Tokyo 2020 Day 3 Review
Another day of Tokyo is behind us and it's been a golden day for both Australia & Canada...but more importantly TASMANIA! Yes that's right, Tasmania is finally on the board after an epic day that we will celebrate! We go over all the medal wins and talk up why Tasmania clearly is the star of the day. We also find out why watching the triathlon was a bit more revealing than we were expected, as well as find out why the Off The Podium curse hasn't been put in the purse just yet. We also bring you some more exciting commentary, this time from the great sport of fencing, and also find out why Canadian judo athletes are sad and why Australian softball players are even sadder. It's another massive day of action you won't want to miss!
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 for day three of the Tokyo Olympics, and it's a golden day for Tasmania! Yes! We have a gold, a history-making gold for Tasmania. No other countries or places in the world won gold medals today. And if they did, who gives a rat? Because bugger Australia, bugger Canada, bugger Japan, bugger Kosovo, bugger rock, bugger Slovenia, Tasmania is on the medal tally finally. What an exciting day. Yeah, we probably should mention Canada also won a gold, which was a pretty big deal as well. But we'll get to that because we've got plenty to talk about. And while we've got somebody else talking here, Casper's here! Casper, Tasmania won gold! Yes! Yes!
COLIN HILDING: You want to take a pop figure?
BEN WATERWORTH: This is really awkward. I'll come back to you, Casper. Jarrod!
COLIN HILDING: You go upstairs now, okay? I don't know what to do.
BEN WATERWORTH: I'm not usually allowed to talk to children. Jarrod, welcome to Off The Podium.
JARROD LOOBEEK: Thank you. It's good to be back on a golden day for Australia and Canada.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yes, Colin. We should mention the little fact that I did kind of undersell it. But Canada, I'm really awkward right now. There's a child on. I feel like I'm about to get arrested. Canada won a gold medal too, Colin!
COLIN HILDING: We did! And it wasn't even somebody who was white, which you don't see often in some countries. Here in Canada, it's not unusual.
BEN WATERWORTH: We started off awkward and slightly racist. Good start to the day. Very exciting day. Ariane Titmuss winning gold for Australia. It was the Terminator versus the Goat, as they wanted to say about 101 times. And Maggie McNeil also winning gold for Canada. It was the Canadian against the others. I don't know if she has a nickname. Both in swimming, I should mention, for those who are playing at home or wondering what we're talking about. But outside of the joy that came with the gold for both Canada and Australia, should also mention it's a bronze day for Australia. We added two bronze, and a bronze day for Canada, because you also added a bronze. One bronze? Yes. So you're still losing to us on the middle tally. Hey, you were beating us on the middle tally today for about 10 minutes, so good job when Maggie got that gold. Let's get the reaction of Canada first, because I feel ours will go for a little bit longer, because I've got a lot of stats today, and I'm excited for it. Colin, Maggie McNeil, was she somebody who was expecting me? She took a silver yesterday in the 4x1, but she's the world champion coming into the 100 fly. Was she being talked up as a gold medal champs?
COLIN HILDING: She was being talked up as a champs. I don't think Canada talks up gold medal champs anymore. Let me also clarify, the comment about it wasn't somebody who's white, that's due to an off air comment about how some countries it's unusual to see somebody of another race.
BEN WATERWORTH: Colin, you're not meant to add to that. You're meant to just pretend that you're racist for once.
COLIN HILDING: I'm not going to get myself a Noah reputation here. This is pretty normal here in Canada. But I would say a year ago, two years ago, nobody had really even heard of Maggie, and all of a sudden out of nowhere, her name's being thrown around with Penny, and what made this even better is that, A, it is an event that we have won gold in before, so now Canada back to back gold in the same one, but back to back with two different swimmers. I mean, it's great for Canada when we were in Rio to have anybody win a single medal, and then we came away with a gold, and now we've won back to back golds in the same sports with two different athletes, which is incredible. And I just have to say, Maggie hasn't been big on media up until this event, and I'm very fascinated by watching her. I think that she has potential of winning in a lot of things because the commentators pointed out that not only has she memorized the periodic table, but she knows the first 100 numbers of pie by heart. And when you watch interviews with her, you can just see there's something about her where she is so laser focused that she could probably, I don't know, create time travel if she wanted to. So gold medal in the butterfly, by the time we get to Paris, she's gonna be inventing time travel.
BEN WATERWORTH: And I will say she can go back in time to 2016 when Canada got the silver in this event, Colin. You're thinking of a different one for Penny. I hate to be that guy to correct Canada's number one expert, but Penny 100 metre free, Penny got silver in the 100 butterfly. Come on, Colin, everyone knows this.
COLIN HILDING: Unless you're in Canada.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, the reason I knew that, because Basil let me know, Basil told me, this is the first time that Canada had ever won a gold in this event. Basil does know best. Absolutely. I love her reaction. I mean, her reaction, basically. Even Liesl Jones was like cacking herself on our coverage, because they kind of cut to her, and she's just kind of like, oh, yeah. And then she kind of does this double take pigeon almost. I'm like, I won. And then even then she kind of had a double, I won. And I saw she was interviewed afterwards. I think the Team Canada posted her quotes, where she basically said she couldn't see it, because she couldn't have contact lenses on, and she could not read the board, which is fantastic. So I think even, I mean, we're going to talk about reactions. It's a day for reactions, I feel. But I mean, she's got to, is she endearing herself into the hearts of Canadians now just with her, what you were telling us about the personality, as well as just this great reaction?
COLIN HILDING: Yeah, and with her personality, one of the interesting things about her is, I don't mean this in a derogatory way, but she almost comes across very robotic when you see her interviews, because she's just, I think, so incredible, so smart and everything. It's like watching a Terminator. And if you can get her to crack, I think that is commentators, reporters, anchors, that is their gold medal. If you can crack Maggie McNeil and get a smile out of her. And I watched a very challenging interview with one of our best commentators we have here, one of our best reporters, Andy, what's her name? Andy Petrillo.
BEN WATERWORTH: Oh, yes, the Andy Petrillo.
COLIN HILDING: She's very good. You should check out her Instagram. You might like it. I'm Googling, howdy Phil and I. But she was interviewing. You could tell with every single answer, you and I have been there, you interview an athlete, and you think, okay, I'm going to give them something new. I'm going to get a reaction on them. And they have been asked this question a million times, and they are giving this response for the millionth time. And then when she finally asked her, it's like, you know, I have to talk about your reaction. You're not able to wear contacts. You don't have prescription goggles. And you look up, and you do the squint, and you see it, and then you celebrate, and then you do the squint again, because you're still doubting it. And Maggie just smiled and kind of chuckled, and like, there you go, Andy. You cracked the Terminator. You got a smile out of her. That's your gold medal.
BEN WATERWORTH: Okay, the Terminator is Ariane Titmuss. You got to be careful with what you're saying on this episode, Colin, because it's a golden night for us. Don't take away our Terminator. Just quickly, Andy Petrello, yeah. She seems like a nice lady. But, I mean, we talked about Penny yesterday. She only needs to win one medal. I mean, this is double medal now for Maggie, because she was part of that 4x1 team yesterday. Are they talking about other events? Has she got, like, is she in the 200 fly? Is she going to be in the 4x1 individual? Like, what else has she got going?
COLIN HILDING: I think she has a 200-something coming up, because I remember, I think it was in the qualification or the heats for this. They were saying she wasn't performing originally as well as expected, because she had her attention on the relay at that point. And I did hear a similar comment about whether or not, you know, she was going to reserve something for a 200. But I don't know how many events she has to come. I mean, I think that there's a very good chance that we walk out of these Olympics, and Maggie McNeil has replaced Penny Oleksiak as the star of Canadian swimming.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, we'll have to get her on the show, then, so that she doesn't win any more medals.
COLIN HILDING: She can recite the first 100 numbers of pie for us.
BEN WATERWORTH: Hey, that's enough. I didn't even know there was 100 numbers of pies. That's how smart I am. Also, just while we're on the medal wins today, Jessica Clem Kate, Yeah, another Terminator. The bronze in the women's 57 kilo. Now, I believe your very first ever female judo medal winner, and I think your fifth overall. Was this expected? Was this something that Canada was keeping an eye on? Because from what I gather, she had a bit of a chance. She was world champion earlier this year in this event.
COLIN HILDING: Her name had not even been thrown around until last night when it started. So I just, I think we went over, you know, on our preview episode, these are the ones that I didn't even see her name mentioned, which is unusual because she is a world champion. But we've had several events where our world champions have not succeeded. So it was good to see that she ended up in the bronze. I forgot to claim one Terminator. It's going to be her because I was watching, I think it was her quarterfinal match, and it was over in about 20 seconds. And the commentators actually said, oh, she does not look happy with that. You know, she's going to be reserving all of her aggression now for the semifinals, as if she needed to take this frustration out. And then I thought, okay, this is just a one-time comment. It wasn't even Canadian commentary I was watching. I don't know what country it was for the bronze medal. And they were saying, it's like, you know, I really hope that she's happy with that result. And you could tell she's just stone-faced, like, I won the bronze, should have been the gold. Like, this is one angry woman. Like, I love her.
BEN WATERWORTH: I think she's great.
COLIN HILDING: I mean, she's going to rip apart the judges just because she didn't make it to the gold match.
BEN WATERWORTH: It's actually interesting, though, when it comes to Canada today, because you could have had two bronzes in the judo, Colin, because Arthur, Arthur Magladeon? He let you down by losing to a Mongolian. Who loses to Mongolia and Judo? Probably most people. I think they're quite good at judo. But the reason I also wanted to bring this up was I saw a tweet today from a very good friend of the shows, Mr. Evan Dumphy, who tweeted out saying, who can explain to me why judo has two bronze medal matches? In boxing, both semi-final losers get bronze, which is also strange to me, but there are literally two bronze medal matches. I don't understand. Either way, Ken has got two chances for bronze coming up. I want to know why are there two bronze. This is the weirdest thing. Just do what you do in boxing. Two losers of the semis, you both get a bronze. That's fine by me. Was this talked about tonight, why this happens?
COLIN HILDING: No, I didn't see anything on it. But again, they were only coming back for the Canadians during the judo. So that was the only time we really saw it. I did want to point out, I'm not going to pronounce his name any better than you did, but Jamie had no interest in him because he had previously lost to a Georgian. He only made it in a repitition later on. Jamie's new Jay Litherland is this Georgian judo guy. I don't even know where he ended up placing because I haven't watched the gold medals yet. But wow, she's a fan of his. We got another guy to add to the list. Let's bring some of these hunky men on the show and get one more listener from my wife.
BEN WATERWORTH: Is this Lasha Shevdat Uashvili?
COLIN HILDING: If I saw him, I would know, but I don't even want to try spelling what you just said.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, he's only a silver medallist. He lost in the finals.
COLIN HILDING: Oh, I have a spoiler.
BEN WATERWORTH: Oh, you just said you haven't watched it. That's awkward. I do listen. I think we even started...
COLIN HILDING: He's pretty attractive.
BEN WATERWORTH: He's got a nice bod.
COLIN HILDING: Well, before, when we were arranging this recording last night, I said, you know, we might have to start recording a little bit later because I'm not going to be home for a while. I'm going to have a while to catch up. And just before we start this, I'm just finishing the bronze for the judo.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which I like... I don't know if you like spoiled everything else when I'm posting things out today or something along those lines, but...
COLIN HILDING: Oh, I muted you a long time ago. I learned that from Jarrod.
BEN WATERWORTH: I think everyone's muted me a long time ago. Like, I mean, it's... you're not the only ones, basically. But it's exciting. Like, I like it when you'll get a random sort of sport come out of nowhere. I think it was Sydney. And I'm just trying to remember her name. We've won two bronzes in judo. I think Sydney and Athens, we both got a bronze. And I remember Sydney was a real shock. Maria Peckley, that's her name. In the same event, the 57 kilo, we got a bronze. And that was kind of just one of those ones where it was like, of all the sports. It's like when Chloe won modern pentathlon, we're not going to win a medal in that. And then Athens, we had a similar thing happening. I mean, Jarrod, do you remember, again, I don't know if you remember sort of the joy it was when Australia got bronze in judo in those two Olympics?
JARROD LOOBEEK: I don't, but you're right. There's a special joy that comes with us winning, of any country, winning an unexpected medal. And I know we're only a couple of days in, but I'm hoping that we get that same feeling at some point throughout this Olympics.
BEN WATERWORTH: I think that there always is that sport that we will win. You get to that point of an Olympics, and I know we talked about this when Chloe won the gold, it's kind of like, well, all our chances are done now, so we'll just skate on by, we'll be fine, and then all of a sudden, boom, Chloe has been... It was like Sochi when David Morris won that silver. We were kind of like, oh yeah, we're done, we're not winning any more medals now, and boom, there we go, silver. I'm clearly thinking that we're going to, I don't know, win the karate maybe. I don't even know if we have any karate people. What's the correct term for a karate athlete, I guess?
JARROD LOOBEEK: Karate chopper.
BEN WATERWORTH: Chopper karate. I see what you did there. Let's talk about Australia though, because Colin's actually stepped away from it. He's so emotional of their golden bronze day today.
JARROD LOOBEEK: So emotional that you spoiled the results.
BEN WATERWORTH: Again, you know how it feels. Ariane Titmuss. I mean, look, I should mention, again, I'm wearing the Tokyo gold. I'm wearing the Tasmania jersey. I'm wearing the Tasmania jackjumpers. Get on board the jackjumpers if you're not on board them in the NBL season coming up. Because, okay, Australia won a gold. I'm very, very happy. But let's just talk about this from a Tasmanian perspective, because I know Colin, as he joins us again, probably has a similar thing, like very proud to be a Manitobian. The Manitobites.
COLIN HILDING: You know, it's Manitobian, but I kind of like the sound of Manitobite. Let's go with that.
BEN WATERWORTH: Manitobanese? I don't know. But like whenever somebody from Manitoba wins a medal, I'm sure it's a big deal. But I'm gathering, based on the guests we've had on this show, it's quite a more common thing when somebody from Manitoba wins. Ariane Titmus is only the sixth ever Tasmanian to win an Olympic gold medal. And she is the first ever individual athlete to win an Olympic gold medal from the state of Tasmania. Only the second ever female. And for those playing at home, yes, I will read you the other five Tasmanian gold medallists in the history of the Olympics.
