the Aussie in the 10,000 metres who collapsed and then picked himself up and walked across the line, basically. And then he starts interviewing the other people, like Patrick Dangerfield's like, oh my god, tell me, Brett Cox, how are you feeling? Like, such a job, let Joanna do a job. And then you had Jamie Carr, who's a jockey, so head of the Melbourne Cup, which is our big horse race. She's talking up Andrew Hoy. And then Joanna Griggs is like, oh, you ever thought about going to the Olympics? And she's like, well, it was my dream as a kid. And all exclusive on Channel 7, she's going to be switching from like, horsies to horsies at the Olympics. So it's just like a 15-minute wankfest for Channel 7 Sports featuring our super... It'd be like if CBC were like, and here's, you know, Austin Matthews talking about his favourite, and coming soon, the NHL returns on CBC. Like, you know, it was just weird. Anyway, that was mine. That was it. Actually, the one thing before I... Oh, please, please, Colin, yes.
COLIN HILDING: This is not to do with commentary, but you guys asked a question on the last episode I wasn't on when you were talking about The Voice being shown over the... Does Canada have something like this? We do, but it has me very intrigued. It's a show called Race The Tide, and it is a reality competition show about sandcastle building. And it looks amazing. Like I'm saying right now, it can be on the Oz Network or whatever, but we have to cover an episode of Race The Tide.
BEN WATERWORTH: You know, you think that would shock me, but I live in a country where we have reality shows about building Lego and putt-putt. There's putt-putt reality shows. I get... See the celebrities play putt-putt golf. That's apparently a reality show. So... And The Voice started tonight, Colin. Yay! It was on before the closing ceremony.
COLIN HILDING: I got to wait till next month for Race The Tide.
BEN WATERWORTH: Oh, come on. You're missing out. Keith Urban, Guy Sebastien are judges, Rita Ora and Jessica Malboy. Get behind him. Before I get some thoughts for you, because you're not going to be with us tomorrow night in terms of the Olympics, just as you're sort of concluding words for Tokyo. The most watched event, I can tell you, for both Canada and Australia. Now, I'll give you... I mean, the one is obvious, I think, for you guys, but what was the Canadian most watched event of these Olympics?
COLIN HILDING: It was the women's soccer finals, which was something like 4.4 million people. Put that in perspective, this was something that started at 7 in the morning, Winnipeg time. So you're talking 8 in the morning for the East Coast, you're talking 5 in the morning for the West Coast. You know, hockey finals have happened like that. So I mean, you would get ratings like this for the Olympic hockey finals. But to have any summer sport getting ratings like this is ridiculous. To have it be soccer as well, which we only recently got, like kind of our first professional soccer league in Canada. A lot of people kind of make the argument that the women's bronze medal puts soccer on the map in Canada. That's completely true. But I mean, this is going to like shatter everything. This is going to become such a huge sport now. You're going to have TV deals all of a sudden coming in. There's a lot of people who already are talking about this because, you know, oh, this means there's actually going to be like a proper TV deal for soccer and everything. 4.4 million people, to put in perspective for any Americans who are listening, Canada, one-tenth the population, this would be as if 44 million people tuned into an Olympic event at five in the morning. That's how huge this was.
BEN WATERWORTH: Who's the Winnipeg team in the CPL?
COLIN HILDING: I wish I remembered the name now. I've yet to see a game of theirs. I'll have to look it up.
BEN WATERWORTH: See, I've got...
COLIN HILDING: I wanted to say also, we went over like the Manitoba athletes. You know, the Team Canada website had Manitoba athletes. That's your team, the Volkswagens.
BEN WATERWORTH: Get on board on Pacific FC. Vancouver doesn't have a team, but Victoria does. Get on board the Isles. Pacific, look, I even was a player, look, it's my own name.
COLIN HILDING: We have Valor FC as our name.
BEN WATERWORTH: That's right. I did know that. We've talked about this before.
COLIN HILDING: But I wanted to say, we went over all the Manitoba athletes and everything that were going to be coming here. I don't think they mentioned Desiree Scott, who's one of the few veterans on the women's soccer team. But Winnipeg is bringing home a gold medal now. And I thought she wasn't playing because Team Canada's website, I don't think had her listed. But that's one of our top players is from Winnipeg. So there we go. Both our home countries are bringing home a gold.
