January 17, 2018 • 41 mins
Who's the Michael Phelps of the early winter games? Why did the 1924 British curling team just get their gold medals? And what are the greatest sports we wish were still in the Olympics (a round of Korfball, anyone?) Will and Mango dive into Olympic history and investigate how one little rule-change affected how future sports were played. Featuring American ski-archer Dave Bergart.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Guess what will what's that mango? So you know what
my favorite part of the Winter Olympics is, all right,
I think I want to guess on this one. I'm
gonna guess um the bob sled. I mean, that's super fun.
But my favorite armchair sport at the Olympics is trying
to spot the carpet baggers. The carpet baggers. Yeah, I mean,
you know, you see it in the Olympics, but especially
(00:20):
in the Winter Olympics, Like at Sochi, there was this
couple from Long Island in their late forties who thought
would be fun to compete in the Olympics for Dominica,
which is this tiny island nation the Caribbean. And you'd
obviously have to be super fit to be in your
late forties and make the US ski team, but in
Dominica you kind of just have to have a pair
of skis and a passport. So, I mean, how prevalent
(00:41):
is this carpet bagger and how do they get away
with this? I mean it is discouraged, but sometimes it's
like elite athletes who couldn't make cut in their country
where they live, but then you know they want to
compete for their country of origin, and sometimes it's athletic mercenaries,
like Bahrain is notorious for buying Kenyans to long distance
for their nation. And then there are these wealthy crazies
(01:03):
who could just buy their way in, like Germany has
this prince named Hubertus who was born in Mexico but
has competed for Mexico and uh Slalom six times. I
believe at Sochi he was fifty five years old. When
you're doing this, Yeah, and you might remember him from
wearing this outrageous spandex Mariachi out I'm gonna look him up.
(01:23):
I don't remember this, he said. If he wasn't gonna win,
at least he could aim for best dressed. Getting excited
to spot these Olympic outcasts made me wonder about all
the other things that the Winter Olympics, like when did
the Winter Olympics start? And why does Norway dominate the games?
And why does curling get to be a sport. So
let's stay again Aither podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius.
(02:06):
I'm Will Pearson and it's always I'm joined by my
good friend man guest Ticketer and on the other side
of the soundproof glass, showing off his brand new Winter
Olympics stuffed animal pal. I don't know how I got
ahold of that. That's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil.
Look over there, mano at Sue Harang, you know, the
white tiger mascot for the upcoming Games. Yeah, I'd recognize
them anywhere. So I love that the Winter Olympics get
(02:28):
their own mascots. It's actually one of my favorite things
about the Olympics. Well, you know, the Winner Games might
play second fiddle in terms of scale and viewership, but
I feel like the mascots, those things can go toe
to toe with their summer cousins. In fact, one thing
I learned while preparing for today's show is that we
actually have the Winner Games to thank for this whole
idea of these Olympic mascots. You know, they didn't start
(02:50):
out as this cute and cuddly animal like Sue Harang
might be. Just look at it over there in Tristan's lap.
But the very first one was this creepy caricature of
this arm less skier I don't know why, with his
manic red face. His name was shuss after after the
term for the straight downhill ski run and then he
popped up as this unofficial mascot of the nineteen Winner
(03:14):
Games that were in France, and even though his simple,
big headed design led to most fans calling him the
skiing sperm, was a big hit with attendees, and so
he kind of paved the way for the first official
mascot four years later, and that was that multicolored dotsu
named Waldy who appeared at the Summer Olympics in Munich.
So she is great, but if we're talking unnerving mascots,
(03:37):
I'm gonna go with Schneman. Shush, and Schneeman. Sniman was
the first official mascot of the Winter Games, and this
was back in ninety six, and he was basically just
a snowman head on tiny legs wearing this big, floppy
red hat. It's almost like a kid started building Schneman
and then gave up after realizing there was an atarian
(03:57):
side where it was warmer. I'm done with view Schneman. Well,
obviously today's show is all about the Winter Olympics and
we're getting pretty excited around here for next month's Games
and Pyeong Cheng, so we wanted to take the opportunity
to dig into some of that weird history and the
surprising controversies that surround these lesser known Olympics. So, Mega,
where do you feel like we should start? Well, you know,
(04:19):
I always like starting at the beginning, which actually wasn't
that long ago for the Winter Olympics. So the first
official Winter Games were held in France back which was
only twenty eight years after the first modern Summer Olympics
in Athens. But the Winter Olympics were known by a
different name originally. So the first event was actually called
Winter Sports Week, and it was this twelve day program
(04:41):
consisting of six sports and sixteen events. Such a weird name,
like it sounds like something you'd participated in college or something,
So why did they call it this? Was it like
a test run for the winter version of the Olympics
or what? Yeah, exactly right. So, figure skating and ice
hockey were actually part of the Summer Games already at
that point, and the idea of getting cold weather sports
their own showcase was first floated by the IOC. So,
(05:04):
I mean it seems like the interest was there, So
why did this first event get such a like a
watered down name? Well, I mean some Scandinavian countries balked
at the idea of a separate event because they already
took part in their own competition called the Nordic Games,
and they didn't want an official Winner Olympics to steal
their thunder. So, you know, the committee made this Winter
Sports Week. But the games were this huge success. There
(05:26):
were ten thousand paying attendees who turned up to watch
sixteen countries compete in sports like speed skating and Bob's
lead and curling, and the events were such a smash
hit that just one year later, the IOC retroactively declared
it the first Olympic Winner Games. All right, so who
were like, you know, like the Michael Phelps of the
first Winter Olympics. Were there any standouts or the athletes
(05:47):
still trying to kind of figure out what they were
doing in the competition. Yeah, So, you know, the skin
and even countries like I mentioned, had this leg up
because they've been holding their own competitions for over twenty
years at this point. So Norway in particular has always
dominated the Winner Games, and the first one was no exception.
They had this incredible athlete, Thor leaf Haw, which is
about as Nordic a name as you can have. And
(06:10):
he was this legendary skier who won three gold medals
in three different events that year, and he also took
home a bronze medal for the ski jump competition. But
this is super weird. Fifty years later, it was discovered
that a scoring mistake had actually happened and the medal
actually belonged to this US athlete named Andrews Hogen. Wow,
fifty years later, I mean, I guess better late than never,
(06:30):
but still that is a long time. So were there
any other US victories that year? Yeah? Actually, the very
first gold medal awarded went to this American speed skater
named Charles Jutra, and he was this underdog, but in
the end he beat out all twenty six other skaters
by completing the five event in just forty four seconds.
And my favorite underdog, though, is is this Norwegian ice
(06:52):
skater who's named Sonja Henny. And not only was she
only one of eleven female athletes competing that year, she
was also only eleven years old. Eleven years old? Wow?
So did she win? No? She came in dead last,
but games were actually just the start of her career.
She won a gold medal at each of the next
three Winter Olympics, and she grew up to be this
(07:13):
Norwegian movie star. I mean, Norwegan just really do kind
of own the Winter Games, don't they. I was reading
that Norway has actually won more gold medals in the
competition than any other country after soci their record stands.
I think it's a hundred and eighteen gold medals and
and something like three hundred and twenty nine total. Yeah,
and they're actually one of only three countries the other
(07:34):
two being Austrian Lichtenstein, that have actually won more medals
in the Winter Olympics than in the Summer Ones. I mean,
it makes a lot of sense given their geography and
the climate. But you know, that cold weather advantage is
actually kind of at the root of one of the
Winter Olympics biggest controversies. You know, put things in perspective.
There are ninety countries that are set to compete in
pyong Chang this year, which is a far cry from
(07:54):
the more than two hundred countries that participated in the
two thousand sixteen Games that were in Rio. You know,
the reason for that disparity isn't so much a lack
of interest as it is a lack of resources, you know,
being able to compete in events like losing and figure
skating and Bob's letting. I mean, all of that requires
this practice in these very expensive facilities. And his Olympic
(08:15):
historian David Wallechinsky puts it, if you want to run
a hundred meters or even a marathon, you can just
step outside your door and go do it. If you
want to play soccer, you can do that anywhere. But
if you want to compete in the loge, I don't
think so. So obviously, you know, something like the alpine
skiing is it's an expensive hobby and if you're trying
to compete, just think about all the equipment and training
(08:35):
and also just the regular access to these facilities that
you need to have. Yeah, so, I I know in
tennis they say if you don't play for two days,
you lose some of your muscle memory and you're basically
relearning your strokes, which is crazy, right, But if you
think about something like that for skiing, I mean, the
climate dependent nature of the events definitely hurts your chances
if you're from a tropical place, and the Winter Olympics
(08:56):
have also developed this. You know, elitist stigma because the
cold of countries also tend to be richer and wider,
which is probably one of the reasons that they still
aren't as popular as the summer counterparts. Which isn't to
say that more temperate or even downright tropical countries don't
get a chance to shine. I mean, everyone remembers cool runnings,
right and the Jamaican Bob's led team from the Calgary Games,
(09:18):
but this is still a long way ago. If the
winner Olympics want to be an event that's truly representative
of international athletes, yeah, you know. And since we're talking
about controversies and you mentioned the ad eight Olympics, I
just have to take a second to talk about Eddie
the Eagle. So I'm not sure I know that mascot.