COLIN HILDING: I'm going to guess Errol Flynn in fencing, right?
BEN WATERWORTH: Sadly, he missed out in the fourth. He lost to bronze, sadly. Michael Grenda in 1984, took to 1984 in LA for us to win our first ever gold. He was part of the 4,000-metre team pursuit cycling team that won. Our first ever female gold medallist was Marie Fish in hockey in Seoul in 88. Stephen Hawkins, not Stephen Hawking, was part of the double skulls team that won gold in Barcelona. We then had to wait until 2004 for Maddie Wells to be part of that famous Kookaburra team that won the men's only ever Olympic gold medal in Athens. And then Scott Brennan back in 2008 in Beijing, part of the double skulls that won a gold. So history making today for Ariane Titmuss to not only beat the goat, but to be Tasmania's first ever individual Olympic gold medallist. Jarrett, all of that gloating about Tasmania aside, it was a pretty good race. She beat Miss Ledecky. We're not cocky at all, but we like it.
JARROD LOOBEEK: It was such a good race. It was so fascinating to watch. It was just such a good like come from behind victory. Like it was such a nice like strategic swimming race. Yeah, such a joy to watch.
BEN WATERWORTH: And I loved having Thorpey in there. Thorpey getting animated. Thorpey said it was fully sick. Thorpey was all in bold with it. You know, Basil, I think maybe went a little bit overboard with some of his commentary. The coronation, a celebration. Like it was kind of OK. Yep. And then to become a legend, you have to beat a legend. Now, I love how they really did talk up Katie Ledecky. She's a great swimmer. I think she's achieved a lot. But was it Missy? Was it Missy Hyman? Wasn't she somebody who won a few more?
COLIN HILDING: Well, I was going to say, I think the more impressive thing is that we're actually seeing Katie Ledecky this time around, because I was thinking about this yesterday. Back in what was at London, Missy Franklin won everything. And then she was essentially non-existent when we got to Rio. So it's actually not as common as you think to have an athlete in swimming be able to carry over from one Olympics to the other with this type of success. So, I mean, even if it is a silver, I mean, she's there. This is something we always see.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah. I mean, like, I'm not trying to talk down Katie Ledecky, because, I mean, we're Australians. We want to gloat about this. We beat the goat. But I mean, God, the amount of times I heard the Terminator has beaten the goat, I was like, OK, that's a little bit too much there. But I think the talk of the town, though, around her win is not only around Titmuss' win, but Colin's doing the old shake there right now. Her coach, Dean Boxall, has gone viral with his reaction. We talked about the Tunisian's reaction yesterday. But I mean, Jarrod, this is epic. I want this guy on the show. I mean, I swear it's actually Stephen Hooker. But I mean, that's a whole other story. But I mean, Dean Boxall, if we could give an athlete of the day to a coach, we'd give it to this guy, wouldn't we?
JARROD LOOBEEK: Yeah, so good. We talked up the reaction of the Tunisian coach the other day. This just was leaps and bounds ahead of it. The fact, too, that to add to this epic moment, you had Ian Thorpe in his typical style of just being deadpan and commentary being like, I'm not sure the fence is going to appreciate that. But it was just such a good moment. So good.
BEN WATERWORTH: And then you had the deadpan Japanese official behind looking at this guy like, what the hell are you doing? Yeah, it was epic. And then you see him crying. When Ariane got interviewed after her medal, she started crying. They cut back to the pods, and there's Tasmania's number one former newsreader Steve there getting pumped and excited. I loved how they interviewed him and he's losing his voice. He's just absolutely screaming there. We did get reminded about another 58 times that they were uprooted from Tasmania, so good for them. And my favourite bit, though, I think of Ariane when she... I don't know why they have to do the dual interview. You interview them afterwards, and you interview them when they've got the metal around the neck. Okay, fine. But I love the fact that when Ariane's there, she's like, oh, one gold, I'm really excited. And then they cut, and they're like, oh, look, Ariane, there's your family. There they are, they're all there anusa. The first thing she says, oh, there's Dorn Fraser. She doesn't care about her family. Fucking Dorn Fraser's watching on. She's pumped. So good. I'll tell you what, Jarrod, we've got the old GoPro bros and the Swiss and all that sort of stuff. 100% for Harvey Norman, though. So maybe you've got to be bored on a Harvey Norman ad to win a gold medal because that works out well for our Terminator.
JARROD LOOBEEK: Well, given Harvey Norman's profit margins this year, it only makes sense that they're backing people who are actually winning gold medals.
BEN WATERWORTH: But I will say, in all seriousness, I mean, it is a great thing for Tasmania. The one time I can say I'm kind of proud to be here in Tasmania right now for this to happen, because, I mean, Jarrod, you're from Sydney. You guys shit gold medallists every single five seconds, right? Like, I mean, you know, Ian Thorpe's from Sydney, Jane Gold, like, all these people are from, you know, oh, good, look at you, from Sydney. Whereas, you know, this is a rare air for Tasmania to have this. Clearly, our first ever individual gold medallist. I did work out off air, and I'm talking to Jarrod about this, that I still yet to have a Winter Olympian, so not only are my chances looking good to become Australia's next Winter Olympian in one day, I could be Tasmania's first ever Winter Olympian, so I'm holding out hope for that. Don't you two get that excited. I want to, I will say, yeah, Missy Franklin, not Missy Hyman. That's a different person. But I'm looking here, the most successful female of all time in swimming is Jenny Thompson. Eight gold, three silver, one bronze. Katie Ledecky is only fourth on that list. She's behind Amy Van Dyken and Christine Otto. So even Dawn Fraser's only, she's won more total medals than Katie Ledecky. So, yeah, not quite the goat, I will say, but not to take away from you, Katie, you got the silver. Our other medals today, bronze in the 100 fly behind Maggie, and silver in that one went to Yufei Zhang for China. But Emma McKeon, bronze medal, that was a nice little one there for her, Jarrod. What, eight years after she won silver in London, I believe. So nice little one there for her.
JARROD LOOBEEK: Yeah, it was a good swim and a good backup too, after she did such a good job in the relay the other day.
BEN WATERWORTH: And I'm sorry, not silver in London, I'm thinking of a completely different swimmer. But yes, no, her first individual. No, she got a bronze in 200. I've really done my research today, clearly. I'm doing very well. And we also got a bronze, which was almost as epic as Ariane's race, because Kyle Chalmers stormed home to beat our traditional swimming rivals of Canada in the four by 100 free. We were not looking good for a medal, but Chalmers stormed home to beat those pesky Canadians, Jarrod. My goodness, what a swim by Kyle to get us the bronze.
JARROD LOOBEEK: It was. It was such a good swim. I did love, though, at this point in time, the bias commentary of... I feel like it was Thorpe saying how that leg was better than the American's first leg. And then they read out the times, and the American first leg was considerably faster. But it's almost more impressive. And I'm like, but is it? But it was slower. So a little bit of Australian bias there in the commentary.
BEN WATERWORTH: I think they're just talking him up for the 100. Oh, that's going to put him in good stead for the 100 free, you know, the individual one. But Colin, how did you feel about getting fourth? Because the one thing I will say, though, the Canadians seemed quite proud with that fourth, because I believe the talk was that they wouldn't even make the final, but they ended up, I mean, you should have... I'm saying it. You should probably have won the bronze. You had more consistent race than Australia did.
COLIN HILDING: We had the bronze for, I think, three of the legs there. I think it was probably only... It was not even in the full last 50 metres. It was maybe in the last, like, 20 metres that you took it, because you're just sort of watching as everybody's so close. And if it's the same on yours, where they'll have the flag displayed behind the person just for the top three. And I'm watching as Canada, Canada, Canada, then all of a sudden it's not Canada. I'm like, wait, wait, what? What happened? And then all of a sudden it's over. It just came, literally came out of nowhere. But like, you're completely right. We weren't expected... I think we only barely qualified for this event. Like, just made it. Qualified in last of all teams that actually qualified this time around. Weren't expected to even make the finals. And he would make the finals and were this close to a bronze. What makes it even better is that women completely overshadowed the men in Rio. In fact, our best hope that we had in Rio was a swimmer named Santo Condorelli, who now swims for Italy. He's a Japanese-born Italian who was raised, I think, in America, but competed for Canada only because his mother was born here, never even lived in Canada. He came in fourth, so we're like, oh, we got Santo Condorelli. Come Tokyo, we're going to be golden. But no, he's gone. So to have this team put together when none of them are really metal hopefuls and anything else, and also they brought a guy out of retirement for this. We have this one swimmer, Brent Hayden, who had retired, but they said, we really want to put together a relay team that can give the men a chance. And this team, their goal was essentially let's get ourselves on the map. If we win a medal, great, but if we just get ourselves on the map and people can see Men Can Swim in Canada too, then we can take a little bit of the spotlight and get some of the attention and get some of that sponsorship dollars. So the whole team, it meant a lot to them that they even got the fourth place. And this isn't a Canadian thing. We're like, oh, it's a Canadian medal. We finished in fourth. This is legitimately one of the happiest moments for Canada that this team came out of nowhere and almost took the bronze.
BEN WATERWORTH: It's fascinating you say that because it's sort of, I mean, at least growing up for me, it was kind of the opposite. It was always the men who dominated the limelight for swimming, not to take away from people like Susie O'Neill and Samantha Riley, these great female swimmers we had. But for so long, growing up, it was Kieran Perkins, it was Daniel Kowalski, then obviously Thor, Packard, Clem, all these people like that. And then the shift really went from the men to the women sort of around Beijing, I want to say. And again, not to take away from Patria Thomas, from Liesl Jones, Libby Trickett, these great female swimmers we had. But really over the last decade, our men have underperformed. I mean, let's just mention the name James Magnuson, and that's enough for us to shiver in our spines here in Australia. But the women have just dominated. Yeah, we had Kyle Chalmers win gold. We had Mack Horton, of course, in Rio as well. But it was sort of a rare air for us of our male swimmers. And even in these Olympics, isn't it, Jarrod, where it's kind of none of our men are being talked up as gold medal chances. It's all the women.
JARROD LOOBEEK: Now, it's always a surprise even when they go in as favourites, or they set records and this, that, whatever else. But you haven't heard of them before. They actually get there out onto the blocks. And then during the race, it might come up, oh, they finished second at the last World Championships, or they're the defending champion from the World Championships in this. But yeah, in terms of promotion, there's just zero promotion of any of the male swimmers.
BEN WATERWORTH: That's so true. Like, I could barely name any current Australian male swimmers outside of those few that I just mentioned, whereas the female swimmers, I could probably list you like nearly 10. So, which is great for, you know, it's kind of one of these rare sports, I guess, where they're almost equal pegging in terms of everything. And then, you know, flip it around a little bit with that too. I guess...
COLIN HILDING: I just want to say one more thing on this. With the men's team in Canada finishing fourth, like it does sound ridiculous to say, oh, well, you know, this fourth place finish will put them on the map. It's like, well, aren't they already on the map? They're in the Olympics. But when we look at Rio, you know, we had this unexpected success in the pool for the women. And now we have Maggie McNeil, and we have Summer Macintosh, who weren't really even swimming at that point. So something like this, you just get some attention. You're going to have male swimmers who are suddenly like, you know, I'm going to push harder. I can actually win. There's a team there, you know. There's a point to this. I don't have to leave and compete for Italy. I can stay in Canada.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which is actually, yeah, it's a good point. And one thing I'll say, too, like kind of going back to, you know, the Mack Hortons and the Kyle Charmers, is that even after winning gold, I feel like you barely heard their name. It was still all about the bloody Campbells. You know, it was kind of, it was, it was interesting. But we should mention, just not a medal event, but big sort of mourning for our big jewel in the pool tomorrow, which I want to say quickly, like they talked this up so much, you know, Titmuss vs Ledecky. And I think it was, was it Basil Jarosz that said, it was Cassie Freeman-esque, all the pressure. I mean, come on, Basil, I love you, mate. But just, no, not Cassie Freeman-esque, OK, just no. I'm so more excited for this 100-metre backstroke. This is the one, to me, that we should be talking up, because we talked about it last night, how the Olympic record went boom, boom, boom. Straight away in the first semi, it went again. Reagan Smith from America, former world record holder, boom, new Olympic record, followed by Kylie Mass and Kylie McCowen, McEwen, sorry, were both in the semi together and went one, two. So the fastest three are the three that we're all expecting to be the fastest. Reagan's number one, Kylie's two, Kylie's number three. This is, I want us to commit to commentating this tomorrow because this has to be the one that we need to do because there's a lot on the line, not only for our countries, but for our bloody show. So, I mean, are they talking up Kylie, Colin much over there at the moment?
COLIN HILDING: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, and I'm talking her up. I said to probably two or three people, you know, there's a curse out there that needs to be broken and Canada has to break this curse. Who cares about whether we can top our medal count and pass the Olympics or anything like that? This curse is so important. We need to know we're not the problem, you know? Poor Max this morning.
BEN WATERWORTH: Thank you, Colin. You just jinx it by saying that out loud. But yeah, Jarrod, I mean, like, I saw you nodding when I was saying that. Like, this is the one I feel that they should be talking up as the big event. Like, not to take away from Arnie. It's great she got it. Fantastic. But this is the one that has got so much around it.
JARROD LOOBEEK: I just think the fact that they're like, like you said, it's the hype of the record going one after the other. It's the fact that it's not just like a two-horse race here. It's multiple people. And it really feels like this could just go anyway. Even you chuck in Emily Seabom as like a potential like medallist there as well. Like, it's just I just don't know what's going to happen in this race. Like the today it was like, okay, we could go one way or the other. This it's just it's multiple people. I really feels like there's four or five people who could win on the day.
COLIN HILDING: Well, I was going to say with the Olympic record going four times in two rounds, and we're not even at the finals yet. Everybody knows how much harder they have to push. And you know, we haven't had this grouping together. Now you've got these three girls all together at the same time. We could potentially see the world record go more than once.