BEN WATERWORTH: Tell you what, Colin, you should get to work during that. You should contact our friend Britt. You should see if you can get some media access and go and interview these people and do that.
COLIN HILDING: There is a local radio show after the last Olympics that tried to get Desiree Scott on. They ended up getting Desiree Scott's mum. So I don't know if she does a lot of media, but hey, we can try.
BEN WATERWORTH: You get a dad. Why not? To put that into context, I'm just looking here at the list of most watched broadcasts in Canada. And for 2021, so what did you say? 4.4 million. So that is in sixth place here. So that got more viewers than Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals. So Euro 2020 got three points.
COLIN HILDING: Really?
BEN WATERWORTH: That many people in that? Your most watched ever broadcast, can you hedge a bet at what that would be in the history of Canada?
COLIN HILDING: Vancouver 2010 hockey finals.
BEN WATERWORTH: Correct. The gold medal game got 16.6 million. And behind that, the closing ceremony and then the opening ceremony. I'm pretty sure Australia's most watched is the Sydney opening ceremony. Although I think like the MasterChef finale one year randomly beat something. It was embarrassing when I saw that. What do you think the most watched event of these Olympics were for Australia?
COLIN HILDING: This is, see, I would have said something to swim, but I think swimming, it happened so fast, has replayed so many times, there's not going to be like, I must tune into this. So I'm going to assume it's going to be a team sport. I'm going to take a gamble and say it was the basketball the other night.
BEN WATERWORTH: Look, I thought it would be too. I know they put very high ratings for the Kookaburra's gold medal game as well, because I know a lot of hockey people were sharing that. No, according to what I read today, the most watched event at these Olympics for Australia was Rowan Browning's semifinal of the 100m. Yep, that was the most watched. Can you believe that? And you questioned us the other day while we were talking about this, and I said, like, this is a pretty big deal that we've got that. The mullet got things. He got up there. So, yeah, there you go. That is, apparently, I'm seeing the headlines today. That was the most watched event.
COLIN HILDING: What's surprising about that is, I mean, you tell me what the media said going in. I know you're excited to have a sprinter in there. He shocked everybody by winning his heat, but people are tuning in before that happened. So what was driving them to tune in when they didn't think he had a shot?
BEN WATERWORTH: The mullet, I don't know. And just quickly, to answer myself, I've got the 10 most watched broadcasts in Australia of all time. The MasterChef one didn't make. Maybe that was just in terms of like normal, regular programming. So going through here, sports wise, number eight, you've got Lionel Rose vs Alan Rudkin, a boxing match from 1964. The Sound of Music in 1977 is the ninth most watched program ever. In number six, the 1984 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony. At number five, the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. At number four, the Sydney Opening Ceremony. At number three, the Sydney Closing Ceremony, the two most watched broadcasts in Australian history. Number two, the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Di. And at number one, the funeral of Princess Diana.
COLIN HILDING: Man, you love Diana there.
BEN WATERWORTH: I know, number one and number two, you see. I imagine if they broadcast her birth, that would be number three.
COLIN HILDING: Imagine if she had a mullet, what those ratings could have been.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, she did have a mullet. Have you not seen her in the 80s? What are your overall thoughts, O'Colin? I mean, we'll have more of a structure probably tomorrow night on our proper episode. But I mean, you're obviously not going to be there. But I mean, how have you enjoyed these games? Final thoughts, standouts, disappointments, anything else you want to add here?
COLIN HILDING: I think we came into this really questioning, would it be weird without the crowds? And I think the biggest surprise is the crowds didn't make that big of a... I mean, I'm sure it would have been even more incredible with the crowds, but they really found clever ways to hide it with production. There was limited fake crowd noise, because I think in a lot of cases, the people there were willing to make a lot of noise. I know Damien Warner was being interviewed, and they were talking about how, you know, before he was going for his different events, you know, he'd do the whole clap. Like, everybody get into it. We see a lot of athletes do that. And he was being asked, like, is it weird to do that when there's no crowd? And he goes, to be honest, I wasn't doing it for the crowd. I was doing it because the people there, the coaches, the other teams got so much behind you that it really was helpful. So I really think that made a huge difference, having athletes there. And I think the athletes did sort of go out of their way to be, you know, even if it's not my country, I'm going to make as much noise as possible, because it's good for everybody. That really, I think, covered for a lot, because overall, this would go down as one of my favourite Olympics I've ever watched. Like, there are so many great moments. I don't feel like, you know, there were necessarily as many, you know, classic moments like, are we going to be talking about this 20, 30 years from now? But there were so many surprises, I think was one of the big things. You know, the men's 100 metre, that was just like, where did that come from?