I know it sounds very cuddly, but Eddie the Eagle
is actually one of the nicknames for Michael Edwards. And
(09:38):
he was this British plaster who always dreamed of competing
as a downhill skier in the Olympics, and after determining
that ski jumping would be cheaper and less competitive, in
order to be able to prepare, Michael became the first
in British history to participate in the event. Now, there
was only one little problem, and that was the fact
that he was terrible at ski jumping. In fact, he
crashed at the World Championship up six, kind of became
(10:01):
the laughing stock of the press and not so lovingly
referred to him as Mr Magoo. But you know, Edwards
was undeterred and he managed to fulfill his dream by
competing at the Calgary Olympics just two years later. Although
he successfully landed his jobby, he didn't score even like
half the total points as any of the other competitors.
But nonetheless Eddie the Eagle, as he was called by
(10:22):
the president of the IOC, became this national star and
you know, an unexpected point of pride for England. So
I'm guessing where the story is going, right, It's just
like that little Norwegian girl who rallied and came back
to clean house at the next Olympics. Uh definitely not.
Edwards competed for a spot I think in the next
three Winner Games, but the Olympic community had raised the
(10:43):
qualifying standards at that point and that was really to
box him out. And you know, still he claims about
seventy percent of his income now comes from speaking engagement,
so it wasn't a total loss for the guy. Yeah,
and as far as controversy's going, that one's pretty innocent.
Like most Olympics scandals are a little more tingshch same definitely.
And so I was reading about Orton Enderland. She was
(11:04):
this East German luge champion who wound up forfeiting her
gold from the sixty eight Games when it was discovered
that she and her teammates had actually heated the rails
that are sled just prior to the race. I mean
I didn't realize the physics of this, but the extra
warmth had reduced the sleds friction with the ice, which
gave them a much faster run time. And so the
three women were disqualified, but the East German Olympic Committee
(11:24):
never took responsibility. Instead, they blamed it all on a
capitalist revenge plot. Yeah, that must have been a capitalist
revenge plot. You know. It's funny because I know about
like corking your bad or deflating a football, but honestly
have no idea how to cheat and winter store me either.
I mean, it wouldn't even occur to me to heat
the metal under your luge. That's also a sentence I
(11:45):
never thought I would say. But all right, well, speaking
of East Germany, there's one interesting thing I came across,
and that was that West and East Germany actually reached
across the Iron Curtain and they decided to compete together
as this unified team of Germany. This happened in three Olympics.
It was in fifty six and sixty and sixty four.
But that's when the truce came to an end because
this alternate for an East German team, I think on
(12:08):
the toboggan team. They used the games as a way
to make a break for freedom. And so her name
was Uta Galler and apparently she fled for West Germany
while her teammates were celebrating during a reception one night.
That's crazy. Did she make it? She actually did, And
you know, she actually wasn't even the only one. According
to the Associated Press, there were thirteen fans from Eastern
European communist countries that also escaped under the cover of
(12:30):
the Olympics. That's amazing and you kind of have to
admire people who saw an opportunity and seized it. So
one of my favorite Olympic controversies centers on this guy
named Stephen Bradbury, who depressed dub the accidental gold medalist.
He was on the Australian speed skating team that won
the country its first medal at the Winter Olympics back
but his most triumphant moment came at the two thousand
(12:52):
two Games in Salt Lake City, and by that point
Bradbury had suffered a number of debilitating injuries and was
no longer at the top of his game. In fact,
he only made it through the quarterfinals that year because
another athlete was disqualified, and he made it through the
semis because a number of his competitors fell down on
the track, and that fall actually gave him this great
idea for what would turn out to be a winning
(13:13):
strategy when it came time for the big race. Bradbury
figured his best shot was just to hang back, you know,
on the off chance that another fall might clear the
field for him. And amazingly, the plan worked like in spades.
As he was racing, there was this disastrous wall that
caused all four of his competitors to collapse in him.
He yeah, it was just before the finish line, and
(13:34):
Bradbury kind of just skated slowly around them, claiming his
cold medal. You know, the craziest part was like the
crowd was booing and jeering. I mean, I kind of
love that story. It might not be like a glorious win,
but a win is a win exactly. And Bradbury's sort
of admitted that he won by sheer luck, and he
used to sort of be upset about it and conflicted
(13:55):
about it, but now he kind of considers his reward
for you know, this entire career hard work. I mean,
you know, like we were saying earlier, the Winter Olympics
don't always favor these warmer weather countries, and Australia certainly
being one of those, so you have to take what
you can get. I think there's actually one other long
running controversy I do want to mention, But before we
get to that, let's take a quick break. You're listening
(14:28):
to Part Time Genius and we're talking about the little
known origins and shocking scandals of the Winter Olympics. All right, magus,
So the last controversy I wanted to mention is just
how long it took for a British curling team to
receive its gold medals and why is that. Well, Great
Britain won the curling competition way back in the inaugural
Winter Games of nineteen twenty four, but the winner actually
(14:49):
didn't get their gold until a whopping eighty two years later.
So what was the hold of Well, the delay stem
from some confusion over weather curling had been an official
event at the first Games, or whether it was what
they called a demonstration sport. You know, these are the
events that are mostly there for promotional purposes and kind
of build interest in these niche sports. Yeah. So, my
(15:10):
friend Dave was a ski archer, and he was like
tenth in the world and number one in the U
S when we were in college. It's not a big
sport here, but it is in Europe. And I was
always hoping they'd make ski archery is sport just so
I could watch him in the Olympics. But it never happened.
You know, I've met Dave before and he never bragged
about this. I feel like I would start every conversation
with I was number one in the world at the
(15:30):
ski archery thing. But you know, it's weird to think
about things that have been these demonstrations sports, like, you know,
everything from pigeon racing and ballooning, to even volleyball and tennis,
but at some point those were outsider sports. And also
there was a sport called I think courfball. I don't
know what that is, but I am a big fan
just because of the name. Anyway, some of the demonstration
(15:53):
sports wind up becoming official events, but until they do,
they actually don't give the winners of these the proper
Olympic medals. So even though curling was played at the
first Winter Olympics, it didn't reappear in the Games until
nine and its first appearance became excepted, as you know,
just being a demonstration event. So what changed over the
course of those eighties some years. Well, for some reason,
(16:14):
the IOC did this deep dive into its records and
they ruled that curling had actually been intended as part
of the official program back in nine four. So even
though the original team members were long gone by this point,
they were given the long overdue honor of being upgraded
to these full Olympic gold medals. Well, I'm glad you
brought up demo sports because I actually spent some time
(16:35):
looking at old Winter Olympics and have you ever heard
of skee during no is that like cor fall. It's
exactly like cor falled skis. So this comes from the Games,
but basically competitors on skis were pulled over jumps and
other obstacles by riderless horses. It was this one off
event that never returned to the Olympics, but it actually
(16:56):
still has a following and there's a World skee during
Championship that's how in Whitefish, Montana every single year. I mean,
I have to admit that sounds like a sport that
happened by accident where somebody like fell off a horse
and was still attached to it. But I've never heard
of that. I mean, I did know that dogs made
an appearance. I think it was in the nineteen thirty
two Winter Olympics that were like Placid, but this was
(17:16):
just part of a demonstration for this sled dog racing,
and so the sport re emerged at the fifty two
Games in Oslo, but you surprisingly it never quite made
it to official event status. Yeah, it's kind of crazy
because sled dog racing seems like a natural fit. Yeah,
I mean, I guess they always have the I did
a odd but sadly for like a lot of other
sports that they don't have like their own championships. So
(17:37):
so there's one called ski ballet or a cross ski
and it was pretty much what the name suggests. So
competitors take to a smooth slope and they performed these
highly choreographed ski maneuvers. It's all set to music, which
sounds awesome, right. It cropped off at two Winter Olympics.
It was shown in Calgary and eight eight, and then
again in France and ninety two, but it never really
(17:59):
found an audience, and in fact, the International Ski Federation
for some reason stopped holding formal competition for the sport
in two thousand and that's kind of when the dream
of ski bellet died. I mean, it's kind of weird,
but I'd probably watch it. In fact, I think i'd
be really good at it. All right. Well, one of
the weirdest official sports of the Winner Games was called
the Winter pent Tathlon. So in addition to cross country
(18:20):
skiing and shooting, the event also featured get this, skiing,
horseback riding, and of course fencing. How did this not
catch on? Skis, horses, guns, swords, something for everyone? You're
not kidding. I mean, I feel like everybody can find
something awesome in this. But I suppose it was deemed
a little too complicated for the Olympics. But it actually
(18:41):
is still held every year as part of the Military
World Games. So here's an event that, despite fan outcry,
was also deemed too complicated for the Winter Olympics. Chicken
sled racing. All right, that can't be a real thing,
No way, I know it's it's only sort of a thing.
So a few years ago, KFC and this ad agency
hired two members of the Team USA bobsled team to
(19:03):
help promote their new chicken strips, and the brakeman for
the team is this guy. Jim Carriell was filmed eating
chicken from the KFC Go Cup while racing down the
track at seventy miles per hour with a fourth of
five geese. So apparbably this is some sort of feat.