BEN WATERWORTH: And this is the thing. I was just going to quickly add on Emily Seabombs. She was the one I got confused with. She's a silver medallist from London. Thank you very much, Ben. The other way around. But you're right. And this is where going into these Olympics, I feel it wasn't being talked up as much because obviously Kayleigh broke the world record in the Australian trials and kind of came out of nowhere. And this was all of a sudden like why she wasn't being that hyped. But you do have the three former world record holders in this event. And like it's just it's crazy. And you look at someone like Kylie Mass, she's the only one with Olympic experience, obviously winning a bronze back in Rio. I mean, both Reagan and Kayleigh have never been in the Olympics before. So this is their first ever time being in Olympics and being in the Olympic final. So it's incredible. And I'll say like with Emily Seabombe, I'm with you, Jarrod. Like, of course, I mean, to me, I'd like to see Kayleigh win. Like I'm not even, you know, my little sort of slightly pervy comment aside, yesterday I've legitimately followed her for quite some time. And she's she's actually very entertaining on social media. I will say that. So it's kind of one of those sort of things where you're like, oh, I liked this person before they were big. And it's like, oh, well, that's my Instagram pervy follower that I've had for a while. But with Emily, like that would be kind of like a cool little, you know, a romantic thing if she could pull off a gold medal in that. Come out of nowhere, beat these three fast people.
COLIN HILDING: It's not a pervy thing. And then you're dropping words like romance.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, like a romance on the sports side of things, Colin, Jesus Christ. Like, I'm not talking about that.
COLIN HILDING: A nice, quiet night, fireplace.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, I mean, she's an Olympic gold medallist. Emily, I wouldn't say no.
COLIN HILDING: Some oil, a shower.
BEN WATERWORTH: I'd also say, like, backstroke is probably my favourite stroke, because when I used to swim in my swimming career, I was a backstroker. The only time I ever got a placing in a swimming carnival in my school days was in backstroke. Admittedly, there was only three of us in the race, and I got third, but it doesn't matter, it counts.
COLIN HILDING: Ben, stop saying stroke, please.
BEN WATERWORTH: God, you're a pervy guy, Colin. Get it out of your mind. That's not what I'm talking about. The other one I wanted to talk about before I go over some of the other medals, because I obviously got a few other heats and everything that's happened tonight. On this golden day for Tasmania, absolute great day. We nearly had an absolute boil over when it came to a surprise Tasmanian medallist, Daniel Watkins in the canoe slalom qualified for the final in second out of nowhere. And in the final itself, he actually did okay. He just got stuck on sort of one gate. And basically, had he not got stuck in that gate, he probably would have won a medal. But, I mean, not only is he taking this world by storm from his canoeing, there's some other things about him that are taking the world by storm, which I don't want to talk about right now, because it's a little bit of a section I want to talk about after. But Jarrod, did you see our man Dan? Tazzy boy down the road from me. He's actually in the Huon Valley. He's closer to where Noah's from, snuck in the Huon Valley. So, you know, it's kind of that way.
JARROD LOOBEEK: I did. It was, like you said, it started off so promising. The fact that he qualified second fastest anyway, was just like a massive achievement. It felt like that came out of nowhere. And then the top section of the course, he was right kind of on that pace. I think it was like, I don't know, 19.
BEN WATERWORTH: Like.2 or something.
JARROD LOOBEEK: Yeah, something like that outside of the gold metal time in the top half. But then, yeah, just got stuck in that, that one point that threw him off. But it was just such an impressive run to get to the final. And then it was looking so promising for so much of his run.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which I don't know how that goes into tomorrow when it comes to Jess, because again, no pressure, Jess. I think she's, if you want to talk about Kathy Freeman-esque, if Jess wins at least one of these two golds, I'm saying that's Kathy Freeman-esque with the amount of pressure we're putting on Jess Fox. But yeah, it was a great result to see him in the final. He ended up finishing ninth in that final. And I should have mentioned too, another Tasmanian who got a very late call up, Josh Belts, who is from Hobart. And it's a weird connection to everyone in Tasmania knows everyone. But my dad, I think, used to play with his dad on a team. So it's kind of the six degrees of separation that the hockey community is kind of like that. So obviously with Eddie Ockenden, who I used to play against, our captain, and then obviously Josh Belts. So it's kind of a weird thing. But he made his debut on the weekend. There was a late minute call up to the Kookaburras. So hashtag Team Tasmania, we're doing it for the Apple Isle. That's all I can say. So let's go over some of the medallists today. And as is often the case when we're on air, couples still to be decided. The mixed doubles table tennis and both the taekwondo are on as we speak. So we'll go over the ones here. The archery, the men's team went to South Korea. What a surprise. Gold for them in the canoeing, the event we were just talking about. Benjamin Savsek of Slovenia took the gold in there. Sadly, I've got some bad news to report today. Great Britain won a few gold medals today, so I'm a bit sad about that.
COLIN HILDING: One of them was a nice win.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, well, I'm about to mention that one. But the first one I'll mention here is the mountain biking cross country, Thomas Pidcock won the gold. He's so immature, Ben, gold. I'm guessing this is a nice one. You asked a question, I think, in our preview episode. Is Tom Daley going to be at the Olympics? Well, Colin, go to say yes, because he won a gold medal today with Matty Lee in the men's synchronized 10-metre play. OK, admittedly, it's a nice little thing there for Tom to win the gold. In the fencing, which you may or may not hear some of that very, very shortly, Hong Kong's Cheung Ka-Long took the gold in the men's foil. And sadly, our man Max the Curse, he did not progress past the round of 32, which we'll talk about that in a little bit, I think, when it comes to what we hope to commentate on today. But anyway, Rocker bouncing back from their silver start to these games. He got a couple of gold today. Sofia Pozdynikova won the women's saber. Good job, Ben. Thank you. The gymnastics men's all around, which I'm seeing right now is apparently live on TV, but clearly it's not, because Rock won the gold in that. They won a rock. They did. Judo, we had gold to Japan on Shohei Ono, and the men's 73 kilos. And Jessica Klim Kate may have won the bronze, but Cosophos Nora Jakova won the gold in that one. Shooting, it was double gold to America. Vincent Hancock and Amber English in the men's and the women's skates. Skateboarding, double gold for Japan, Momiji Nishieya took the gold. 13 years old, beat another 13 year old by the name of Rasa Lille from Brazil. It does not make us feel insignificant at all, does it, when 13 year olds are winning Olympic gold medals. In the swimming outside of the ones that we mentioned, the US won the men's 4x100 free. And I want to talk about Adam Peaty from Great Britain. This guy's in the wrong sport. He's not a swimmer, isn't he? He should be in boxing, that guy's scary. Like, I wouldn't want to swim against him. Of course he does breaststroke. He looks like a guy who would just stroke women's breasts without permission. Like, that guy's... Don't listen to this, Adam, don't hurt me. Like, seriously, I didn't say that, that was a joke. I think he's getting into a bit of trouble too for his interviews when he dropped a couple of F-bombs. So anyway, in the triathlon, which I think Jarrod, you ought to mention a little bit, Christian Blumenfeld from Norway took the gold, and New Zealand won their first medal, everyone. Get on board the Kiwis. Hayden Wild, Gold and Wild in New Zealand, they got the bronze, and in the weightlifting, the women's 55 kilos, it was Philippines. Hidolin Diaz knocked off China's Qun Liao, so break China's streak on the weightlifting. Jarrod, I was going to talk to you about the triathlon. I didn't catch any of the triathlon. I saw the false start highlight, and then I saw the win, and I saw the controversy around, well, not the controversy, there's something else around Christian's personality. I didn't see the vomiting, though. Tell us about this vomiting incident.
JARROD LOOBEEK: You missed out. As soon as he won, he falls to his knees. He wraps himself in the finishing line tape. He's lying there for a bit. Then we get a great comment from the commentators that, oh, he hasn't left anything in the tank. And then literally straight away after they say that, he just starts vomiting right in front of the finish line. Then about the fifth or sixth finisher comes through. They fall over pretty much like, and are lying down right next to this puddle of vomit on the finish line. It was just... But they kept filming him. Then he moved over somewhere else, and then he vomited somewhere else as well, and they just kept going back to him. I don't know if we need this type of Olympic coverage, but... It was just the timing of the comment, that he left nothing in the tank, and then just vomited straight on the finish line.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, maybe I'm glad I missed that. Colin, do you catch any of the triathlon? You actually love triathlon, don't you?
COLIN HILDING: Yeah, well, that was the first thing after the swimming ended last night. I missed it earlier on. I went back and watched the whole thing before I went to bed. I missed the vomiting. I'm going to have to go back and see if I can spot it now. I mean, the triathlon, because in Sydney, which I think was the first time the event ever took place... One of the greatest Canadian Olympic moments of all time, Simon Whitfield. It's always something I try to check out. This is probably the most invested I've been in it. Partly, as I mentioned yesterday, Tyler Mislechuk, who is Canada... I mean, he was definitely expected to be top ten, maybe even top five finish. He's from Winnipeg. Well, he's technically from Oak Bluff, which I love they say Oak Bluff. Oak Bluff is about as far from Winnipeg as my current house is. We have one big highway that surrounds Winnipeg, and if you're inside that highway, you're considered Winnipeg. If you're outside, you're not. I'm within walking distance outside that highway, and I'm considered Winnipeg. He's within walking distance, and he's not, so I don't know. But I'm going to say, he's not from Oak Bluff. He's from Winnipeg, people.
BEN WATERWORTH: I was going to mention about Simon Whitfield. Lives in Victoria. So, you know, I have a connection to Simon. I never did. But he's got a thing here, actually. He's got two houses. Of course, he would. He's in the Olympic gold medal on Salt Spring Island, another famous little island in the Vancouver Island chain. So there you go. Little Mr. Richie Rich. He's the gold and silver medallist.
COLIN HILDING: What I found fascinating with the Triathlon was something I never really learned before. You know, when you get some of these events, you hear about, oh, well, there is a team strategy, right? And we had another Canadian who was in that. What was his name? Sharp, something sharp. And there's, you know, the, what do you call, drafting in the cycling. Basically, they said afterwards, and I don't know, maybe this is a normal thing, they said afterwards, this other guy Sharp was on the team just to guarantee that Tyler Misichuk would have gotten to the podium. The whole idea was he was supposed to protect him in the cycling, so he saved his energy for his strongest, which was the 10K run. And he spent the entire time drafting on Sharp. But Tyler Misichuk has been very vocal afterwards about how, and not only disappointed, he actually used the words angry he was that he finished in 15th, because he said he had really bad cramps the entire cycling that never went away.
BEN WATERWORTH: Oh, boo-hoo, the gold medallist vomited. Suck it up, princess.
COLIN HILDING: There you go, yeah. He wasn't drafting on another Norwegian. So Tyler Misichuk, in a way, you think, okay, if this was an American, I'd be like, oh, there's a typical American just complaining and everything. But right now, I'm into the aggression of the Canadians. I like Clem Kate and Tyler Misichuk showing, we can be aggressive, we can be angry, we can yell, we can scream, we can be serious.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, I'm just saying here, Massey Sharpe finished 49th out of the 49 finishes. So good job with that draft.
COLIN HILDING: It shows his job was just for the cycling.
BEN WATERWORTH: The highest place Aussie was Jacob Burtwhistle. What a name, Burtwhistle. Yeah, sign me up. 16th, just behind Mr. Misichuk. So there you go. The skateboarding... Anything else? I did see. I thought this was something that was being praised, because all I saw on Twitter was everyone was going, this is amazing, this is amazing. But then I have seen a separate headline on one of our news websites basically saying, skateboarding draws mixed reactions from fans. And yeah, I think even Sinead O'Connor, nothing compares to you herself, said something on the lines... Oh, sorry, not Sinead O'Connor. Sinead O'Carroll, often confused. Her tweet says, this is an off-brand tweet, but isn't the Olympic skateboarding very underwhelming? Yes, I would agree with that. I watched more of it today, not just because it was the women, but I just... They just do a jump, and then they land, and when they fall off, that's the best part.
COLIN HILDING: Like, this is essentially slope style on a skateboard, but in slope style, they have this massive park that they can use or whatever. So in slope style, they're going all over the place. Like, I've got 30 seconds, I'm going to do whatever I can.
JARROD LOOBEEK: It is one trick.
COLIN HILDING: And they've got... They're surrounded by all these different things. Give them a time limit. I will watch this sport. If you give them 60 seconds, you got to do whatever you can, and that's 60 seconds, and that's your score.
BEN WATERWORTH: Not...
COLIN HILDING: Ooh, that was a nice kickflip there on that one rail.
BEN WATERWORTH: I played Tony Hawk's Pro Skateboarder 1 and 2, and I did a lot more in my 30 seconds in these. Like, come on.
COLIN HILDING: Do you remember the level? I think it was Tony Hawk 2 or 3, where it was like a foundry, and you could fall into the molten metal or whatever, and die and burn?
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, of course you like that one. You're burning to death.
COLIN HILDING: I was thinking, introduce that into this sport. If nothing else, it brings a little excitement. Best case scenario, we get to see some of these really obnoxious skateboarders just burn alive.
BEN WATERWORTH: I will say, just to make us all feel very old, the gold medallist, Momiji Nishaya, butchering that, but that's the case on every single day. She's 13 years old. She was born about a week after the Beijing Olympics wrapped up. So how are we all feeling today, folks, in the back of the head? I'm not taking away from 13-year-olds winning medals. When you're gold and silver medallist, I think even the bronze medallist was 16. I just don't know how I feel about that. Jarrod, I mean, I don't know. We were just talking off air about the fact that baseball and softball are not in Paris, but skateboarding, sticking around, like, come on.
JARROD LOOBEEK: Yeah, it just doesn't have the same level of prestige, and there's other sports where athletes are young. I'm thinking about gymnastics mainly, but I just feel like the commentary, too, added to this that it's just kind of like, oh, they just hang out at the local skate park, and then they just come along to the Olympics. It just didn't feel like there was, and maybe there was, lots of training that goes into it, but just the way they were commenting and talking about it, it was just kind of like, oh, yeah, well, they're at the skate park, and they just decided they'd come along to the Olympics, like, just send a scout down there to pick out a couple of people, say, hey, you want to go potentially win a medal.
BEN WATERWORTH: I did still get a comment today, Jarrod, and tweeted that out, because I've got a few for our Channel 7 bits. Australia's Hayley Wilson didn't make the final, neither did Canada's Annie Gugliela. But the one everyone's talking about is this Margie de Dau. She's quite cute. Like, not in that way, Colin, before you shoot me down, just her reactions and her sticking her tongue out every five seconds, it was kind of funny.