BEN WATERWORTH: That's one of my favourite reactions of this entire Olympics, because doing that commentary, you're like, I don't know what happened. I'm just like, oh, the Italian one.
COLIN HILDING: And you're like, who's an Italian? You never expect to see something like that. I think a lot of the new sports were really intriguing too. Every time they introduce new sports, typically it's something where you're like, oh, that's interesting. I mean, sport climbing, 3X3 basketball, those are incredible. I thought karate was great. I thought that surfing and skateboarding were so bad that I almost want to see them back again just so we could mock it and work it into a commentary next time. But obviously, complete bombs for those. But I mean, overall, I think that it was surprisingly entertaining games. And I think so many people delivered. We saw so many bests from countries, world records being set in this type of heat. That's something I never expected to see. And for the most part, we mentioned how the opening ceremonies were a letdown because they were just reminding us, hey, it's a pandemic and all that. I think what really worked for the rest of the games is that they didn't remind you that. Like I was mentioning with the crowds, the athletes being that audience so that you're not thinking, oh, these are COVID games, and oh, imagine how much different this would be with a crowd.
BEN WATERWORTH: It's, yeah, I mean, I don't want to sort of go too much into it because I'll talk a little bit more about it tomorrow night. But one thing I'll say is, it surprised me at how much I ended up enjoying it. And I kind of said a few times, I think, during our episodes, like these are the best games ever. But I mean, I don't want to maybe call that right now. But yeah, I think, you know, as an Australian, obviously, it's incredibly successful. Great to see Canada do so well. We put that sort of montage up of all the different medallists on our social media, which is kind of a cool little picture showing them all, to see so many other countries do well. And just, it went by so quickly as well, which is interesting. I mean, the Olympics generally do, and you're enjoying them. But it was just so fascinating. It got to a point where I was almost forgetting the Olympics were on this year, just because you're not expecting them to be on in 2021. And kind of so much other stuff has happened. So, yeah, like I think kind of just in a brief summary, maybe I'll kind of think about this a little bit more ahead of our episode tomorrow, when I kind of have some more thoughts of it. Like, I'd rank these very highly in terms of Olympics overall. I would definitely say I've enjoyed these more than Rio. And that's not to take away from Rio. I'm not saying Rio were a bad Olympics. But yeah, I just think that kind of, as you said, maybe there's nothing super memorable about it in terms of like, you know, we're not going to be talking about the same boltness or this sort of stuff. But I still think there's enough to kind of go on, you know. And, you know, I'll probably talk a bit more about the sports tomorrow night. But yes, get fucked skateboarding. Outside of that, I mean, I came around and surfing. Sports climbing was epic. 3x3 was great. Karate, from what I saw, was fine. So, yeah, but I will say, Colin, because again, you're not on tomorrow night. Let's give the Off The Podium medal tally for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, shall we? Zero gold, two silver, and three bronze. No, two bronze, sorry, because I'm adding my own in there. That bit selfish, Ben. Let's try that again. Zero gold, two silver, two bronze, four in total. You're declaring the curses in the purse. So for you, it is. You did very well. You got zero, two, two. I got zero, zero, one. So, you know.
COLIN HILDING: And do we count that one? Because the whole reason we talked about the curse in the first place is because we weren't going to count Charles Hamlin's relay in Pyeongchang.
BEN WATERWORTH: Look, I will not officially declare the curse over until we get a gold medal. I'm saying it right now. I think it's fair. I think that's fair. You know, we're not panics, Dan.
COLIN HILDING: I'm really torn on it because I'm thinking, like, let's get Mikel Kingsbury on here, because if there is any guaranteed gold for Beijing, it's Mikel Kingsbury. But now we get him on here, we're going to ruin that gold. We can't do that to him. I don't want any of these anymore.
BEN WATERWORTH: I'm not advertising this curse to anyone. It's that simple.