According to carry All, no other bobsled team out there
is pulling five g's while eating chicken, and more casual
(19:24):
fans of chicken sled racing may not know the physical
demands five geese puts on an athlete. Do you know
how much an extra crispy strip weighs at five g's?
It's almost a half pound. Seriously, don't try this at home.
I serious, he is with that. That's pretty great. Yeah,
I am guessing the sport never made it to the
demo phase though. Yeah, so, I mean, the company started
(19:45):
this social media campaign that include this petition to make
it an official event at the two eighteen Games, but
as far as I know, it won't be debuting there.
That's probably for the best. But all right, well, speaking
of Bob's ledding, did you ever hear off of the
sport got its start? So there's actually kind of a
three for here because there were two other winter sports
that involved the icy track. You've got the luge the skeleton,
(20:07):
and those can also be traced back to the same source. So,
I mean, I know what loses. It's when there's like
a single person on a sled face up and feet first.
But remind me what skeleton again, it's pretty much the reverse,
like you sled face down and face first, which is
just terrifying. It just made me like nervous thinking about it.
(20:27):
I know me too, But the story is pretty strange
as well. So apparently lose skeleton and Bob's letting all oh,
this huge debt to a Swiss hotel owner. His name
was Casper Badred and in the eighteen sixties Casper hit
upon the idea of a winter resort and this was
kind of a way to fill empty rooms during the
freezing winter months in St. Maren's. So he convinced English
(20:47):
tourists that there was plenty of fun to be had
by speeding through the town streets on kind of a
modified sled that that happened to be popular at the
time among local delivery boys. There was only one problem
to this, and that's an mature sletters were routinely smacking
into unsuspecting pedestrians. They were just trying to walk down
the street, and I guess in some ways that wasn't
(21:08):
great for business. So Casper came up with a solution,
and that was to construct this icy half pipe and
so people could, you know, no longer have to reak
havoc in the streets. And they started experimenting with new configurations.
They might, you know, strap two sleds together to make
somewhat of a bob sled, and within a decade this
recreational sledding had morphed into a few distinct competitive sports,
(21:29):
and by the time the Winter Olympics rolled around in
nineteen four bob sled or bob slay as they used
to call it. It was kind of a natural inclusion
on the program. That's kind of funny because it's actually
a similar thing that happened with the snowboard. So the
basic idea of snowboards first cropped up in the eighteen hundreds,
but they didn't become a commercial product. And I didn't
realize this but until the nineteen sixties. And that's when
(21:52):
a Michigan man named Sherman Poppins strapped two skis together
to make a new kind of ride for his daughter,
and you love this. He dubbed the invention the snurfer snurfer,
and he's sold over a million of them in the
next decade. And then athletes made their own adjustments and improvements,
just like what the bobs led, and then the sport
became a full blown craze in the eighties and nineties. Also,
(22:14):
I really do wish we could keep calling it snurfing. Man.
Let's try to bring that back if we can. But
it's wild to think about her recent a breakthrough something
as familiar as snowboarding really is, and what's weird. It's
kind of the same with figure skating too. I mean,
ice skating has been around for hundreds of years, but
you know, the expressive acrobatic version that we think of
with figure skaters, that didn't come around until the mid
(22:35):
nineteenth century. And believe it or not, it was an
American who actually popularized it. The guy's name was Jackson Haynes,
and he was looking for a way to combine his
ballet dance training with ice skating at a time when
most of the skaters were focusing on just doing these
complex patterns in the ice and so moving gracefully to
music and all the spinning and jumping. That was something
(22:55):
that no ice skater was doing at the time, and
it all seemed too theatrical, I guess for some people.
So this restrictor you frustrated Haynes, and so he left
for Europe and this international style, as they started to
describe it, it began to know thrill these audiences in
London and Paris and other places that they were taking it,
and so we cris crossed the European continent as this
(23:16):
skating celebrity for over a decade and so today people
remember him as the father of figure skating. I love
that anyway. I know there are plenty of other innovations
connected to the Winter Olympics like we should probably talk about,
but first let's take a little break. So Dave Burgart
(23:39):
is a dear friend of mine. This is how far
we go back. So I was on the studio abroad
trip to Tibet, and I knew no one on the program.
And as I was walking onto this bus as a
total dork. I mean, I think I had a sketch
pad in one hand and a ukulele and my other
and I had this like ridiculous little suitcase while everyone
had these awesome hiking backpacks. And I by Dave and
(24:01):
he was on this bus just playing with the Rubik's
cube and he was wearing a coffields T shirt which
was a little band from Delaware, and I thought, another
cool dork. I found my people. But then, uh later,
Dave was so humble about this, and I was shocked
to learn he was number one in the country and
ski archery and and the fact that it was a
real athlete just blew me away. But that's what I
(24:21):
wanted to talk about today. So Dave Berger, welcome to
the program. Thanks, we can we can debate real athlete
with ski archery. So I'm always interested in these like
fringe sports, and I'm so curious, like how did you
even learn about ski archery and how do you get
into it? Yeah, that's a good question. Um, So you know,
(24:43):
obviously I grew up as a competitive archer. I was
just like I think I was one of those kids.
I just went to summer camp and uh, you know
picked up archery and you know, just fell in love
with it. And it just happened like the camp counselor
like lived down the street for me and he shot
archery year round, and so he invited me to you know,
(25:04):
start shooting with him, and so like in I don't know,
elementary school, middle school, like I was kind of going
around the East Coast doing all these archery tournaments. And
then like I hit high school and like archery is fun. Um,
I learned a lot from it, but it was like
a little bit too mellow, and all my friends are
doing Nordic skiing and so I just picked it up
and then like learned about it and I'm like, wait,
(25:26):
I can combine these two things, and this really obscure
sport like that sounds awesome and the most amazing then
diagram of things I'd never put together totally. Um and
so yeah, and I just started racing in the the
archery archery Bathron and like I just was at the
(25:46):
right time, like it was starting to get bigger internationally
and had some opportunities to start traveling and racing, and
uh I did that from like to like two thousand
and seven ish or so, I raced all over Europe
in Russia, and uh yeah, it was it was a
good experience. That's amazing. So when you started, how many
people were you competing against in the US? Like pretty small?
(26:10):
I mean, you know, Nordic skiing is a pretty small niche.
And then like if you add like biathlon, which is
the sort of the cousin sport which just uses you know,
my full instead of a bow and arrow, um, that's
even smaller. And then if you like take it's like
even a smaller piece of that. And chess boxing, which
you know is that where they're like rounds of chess
(26:30):
and followed by boxing, Like it has to be an
okay chess player, but it helps to be a really
great boxer, like Mike Tryson would destroy Gary Kasparov. But
do you have to be a better skier or archer
and ski archery? Yeah, that's a good question. Um, I
would probably say skier. You have to be good at
both for sure. Um, but fast gears tended to do
(26:52):
better I think than just straight archers. Yeah. And and
so I I know when you traveled abroad to competitions,
families would put you up. Could you tell us about
your Russian host family and how they welcomed you and
you're computing there, man, Yeah, this crashed me up because
you know, there's this one race I did in like
a Siberian outpost and uh there's like no hotel. So yeah,
(27:15):
I was put up my host family, and uh, you know,
I was like in shape and like kind of living
a monk lifestyle, like eating pretty healthy, and they were
so tipled to have like an American in their house.
They wanted to give me like the best hospitality possible,
and they, like the night before the race, like insisted
that I just take like vodka shot after vodka shot,
(27:36):
and like then they're like heating up there like wood
fired sauna, and like you know, like wouldn't accept like
no for an answer. So I went out there and
like kind of craziness just ensued with like a local
policeman coming and all of a sudden that we were
firing his gun that like pepsi cans in the backyard. Uh,
I was not in tip top race shape the next day. Um,
(28:00):
but I didn't know if that was part of like
my competitor's plan or what. But uh, you know, years later,
like I don't think it mattered how it did in
the race. It was a pretty fun story and cool
cultural experience and uh yeah I felt really lucky. That's
pretty awesome. So, um, we want to put you to
a quiz because we always put our favorite guest to
a quick So this is called real discontinued Olympic event
(28:22):
or something we made up? I love it? Okay, So
so the first one is Tug of War? Is this
a real discontinued event or something we made up? Oh?
I am going to go real event. I bet. I
bet in the old like you know, early, I can
see this in early nineteen hundreds, I can see I
can see Tug of War. Yeah, absolutely right. They had
(28:45):
eight men team and England was particularly good at it,
and it was from all right, one for one solo
synchronized swimming. I'm gonna have to go made up. I
don't know if we so I thought it was it
was fake too, but it's a real event. This is
(29:07):
from and despite the name, apparently the synchronized is actually
with the music and not with other people. Oh that
is so good. Isn't that crazy? We missed our calling? Yeah,
tandem horse dancing. Oh god, I want to say false,
but after that last one threw me for a loop
(29:28):
tandem horse dancing, it's I have to say false. Yeah,
it's false, but I wanted to be a real event
for two men snow man construction. Uh two man, I'm
(29:52):
gonna go false. I hope this is false. Yeah, a
false and number five swimming obstacle. Course. Well, we've only
had one true one so far. I don't know if
that's too hm true. Yeah, that's right, so a corner guardian.