COLIN HILDING: I want to say, Annie Gugliela, I think she's the real loser here because I want to put up for the athlete of the day, the person she replaced. There was a South African skateboarder that I think it was a positive COVID test, had to drop out. Annie Gugliela was called last minute, basically, how soon can you get on a flight to Tokyo? You're a substitute. We're going to put you in the event. And that's been the big story everybody in Canada talk about. Oh, isn't it nice that, you know, she's able to be here? I'm thinking our athlete of the day is this South African who avoided the skateboarding and doesn't have to be forever plagued with being part of this event.
BEN WATERWORTH: She's switching to sport climbing for Paris, I think. So that's a cool one to be involved in. Yeah, I just don't know. Sorry, skateboarding, but it's just, I'm not feeling it. I'm not, you know, I wanted to, because it was one of the ones that I was like, yeah, this is cool. Bring on skateboarding. But just like if Tony Hawk, like I know he's about 60, but like if you told me Tony Hawk was competing in the Olympics, I'd be fully on board. Like I want to see Tony compete. It's like Shaun White, right? Like you want that sort of level of person on there. But like, come on, Tony, just because you're 60, I've seen you're out there skating it, like you probably would have won gold by default. Everyone's falling over. So anyway, let's go through some of the results for Australia and Canada today outside of our medal ones. Colin, our Canadian correspondent, just what's been happening in Canadaville?
COLIN HILDING: Well, we already said Maggie McNeil's the big star here, the new hero of Canada. But we briefly talked about her the other day, Summer Macintosh, 14 years old, and also just barely missed the podium. I mean, she was-
BEN WATERWORTH: Why'd you mention her? I forgot to mention her. She was great.
COLIN HILDING: Yeah, right in the mix there for the 400 metre freestyle, like right up until the end. And another thing that because she is only 14 years old, people are thinking, imagine what she's going to do if she placed fourth in this event and held the third place for the majority of the race. Imagine she's going to do it in a few years.
BEN WATERWORTH: She led after the first 100, or at least the first 50 she led.
COLIN HILDING: Yeah, the first 100. I remember watching with Jamie. I'm like, this is great. I don't think she's going to hold it, but she's in the lead right now, this 14-year-old Canadian. It's unbelievable.
BEN WATERWORTH: Canadian record too. She lowered the one that she set in the heat, so a new Canadian record.
COLIN HILDING: And then also Canadian record, the Men 4x100 Relay. Aside from finishing fourth, they set a Canadian record too. Kylie Mass is through to the finals. Taylor Ruck, unfortunately, is not. She just missed out on it, so we're going to have one Canadian in the finals there. But here we go. Penny Alexiak and Summer Macintosh also are still in it for the 200-metre freestyle. That one's still coming up. Judo, we already talked about Klemkate and let me try this. Marjoledon, Arthur Marjoledon. Marjoledon, something like that.
BEN WATERWORTH: I like that dinosaur in Jurassic World. It was entertaining.
COLIN HILDING: Yeah, the Marjoledon, yes. Klemkate wins the bronze. Marjoledon, the dinosaur loses it. Triathlon, we already covered. Miss LeChuck in 15th place, and he's angry. He's really angry. I also just want to say, because it's so hot out there, I'm loving watching these outdoor events where they're giving them ice to shove down the back of their shirts as they're cycling the Southern Road Race as well. But the get ups that they have at the end of the triathlon, if you actually watch any of the interviews that take place maybe half an hour later, they're wrapped in some weird stuff, which I guess are like cooling packs around their neck and their heads. But it looks like they're wearing some type of like tribal ceremonial uniforms when it's just there for cooling. It was 27 degrees, and I think this event started at 6 in the morning. So that's even hotter than it is in Winnipeg.
BEN WATERWORTH: I was wondering actually that because I did see something that was posted about how competition starts like 7 a.m. Australian time. I'm like, what event is starting? So no wonder I missed the bloody trial. I'm getting up. I'm going to bed at that time.
COLIN HILDING: And that was the first thing that was on. So I watched a little bit of it before I had to leave last night. But I mean, the crazy thing is 27 degrees was the temperature of the air at 6 a.m. And I mean, we're right now in the first couple cool days we've had here in Canada in a while, but we've been having, like, you wake up in the morning, and it's already 23, 24 degrees, and I'm feeling like I'm dying. I can't imagine having to do a triathlon in 27 degrees. And the water was like 30 degrees. I don't know how the water was warmer. You don't typically find that where the water temperature is warmer than the air temperature. At least it wasn't green. It's not green, yeah. We had some commentary on that in the diving, too, which, diving next, the men's 10-metre, which Tom Daly won. Big deal also, just quickly mentioning the fact that the Chinese hadn't lost this as Athens, and the Chinese Olympic Federation or whatever had basically set their sights on, we were going to have a clean sweep of eight gold medals. So Tom Daly and What's His Name, the other guy, they've held off a Chinese sweep. Yeah, Tom Daly and the other guy held off a clean sweep, but the Canadians didn't help matters. Vincent Rindo and Nathan Zambar-Murray, that's a name. Yeah, they finished overall in fifth place, which wasn't bad. They kind of were flip-flopping all over the place. At one place, they were at.4th. At one point, they were at seventh. They ended up in fifth. Andy Guglia, skateboarding, finished second last. The real winner is the person that she replaced because they didn't have to be there, as I said. Mountain biking, Peter DeSera, 26th. Weightlifting, Rachel LeBlanc, Basenets. Yeah, finished third in the B group and 12th overall, lifted 181 kilograms.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah.
COLIN HILDING: Softball, we're on a roll here. Don't mention softball.
BEN WATERWORTH: That sport doesn't exist to us anymore.
COLIN HILDING: I'm thinking like the silver might even be within our reach now. No, it's not.
BEN WATERWORTH: You're playing Mexico for bronze. Sort of. We'll get to that. Don't worry.
COLIN HILDING: Don't rub it in. I'll scan through some of these. Pavan and Paredes, beach volleyball still undefeated, two in a row. Leila Fernandez is out. The tennis, fencing, we'll mention in a second, but good friend Maximilian Van Haaster.
BEN WATERWORTH: I'll mention it now. We may as well talk about it now.
COLIN HILDING: So we're all eliminated, all the Canadians are eliminated, but Maximilian Van Haaster was eliminated. They even say, unfortunately, eliminated early. But the weird thing with this was that the Canadian coverage, they have the little scroll on the bottom of the screen that will come up during an event. It will say, Canadians competing today. It mentioned the other two fencer guys, Alex Kay and Eli Schenkel. His name didn't come up and I was waiting for it. And even the one female fencer we had, her name came up and not even to mention a Maximilian Van Haster.
BEN WATERWORTH: That's how bad the curse is getting now. You don't even get mentioned on coverage.
COLIN HILDING: It's just an anger towards us. You had our Olympic hopeful on your show, disgusting Maximilian that you would do that off the podium.
BEN WATERWORTH: Are we not glad that Tessa Virtue's retired? We would be shot. Holy crap. What I want to say about Max is that he actually liked a tweet that we put out this morning two hours before his match. Get off your phone, Max. Focus on the Olympics. We also got another like. We will mention that shortly. I was so disappointed, because we're going to get to some commentary soon, and we were all set to commentate on Max's bout. Obviously, you got four matches happening at once, and I guess the world feed only shows the one, I think, on like the blue mat or the red mat, right? And Max doesn't like the yellow mat or something. So sadly, the only time I got to see him while I was watching the German and the Italian, which he saw his butt every few seconds, and they cut away, and you saw a long shot of the thing. He actually got off to a great start. I think it was about four or five up at the very beginning, and Ryan Choi, the guy who beat him, I think is about 20 places ranked higher than him. And obviously, Max is very confident of getting a medal, so I'm sure he's very disappointed at that. But he's got the team foil to come in about a week, so Canada will bounce back with that. But the good news, sorry to steal your thunder here, Colin, but anyone who listened to our interview with Max, Max's great rival, Gerrick Meinhardt, also got eliminated in the round of 32, so suck it, America, to take Colin's thing. I don't know if Gerrick's gonna buy him a beer because they both got lost out in the round of 32, but Gerrick, if you listen, you owe Max a bloody beer.
COLIN HILDING: Their friendly bet, yeah. Just wrapping up with the team sports here, let's not talk about rugby. Canada does not exist there. They literally don't exist. 24 to nothing to Great Britain, and then another 28 to 14 loss to Fiji. But volleyball, we did a little bit better, but still lost to Japan, which just finished. And water polo, we also lost to Spain, so team sports, not Canada's thing in Tokyo.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, one might be, because you mentioned the softball.
COLIN HILDING: Jarrod!
BEN WATERWORTH: Australia, undefeated with winning medals in the greatsport of softball. All we had to do is beat freaking Mexico, and the bronze was on tomorrow against Canada. We got beaten by freaking Mexico, so therefore Canada will play Mexico tomorrow for bronze. You're welcome, Colin. You have your bronze medal. Yeah, I don't even know what to say to that. For Australia, obviously, we had our medals, which were great. We like our medals. Softball, we choked, not so great. Daniel Watkins did pretty well. That was great. Sky Nicholson threw to the next round in the boxing. That was great. I watched the archery this morning. Our reigning bronze medallist from Rio choked in the first round, and we were out. But having said that, to pull a Colin, Colin likes it when his teams get eliminated by, say, the eventual champions, we lost to the eventual silver medallists in Chinese Taipei. So not too bad. We'll take that, won't we, Jarrod?
JARROD LOOBEEK: Yeah, it was a close match, too. I think that one went down to a tiebreaker or something.
BEN WATERWORTH: It went to an extra inning. That's not what you call it. A shootout, basically. But watching at the beginning, Chinese Taipei sucked at the beginning. Oh, God, we're going to shit this in. But then ultimately, it was kind of the other way around, unfortunately. So, yeah, not a good one there for us. Going through things chronologically, as I scroll through my list here, in Badminton, unfortunately, Simon Wing Hang Leung and his partner, the name is cut off here, lost. Sorry to the other player. I like to call them. Also in the women's doubles, Sechana Mapasa and their partner also lost. So that was sad. Yes, 4-1 in softball. We went down. So, mwah, mwah. In the beach volleyball, McHugh and Schumann lost again this time to rock. I think that puts them in a tricky position. There's two in a row now, haven't they, Jarrod?
JARROD LOOBEEK: Yeah, I think they said they have to beat. Is it Spain to progress through, I think? They still have a chance of getting through to the knockout.
BEN WATERWORTH: I watched the one the other night against the Danes, and they were apparently like the world number one, and we nearly did beat them. So that was quite a close one. As I mentioned, Sky Nicholson in the boxing, in the featherweight, she is through to the next round, although Alex Winwood is not. He is being eliminated in the men's flyweight. So better luck next time, champ. Better luck next time, champ. I'm calling a boxer champ, a guy who kicked my ass in five seconds.
COLIN HILDING: Was that derogatory, the way, champ?
BEN WATERWORTH: I'm here, going on last night about how we're so derogatory to Summer McIntosh. Oh, she's 14. Chin up, champ.
COLIN HILDING: Why did she hit me with your punch there, champ?
BEN WATERWORTH: I'm so confident about my boxing ability now that I've seen all of the Commonwealth Games boxing.
COLIN HILDING: Yeah, since you worked the boxing, you're the expert. I've seen the Rocky movies. I know how this thing goes.
BEN WATERWORTH: I haven't seen the Rocky movies. I'm going to get punched by a British swimmer and an Australian boxer. Honestly, I'm more scared about the Australian, the British swimmer. He won a gold medal. So let's be honest. In the mountain biking, Daniel McConnell finished 30th. Better luck next time, Jim. Can we just go with that? That's our motto. We're so bad at actually having people do well on this bloody show. The Hockey Roos, dominant win, 6-0 over China, which is great. Have you seen this bit of controversy on social media, Jarrod? Because apparently Australian media cannot get the teams right. They keep calling the Hockey Roos, the Cookaburras, and the Cookie... the Cookie Burras, the Cookaburras, the Hockey Roos, which is pissing off the hockey fraternity. Have you seen this?
JARROD LOOBEEK: I haven't, but I... feels like... it feels a bit petty, but I suppose if that's your team name and it's been that for however long, then fair enough.
BEN WATERWORTH: I feel like it's very standard because, you know, we know, I guess, that most of our prominent sporting teams, I mean, I get, like, the Stingers and the Sharks mixed up in the water polo, but that's not that overly prominent, whereas hockey is a fairly prominent sport when it comes to the Olympics. So, there's literally one of the former Olympians that we follow on Twitter. I think he, like, tweeted out a graphic with, like, a picture of, like, a kookaburra and a picture of, like, whatever the hockey roos are, some sort of kangaroo, and kind of, like, describe the differences. It was quite funny. Um, Rugby Sevens, uh, yeah, a bit of a bad start for us. We got, uh, I don't say belted by Argentina. We came back, but, uh, I, you and I were talking a bit off air about how this was not very well advertised, because it was on about the same time as the swimming, and just so happened, I flicked over to Seven Mate, and here it was. We were, I think, 19-0 or 25-down nothing, then we got, like, three tries in a row. It was 19 seconds remaining, and all we had to do was score a try to win it, but then we turned it over and gave it to Argentina and gave them a 10-point win. Uh, and then in the evening game, uh, we belted Republic of Korea 42-5. Did you see much of the rugby?
JARROD LOOBEEK: I caught a little glimpse of us against Korea, uh, and then flicked off, because we were winning so easily that I thought, well, there's no point watching this.
BEN WATERWORTH: We'll say to Colin, he stepped away for a second, but he might be, uh, you know, disappointed about the old games from Canada, but they did play the, uh, gold and silver medallists, I believe. Didn't Britain get the silver behind Fiji, I think, from memory, in Rio. So, uh, 24-0 nothing against Britain, and then 28-14 against Fiji. Respectable effort, Colin, I think you should take that on board. Fiji, the reigning gold medallists, uh, took both their matches, and for our friends across the Dutch, I wasn't meant to spoil Nook earlier tonight when I recorded, didn't want the spoiler. Uh, but, uh, New Zealand did beat Argentina, 35-14, and 50-5 against the Republic of Korea. So, New Zealand doing a little bit better than us. Uh, there's lots of sailing going on, there was some shooting going on, and we talked about that, uh, the skateboarding, surfing. Jarrod, what's happening? Ash Barty, day two. Stephanie Gilmore, day three. She's out in the frickin first round. What's happening here?