COLIN HILDING: Certainly not the people who are getting ready to defend their gold medal.
BEN WATERWORTH: I might do a graphic that will show sort of our guests what they've won, because I think it's kind of cool. In all seriousness, we've had guests on the show that have gone on to win four Olympic medals. Not to take away from Charles obviously winning a bronze in Pyeongchang, but we sort of didn't really have a lot of the social media going back there. But we've got a lot planned in the lead up to Beijing, and it would be very nice to kind of walk away with the gold. But realistically, I'm the one who's more cursed than you are. And let's not even get started on the fact that no Australian has ever won a medal on this show after appearing on it. Canadians, they're all Canadian medals.
COLIN HILDING: Yeah, there's another thing.
BEN WATERWORTH: There's the thing. It's Australians that are cursed by coming on this show. And Americans, Abdi didn't win. Has Miles made the team yet for next year? I don't think so. So we'll keep an eye on this. But like, when we get a gold medal, I'm not saying if, when we get a gold medal, we're going to celebrate the shit out. Maybe we need to start getting Youth Olympic athletes on. You have to, I'm not letting you interview the youth. Yeah, exactly. But I'm proud of that. Like, how many athletes do we have going into this? I think we had like nine, didn't we? Yeah, nine athletes in total to get four medals.
COLIN HILDING: Four of them, yeah.
BEN WATERWORTH: Four of them got medals. So that's pretty good. Well, actually, no, three of them got medals. Because Kylie won.
COLIN HILDING: Evan, Kylie, Aaron, and Brendan.
BEN WATERWORTH: My counting skills are going up.
COLIN HILDING: You're still not counting your own guy. You're like, I'm so ashamed of myself. I'm not counting Brendan Rodney.
BEN WATERWORTH: Obviously, I'll probably tease a little bit more about what we've got coming up in terms of there. But are there any athletes for yourself that you're going to be hoping to get on? Because obviously, you haven't reached out to anyone yet. But I mean, is there any, say, like, of the four that we've had, would you like to get Kylie back on? Evan, would you like to see Aaron, Brendan on? And are there other Canadian ones that you're going to be keen to try and track down to get on the show? Medallists or no medallists?
COLIN HILDING: I mean, you know, all of the ones who went on to medal, I think it would be great to get back on, particularly Kylie, because she did break through. We could tell her, listen, there was a curse and you broke it for us. So eternal thanks to you. But Evan would be the one I'm really excited about because, you know, he is such a champion of race walking. And, you know, this is sort of the, as far as we know, the end of race walking for him. I'm actually really intrigued to see if we can get some guests from other countries, because, you know, again, we've had, you know, one Jamaican on here before. We've had a couple of Americans. We've had mostly Australian Canadians. I think we've got a great lineup of athletes from other countries to get on. But even as far as just the Australians and Canadians, for the Canadians, I mean, we know we're not going to get Summer McIntosh yet. Ben's not allowed. But if we can get any of the other swimmers, and Maggie McNeil would be fantastic. I'd love to see if I could break Maggie McNeil to get her to kind of laugh or smile on the show. I think that would be a feather in the cap for us. Damien Warner would be like, that's the ultimate. I'll also say Mohamed, just as far as like who would make a great interview. Mohamed would make a great interview. But I think we all know now who our number one athlete to get after these games is. She is Australian. So if we're going to give a most entertaining athlete the games to, who's it going to be? Were they in the Javelin, Ben?
BEN WATERWORTH: I think it was the Javelin, wasn't it? Can I just say, and again, this is the Off The Podium brag session, but I want to point out that of all the likes and the social media interactions we've had of these Olympic Games, we've had Zach. Zach again today. Zach liked our post today. We've had Penny. Penny liked us. Penny liked us.
COLIN HILDING: Get on board there.
BEN WATERWORTH: Get on board the Penny love. I want to say that our San Marinian shooter liked a couple of our posts that we tagged her in, so we're on board there.
COLIN HILDING: Aaron Brown this morning?
BEN WATERWORTH: I saw that, yes, exactly. Our French dressage rider liked us. Our Lithuanian modern pentathlete liked our post. Our Russian sports climber, who I put the wrong photo up, then corrected it. She liked our post. There you go. Can I proudly say that Nicola McDermott liked our post today. She's on board the Javelin champion.