(30:13):
The discipline required swimmers to clamber over a poll hovering
just above the surface of the water, scramble over a
row of parked boats, and then swim under another row
of little ships. And apparently people who grew up in
Harbor's would tend to win this competition. That's amazing. Yeah,
so Dave when astounding four for five, which entitles him
(30:34):
to our top prize. A handwritten note to his wife
for boss singing his praises Dave Burgart, thanks for being
on Part Time Genius. That's awesome, Thanks so much. Welcome
(30:55):
back to Part Time Genius. So one thing I noticed
while prepping for this episode is just many breakthrough innovations
happened to coincide with the nineteen six winner Olympics, and
it's not an exaggeration to say that the games would
never be the same again after that year. It's a
big statement, all right. So what kind of stuff are
you thinking about? Well, for starters, nineteen sixty was the
year of the zamboni. The zambony, so like the thing
(31:17):
on the hockey rinks and stuff. Yeah, so Frank Zamboni
invented in nine and he used it at his family
owned rank, and then it started to catch on with
the public in the fifties, especially after Sonia Henny bought
one to take along on her travels. And you remember
Sonia Henny as the Norwegian young kid. I do remember her,
and it was his name, really, Frank Zamboni. That's awesome. Yeah,
(31:37):
it was. And when it came time for the nineteen
sixty Games, Zambonis were finally ready to make their Olympic debut,
so they used Frank's patented method. The machine actually shaves
the surface of the ice and then sweeps away the
shavings and then it washes the ice though it's nice
and slick for skaters, and all these years later, Zamboni's
are still the gold standard. Yeah, it's an interesting fact.
(31:57):
I'm still not a hundred percent convinced you didn't sneak that,
and just so you say, Zamboni. But anyway, what else
was big for the NT six Games? Well, Zamboni, Well,
the biggest game changer that year was that the Olympics
were televised for the first time. And it's kind of
hard to imagine today when you can watch round the
clock live coverage of every single event, But until the
(32:18):
nineteen sixties, or in the nineteen sixty Games in particular,
the only people who could watch the Olympics were those
who attended them. And that changed when CBS paid this tiny,
paltry some of fifty dollars for exclusive broadcasting. Yeah, I
mean it's so little money, right, but it totally paid
off for the network and they saw a record setting
ratings that year, but the athletes and organizers actually benefited
(32:40):
from it as well. So all right, so how's that well?
I mean, there was some confusion during the men's slow
and skiing event that year, and officials were unsure whether
one of the skiers had actually missed a gate during
his run. But thanks to this new deal with the
TV network, the officials actually had this chance to resolve
the matter, and they asked members of the CBS team
they could review the tape to confirm what had happened.
(33:02):
CBS obliged, and in doing so, they actually came up
with something that became indispensable in all sports, the instant replay.
So that all started from the Winter Olympics. That's pretty cool.
I guess you're accurate. So nineteen sixty was a pretty
big year for the Winter Games. But you know, actually
one of my favorite innovations didn't come along until almost
thirty years later. It was in the eighty eight Games
(33:24):
in Calgary, and that was the year when the National
Research Council of Canada devised a special all weather Olympic torch.
This was to be used in the traditional relay before
the games and Onlike previous torches, this one was designed
to be especially lightweight and it was powered by this
special fuel that allowed the flame to stay lit during
its eighty eight day, eleven thousand mile trip across the
(33:46):
Canadian tundra. That's amazing across the tundra, And actually it
reminds me of something I read about this year's Olympic
Torch relay, which is going on right now, but apparently
in December, there was one leg where the torch was
carried by the South Korean robot named Hubo. Wait is
that allowed? I think it all had to be people, No,
it can friendly And the best part was that Hubo
(34:06):
used a power drill to cut a hole in the
wall and then he passed the torch over to the
inventor who created him. That is a little bit ridiculous,
but I mean also a good reminder that the Olympics
can be, you know, pretty entertaining sometimes, especially when you
add robots to the mix, which is something South Korea
is going all in on this year. Yeah, you know,
I was reading about how their Ministry of Science is
working with these local companies and so they're rolling out
(34:28):
new technologies all through the games. Like apparently they've been
testing these multi lingual and autonomous robots at the airports
so they can guide visitors to correct gates or provide
information about flight times. And then when they aren't busy
with guests, they just roam around and clean things up.
That's awesome, and so the hope is that the bots
can be put to work in pyeong Chang as a
way to get visitors around this language barrier there. That's
(34:50):
pretty neat, and from everything I read, this year's games
are gonna be like this true Techi paradise. So aside
from the full on robots, Huntai has these self driving
buses that whisk visitors around the host city, and they've
got a fleet of aerial drones they'll be watching over
the proceedings. And that's not just to help broadcast events,
but also for security purposes and maybe also part of
(35:11):
the entertainment offerings. I don't know, we'll find out. But
the thing that will catch most nerds attention is that
the Winner Olympics will be the test site for the
new five G mobile network, and so most of us
won't be able to connect to this new platform until
but for those in attendance, the network will actually provide
data speeds up to a thousand times faster than the
current networks. I mean that's fast enough to download almost
(35:34):
a gig of data in a single second. That's pretty well.
All right. Well, we we've talked about some of these
very you know, tech heavy innovations that we should be seen,
but there are also some non tech based first that
we should look forward to as well. There was one
of I was reading about. You know, for example, Adam
Rippen will compete in figure skating as the first openly
gay mail athlete to represent the US and the Winter Olympics,
(35:55):
which is kind of hard to believe that it's not
until this year that that's happening. But you know, all
the next activity aimed at homosexual athletes during the two
thousand fourteen Games and so chi Adams performance and hopefully
will be an uplifting moment for many people at this
year's event. Yeah, and one of the first I'm most
looking forward to this year is Nigeria's debut at the
Winter Olympics. The African nation will become the latest warm
(36:17):
weather country to buck the cold climate trend. And that's
all thanks to its women's bobsled team. Oh wow, so
it's kind of like Cool Runnings all over again. Yeah, definitely.
And and just like with the famous Jamaican bobsled team,
Nigeria's team is a total labor of love. So they
actually crowdsourced the seventy dollars they needed on go fund
me for like sleds and equipment and fees. And according
(36:38):
to the sled driver, her name is um Sean Ottagon
and anyway, this is her quote. I was inspired to
start the Nigerian women's bobsled team in hopes of being
the first ever African representative men or women to qualify
for the Winter Olympic Games. And the sport of bob
sled mission accomplished on that one. That's pretty neat and
I can't wait to see how they do, you know,
(36:58):
this year more than others, I'm really looking forward to
the Games, and you know, things feel pretty divided these days,
so it does seem extra important to have this event
where people from all different regions and all different cultures
they can come together and kind of celebrate what humanity
is capable of and and to do so in this
friendly spirit of competition that the Olympics is really all
(37:19):
about I know, and in South Korea, you know that's yeah,
no kidding. But well, I know the opening ceremonies are
still a few weeks away, but what do you say
we kick things off early with the men's freestyle fact
off event? You know what, mega, I say, let the
games begin. H So did you know that only one
(37:42):
person has one gold at both the Winter and Summer
Olympics and that honor goes to American Eddie Egan. He
won the light heavyweight boxing event in the nineteen twenty Olympics,
and over a decade later, he was part of the
four man bob's led team that took gold at Lake Placid.
There are three other athletes that have won men alls
in winter and Summer, but again, it is the only
one to take gold at both. So I know, we
(38:05):
were just talking about the Jamaican bobsled team that got
so much attention for the Calgary Olympics and cool runnings,
and you know, the team was kind of a punchline
for a while, but they eventually won their fans over
because of their hard work and determination. But what I
didn't remember, and what most people probably don't remember, is
that the team still competes and they've actually gotten much better.
In fact, only six years after those games, the Jamaican
(38:28):
team actually beat both US teams in the event. Wow.
I didn't know that either, all right, So, which country
is most dominant in a single sport? I was looking
into this and you may remember that four years ago
and Sochy, the long track speed skaters from the Netherlands,
took home something like se of the medals in that sport.
I mean, just completely dominant. But the Atlantic was looking
(38:49):
back at medals over the past eleven Olympics and they
found that the most dominant country in a single sport
those would be Germany's losers, and they took home something
like thirty seven percent of medals over that period of time.
I should note this would include East and West Germany
as well as the unified Germany, so they did get
to have more competitors over that period of time. But
(39:09):
that's still pretty remarkable. Yeah, that's amazing. So the only
winter sport where an American athlete has never meddled is
the biathlon. Um, but you know, I have a feeling
that they're going to pull it off this year. But
I mean, the truth is I'm saying that, like I
know anyone who competes. I don't even know exactly who
does that, but I hope that we win one there.