JARROD LOOBEEK: Yeah, it doesn't bode well for I don't know who's the hot favourite tomorrow, but, um, they're in trouble.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, I mean, Sally Fitzgibbon's made it through, so that was good. And in the men's side of things, uh, Julian Wilson was gone, uh, lost to Brazil's Gabriel Medina, but Owen Wright beat Jeremy Flores of France. I did love the coverage that Channel 7, well, we're live. Literally, I'm watching the surfing, and I just happened to glance at my screen, and already the result was up that Julian Wilson lost, so classic Channel 7 there. Um, swimming-wise, we've obviously gone over that, but I will just mention in terms of some of the heats and the semis that have happened, uh, obviously tonight as well, uh, we've obviously gone over Kayleigh McEwen, um, in the women's 200 metres. Uh, Colin mentioned about Penny Alexiak and uh, some of McIntosh going through. Well, Annie's back. Haha, get it? Uh, she's the third fastest into the semis and Madison Wilson also through there, so good results there for the Australians. We've got Chelsea Hodges. Uh, she missed out just by.1 of a second to make the final of the 100 metre breaststroke. Uh, I mean, come on, 100. That's a bit cheap, isn't it?
JARROD LOOBEEK: Should have given her nails out.
BEN WATERWORTH: I know, right? Um, also in a similar one as well, Thomas Neal in the 200 metre freestyle missed out by.3 of a second to make the final, so we won't have any finalists in those ones as well. Mitch Larkin is through to the final of the 100 metre backstroke, which is great. And Ryan Murphy, not only can he do some great television shows, he can swim bloody well for America as well. He's fastest through. It's good for you, Ryan. I do like all your TV shows. Listen to our Nip Tuck coverage over on The Oz Network. So those are those results there. And am I missing anything, Jarrod? Table tennis, we had a win there for Jianfang Lei in the women's single round two. Good for her. David Powell was out, unfortunately, for him. Taekwondo, Jack Martin got eliminated early. Chin up champ. Oh, I'm missing the tennis! Tennis! Jarrod, you talk about the tennis. Come on, this is your baby.
JARROD LOOBEEK: Oh, not a great day in the tennis, to start with, in the singles anyway. So we had Milman go down to the Spaniard, Davidovic, Fekina, and then Isla Tomlanovich, the last woman, Australian woman left in the draw. She lost to Svitolina from the Ukraine. And the doubles then, the doubles. Both Aussie teams are through. So Stoser and Perez and Barty and Sanders won their respective matches.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which is, I mean, who are you giving the chances between these two? Like, do you expect out of any of them that the Barty Party and the Storm Sanders will go through, or will Sammy Stoser finally get herself an Olympic medal?
JARROD LOOBEEK: I think I'm leaning towards the Barty Party.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which, I mean, singles is a bit more prestigious, I guess, but I mean, you know, she can walk away. I mean, Rafa won a gold four years ago on the doubles. I think he's, didn't Roger, he's only won a gold in the doubles I too believe. So, you know, I guess these greats do win the doubles every now and then.
JARROD LOOBEEK: Yeah, and Ash Barty, like, no strangers to the doubles court, making multiple Grand Slam finals with Casey Delacqua, and Storm Sanders, I think, just came off a semi-final or quarterfinal of the women's doubles at Wimbledon. So, I think definitely potential to get a medal with that combo.
BEN WATERWORTH: One thing, going back to Colin's opinion of, like, if you want to lose to someone, lose to the eventual champion or someone like that, good to see that Barty's conqueror, Sara Tormo Saribes, is through to the next round, and we should also mention Novak through, so is Miss, um, why am I going blank on a name? Naomi, thank you, Jesus Christ, how are you Japanese? Listen, they're our big fans, we're bagging them out all of a sudden. I'm also seeing here, good to see New Zealand winning a traditional New Zealand win in the men's doubles. Daniel and Venus beat a Dutch pair, Kolhoff and Roger, in a walkover. The standard New Zealand win there, I feel. And we should also mention the water polo. This would be the Stingers, because the sharks are the men and the Stingers are the women. Am I getting that correctly, Jarrod?
JARROD LOOBEEK: Sounds right to me.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, we'll go with that, cool. Australia beat the Netherlands, 15 to 12, I watched a little bit of that today. So, undefeated, the women. You can always rely on the women in the water polo, unlike the men who are not. Chin up, champs. You can do a little bit better there. Colin's gone AWOL, so we might throw right now to our commentary for the day. It's kind of becoming a daily thing. Fencing, now Jarrod, just before we play this, how was your experience when it comes to fencing with this commentary we're about to hear?
JARROD LOOBEEK: Well, I mean, clearly an expert in the field. So it was really just another day in the commentary booth.
BEN WATERWORTH: Just another day in the commentary booth. You're going to hear our commentary of the round of 32 game. The match that we thought would be with Max, but unfortunately not. But Alessio Faccini of Italy versus Andrei Sunita of Germany. And let's just say this got a little bit personal. That's the best way I can describe it. So let's cross now to Tokyo with your commentators, Ben Waterworth, Jarrod Lubik, and Colin Hilding. Yes, thank you very much, Ben. We are here live at the Macahore Messe, or as the locals are calling it, the Fensatorium, for this round of 32 match in the men's foil individual between Andrei Sunita and Alessio Faccini. It's number two versus number 34, traditional rivals, Alessio and Andrei. It's a pleasure to be joined by two esteemed colleagues of mine. It is Canada's number one fencing expert, Colin Hilding. Colin, thank you for joining me in the commentary box. I'm excited to see your face.
COLIN HILDING: I'm excited to show my face as always, and I'm also excited to see if Max von Haster's face might appear in the background at some point during this match.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yes, we'll get on to Max in just a second because we were meant to be commentating this match, but due to broadcast regulations, we have to commentate these two. It's also a shame that this guy can't be fencing. I believe he did withdraw from the fencing competition last minute. It is EMU Plains' number one ranked defensor. It is Jarrod Blueby.
JARROD LOOBEEK: Yeah, a shame to have to withdraw from the competition, but our second best thing is definitely commentating it.
BEN WATERWORTH: I'm excited for this match. Of course, as I said, traditional rivals, Alessio and Andre, they hate each other. They actually really hate each other.
COLIN HILDING: I have heard similar stories.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, I heard that Alessio slept with Andre's wife, and therefore they challenged each other to a duel, and that is the only reason why they're fighting in the Olympics, which is a fair enough thing to do there, so they did it back in the 80s.
COLIN HILDING: Which one is Alessio and which one is Andre?
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, the one that says Andre is Andre, and the one that says Alessio is Alessio. So the German, that guy right there is Andre. I'm disappointed in your knowledge, Colin. As Canada's number one expert in fencing, I believe you should know this.
COLIN HILDING: Well, unfortunately, the monitor I'm using does not include their names, but we'll blame somebody else for that. Now it does. Andre Senita. Yes. What a man.
BEN WATERWORTH: Now, I believe, Jarrod, you're good friends with Andre Senita. Have you spoken to him before this match? Has he told you how he's feeling about his wife cheating on him with this beautifully bald Alessio for Chini?
JARROD LOOBEEK: Well, he's out for revenge, that's for sure. And what better revenge to take than against the number two seed in the event?
BEN WATERWORTH: Indeed. And if you want to fence anyone, you want to fence an Italian, because we know that Italians are very good at fencing. They like to fence and put up the picket fences and the iron fences and cast iron fences. And I also do believe, too, that Alessio, whilst cheating with Andre's wife, watched plenty of Die Another Day to really get himself in the mood for this one. And I got some tips from the esteemed Verity Colin, who I know you're close personal friends with.
COLIN HILDING: You know what? We should keep a professionalist commentary, but you can shut up and leave now, Ben Waterworth.
BEN WATERWORTH: I will disregard that comment, Colin. We're about to get underway here. The epic duel between Germany and Italy. And they're fencing. That was a fence and a half. But I think the point has gone to Alessio there. I'm not sure about that one, Jarrod. I feel that Andre got these tipping moves.
JARROD LOOBEEK: Yeah, I'm looking forward to a slow-mo replay of that.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, it looks like we're back into the fencing section, which is what we generally do much.
COLIN HILDING: Correct me if I'm wrong, but Alessio's mask is a tribute to Cobra Commander, is it not?
BEN WATERWORTH: I believe so, yes, it absolutely is. Oh, hang on, we got some drama here. Hang on a minute. Andre's pulled something here in his leg. I don't know what's happening. He's down. Oh, drama here. Jarrod, what's happening?
COLIN HILDING: I'm fairly certain that the sniper from the stands has just targeted his left calf.
BEN WATERWORTH: Jarrod, is that what you saw?
JARROD LOOBEEK: Yeah, the blowed up from the stand into the calf. May also have pulled a hammy.
BEN WATERWORTH: Oh, there's the moment there where the dart hits him.
JARROD LOOBEEK: No, definitely. The Achilles heel. You expect more of that from the Greek athlete, but the Germans as well have the Achilles heel.
BEN WATERWORTH: You've got to really feel for Andre here. I mean, not only has he lost his wife to an Italian, but he might have lost his Achilles there, not even to a Greek person, as you mentioned there, Jarrod. I mean, this is looking pretty nasty here, as the coach comes in, gets the magic backpack on here. Germans are known for the magic backpack, and he's out in the magic spray. It's the magic spray. It's out of the bag. And he's going to spray it. I'm like, oh, he sprays the magic, and oh, a bit of sass there from Alessio coming in and tapping on the shoulder. Colin, I'm not sure what that move is called.
COLIN HILDING: Well, whatever it is, he's quite enjoying it and may have to excuse himself for a few minutes.
JARROD LOOBEEK: We used this spray for our zoet's leg the other night.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, I was going to mention that to you, Jarrod, as the expert of magic spray. What actually is in magic spray?
JARROD LOOBEEK: It's mainly just sugar and water. So not great if you're out with the mosquitoes, but a really good placebo if you're pretending you've pulled your heels.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, Andre seems to regroup now, and he's put on the old helmet back on there. And it's amazing that he can see with that German flag covering him so well. But good to see Andre back into it as he's gonna start fencing again. He's fencing. He's moving his sword. Andre's fencing. Oh, they're both fencing here. Really good. Slapping the swords. Slapping it. Slapping away. Goes for the move. Oh, did he get it? He does. He punts a fist. Oh, the Achilles heel is fixed, and he's all ready to go. What a move there, Colin Hildy.
COLIN HILDING: I'm calling it now. That was a fake injury just to psych out his opponent. Classic move from the Germans.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, classic move from the Italian there, just moving in and sticking it straight to the body. As an esteemed fencer once said, it's just a bit of sport, Miranda, and he's really pulling on there.
COLIN HILDING: He's got a little bit of a wonky blade there, which he's trying to straighten at the moment.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which I do believe having a wonky blade is natural in some men. We're back into the fencing section of the fencing, and I think somebody hit... I don't know what happened there, but they're starting again, and it's good to see that Alessio is really taking advantage of the floppy blade. Oh, and there's a glove has come undone here, or something's happened there. I don't know, is he using the force there, Colin?
COLIN HILDING: He's kind of... Believing yes, oh, yes.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, he's trailing 2-1 there, Andre, so the force might come into play as Alessio gets on the front foot. He fences, he fences, he fences. Oh, slaps it away there from Andre. He doesn't like it at all. Bang, damn.
COLIN HILDING: He went straight for the stabby stab.
BEN WATERWORTH: The stabby stab. Jarrod, the traditional move of you, I believe, you're prominent in the stabby stab. Was that a good stabby stab?
JARROD LOOBEEK: It was a good stabby stab. Years of effort and training have gone into that. I think the full one down, it might all likely be time for Andre to pull the other Achilles heel.
COLIN HILDING: Indeed.
BEN WATERWORTH: It worked from the last time. His only point was after faking that injury. As Alessio comes in, but I think Andre might have gotten that, and Alessio really likes to hold his blade a little bit more. I feel like, as a teenager, you're told not to touch your sword that much, but maybe his parents weren't very good.
COLIN HILDING: They are fighting over a woman, so they are trying to show off their blade size and blade grappling skills.
BEN WATERWORTH: That is true, Colin. We did mention the cheating. Of course, the winner of this bout does get Andre's wife, which is a nice little incentive, as well as moving into the round of 16.
COLIN HILDING: You can't see it on the screens right now, but she is currently hanging above the mat in a cage.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which is, again, how it was done in the ancient Olympics. Oh, was that Alessio there? Jarrod just getting a bit on the wrist. No doubt, with a quarterback, minute 48 to go. Alessio is just staring him down. Andre is really slapping him around. He's fencing, he's fencing. He goes in for the fence, and oh, look at that, into the wrist.
COLIN HILDING: Nice evasion there by Alessio.
BEN WATERWORTH: I've not seen someone run away like that since the French. That was incredible. Fencing still hard there. Alessio wants to fence hard, but Andre is fencing a little bit harder there. As they cross that line, of course, if you cross that line 14 times, you get a bonus point, I believe, which is very rare. Oh, what a slap down there from Andre, if you don't mind.
COLIN HILDING: Learn that move straight from Conan the Barbarian.
BEN WATERWORTH: No point of water, though, Jarrod. Controversial. What are the judges thinking?
JARROD LOOBEEK: Very controversial. I'm not sure about this tactic from the Italian of just retreating into the stripy section of the mat. Surely that's minus two points.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, it should be. Oh, but he gets the point.
COLIN HILDING: Oh, the helmet's come off. He means business now.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, Andre is just showing his face to his wife there to remind her what he looks like so that...
COLIN HILDING: This is a man with hair.
BEN WATERWORTH: He's a very hairy man. Oh, they're both claiming the point here. Alessio removes it and says, No, I'm bald. Remember that. I don't have a nice head of hair. Mrs. Santini. Sanita. Whatever her name is, it doesn't matter, but they're both celebrating. That's the main thing.
COLIN HILDING: They're just both happy to be there.
BEN WATERWORTH: Now, there's a...
COLIN HILDING: And all the judges. There's a discrepancy here. The judges are looking.
BEN WATERWORTH: Of course, the esteemed judge, Mr. John.
COLIN HILDING: I'm not entirely sure that that hair is legal right now. You may have to shave it before the end of the match. We need this to be an even contest.