COLIN HILDING: Her diary has become such a big thing. I love that she's posting pictures from inside her diary now.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, the one that actually is standing out too is that she wrote a letter to herself 10 years ago or something saying, I'm going to go on to win a medal in high jump, and now that's making the rounds. It's so animated. I've whacked things. But no, she is just an absolute star. And I will say, two things actually I forgot to mention on the coverage last night once we got off air. I said, oh, is Andrew Gaze crying? Andrew Gaze's speech has gone viral today after the Boomers win. So basically, everyone was crying. And Andrew Gaze, who for people who don't know, he's basically Australia's Michael Jordan. He's Australia's greatest ever basketball player. And he carried the flag in the Sydney opening ceremony. He was in tears. He's literally going, you have no idea what this means of the sport in this country. This has been something that we have been trying for 62 years, and this is the greatest thing. And it was really emotional. But then Nicola McDermott's interview, like just what you expect. She's basically like, oh, this is amazing, great. You know, Jesus was with me and faith. And like the sidelined reporter guy, why does Jesus mean so much to you? Tell us about your faith. It was actually kind of quite like sweet because she was basically going on about saying that like she was an outcast. She didn't really have anyone. She was sort of, you know, alone and sort of ignored at school. And then she found faith and then she felt accepted. And I was like, it was like, again, I'm not a religious person, and this is not me bagging out her faith, anything along those lines. But it was just like a really sweet interview and just everything you would expect from her.
COLIN HILDING: She's so much fun. Like that would be an interview.
BEN WATERWORTH: She likes us. She likes our post. So, you know, I've got my list. So I've got plenty to get through there. Colin, 180 days to Beijing. That's all we can say. I mean, the real Olympics are on in basically five and a bit months. The real ones.
COLIN HILDING: I don't want to jinx it, though. I mean, we probably set at one point 180 days to Tokyo and a couple hundred more on top of that.
BEN WATERWORTH: It's China, though. China doesn't give a shit. China started this thing.
COLIN HILDING: Oh, let's not go there, Ben.
BEN WATERWORTH: They're fine. But I mean, I'll obviously again mention a bit more about tomorrow, sort of what we've got coming. But again, I love any Olympics. I feel we need to start doing Youth Olympics episodes. Again, I'm probably not allowed on them. There's a reason why we probably don't. I mean, look, I wouldn't be opposed to doing a Paralympics episode. I feel like people think we're just going to be cruel. But no, Paralympics are some of the most amazing sport you will ever watch. These people are just incredible.
COLIN HILDING: If people want to know why we don't cover the Paralympics, it has nothing to do with us being against Paralympics. We are so burnt out after doing this every single day for the Olympics. You need time to recover. So that's the only reason really that Paralympics isn't covered on here. I mean, I would love to talk about Paralympics.
BEN WATERWORTH: And there's also about 10 times the events. I mean, the 100-metre sprint, there's not just 100-metre sprint. There's like 80 categories for the 100-metre sprint. So maybe we can do it. I mean, maybe we can just do a wrap. We'll see how we go. We haven't talked about it. But outside of that, Olympics-wise, Beijing, get pumped up, and we'll talk more about some of our coverage we've got coming up. But Colin, thank you. I think you made all but four episodes, did you not?
COLIN HILDING: Yeah, that's not bad. When I look back, we talked about how after the fact, I was sick during what was a Pyeongchang game, so I missed a couple. I mean, when we get to the next one, I'll tell stories about what a challenge it was for me to be on, even the 12 episodes I've been on this one. It's been an exhausting two weeks, but this has been my highlight.
BEN WATERWORTH: What about the commentary, though? Did you have the fact that we kind of introduced this? I think it turned into a lot more than we thought it would, but I loved it. I thought it was fun.
COLIN HILDING: What was your favourite commentary? Again, a little peek behind the scenes. I mean, the commentary, you know, sometimes we do this where it's live or we'll do it right before we start recording our episode, but a lot of these were like, all right, who can be ready at like 7 o'clock in the evening or for you guys 10 o'clock in the morning to do 20 minutes of commentary? That also I think was some of the most fun we've had. I think that, you know, it'd be good if we can plan this so well in advance where we know, okay, we're not gonna have to fill dead air or whatever, we're gonna have the right sports. I mean, I think that will be kind of the highlight of the next Olympics, because you want to talk about what's been the most fun these Olympics, doing those commentaries. And it's funny because I showed the first one to Jamie, she's like, well, I don't find it that funny. And I'm like, what are you talking about? You don't find it that funny. Well, I actually challenged myself every time after that. I'm like, you're going to sit down and listen to this, and she got some good laughs out of it. So come on, we broke Jamie. She found some of it funny.