So all right, Well, earlier we mentioned Norway being a
(39:31):
powerhouse in the Winter Olympics, and it's even more impressive
if you look at their performance per capita. But approximately
five million citizens, they're roughly the same size as my
home state of Alabama, and they've won approximately one Winter
Olympic medal for every seventeen thousand residents. Now that made
I don't know if that sounds like much or not,
but compare that to the U S where it's one
for every one point two million. So I like the fact,
(39:54):
but I can actually top it. And that's because everyone
forgets about Lichtenstein. I forgot about Lichtenstein. So they've won
a total of nine medals, all in alpine skiing, and
that's actually close to one for every people there. That
is pretty crazy that one out of every people that
live there has won a medal. That is, it's on
(40:16):
all the recruiting materials. Well, man, go, I have to
admit it. You you have won it. You win this
week's fact Off Trophy. Thank you so much. Well, thank
you guys for listening. That's it for today. If we
forgot any great facts about the Winter Olympics or just
the Olympics in general, we'd love to hear from you.
It's Part Time Genius at how stuff Works dot Com.
You can always call us on our seven fact hotline.
It is still seven mangoes. That's awesome one eight four
(40:40):
four pt Genius. You can also hit us up on
Facebook or Twitter. Thanks so much for listening, Thanks again
for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of How
(41:01):
Stuff Works and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people
who do the important things we couldn't even begin to understand.
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(41:22):
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like what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe. And if
you really really like what you've heard maybe you could
leave a good review for us. Did you forget you?
Jason who
Guess what will what's that mango? So you know what
my favorite part of the Winter Olympics is, all right,
I think I want to guess on this one. I'm
gonna guess um the bob sled. I mean, that's super fun.
But my favorite armchair sport at the Olympics is trying
to spot the carpet baggers. The carpet baggers. Yeah, I mean,
you know, you see it in the Olympics, but especially
(00:20):
in the Winter Olympics, Like at Sochi, there was this
couple from Long Island in their late forties who thought
would be fun to compete in the Olympics for Dominica,
which is this tiny island nation the Caribbean. And you'd
obviously have to be super fit to be in your
late forties and make the US ski team, but in
Dominica you kind of just have to have a pair
of skis and a passport. So, I mean, how prevalent
(00:41):
is this carpet bagger and how do they get away
with this? I mean it is discouraged, but sometimes it's
like elite athletes who couldn't make cut in their country
where they live, but then you know they want to
compete for their country of origin, and sometimes it's athletic mercenaries,
like Bahrain is notorious for buying Kenyans to long distance
for their nation. And then there are these wealthy crazies
(01:03):
who could just buy their way in, like Germany has
this prince named Hubertus who was born in Mexico but
has competed for Mexico and uh Slalom six times. I
believe at Sochi he was fifty five years old. When
you're doing this, Yeah, and you might remember him from
wearing this outrageous spandex Mariachi out I'm gonna look him up.
(01:23):
I don't remember this, he said. If he wasn't gonna win,
at least he could aim for best dressed. Getting excited
to spot these Olympic outcasts made me wonder about all
the other things that the Winter Olympics, like when did
the Winter Olympics start? And why does Norway dominate the games?
And why does curling get to be a sport. So
let's stay again Aither podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius.
(02:06):
I'm Will Pearson and it's always I'm joined by my
good friend man guest Ticketer and on the other side
of the soundproof glass, showing off his brand new Winter
Olympics stuffed animal pal. I don't know how I got
ahold of that. That's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil.
Look over there, mano at Sue Harang, you know, the
white tiger mascot for the upcoming Games. Yeah, I'd recognize
them anywhere. So I love that the Winter Olympics get
(02:28):
their own mascots. It's actually one of my favorite things
about the Olympics. Well, you know, the Winner Games might
play second fiddle in terms of scale and viewership, but
I feel like the mascots, those things can go toe
to toe with their summer cousins. In fact, one thing
I learned while preparing for today's show is that we
actually have the Winner Games to thank for this whole
idea of these Olympic mascots. You know, they didn't start
(02:50):
out as this cute and cuddly animal like Sue Harang
might be. Just look at it over there in Tristan's lap.
But the very first one was this creepy caricature of
this arm less skier I don't know why, with his
manic red face. His name was shuss after after the
term for the straight downhill ski run and then he
popped up as this unofficial mascot of the nineteen Winner
(03:14):
Games that were in France, and even though his simple,
big headed design led to most fans calling him the
skiing sperm, was a big hit with attendees, and so
he kind of paved the way for the first official
mascot four years later, and that was that multicolored dotsu
named Waldy who appeared at the Summer Olympics in Munich.
So she is great, but if we're talking unnerving mascots,
(03:37):
I'm gonna go with Schneman. Shush, and Schneeman. Sniman was
the first official mascot of the Winter Games, and this
was back in ninety six, and he was basically just
a snowman head on tiny legs wearing this big, floppy
red hat. It's almost like a kid started building Schneman
and then gave up after realizing there was an atarian
(03:57):
side where it was warmer. I'm done with view Schneman. Well,
obviously today's show is all about the Winter Olympics and
we're getting pretty excited around here for next month's Games
and Pyeong Cheng, so we wanted to take the opportunity
to dig into some of that weird history and the
surprising controversies that surround these lesser known Olympics. So, Mega,
where do you feel like we should start? Well, you know,
(04:19):
I always like starting at the beginning, which actually wasn't
that long ago for the Winter Olympics. So the first
official Winter Games were held in France back which was
only twenty eight years after the first modern Summer Olympics
in Athens. But the Winter Olympics were known by a
different name originally. So the first event was actually called
Winter Sports Week, and it was this twelve day program
(04:41):
consisting of six sports and sixteen events. Such a weird name,
like it sounds like something you'd participated in college or something,
So why did they call it this? Was it like
a test run for the winter version of the Olympics
or what? Yeah, exactly right. So, figure skating and ice
hockey were actually part of the Summer Games already at
that point, and the idea of getting cold weather sports
their own showcase was first floated by the IOC. So,
(05:04):
I mean it seems like the interest was there, So
why did this first event get such a like a
watered down name? Well, I mean some Scandinavian countries balked
at the idea of a separate event because they already
took part in their own competition called the Nordic Games,
and they didn't want an official Winner Olympics to steal
their thunder. So, you know, the committee made this Winter
Sports Week. But the games were this huge success. There
(05:26):
were ten thousand paying attendees who turned up to watch
sixteen countries compete in sports like speed skating and Bob's
lead and curling, and the events were such a smash
hit that just one year later, the IOC retroactively declared
it the first Olympic Winner Games. All right, so who
were like, you know, like the Michael Phelps of the
first Winter Olympics. Were there any standouts or the athletes
(05:47):
still trying to kind of figure out what they were
doing in the competition. Yeah, So, you know, the skin
and even countries like I mentioned, had this leg up
because they've been holding their own competitions for over twenty
years at this point. So Norway in particular has always
dominated the Winner Games, and the first one was no exception.
They had this incredible athlete, Thor leaf Haw, which is
about as Nordic a name as you can have. And
(06:10):
he was this legendary skier who won three gold medals
in three different events that year, and he also took
home a bronze medal for the ski jump competition. But
this is super weird. Fifty years later, it was discovered
that a scoring mistake had actually happened and the medal
actually belonged to this US athlete named Andrews Hogen. Wow,
fifty years later, I mean, I guess better late than never,
(06:30):
but still that is a long time. So were there
any other US victories that year? Yeah? Actually, the very
first gold medal awarded went to this American speed skater
named Charles Jutra, and he was this underdog, but in
the end he beat out all twenty six other skaters
by completing the five event in just forty four seconds.
And my favorite underdog, though, is is this Norwegian ice
(06:52):
skater who's named Sonja Henny. And not only was she
only one of eleven female athletes competing that year, she
was also only eleven years old. Eleven years old? Wow?
So did she win? No? She came in dead last,
but games were actually just the start of her career.
She won a gold medal at each of the next
three Winter Olympics, and she grew up to be this
(07:13):
Norwegian movie star. I mean, Norwegan just really do kind
of own the Winter Games, don't they. I was reading
that Norway has actually won more gold medals in the
competition than any other country after soci their record stands.
I think it's a hundred and eighteen gold medals and
and something like three hundred and twenty nine total. Yeah,
and they're actually one of only three countries the other
(07:34):
two being Austrian Lichtenstein, that have actually won more medals
in the Winter Olympics than in the Summer Ones. I mean,
it makes a lot of sense given their geography and
the climate. But you know, that cold weather advantage is
actually kind of at the root of one of the
Winter Olympics biggest controversies. You know, put things in perspective.