JARROD LOOBEEK: Yeah, having a bold judge is a bit concerning. There may be a little bit of favoritism towards the Italian going into this.
BEN WATERWORTH: Look at the crowd behind the judges there. Aren't they loving fencing? Traditional fencing crowd here in Tokyo, which is a good thing to see. Colin, have you ever seen a crowd this big before at fencing?
COLIN HILDING: You know, this is about three or four people more than the largest crowd I've ever seen at fencing, which is zero.
BEN WATERWORTH: Now, the judge's decision here looks like he is saying, yes, Andre, you need to get a bit of haircut. Sorry, I misread that. But Andre's got the point.
COLIN HILDING: Oh, look at this. He's going for the stabby stab again, parried with a pokey poke.
BEN WATERWORTH: Oh, and that was a great pokey poke there for Andre, pumps the fist. And he still doesn't get a point though. The pokey poke, not the favourite one of the judges there. This is controversial. And they both claim it then. Was that a pokey poke, Jarrod? How do you see it?
JARROD LOOBEEK: I think a pokey poke parried by a stabby stab, so it really just depends what the judges prefer in terms of moves there.
BEN WATERWORTH: Let's take a look at this, because Alessio's got the point, but the... oh, that's a bad fall. Oh, they're going back to the judges. Mr. John, he's saying, hang on a minute, let's get the wife in. What does the wife think? And oh, Andre's gone. That's my wife. Yeah, my wife, see, she's up there. What are you doing? Like, she's got nothing to do with this. She's the reward. Alessio is hitting the game, though, here, Jarrod, from Alessio. He's keeping focused, thumbs up, saying, yep, she's a good route, so let's get on with the bout.
JARROD LOOBEEK: Yeah, he's done well to bribe the judges here, making sure a fellow goalie on the judging panel is never a bad idea in the fencing.
BEN WATERWORTH: Oh, look at the evasion skills there from Andre.
COLIN HILDING: I think he may have just pulled his pinky there. It is not looking good for Andre's pinky right now.
BEN WATERWORTH: And we know that coming into this bout, Jarrod, of course, Andre's pinky was a talking point of Germany, wasn't it?
JARROD LOOBEEK: It's true. It was very touch and go whether he'd be competing or not without coming in with that pre-existing injury.
BEN WATERWORTH: I love the way Alessio's holding that sword up, kind of taunting him, going, yes, this is what was in your wife last night. Bring it at me. Oh, they go in with a stabby stab together. Oh, and Andre's not happy. Look at my hair. It's beautiful. I deserve the point. And Alessio kind of does the duck waving in the background, and looks up at the wife and says, Yeah, you're coming home to me. Oh, and they're back to Mr. John Collum. What's happening here?
COLIN HILDING: The judges are now admiring the wife. They say, No, I'm taking her home. No, no, no, I'm taking her home. We may have a fencing match breaking up between the two judges here. This has got to be one woman.
BEN WATERWORTH: I think they're on her OnlyFans page there pointing out which videos they're going to pay for and extras to scrims. Look, he's saying that one there's pretty hot. And then the other judge is going, No, that one's more my favourite. Jarrod, I mean, how do you choose an OnlyFans video as a judge to try and salvage a point here for either Andre or Alessio?
JARROD LOOBEEK: Oh, look, well, they can't decide. They might have to throw to the crowd here. The crowd of three people may have to make the deciding choice.
BEN WATERWORTH: Oh, and he's waving the arms in a slight fashion. He's saying, No, No, OnlyFans is going to be after the bout and Alessio gets the point. So that's a fair standard fencing rule there, isn't it?
COLIN HILDING: But they are offering snacks and drinks for the viewing party later. So a little bit of concession there.
BEN WATERWORTH: Alessio comes in the front foot. Andre's getting a little bit dancy there. He's pulling the Michael Jackson. Getting a bit front footy there. He's going to the chase. Oh, and nothing there. No light up.
COLIN HILDING: Jackson versus Timberlake there on the mat. Whoa.
BEN WATERWORTH: Can't help this feeling. And at the end of the day, it's can't help this feeling gets at the point there for Alessio. No, he doesn't. Still 6-2.
COLIN HILDING: Wow.
BEN WATERWORTH: Oh, hang on. They're back at it again. And oh, the hair comes out again. And he's putting his hand up going, okay, fair enough. My head just didn't quite stand the test of time. And Alessio keeps the helmet on. He knows that Andre's wife knows what he looks like without that. And he's got a beautiful bald head, which, Jarrod, in fencing, how much does the bald head help?
JARROD LOOBEEK: Well, as a bald judge, like I've said, it helps a lot. But I think the mask has stayed on. Do we know if this is still Alessio?
BEN WATERWORTH: That's a very good point. It could be Sydney 2000 gold medallist Miranda Frost.
COLIN HILDING: They have a double in the wings there.
BEN WATERWORTH: Oh, and just playing with his sword a little bit there, just getting himself ready for the wife later on there, Alessio.
COLIN HILDING: Now, who can explain the significance of the blinking light up helmets? Does this help when you have zero visibility from behind these things?
BEN WATERWORTH: Look, I think it's more of a... I think to get the kids into fencing, Colin. Obviously, we know that skateboarding and surfing is really getting the kids involved here at these Olympic Games. And aren't we just completely enthralled by those sports? But I think by using light ups, using a bit of technology here that we're seeing, it gets the kids involved in a rave. So I believe a lot of kids around the world, particularly in Germany and Italy, they're actually listening to EDM while they're watching this. And a bit of Daft Punk, because it's a bit of Daft Punk, of course, with the helmets.
COLIN HILDING: The Tron Legacy connection right there. We're going to see light cycles coming in in 2028.
JARROD LOOBEEK: And don't forget, it's almost like a laser tag helmet, so the crowd can shoot in and get their favourite athletes multiple points.
BEN WATERWORTH: And anything to get the kids involved, I say.
COLIN HILDING: He's tallying off the head now. It's getting a little bit slick. That's why the helmet's coming off now. It can't stay on with all the moisture on the scalp.
BEN WATERWORTH: Now, how do you see the first half of this? 9-2 is a score here. Alessio looking like he's going to be getting a bit luckier tonight with that sword. Jarrod, standard bout between these two. I mean, how are you feeling if you're the wife right now?
JARROD LOOBEEK: Oh, it's very one-sided at this point. She's got to be anticipating another night with Alessio.
BEN WATERWORTH: Colin, you see anything differently here? I mean, we're just watching Andre have a skull of the old Michael's Magic Juice, and the coach here yelling at him.
COLIN HILDING: He's opened up a good old can of slam just to replenish his electrolytes, get ready for a nice night out. But you know what? At this point, the wife is the real winner because, wow, these are two real men right here.
BEN WATERWORTH: I want to say the German coach is not a real man. That was one crap hairstyle. So clearly, Andre...
COLIN HILDING: Now, who's in the background there? Was that Max? Where's Max? This is a Waldo thing here. Let's find him.
BEN WATERWORTH: Max is around. Max is somewhere. We're sad that we're not watching Max, but we're going to get second... Not half, I should say. Second period, just like hockey. And first to 15 wins, of course, as... Didn't Alessio just do the stabby-stab there? Classic Alessio move. He comes in now. He's ironing him off. He's fencing. He's fencing. Andre's fencing a little bit harder. Oh, he's being pushed back into the stripy stripes. This is dangerous now for Andre, not the stripy stripes. He hates the stripy stripes.
COLIN HILDING: Oh, he's into the whitey whites.
BEN WATERWORTH: Not the time to protest. Not the time to protest. I respect Andre's stance there. Black lives do matter, but not in the middle of a fencing match. All lives matter at any point in these games. You want to win. He's gotten a point back now. It's 11-3. This is a bit of a blowout, Jarrod.
JARROD LOOBEEK: It is. And taking him in protest? Or was that a proposal that we just saw?
BEN WATERWORTH: Maybe he wants his wife back, and he's trying to use some sneaky, sneaky methods. I don't know. It is just a bit of sport, remember, Jarrod, so I'm not quite sure how that plays out.
COLIN HILDING: This isn't even Andre's real discipline. I mean, this match is so much of a grudge that he moved up from picket to chain link just to be able to compete tonight against Alessio.
BEN WATERWORTH: Check out this move here from Alessio. You talk about the stabby stab and the pokey poke. This is the pokey stabby stab. I mean, that is just a classic Italian fencing move, and he moves up 12-3 now. Nearly a double-digit lead. Oh, and a nice little move there from Andre, but he's not happy. Alessio's rubbing the sword, and neither scores there. He's just checking to make sure that the handle is in place.
COLIN HILDING: Yep, but it is a handle. That is still there.
BEN WATERWORTH: We get very close here, of course. Oh, and into the point. Oh, and Alessio shakes the fist in anger. He wants to use a force against himself. Check this one out here. Andre, boom, and Alessio.
COLIN HILDING: He finds Andre's lack of faith disturbing.
BEN WATERWORTH: Oh, but there's the lack of faith return. Alessio gets it back, and he's two away from the round of 16.
COLIN HILDING: Right now, what we're hearing behind that helmet is, it's all your fault. You turned her against me.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yes, we're seeing a lot of this during these Olympics, of course. Alessio just really starting to push him back into the stripey stripes, but Andre says, haha, you fell for it. You fell for my fake out, and it's a good stripey stripe fake out, Jarrod, which is another traditional fencing move.
JARROD LOOBEEK: Yeah, that's exactly where you want to get him in the stripe zone, and then duck, weave, bob and stab.
BEN WATERWORTH: Colin, do you see Andre coming back?
COLIN HILDING: At this point, I think it is a lost cause. I mean, his best bet is just to rip off the mask of his opponent and stab him straight in the eye, which may happen. I have seen it once in fencing before. It did end unpleasantly.
BEN WATERWORTH: I'm just looking up to the rafters here, and Andre's wife is starting to get a bit panicked. I do believe that she doesn't like Alessio's sword. She actually prefers her husband's sword, but it looks like she's going to be living with another man's sword for a while. At that point there, Alessio didn't quite get awarded. I was about to say that brings him match point. He's going to fence hard and all into the shoulder almost there.
COLIN HILDING: Oh, look at this. Almost off the mat, Alessio is losing his footing. This may be turning around. We're at 13 to 6 now.
BEN WATERWORTH: Alessio is pointing up at the rafters going, come on, Mrs. Sunita, bring my sword to your face. It's coming home. Alessio comes in now. He just loves holding his sword up there, whereas Andre's a little bit more flexible. He's a bit more dancing. The Michael Jackson into the striper's tribe. Oh, danger here now for him. Is this going to be a fake out? It's going to be a fake out? No, he's going to push him away with his wrist. He's going to push him back into the middle zone. This is good for Andre. He really likes it. Oh, and into the body he goes. Andre with another point back, back to within six now. Jarrod, it's getting interesting. And look at him just there, holding up, saying, this is how big I am, but my wife still likes it.
JARROD LOOBEEK: Yeah, Andre getting excited at this point that they come back maybe on.
BEN WATERWORTH: Oh, the helmet's off here. Now, Alessio just wants to remind everyone that he's bald. He's just going to showcase it to the crowd. It's almost like the Milan Fashion Walk. Oh, no, he's going to the, he's getting the towel. And another knee here by Andre. He really loves protesting, doesn't he? And this, of course, this official is Jenny. Jenny, of course, he's from New Plains as well, Jarrod. I believe you know Jenny quite well.
JARROD LOOBEEK: Yeah, Jenny is the classic fencing official. And then we have Bob there, who's brought out the special spray for the Achilles again. Remembering last time this occurred, Andre did score the next point. So I think he knows he's within striking distance now of that lead, and he's going to guarantee the next point with that special spray.
COLIN HILDING: Now also, Jenny and Bob will have a follow-up fencing match to determine who gets to take home the loser of this. As we know, the wife takes the winner, but the loser will still be up for grabs because, hey, sexy is sexy. You know, you cannot deny even the loser in this match is a winner.
BEN WATERWORTH: Now, let's hear you just taunting Andre again. I believe he's simply saying, yes, your wife was that good, and she will continue to be. Andre, I like the ignoring tactics here, though. He's not taking any of this crap. He just taps him on the thing and goes, yeah, we'll see who the real man is. We'll see. 13-7 now. Can Andre come back into it? As Jarrod mentioned, the magic spray helped him last time. He's on a two-point run. He comes in now, put his sword down. Oh, he gets a bit aggressive there. He finishes really hard. He slaps him down. Oh, he's not happy with that. Oh, Alessio gets the match point.
COLIN HILDING: The most animated slaps is Jonathan LaPaglia and Melissa George. Wow.
BEN WATERWORTH: Tell you what. Seven match points now here for Alessio. He just needs to slap him once into the stripey stripe, and he pushes there, but Andre says, no, no, let's go again. On guard is the call. Alessio, oh, a bit of a head shot there from Andre. Now, is that double points, Jarrod, for a head shot? No. Yeah, it would be.
JARROD LOOBEEK: It really looked like he made that. They might need to check the batteries in his helmet.
BEN WATERWORTH: Oh, and Andre got the point there, just snuck in before it lit up.
COLIN HILDING: Oh, that was a full right hook. The swords are about to be dropped here.
BEN WATERWORTH: Andre knows he's a point away from losing his wife. What can he do here? Oh, there it is. No, hang on. Alessio is saying no.
COLIN HILDING: Wait a second, people. Wait a second. I need to get my composure here.
BEN WATERWORTH: I think he's saying he's a premature wife-inator. And oh, he's saying no. Hang on. No, I want to drag this out more. I want to keep the tension flowing. Off The Podium are commentating on it. We don't want this to end quickly. Judge John agrees. He said yes, Off The Podium is a good podcast.
COLIN HILDING: And there's one rogue photographer in the background, the only one allowed there.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which I like to see. Too many photos are taken in fencing. Just keep it natural. We don't need photos to remember it. We remember it in our heads. Oh, and there's that wind. I think that's over.
COLIN HILDING: And isn't he happy?
BEN WATERWORTH: That is what I call an Italian celebration. You see the wedding ring there on Andre's finger, which he will have to remove. Now, let's take a look at that. Oh, absolutely. Into the body. The soft spot right there. And Andre is saying, no, no, I will not give up my wife. But we're going to see here. They will have to sign and make this official. Yep, Jim's saying, yep, wife over. That's it. Good sportsmanship from Andre to say, well, well done. You get my wife. And what a win there. Alessio Ficini. Jarrod, typical match there by Alessio. I mean, let's be honest, never in doubt. He wanted the wife more.