BEN WATERWORTH: Got to say, actual tagline of our show, it's actually not that funny. That's off the podium.
COLIN HILDING: But honestly, I took a lot of pride in our commentary, because I think we sort of, we had done this before, where it was more just us having fun spur of the moment, but to plan it out where, okay, this is what we're going to be commentating, prepare yourselves, think about what you want to say. And then, you know, go in and sort of wing it. I mean, it's not easy to fill that much dead air. I think overall we did a pretty good job. I think we produced some entertaining stuff.
BEN WATERWORTH: What I'm going to send you, and I think I've said this to you multiple times, we've talked a lot about in the past, Roy and HG here in Australia. I'm going to send you all their Olympics. They did Sydney, Salt Lake, and Athens. And you need to watch, particularly Sydney, because you will see the inspiration for this. Their commentary made headlines in this country with how funny it was. And if you listen to an upcoming interview we may have coming in a week or so with a luge athlete, you will hear how Roy and HG affects the sport in this country based on their commentary of it, that people have an opinion of luge in Australia. And she's like, yeah, it's a bit hard to shake that opinion of luge in this country after Roy and HG's commentary. So I will send it to you eventually. We'll get there. We've got Bond coming up soon. We've got a lot of shit happening in our lives. So you've got 180 days to watch about six couple hour long episodes of Roy and HG. So, and when you get to Salt Lake, you may hear a certain co-host mentioned on it, because I did have a letter read out, and it made the DVD. So my name is on it, and that's me.
COLIN HILDING: Were you telling everybody to drink a nice can of Slam?
BEN WATERWORTH: No, I wasn't. It basically was on, spoiler alert, I don't know if I'm going to talk about this before. So when they used to talk about Juan Antonio Samarach, they would always go, his excellency. So they would go like, blah, blah, blah, Juan Antonio Samarach, his excellency, and they would bow. So my friend and I used to, whenever our school principal walked past, we would go, his excellency. So I sent a letter into there, because they would have like a daily letter. And so they read it like, this one comes from Ben. It's like, every time we see our school principal, we go, his excellency. And then they just laughed about it and moved on. So I made the school newsletter. They put it in the school newsletter that week. Ben Waterworth was mentioned. I'm like, yeah, I was. Yeah, I was.
COLIN HILDING: You know, you know all those things that are going around social media about then and now, how it was going then, how it's going now, these Olympians. I want that for Ben. How it's going then, how it's going now.
BEN WATERWORTH: I think, legitimately, I think if you go through my Instagram, I posted it maybe possibly during Pyeongchang, or maybe it was during, go all the way back to Sochi if you really want to go there. I post too much on Instagram. Anyway, Colin, I will say thank you very much for everything that you have done during these Olympics. We're not saying goodbye to you, of course. You will be on our interviews and that in the coming weeks when we've got some more to go through, so we're looking forward to that. But it's been an effort. It has been a bit of an effort, but I really do appreciate all your help and everything that you have done throughout the last few weeks. So, yeah, bring on Beijing.
COLIN HILDING: Bring on Beijing. Bring it on. Bring it on.
BEN WATERWORTH: We will be back tomorrow for one final Tokyo episode. Jarrod and I will be going over more of a rap. Not rapping, because we can't. Jarrod might be able to. I don't know. But we will be wrapping up more of the games and talking a little bit more. And we'll have a athlete of the games, which we're somehow voting on off air tomorrow. I don't know how we're doing this, but we'll work it out. Likes on Facebook, saw the social media channels. Subscribe. We appreciate all the support and everyone who's chatted to us and everything on Twitter. Everything's been fantastic. And numbers go through the roof. We've loved every single one of them. And as a podcast that lives on ratings, we might be kept on for another season. Who knows?
COLIN HILDING: We might be renewed.
BEN WATERWORTH: We'll be renewed. Until then, thanks for tuning in to Off The Podium. Good night.
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