There are ninety countries that are set to compete in
pyong Chang this year, which is a far cry from
(07:54):
the more than two hundred countries that participated in the
two thousand sixteen Games that were in Rio. You know,
the reason for that disparity isn't so much a lack
of interest as it is a lack of resources, you know,
being able to compete in events like losing and figure
skating and Bob's letting. I mean, all of that requires
this practice in these very expensive facilities. And his Olympic
(08:15):
historian David Wallechinsky puts it, if you want to run
a hundred meters or even a marathon, you can just
step outside your door and go do it. If you
want to play soccer, you can do that anywhere. But
if you want to compete in the loge, I don't
think so. So obviously, you know, something like the alpine
skiing is it's an expensive hobby and if you're trying
to compete, just think about all the equipment and training
(08:35):
and also just the regular access to these facilities that
you need to have. Yeah, so, I I know in
tennis they say if you don't play for two days,
you lose some of your muscle memory and you're basically
relearning your strokes, which is crazy, right, But if you
think about something like that for skiing, I mean, the
climate dependent nature of the events definitely hurts your chances
if you're from a tropical place, and the Winter Olympics
(08:56):
have also developed this. You know, elitist stigma because the
cold of countries also tend to be richer and wider,
which is probably one of the reasons that they still
aren't as popular as the summer counterparts. Which isn't to
say that more temperate or even downright tropical countries don't
get a chance to shine. I mean, everyone remembers cool runnings,
right and the Jamaican Bob's led team from the Calgary Games,
(09:18):
but this is still a long way ago. If the
winner Olympics want to be an event that's truly representative
of international athletes, yeah, you know. And since we're talking
about controversies and you mentioned the ad eight Olympics, I
just have to take a second to talk about Eddie
the Eagle. So I'm not sure I know that mascot.
I know it sounds very cuddly, but Eddie the Eagle
is actually one of the nicknames for Michael Edwards. And
(09:38):
he was this British plaster who always dreamed of competing
as a downhill skier in the Olympics, and after determining
that ski jumping would be cheaper and less competitive, in
order to be able to prepare, Michael became the first
in British history to participate in the event. Now, there
was only one little problem, and that was the fact
that he was terrible at ski jumping. In fact, he
crashed at the World Championship up six, kind of became
(10:01):
the laughing stock of the press and not so lovingly
referred to him as Mr Magoo. But you know, Edwards
was undeterred and he managed to fulfill his dream by
competing at the Calgary Olympics just two years later. Although
he successfully landed his jobby, he didn't score even like
half the total points as any of the other competitors.
But nonetheless Eddie the Eagle, as he was called by
(10:22):
the president of the IOC, became this national star and
you know, an unexpected point of pride for England. So
I'm guessing where the story is going, right, It's just
like that little Norwegian girl who rallied and came back
to clean house at the next Olympics. Uh definitely not.
Edwards competed for a spot I think in the next
three Winner Games, but the Olympic community had raised the
(10:43):
qualifying standards at that point and that was really to
box him out. And you know, still he claims about
seventy percent of his income now comes from speaking engagement,
so it wasn't a total loss for the guy. Yeah,
and as far as controversy's going, that one's pretty innocent.
Like most Olympics scandals are a little more tingshch same definitely.
And so I was reading about Orton Enderland. She was
(11:04):
this East German luge champion who wound up forfeiting her
gold from the sixty eight Games when it was discovered
that she and her teammates had actually heated the rails
that are sled just prior to the race. I mean
I didn't realize the physics of this, but the extra
warmth had reduced the sleds friction with the ice, which
gave them a much faster run time. And so the
three women were disqualified, but the East German Olympic Committee
(11:24):
never took responsibility. Instead, they blamed it all on a
capitalist revenge plot. Yeah, that must have been a capitalist
revenge plot. You know. It's funny because I know about
like corking your bad or deflating a football, but honestly
have no idea how to cheat and winter store me either.
I mean, it wouldn't even occur to me to heat
the metal under your luge. That's also a sentence I
(11:45):
never thought I would say. But all right, well, speaking
of East Germany, there's one interesting thing I came across,
and that was that West and East Germany actually reached
across the Iron Curtain and they decided to compete together
as this unified team of Germany. This happened in three Olympics.
It was in fifty six and sixty and sixty four.
But that's when the truce came to an end because
this alternate for an East German team, I think on
(12:08):
the toboggan team. They used the games as a way
to make a break for freedom. And so her name
was Uta Galler and apparently she fled for West Germany
while her teammates were celebrating during a reception one night.
That's crazy. Did she make it? She actually did, And
you know, she actually wasn't even the only one. According
to the Associated Press, there were thirteen fans from Eastern
European communist countries that also escaped under the cover of
(12:30):
the Olympics. That's amazing and you kind of have to
admire people who saw an opportunity and seized it. So
one of my favorite Olympic controversies centers on this guy
named Stephen Bradbury, who depressed dub the accidental gold medalist.
He was on the Australian speed skating team that won
the country its first medal at the Winter Olympics back
but his most triumphant moment came at the two thousand
(12:52):
two Games in Salt Lake City, and by that point
Bradbury had suffered a number of debilitating injuries and was
no longer at the top of his game. In fact,
he only made it through the quarterfinals that year because
another athlete was disqualified, and he made it through the
semis because a number of his competitors fell down on
the track, and that fall actually gave him this great
idea for what would turn out to be a winning
(13:13):
strategy when it came time for the big race. Bradbury
figured his best shot was just to hang back, you know,
on the off chance that another fall might clear the
field for him. And amazingly, the plan worked like in spades.
As he was racing, there was this disastrous wall that
caused all four of his competitors to collapse in him.
He yeah, it was just before the finish line, and
(13:34):
Bradbury kind of just skated slowly around them, claiming his
cold medal. You know, the craziest part was like the
crowd was booing and jeering. I mean, I kind of
love that story. It might not be like a glorious win,
but a win is a win exactly. And Bradbury's sort
of admitted that he won by sheer luck, and he
used to sort of be upset about it and conflicted
(13:55):
about it, but now he kind of considers his reward
for you know, this entire career hard work. I mean,
you know, like we were saying earlier, the Winter Olympics
don't always favor these warmer weather countries, and Australia certainly
being one of those, so you have to take what
you can get. I think there's actually one other long
running controversy I do want to mention, But before we
get to that, let's take a quick break. You're listening
(14:28):
to Part Time Genius and we're talking about the little
known origins and shocking scandals of the Winter Olympics. All right, magus,
So the last controversy I wanted to mention is just
how long it took for a British curling team to
receive its gold medals and why is that. Well, Great
Britain won the curling competition way back in the inaugural
Winter Games of nineteen twenty four, but the winner actually
(14:49):
didn't get their gold until a whopping eighty two years later.
So what was the hold of Well, the delay stem
from some confusion over weather curling had been an official
event at the first Games, or whether it was what
they called a demonstration sport. You know, these are the
events that are mostly there for promotional purposes and kind
of build interest in these niche sports. Yeah. So, my
(15:10):
friend Dave was a ski archer, and he was like
tenth in the world and number one in the U
S when we were in college. It's not a big
sport here, but it is in Europe. And I was
always hoping they'd make ski archery is sport just so
I could watch him in the Olympics. But it never happened.
You know, I've met Dave before and he never bragged
about this. I feel like I would start every conversation
with I was number one in the world at the
(15:30):
ski archery thing. But you know, it's weird to think
about things that have been these demonstrations sports, like, you know,
everything from pigeon racing and ballooning, to even volleyball and tennis,
but at some point those were outsider sports. And also
there was a sport called I think courfball. I don't
know what that is, but I am a big fan
just because of the name. Anyway, some of the demonstration
(15:53):
sports wind up becoming official events, but until they do,
they actually don't give the winners of these the proper
Olympic medals. So even though curling was played at the
first Winter Olympics, it didn't reappear in the Games until
nine and its first appearance became excepted, as you know,
just being a demonstration event. So what changed over the
course of those eighties some years. Well, for some reason,
(16:14):
the IOC did this deep dive into its records and
they ruled that curling had actually been intended as part
of the official program back in nine four. So even
though the original team members were long gone by this point,
they were given the long overdue honor of being upgraded
to these full Olympic gold medals. Well, I'm glad you
brought up demo sports because I actually spent some time
(16:35):
looking at old Winter Olympics and have you ever heard
of skee during no is that like cor fall. It's
exactly like cor falled skis. So this comes from the Games,
but basically competitors on skis were pulled over jumps and
other obstacles by riderless horses. It was this one off
event that never returned to the Olympics, but it actually
(16:56):
still has a following and there's a World skee during
Championship that's how in Whitefish, Montana every single year. I mean,
I have to admit that sounds like a sport that
happened by accident where somebody like fell off a horse
and was still attached to it. But I've never heard
of that. I mean, I did know that dogs made
an appearance. I think it was in the nineteen thirty
two Winter Olympics that were like Placid, but this was
(17:16):
just part of a demonstration for this sled dog racing,
and so the sport re emerged at the fifty two
Games in Oslo, but you surprisingly it never quite made
it to official event status. Yeah, it's kind of crazy
because sled dog racing seems like a natural fit. Yeah,
I mean, I guess they always have the I did
a odd but sadly for like a lot of other
sports that they don't have like their own championships. So
(17:37):
so there's one called ski ballet or a cross ski
and it was pretty much what the name suggests. So
competitors take to a smooth slope and they performed these
highly choreographed ski maneuvers. It's all set to music, which
sounds awesome, right. It cropped off at two Winter Olympics.