JARROD LOOBEEK: Yeah, just completely clasped there. Pulled a lot more of the stabby stab. Whereas Andre was going for the pokey poke. And as we know in Rock, Paper, Scissors, stabby stab always beats pokey poke.
BEN WATERWORTH: Of course, he'll move now on to the round of 16. Colin, what do you think his chances are? As we're seeing a great slow motion replay here of Andre drinking water.
COLIN HILDING: Well, he's going to have to set his sights on a whole bunch of other wives because there are many more rounds to go. By the end of this, he may actually go home with about four or five different women. And good on you for that. I mean, if this is what it takes to win, that type of motivation, then you are the champion to me.
BEN WATERWORTH: Now, I thoroughly enjoyed this. I would say if I was to change anything there by Andre, is maybe use a helmet where you can actually see out of it. It might have helped him slightly. The German flag, probably the wrong choice there. And probably a bit overuse of the magic spray as we just saw there Bob do that. But what an event. Fencing, kids are getting into this all across the globe. And there's a reason for it. The result again, 15 to 8, Alessio Faccini defeating Andre Sunita. And now, not only through to the round of 16, but has a round of women to enjoy tonight. Thank you for joining us here from the Fence-atorium. We'll speak to you next time. Wow, what excitement and drama there, Jarrod. I never knew that fencing was that personal when it came to just playing for women. I feel that should be illegal in 2021.
JARROD LOOBEEK: You would think so with the whole dual flag bearers, but here we are.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, indeed. Anyway, just some couple of late results filtering through while we record. I mentioned, obviously, the taekwondo and the table tennis were still happening. I can give you the results for those. For the taekwondo, the men's 80 kilos, gold has gone to rock! Rock a rockin it through here, everyone. Lay in the smackdown. Welcome back, Colin. You came back for the rock gold.
COLIN HILDING: I just want to say, I'm on vacation, and I have taken two phone calls in this episode about work.
BEN WATERWORTH: And let me guess, you get paid $40? Maxim Kramtkov defeated Jordan Salih Elsharabati for that bout. And in the women's 67 kilos, it was gold to Matija Djelic from Croatia, who beat a Brit! Yes, in your face, Britain! Lauren Williams got the silver in there. Bronze went to Egypt in the men's. Saif Assa beat the great esteemed nation of Norway in Taekwondo. You could have had a golden bronze today, Norway. What are you doing? If this was the Winter Olympics, you would have done it. And also, is this similar to judo, where all of a sudden there's multiple bronze medallists? Apparently there is! Ivory Coast got a bronze. So did Croatia again. Two Croatian medals today. Good for them. And Egypt, I went over that. Two Egypt bronze. Wow, Egypt are doing everything today. Good on you, Egypt! Pyramids are pyramids! Finally happening there. And the table tennis, the mixed doubles gold went to Japan. Wow! That's a boil over beat China. Have China ever lost in table tennis before? I believe this could be a huge result here.
JARROD LOOBEEK: Sweeping the diving is gone. The sweeping the table tennis is gone.
COLIN HILDING: Next scene of communism collapses.
BEN WATERWORTH: Geez, Chinese Taipei took the bronze. They beat France as they should. So, wow, I'm shocked at that. That's massive. So, the medal tally. Get on board Team Japan, everyone. The hosts are shitting it in. Eight gold, two silver, three bronze. America have definitely caught up after their terrible day one. Seven gold, three silver, four bronze for 14. China, national inquiry right now. Six gold, five silver, seven bronze only in third. ROK are doing the thing that they needed to do. Four gold, five silver, three bronze in fourth. And Britain, fifth place, three gold, three silver, one bronze. Australia, currently in seventh with two gold, one silver, three bronze. Canada, you're nearly in the top ten. One gold, two silver, one bronze, four. Just a note here, looking down the bottom. Oh, New Zealand, dead last in one bronze in equal 46th place. And how are our Dutch friends going? The great nation that's expected to sweep all before them. Oh, they've only won three silver. Currently being beaten by Uzbekistan, Hong Kong, Slovenia, and Kosovo. And don't forget Tunisia.
COLIN HILDING: Tunisia.
BEN WATERWORTH: So come on, Dutch, pick it up. Jesus, Max Verstappen's winning the Formula One. You should be winning the Olympics here as well. What did we watch today, boys? Colin, what did you see outside of what you've already mentioned?
COLIN HILDING: Well, I mentioned the triathlon and the swimming. Beach volleyball. I actually watched the women's beach volleyball last night and currently watching the men's beach volleyball right now. Norway or Norway, as I like to call them, against Spain. And unfortunately, I didn't have as much time as I would have liked to catch up on a lot of events, but the 3X3 basketball, I'm still trying to watch every single match that's actually put out there. And the judo also, I tuned in. I still have yet to watch the gold and silver. Ben did spoil it, but my memory is not too good, and I couldn't really understand his pronunciation of the name, so this is a potential for me to be surprised.
BEN WATERWORTH: Colin, Slovetsia one.
COLIN HILDING: Well, thanks for spoiling it again. You're welcome.
BEN WATERWORTH: I'm sure that Boris Chivchenko will be very thrilled for that. Download our beautician and the beast coverage, available on all of our other podcasts. Jarrod, what did you watch? You must have been up early if you caught the triathlon.
JARROD LOOBEEK: Yeah, triathlon, a little bit of archery, some tennis, some hockey, some handball. It was a busy day. I saw lots of Australians choke today, but we saw some... It was just like the middle part of the day that was bad for Australia. The morning and the night were great, just that kind of middle section. But disregarding that, yeah, just catching little glimpses of lots of sports today, which was good.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, I had a bit of a busy day too. Caught some surfing, I caught the skateboarding, archery, rugby, swimming, the fencing, of course. I didn't catch any of the handball today, a bit disappointed. I need to always watch that. I saw some of the water polo, a bit of the hockey, the gymnastics I'm watching right now, the canoeing, the slalom as well. So yeah, it was a bit of a mixed day when it came to the viewing, which is great. I always like to... Maybe one day we'll just be like, fuck it, today we're just watching sailing, all day. And I will say I saw some sailing today. They showed some sailing. So, whew, wasn't that going off. Goodness, are we commentating the sailing at once during these Olympics? Please tell me where we are.
COLIN HILDING: Do a four-hour episode on it?
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, why not? We seem to get longer and longer every single day with that. Now, CBC and Channel 7. I've got a few things I want to add to the Channel 7. It's kind of a sidebar which can kind of cover both. But Colin, do we have any standouts from the Canadian coverage today?
COLIN HILDING: No, it was a pretty solid day for Canadian commentary. Really the only slip up came the overnight anchor was recapping an event. I don't even know what the event was. And at one point, they're still showing preliminary stuff, and she's going over, this happened, and this happened, and the results, and suddenly realises that her teleprompter is probably a good five or ten seconds ahead of what the video is showing. And she goes, I should probably wait around until everybody can watch this along with me. My apologies, everybody. And that was it. That was the only slip up the whole day.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, good on you, Canada, for having a good day in the pool and on the judo mat and in the commentary booth. That's what we like to hear. Jarrod, did you have any of anything of note today?
JARROD LOOBEEK: Not too much outside the usual. We did have Joanna Griggs before they crossed the archery say that Australia won their first ever medal in archery in Rio. Can they do it again today? Fact check that given our steamed history in the sport of archery.
BEN WATERWORTH: You know, come on. One of the best medals of Sydney, actually. And we won a bronze also in Athens, too. Maybe she meant OK, I will stand up for Joe. Maybe she meant our first team, because that was our first team medal in Rio.
JARROD LOOBEEK: She could have meant it, but she should have worded it that way.
BEN WATERWORTH: Come on, Jarrod. We know Edwina and my little feud back in Pyeongchang. You know, like they make mistakes. But yeah, anything else of note tonight?
JARROD LOOBEEK: No, nothing really apart from that.
BEN WATERWORTH: I got a few, and then a talking point for you guys today. Our skateboarders this morning, our commentators. Again, I don't care for their names. One of the skateboarders landed and did well. So the commentator said, she's so happy. I'm so into that. It's good. I think that was it. That's all I've written there. Now, lethal Jones said, and I don't know how to take this. Emma McKeon has such a strong back end. I mean, I guess what she was trying to go for the leg. Colin's raising the eyebrows.
COLIN HILDING: Well, it's true, but I shouldn't say it.
BEN WATERWORTH: When it came to the archery, we didn't have our Kiwi friend. We had snooty British guy who really hated Australia. He was so negative against us.
COLIN HILDING: Wait, hold on. They're negative against us. They're so negative towards Australians. Bunch of jerks.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, well, no wonder we hate those bastards. Talking up one of the Chinese Taipei archers, to which he said, oh, he's so happy to be in Japan. He loves Japanese comics and anime. I'm sure he'll be stacking up on them before he goes home. Cool. Done his research, I guess.
COLIN HILDING: Are they discounted there? Like, is that the motivation?
BEN WATERWORTH: Maybe. I will say we got a positive comment by Liesl Jones about Canada, Colin. You'll like this one. I think this is talking about Maggie, who broke the Oceania record. I don't know if we mentioned that, but Liesl Jones mentioned, if we want anyone to break an Australian Oceanic record, we want it to be a Canadian. How is it an Oceanic record, though, if it's a Canadian? They're not in Oceania. Like, that makes no sense. So, anyway, I did like it when they cut to the pods at one point, and Dawn Fraser was loving it. She was on a phone. Like, she got the family all, yeah, yeah, Dawn Fraser literally sitting there on a phone, like, checking a TikTok or something like that. I have no idea. The other line that I like from Basil, we've gone over, is, coronation celebration to become a legend, be the legend, from Tasmania to Queensland to the Olympic final. Sure. The one thing I wanted to point out to the family is I think it was our friend Edwina was talking about Paddy Mills, and one of Paddy Mills' parents apparently uttered the line, if he can carry the flag, he can carry the bins out. So I think Paddy Mills is going back home to take the bins out back home in Australia. And yeah, actually I wanted to comment quickly, Bill Woods. I grew up loving Bill Woods as a Channel 10 personality. He used to anchor the Formula One coverage, and really smart motor sport guy, like really knows his stuff. He used to do a lot of the V8s, and I didn't realise he'd switch to Channel 7. Not only has he switched to Channel 7, Jarrod, he's a switcheroo man. He was commentating the tennis, and then he went from commentating the tennis to the softball. Bill Woods can do it all.
JARROD LOOBEEK: Wow, that's some diversity to move across those sports.
BEN WATERWORTH: And the thing is though, it's not just like they've gotten when they used to get Tom Williams in the canoeing. I remember when Tom Williams would commentate canoeing, because of course, why not? And the fact that you've got, you know, esteemed Olympian Luke Darcy anchoring things. But like, Bill Woods came in that knowingly stuff. He was dropping quotes and everything about tennis and softball. Like, let's be honest, we didn't lose to Mexico, we lost to America B. Because essentially, Bill Woods was saying that all of them play in America and all failed to make the American team, so they went down and represented Mexico. So, you know, that's an excuse. But yeah, good on you, Bill Woods. I appreciate your knowledge. The one I want to talk about, because this kind of leads into some of the things that were happening. When Mr Watkins was out there doing well on the canoeing, apparently the talking point turned into the fact that people seemed to like the way he looked, because apparently the talk of the Aussie media was that he was a bit of a Brad Pitt cross with Chris Hemsworth. What's his name? Dan Watkins. So, look him up. You're into this now. Oh, this guy sounds sexy.
COLIN HILDING: We're going to have to get Jamie watching this guy.
BEN WATERWORTH: He's a good looking rooster, let's be honest. He's got the biceps, like, you know, this is a guy that I'm sure when he comes back down to the Huon Valley, he's going to be getting a lot of people picking apples with him. But I have to say, whoever this guy was doing the interviews at the finish line, you know, pulls him aside. Dan, like, you know, good job. Yep, yeah, how you feeling? Oh, a bit disappointed, got a bit stuck, but I made an Olympic final. Oh, yeah, all your family back in Tassie will be watching. Yeah, hi mum, hi dad, you know, looking forward to getting back to Hobart. Great. The follow up. Yeah, so the tongues are wagging back home. You might be the newest eligible bachelor back there. What are you thinking about that? Twitch is a bit chuffed. Oh, yeah, I hope so. I hope so. Now, I just wanted to point this out because, OK, he's sexy, he's hot, great, fantastic, good for him. Now, our Norwegian triathlete, the other bit that made the news was that he was wearing a bit of a tight fitting outfit that was a bit revealing, and you could basically see his, you know, slong as he cross-lined. Dong, thank you. I forgot our word. So, and all these headlines were like, oh, you could see his dong. Oh, it was revealing. Oh, isn't he quite a talented man? This is coming on the same day where one of the biggest news stories at the Olympics are the fact that the German gymnastics team decided to wear bodysuits to desexualise gymnasts at the Olympics. Now, I'd like to say the words double standards, and I'm going to. Why are we celebrating the fact that, yeah, women, you know, stop Ben Perving on the gymnasts. And yet at the same time, we're going, oh, check out the Norwegian triathletes dick. And oh, isn't he sexy? He's going to get a lot of tail when he comes back to Tasmania. I mean, I know it's 2021, and we, you know, whatever, but like, come on, Colin, you're the man for equality on this show. This isn't fair.
COLIN HILDING: Look, we've heard Jamie's interest in the Olympics comes down to only following people on Instagram once she appreciates them. And every once in a while, the crotch bulges of the diving, which also get her attention. So this is not a male-female thing. This is just this is humans. And everybody is sexualized. It's the Olympics. I mean, we're talking about the fittest, most attractive people in the world. They're there to admire.
BEN WATERWORTH: And on that note, everyone should watch the Swedish handball team. Just saying. Jarrod, what do you think about this? As a Tasmanian, I feel often sexualized for my penis.
COLIN HILDING: Jamie just gave a comment on that. Sorry, Jarrod, to interrupt you.
BEN WATERWORTH: On the Swedish handball team or my penis?
COLIN HILDING: Yeah, she's just talking about Jay Leverlin being really hot. She's like, that's right, Jay Leverlin really hot.