It was shown in Calgary and eight eight, and then
again in France and ninety two, but it never really
(17:59):
found an audience, and in fact, the International Ski Federation
for some reason stopped holding formal competition for the sport
in two thousand and that's kind of when the dream
of ski bellet died. I mean, it's kind of weird,
but I'd probably watch it. In fact, I think i'd
be really good at it. All right. Well, one of
the weirdest official sports of the Winner Games was called
the Winter pent Tathlon. So in addition to cross country
(18:20):
skiing and shooting, the event also featured get this, skiing,
horseback riding, and of course fencing. How did this not
catch on? Skis, horses, guns, swords, something for everyone? You're
not kidding. I mean, I feel like everybody can find
something awesome in this. But I suppose it was deemed
a little too complicated for the Olympics. But it actually
(18:41):
is still held every year as part of the Military
World Games. So here's an event that, despite fan outcry,
was also deemed too complicated for the Winter Olympics. Chicken
sled racing. All right, that can't be a real thing,
No way, I know it's it's only sort of a thing.
So a few years ago, KFC and this ad agency
hired two members of the Team USA bobsled team to
(19:03):
help promote their new chicken strips, and the brakeman for
the team is this guy. Jim Carriell was filmed eating
chicken from the KFC Go Cup while racing down the
track at seventy miles per hour with a fourth of
five geese. So apparbably this is some sort of feat.
According to carry All, no other bobsled team out there
is pulling five g's while eating chicken, and more casual
(19:24):
fans of chicken sled racing may not know the physical
demands five geese puts on an athlete. Do you know
how much an extra crispy strip weighs at five g's?
It's almost a half pound. Seriously, don't try this at home.
I serious, he is with that. That's pretty great. Yeah,
I am guessing the sport never made it to the
demo phase though. Yeah, so, I mean, the company started
(19:45):
this social media campaign that include this petition to make
it an official event at the two eighteen Games, but
as far as I know, it won't be debuting there.
That's probably for the best. But all right, well, speaking
of Bob's ledding, did you ever hear off of the
sport got its start? So there's actually kind of a
three for here because there were two other winter sports
that involved the icy track. You've got the luge the skeleton,
(20:07):
and those can also be traced back to the same source. So,
I mean, I know what loses. It's when there's like
a single person on a sled face up and feet first.
But remind me what skeleton again, it's pretty much the reverse,
like you sled face down and face first, which is
just terrifying. It just made me like nervous thinking about it.
(20:27):
I know me too, But the story is pretty strange
as well. So apparently lose skeleton and Bob's letting all oh,
this huge debt to a Swiss hotel owner. His name
was Casper Badred and in the eighteen sixties Casper hit
upon the idea of a winter resort and this was
kind of a way to fill empty rooms during the
freezing winter months in St. Maren's. So he convinced English
(20:47):
tourists that there was plenty of fun to be had
by speeding through the town streets on kind of a
modified sled that that happened to be popular at the
time among local delivery boys. There was only one problem
to this, and that's an mature sletters were routinely smacking
into unsuspecting pedestrians. They were just trying to walk down
the street, and I guess in some ways that wasn't
(21:08):
great for business. So Casper came up with a solution,
and that was to construct this icy half pipe and
so people could, you know, no longer have to reak
havoc in the streets. And they started experimenting with new configurations.
They might, you know, strap two sleds together to make
somewhat of a bob sled, and within a decade this
recreational sledding had morphed into a few distinct competitive sports,
(21:29):
and by the time the Winter Olympics rolled around in
nineteen four bob sled or bob slay as they used
to call it. It was kind of a natural inclusion
on the program. That's kind of funny because it's actually
a similar thing that happened with the snowboard. So the
basic idea of snowboards first cropped up in the eighteen hundreds,
but they didn't become a commercial product. And I didn't
realize this but until the nineteen sixties. And that's when
(21:52):
a Michigan man named Sherman Poppins strapped two skis together
to make a new kind of ride for his daughter,
and you love this. He dubbed the invention the snurfer snurfer,
and he's sold over a million of them in the
next decade. And then athletes made their own adjustments and improvements,
just like what the bobs led, and then the sport
became a full blown craze in the eighties and nineties. Also,
(22:14):
I really do wish we could keep calling it snurfing. Man.
Let's try to bring that back if we can. But
it's wild to think about her recent a breakthrough something
as familiar as snowboarding really is, and what's weird. It's
kind of the same with figure skating too. I mean,
ice skating has been around for hundreds of years, but
you know, the expressive acrobatic version that we think of
with figure skaters, that didn't come around until the mid
(22:35):
nineteenth century. And believe it or not, it was an
American who actually popularized it. The guy's name was Jackson Haynes,
and he was looking for a way to combine his
ballet dance training with ice skating at a time when
most of the skaters were focusing on just doing these
complex patterns in the ice and so moving gracefully to
music and all the spinning and jumping. That was something
(22:55):
that no ice skater was doing at the time, and
it all seemed too theatrical, I guess for some people.
So this restrictor you frustrated Haynes, and so he left
for Europe and this international style, as they started to
describe it, it began to know thrill these audiences in
London and Paris and other places that they were taking it,
and so we cris crossed the European continent as this
(23:16):
skating celebrity for over a decade and so today people
remember him as the father of figure skating. I love
that anyway. I know there are plenty of other innovations
connected to the Winter Olympics like we should probably talk about,
but first let's take a little break. So Dave Burgart
(23:39):
is a dear friend of mine. This is how far
we go back. So I was on the studio abroad
trip to Tibet, and I knew no one on the program.
And as I was walking onto this bus as a
total dork. I mean, I think I had a sketch
pad in one hand and a ukulele and my other
and I had this like ridiculous little suitcase while everyone
had these awesome hiking backpacks. And I by Dave and
(24:01):
he was on this bus just playing with the Rubik's
cube and he was wearing a coffields T shirt which
was a little band from Delaware, and I thought, another
cool dork. I found my people. But then, uh later,
Dave was so humble about this, and I was shocked
to learn he was number one in the country and
ski archery and and the fact that it was a
real athlete just blew me away. But that's what I
(24:21):
wanted to talk about today. So Dave Berger, welcome to
the program. Thanks, we can we can debate real athlete
with ski archery. So I'm always interested in these like
fringe sports, and I'm so curious, like how did you
even learn about ski archery and how do you get
into it? Yeah, that's a good question. Um, So you know,
(24:43):
obviously I grew up as a competitive archer. I was
just like I think I was one of those kids.
I just went to summer camp and uh, you know
picked up archery and you know, just fell in love
with it. And it just happened like the camp counselor
like lived down the street for me and he shot
archery year round, and so he invited me to you know,
(25:04):
start shooting with him, and so like in I don't know,
elementary school, middle school, like I was kind of going
around the East Coast doing all these archery tournaments. And
then like I hit high school and like archery is fun. Um,
I learned a lot from it, but it was like
a little bit too mellow, and all my friends are
doing Nordic skiing and so I just picked it up
and then like learned about it and I'm like, wait,
(25:26):
I can combine these two things, and this really obscure
sport like that sounds awesome and the most amazing then
diagram of things I'd never put together totally. Um and
so yeah, and I just started racing in the the
archery archery Bathron and like I just was at the
(25:46):
right time, like it was starting to get bigger internationally
and had some opportunities to start traveling and racing, and
uh I did that from like to like two thousand
and seven ish or so, I raced all over Europe
in Russia, and uh yeah, it was it was a
good experience. That's amazing. So when you started, how many
people were you competing against in the US? Like pretty small?
(26:10):
I mean, you know, Nordic skiing is a pretty small niche.
And then like if you add like biathlon, which is
the sort of the cousin sport which just uses you know,
my full instead of a bow and arrow, um, that's
even smaller. And then if you like take it's like
even a smaller piece of that. And chess boxing, which
you know is that where they're like rounds of chess
(26:30):
and followed by boxing, Like it has to be an
okay chess player, but it helps to be a really
great boxer, like Mike Tryson would destroy Gary Kasparov. But
do you have to be a better skier or archer
and ski archery? Yeah, that's a good question. Um, I
would probably say skier. You have to be good at
both for sure. Um, but fast gears tended to do
(26:52):
better I think than just straight archers. Yeah. And and
so I I know when you traveled abroad to competitions,
families would put you up. Could you tell us about
your Russian host family and how they welcomed you and
you're computing there, man, Yeah, this crashed me up because
you know, there's this one race I did in like
a Siberian outpost and uh there's like no hotel. So yeah,
(27:15):
I was put up my host family, and uh, you know,
I was like in shape and like kind of living
a monk lifestyle, like eating pretty healthy, and they were
so tipled to have like an American in their house.
They wanted to give me like the best hospitality possible,
and they, like the night before the race, like insisted
that I just take like vodka shot after vodka shot,
(27:36):
and like then they're like heating up there like wood
fired sauna, and like you know, like wouldn't accept like
no for an answer. So I went out there and
like kind of craziness just ensued with like a local
policeman coming and all of a sudden that we were
firing his gun that like pepsi cans in the backyard. Uh,
I was not in tip top race shape the next day. Um,
(28:00):
but I didn't know if that was part of like
my competitor's plan or what. But uh, you know, years later,
like I don't think it mattered how it did in
the race. It was a pretty fun story and cool
cultural experience and uh yeah I felt really lucky. That's
pretty awesome. So, um, we want to put you to
a quiz because we always put our favorite guest to
a quick So this is called real discontinued Olympic event
(28:22):
or something we made up? I love it? Okay, So
so the first one is Tug of War? Is this
a real discontinued event or something we made up? Oh?