BEN WATERWORTH: Perv, if I say that about anyone, I get shot down.
COLIN HILDING: Jarrod, sorry.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yes, your viewpoint on this.
JARROD LOOBEEK: Yeah, it's an interesting one. It is definitely a bit of double standards going on. And the Olympics have put in so many measures with their anti-sex beds and all the work that they've put in just to be downtrodden by a see-through triathlete's uniform.
COLIN HILDING: Yeah.
BEN WATERWORTH: I mean, so what, people? Like, he's got a penis. He's a man. So, you know, I'm not saying you don't have to be a man to have a penis. It's 2021. I don't know. But, like, good on him for showing it. It was decent for a Norwegian, so good for him.
COLIN HILDING: For a Norwegian.
BEN WATERWORTH: We know Norwegians have little penises, so I mean, you know, come on. That's why they're all Winter Olympians. They shrink. Come on. Hello to all our Norwegians listening today. I think that's our, hang on a minute, our 43rd country we've offended since we began in 111 episodes. We're doing well. Nearly got offensive bingo at number 50. Um, before we wrap up, a couple of other things I should mention, we talked about Max liking our tweet. Who liked our Instagram post last night, everyone? Colin?
COLIN HILDING: Penny!
BEN WATERWORTH: Penny!
COLIN HILDING: And the real Penny! The real Penny! In Rio, we got so excited that a Penny Alexiak liked our tweet until we did a little digging and realised it was obviously a fake Penny Alexiak. This was the real confirmed, check marked Penny Alexiak.
BEN WATERWORTH: The 100% legit, this is a cold, cold girl herself, Penny Alexiak, one medal away from being Canada's most decorated Summer Olympian ever, liked our Instagram post. We've made it, everyone! We've interviewed Tessa Virtue, we've interviewed Zali Stegel. Doesn't matter because Penny Alexiak liked our Instagram, which means she's not going to win any more medals moving forward. The curse isn't in the purse yet. It's still there. I should also mention, I'm so disappointed. I don't even read my own notes. Not only was it a great day for Tasmania at the Olympics, can I just say Tasmania today was ranked the number one economy in all of Australia. So in your face, rest of Australia, we've got gold medallists, and we've got the best economy, and we haven't had COVID in over a year. So everyone come to Tasmania. We've got apples and shit. Can I also mention the US, for the first time since 2004, lost a game of basketball. So, that's a bit of a upset.
COLIN HILDING: Well, we saw how it went for them in 2004 as well. Is this a prediction of things to come?
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, they lost to France. So, I mean, that's enough.
COLIN HILDING: Oh, French.
BEN WATERWORTH: Oh, you know what we haven't done? Athlete of the day. I'm forgetting.
COLIN HILDING: I've got a good one too.
BEN WATERWORTH: Colin's like looking at me with scowly eyes. Jarrod's there sitting there on his one for hours. God Ben, shut up, get to my favourite segment. Alright, Colin, Mr. I've got one ready to go. Give me a good one.
COLIN HILDING: Alright, I'm really hoping you guys can get on board with this because we have some big wins, obviously, some some medals, some gold medals, some silver, some bronzes all around for our home countries. But I'm going to put out there good old China's gold medallist Lee Fabian in the weightlifting, the 61 kilogram category. So not only did he win with his winning lift, but he did it on one leg. Now, he has said afterwards that this was just a spur of the moment thing where it was just a correction. It was an awkward, like, correction of, you know, the weight transfer, let me go up on one leg. But this has become such a big thing that he did it on one leg. When you look up this guy online, he won a gold medal in weightlifting standing on one leg. And it started as a mistake, but now he actually quoted as saying, I know that this move appeases the audience, but I don't suggest someone to learn or make the same move. To me, the record is not the Olympic record. It is my own record. I just want to break my own record. I want to make sure my body could be in good condition for the next competition in China. This guy is so conditioned that him being cautious of his body means I'm going to stand on one leg while lifting 172 kilograms in a clean jerk. This guy is my hero.
BEN WATERWORTH: Colin, I mean, it sounds like a great guy, but I got to say, I think by the fact that he won gold about two days ago, well, a day ago, kind of cancels the whole fact of athlete of the day. So I feel you're a day late.
COLIN HILDING: Oh, this only made the news here in Canada today.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, look, I want to be the technical guy on this podcast, but I feel like he gets disqualified for the fact that he won it. You should have won it yesterday.
COLIN HILDING: Well, it was yesterday somewhere. It was today somewhere else.
JARROD LOOBEEK: It's like sands through the hourglass.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, on that note, I'm going to change mine to Mark Spitz. Winning seven gold medals. That's no mean feat. Come on. Jarrod, is yours Ian Thorpe?
JARROD LOOBEEK: If only.
BEN WATERWORTH: Dore Fraser.
COLIN HILDING: I'm putting up Jesse Owens, then.
BEN WATERWORTH: Edwin Flack. No, sorry, Colin, doesn't count, but good try.
COLIN HILDING: Jarrod, can you really be behind on their coverage? This was like an overnight thing. And this just it.
BEN WATERWORTH: You really are. And this just in. Oh, Calgary have won the 1988 Olympics.
COLIN HILDING: I thought I had a winner here.
BEN WATERWORTH: Come on, Colin, get with it. Jarrod, who's your nominee?
JARROD LOOBEEK: I'm nominating. It's got to be the Norwegian triathlete, Blomfeldt, from the choice of the see-through uniform to vomiting on the finish line to vomiting again, five metres from the finish line to then being kind of like put into like a wheelchair and wheeled off to the marshaling area. I just think that's the way you want to finish a triathlon.
COLIN HILDING: Let's add the way he crosses the finish line where he's looking over his shoulder every three seconds, expecting that somebody's going to gain about 400 metres on him. He's like, are they here yet? No, no, no, no, not yet. And then as he crossed it, he's like, hey guys, I won it.
BEN WATERWORTH: No, look, I'm going to, I'll still put mine up, but I want us to go with Christian here because there's one thing I want to add about his win. My nominee was going to be Dan Watkins just because he's a sexy goddamn rooster who canoed his way into our hearts. And he's going to get laid when he gets back to Tasmania. So, actually, no, screw that. He's going to come back here and take away my chances on Tinder. No, come on. That's one more guy that's more attractive than a boo you, Daniel Watkins.
COLIN HILDING: You guys used to be in the same league, but now he's a league up.
BEN WATERWORTH: Now he's an Olympian. I'm screwed with that. No, I want to go with Christian, actually, because I think with Christian as well. Can we not undersell the fact that he is from frickin Norway? Like, I mean, this is, again, a winter nation. This is triathlon. Like, do they even have beaches in Norway? Like, I'm looking at his stats here. He's obviously won a fair bit in the World Cup. So it's not like this is an unexpected win, but this is their first ever medal in triathlon. But, I mean, I don't really rank Norwegians as good triathletes. I'm sure that's how Norwegians go, oh, Sven, do you see Australia won a medal in skiing? Ha ha ha ha. Now we're like, ah, g'day mate, like Norway won a bloody golden triathlon. Yeah, right?
COLIN HILDING: So next, Tunisia.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I mean, for the achievements, he's got a nice dick. He vomits. He's from Norway, so I mean, it ticked all my boxes. I wouldn't want him to be on my Tinder.
COLIN HILDING: Until he can complete a triathlon on one leg, I don't think he's better than Lee Fabian.
BEN WATERWORTH: Colin, get it on the right day, and you would have won that one. I'm sorry, like you were on the ball. That was a clear winner. But, you know, like, no.
COLIN HILDING: Well, let's revise yesterday. Goodbye, Ahmed.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, I'm nominating Chloe Esposito every single day. Like, she gets my vote every single day. It's that simple, you know. Dale Begg-Smith every day. In Beijing next year, Dale Begg-Smith will get it one day. Maybe he'll show up. I mean, he does often show up five minutes before the Olympics. Hey, guys, I want to represent Australia again. I'd love so much. Please, Dale, please do it. I don't have any seven or CBC tweets. I didn't go into that. Couldn't be bothered. But fan things, we've all recorded one. Do we really want to hear another one? Nah, we've done it today. We've got nothing to do with it.
COLIN HILDING: We're enough.
BEN WATERWORTH: Penny Alexiak's a fan of us now. We don't need to care about that. Tomorrow, there are 22 medals being decided. 22 medal events, I should say. That would make about 66 medals being decided. Ben, tomorrow, if you want to be technical. Those include another big day for us on Off The Podium, because we've got two chances to break the curse, the curse in the purse. Obviously, Kylie, but Katharine Pendrell in the mountain bike. Colin, is she a chance?
COLIN HILDING: Um, I don't want to say this. I think her best days are behind her. This is probably her last Olympics. I mean, we might see an upset, but I think she scraped by last time. I just want to say how impressive she's there. She had a baby only a few months ago, and this is mountain biking. I mean, that's not an easy thing to do. A lot of these sports, yeah, you can have a baby and you can come back, but this is a very intense sport. So good for you, Catherine Pendrell. I mean, one of the two Canadian mommies that are representing this time.
BEN WATERWORTH: 40 years old, good on her. Go you good thing. So yeah, I mean, clearly she's been on the show, so she's not gonna do well.
COLIN HILDING: But you know what would be great is if after the curse goes for this long, but one time where we're like, nah, she's not gonna break the curse. If she's the one who does it, wow.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, she would have until you said that, Colin. Learn, learn, Colin, learn. But yeah, we'll be keeping an eye on the 100 back. I believe that is the one that we might bring you commentary of tomorrow. The Women's Triathlon is tomorrow as well. The Women's Artistic Team all around, and the gymnastics is happening. We've got our first taste of team fencing tomorrow. And Jarrod, how have I missed this? Are you counting down the minutes until team dressage tomorrow?
JARROD LOOBEEK: I am counting down the seconds.
BEN WATERWORTH: Oh, aren't we all? But for an Australian's perspective.
COLIN HILDING: That girl horse, Robin horse.
BEN WATERWORTH: I mean, Emma McEwan, I keep going to say McKean. Kayleigh McEwan, Ben, get your swimmers right. Jesus Christ, you're the expert on this show apparently. Obviously, we're keeping an eye on her, but is the Kathy Freeman of the Olympics just tomorrow, Jarrod? I believe she might have a bronze and a silver. I haven't seen them advertise that in Channel 7 before. Can she complete the set, Jarrod?
JARROD LOOBEEK: You know what? I've got a really bad feeling about it. Me too. But not so much that she doesn't medal, but bronze is just in my mind.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, I just like, I really am feeling bad about tomorrow. But the thing I'll say is that even if she doesn't make the final, because they're doing the similar thing with the men, they'll do a semi, but Jess is just happy. I love Jess for the fact that even when she won the bronze in Rio and everyone was like, oh, disappointing. She was thrilled. She was so happy. Like she just, she's always smiling. She's so happy. So yeah, I'm not feeling it. I just, I just, I feel weird about tomorrow. And I don't like saying that. Come on, Jess.
JARROD LOOBEEK: She's got like another event though. I feel like that's a good thing.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah.
JARROD LOOBEEK: And I just hope that she doesn't qualify as the fastest for the final, because I don't want to have to sit and wait for everybody else for her just to be at the end. Like, please just like scrape into the final. Like, honestly, qualify 10th, and then be the first person to like go through the run. The one thing that I want to sit through with that anticipation.
BEN WATERWORTH: I do, I really like, because one thing I love about, or many things I love about the Winter Olympics, is I love the events where you kind of had the gold, silver and bronze medallists waiting for the next person to come down. And this is one of those events, one of the rare ones at the Summer Olympics you've got. So I love the fact that you have the three. And they're like, you know, they're secretly cheering for everyone to fuck up. And basically they go, oh, look at them go. So, yeah, but outside of that, I would say that we have a softball medal to play for, but no, we don't. I believe we incorrectly, oh, sorry, I'll rephrase that. I incorrectly said that the material that's played today, they play tomorrow against USA. So we'll see how we go there. And plenty of other exciting things happening tomorrow on day four. Wow, look at us go. We're plowing, plowing through. As I think I started yesterday, Jarrod, is there anything particular outside of the, don't answer the dressage. We know that's your answer, but I mean, what are you looking forward to tomorrow?
JARROD LOOBEEK: I mean, it's got to be that canoeing because it is just such a potential medal event. But then also the soccer, because it is kind of a make or break game. It'd be nice to win and not have to sit and wait for other results to see if we can qualify to the knockouts as the top two third ranked teams in the pool. Like it just would be nice to get the winner against the US and just know that we're through the knockout rounds rather than sitting and hoping for other countries to fail.
BEN WATERWORTH: And look, I'm going to say this, because I think we were such a lock for the bronze medal game in the softball, but clearly how did we go? I feel that even if we lose one goal, we're good, because obviously we've had that, but we'll see how we go with that. But I've got this weird feeling that we're going to make it through the quarters and we're probably going to fucking play Canada in the quarterfinals. So, and we, yeah, anyway. Colin, what are you looking? Canada, what are you looking forward to tomorrow?
COLIN HILDING: Well, obviously the 100 metre backstroke would be the big one. And let's add the woman's triathlon, so we can hopefully finally get the desexualization of that sport when we have equal opportunity vomiting from the winner.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, so should. I definitely am there. I think I'm just, I'm chomping at the bit, champing at the bit, whatever you want to say for the 100-metre. I think, yeah, we should be talking this up more. The race that stops a nation tomorrow. Two nations. Two nations, three nations.
COLIN HILDING: Three, let's add America. Suck it, America. Suck it, America.
BEN WATERWORTH: If you haven't listened to our great commentary yesterday, it's brilliant. We are so good commentators. We should be doing this more. So after the fencing today, why wouldn't I say that? Everyone is listening. Thank you for tuning in. Remember to like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, subscribe on Instagram and all those other channels as well. Well, hashtag OTP, get involved on there. We are the Instagram account that Penny Alex yet liked. So therefore that makes us special. Very, very special. It's been a golden day for Tasmania. What a day, Jarrod. Thank you for joining us. It's a pleasure to always have you on the show.
JARROD LOOBEEK: Thank you.
BEN WATERWORTH: And Colin, yeah, you're alright.
COLIN HILDING: Well, I'm golden too. Just so you know.
JARROD LOOBEEK: No.
BEN WATERWORTH: We'll speak to you tomorrow on. Off the Podium. Thanks for listening and good night.
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