I am going to go real event. I bet. I
bet in the old like you know, early, I can
see this in early nineteen hundreds, I can see I
can see Tug of War. Yeah, absolutely right. They had
(28:45):
eight men team and England was particularly good at it,
and it was from all right, one for one solo
synchronized swimming. I'm gonna have to go made up. I
don't know if we so I thought it was it
was fake too, but it's a real event. This is
(29:07):
from and despite the name, apparently the synchronized is actually
with the music and not with other people. Oh that
is so good. Isn't that crazy? We missed our calling? Yeah,
tandem horse dancing. Oh god, I want to say false,
but after that last one threw me for a loop
(29:28):
tandem horse dancing, it's I have to say false. Yeah,
it's false, but I wanted to be a real event
for two men snow man construction. Uh two man, I'm
(29:52):
gonna go false. I hope this is false. Yeah, a
false and number five swimming obstacle. Course. Well, we've only
had one true one so far. I don't know if
that's too hm true. Yeah, that's right, so a corner guardian.
(30:13):
The discipline required swimmers to clamber over a poll hovering
just above the surface of the water, scramble over a
row of parked boats, and then swim under another row
of little ships. And apparently people who grew up in
Harbor's would tend to win this competition. That's amazing. Yeah,
so Dave when astounding four for five, which entitles him
(30:34):
to our top prize. A handwritten note to his wife
for boss singing his praises Dave Burgart, thanks for being
on Part Time Genius. That's awesome, Thanks so much. Welcome
(30:55):
back to Part Time Genius. So one thing I noticed
while prepping for this episode is just many breakthrough innovations
happened to coincide with the nineteen six winner Olympics, and
it's not an exaggeration to say that the games would
never be the same again after that year. It's a
big statement, all right. So what kind of stuff are
you thinking about? Well, for starters, nineteen sixty was the
year of the zamboni. The zambony, so like the thing
(31:17):
on the hockey rinks and stuff. Yeah, so Frank Zamboni
invented in nine and he used it at his family
owned rank, and then it started to catch on with
the public in the fifties, especially after Sonia Henny bought
one to take along on her travels. And you remember
Sonia Henny as the Norwegian young kid. I do remember her,
and it was his name, really, Frank Zamboni. That's awesome. Yeah,
(31:37):
it was. And when it came time for the nineteen
sixty Games, Zambonis were finally ready to make their Olympic debut,
so they used Frank's patented method. The machine actually shaves
the surface of the ice and then sweeps away the
shavings and then it washes the ice though it's nice
and slick for skaters, and all these years later, Zamboni's
are still the gold standard. Yeah, it's an interesting fact.
(31:57):
I'm still not a hundred percent convinced you didn't sneak that,
and just so you say, Zamboni. But anyway, what else
was big for the NT six Games? Well, Zamboni, Well,
the biggest game changer that year was that the Olympics
were televised for the first time. And it's kind of
hard to imagine today when you can watch round the
clock live coverage of every single event, But until the
(32:18):
nineteen sixties, or in the nineteen sixty Games in particular,
the only people who could watch the Olympics were those
who attended them. And that changed when CBS paid this tiny,
paltry some of fifty dollars for exclusive broadcasting. Yeah, I
mean it's so little money, right, but it totally paid
off for the network and they saw a record setting
ratings that year, but the athletes and organizers actually benefited
(32:40):
from it as well. So all right, so how's that well?
I mean, there was some confusion during the men's slow
and skiing event that year, and officials were unsure whether
one of the skiers had actually missed a gate during
his run. But thanks to this new deal with the
TV network, the officials actually had this chance to resolve
the matter, and they asked members of the CBS team
they could review the tape to confirm what had happened.
(33:02):
CBS obliged, and in doing so, they actually came up
with something that became indispensable in all sports, the instant replay.
So that all started from the Winter Olympics. That's pretty cool.
I guess you're accurate. So nineteen sixty was a pretty
big year for the Winter Games. But you know, actually
one of my favorite innovations didn't come along until almost
thirty years later. It was in the eighty eight Games
(33:24):
in Calgary, and that was the year when the National
Research Council of Canada devised a special all weather Olympic torch.
This was to be used in the traditional relay before
the games and Onlike previous torches, this one was designed
to be especially lightweight and it was powered by this
special fuel that allowed the flame to stay lit during
its eighty eight day, eleven thousand mile trip across the
(33:46):
Canadian tundra. That's amazing across the tundra, And actually it
reminds me of something I read about this year's Olympic
Torch relay, which is going on right now, but apparently
in December, there was one leg where the torch was
carried by the South Korean robot named Hubo. Wait is
that allowed? I think it all had to be people, No,
it can friendly And the best part was that Hubo
(34:06):
used a power drill to cut a hole in the
wall and then he passed the torch over to the
inventor who created him. That is a little bit ridiculous,
but I mean also a good reminder that the Olympics
can be, you know, pretty entertaining sometimes, especially when you
add robots to the mix, which is something South Korea
is going all in on this year. Yeah, you know,
I was reading about how their Ministry of Science is
working with these local companies and so they're rolling out
(34:28):
new technologies all through the games. Like apparently they've been
testing these multi lingual and autonomous robots at the airports
so they can guide visitors to correct gates or provide
information about flight times. And then when they aren't busy
with guests, they just roam around and clean things up.
That's awesome, and so the hope is that the bots
can be put to work in pyeong Chang as a
way to get visitors around this language barrier there. That's
(34:50):
pretty neat, and from everything I read, this year's games
are gonna be like this true Techi paradise. So aside
from the full on robots, Huntai has these self driving
buses that whisk visitors around the host city, and they've
got a fleet of aerial drones they'll be watching over
the proceedings. And that's not just to help broadcast events,
but also for security purposes and maybe also part of
(35:11):
the entertainment offerings. I don't know, we'll find out. But
the thing that will catch most nerds attention is that
the Winner Olympics will be the test site for the
new five G mobile network, and so most of us
won't be able to connect to this new platform until
but for those in attendance, the network will actually provide
data speeds up to a thousand times faster than the
current networks. I mean that's fast enough to download almost
(35:34):
a gig of data in a single second. That's pretty well.
All right. Well, we we've talked about some of these
very you know, tech heavy innovations that we should be seen,
but there are also some non tech based first that
we should look forward to as well. There was one
of I was reading about. You know, for example, Adam
Rippen will compete in figure skating as the first openly
gay mail athlete to represent the US and the Winter Olympics,
(35:55):
which is kind of hard to believe that it's not
until this year that that's happening. But you know, all
the next activity aimed at homosexual athletes during the two
thousand fourteen Games and so chi Adams performance and hopefully
will be an uplifting moment for many people at this
year's event. Yeah, and one of the first I'm most
looking forward to this year is Nigeria's debut at the
Winter Olympics. The African nation will become the latest warm
(36:17):
weather country to buck the cold climate trend. And that's
all thanks to its women's bobsled team. Oh wow, so
it's kind of like Cool Runnings all over again. Yeah, definitely.
And and just like with the famous Jamaican bobsled team,
Nigeria's team is a total labor of love. So they
actually crowdsourced the seventy dollars they needed on go fund
me for like sleds and equipment and fees. And according
(36:38):
to the sled driver, her name is um Sean Ottagon
and anyway, this is her quote. I was inspired to
start the Nigerian women's bobsled team in hopes of being
the first ever African representative men or women to qualify
for the Winter Olympic Games. And the sport of bob
sled mission accomplished on that one. That's pretty neat and
I can't wait to see how they do, you know,
(36:58):
this year more than others, I'm really looking forward to
the Games, and you know, things feel pretty divided these days,
so it does seem extra important to have this event
where people from all different regions and all different cultures
they can come together and kind of celebrate what humanity
is capable of and and to do so in this
friendly spirit of competition that the Olympics is really all
(37:19):
about I know, and in South Korea, you know that's yeah,
no kidding. But well, I know the opening ceremonies are
still a few weeks away, but what do you say
we kick things off early with the men's freestyle fact
off event? You know what, mega, I say, let the
games begin. H So did you know that only one
(37:42):
person has one gold at both the Winter and Summer
Olympics and that honor goes to American Eddie Egan. He
won the light heavyweight boxing event in the nineteen twenty Olympics,
and over a decade later, he was part of the
four man bob's led team that took gold at Lake Placid.
There are three other athletes that have won men alls
in winter and Summer, but again, it is the only
one to take gold at both. So I know, we
(38:05):
were just talking about the Jamaican bobsled team that got
so much attention for the Calgary Olympics and cool runnings,
and you know, the team was kind of a punchline
for a while, but they eventually won their fans over
because of their hard work and determination. But what I
didn't remember, and what most people probably don't remember, is
that the team still competes and they've actually gotten much better.
In fact, only six years after those games, the Jamaican
(38:28):
team actually beat both US teams in the event. Wow.
I didn't know that either, all right, So, which country
is most dominant in a single sport? I was looking
into this and you may remember that four years ago
and Sochy, the long track speed skaters from the Netherlands,
took home something like se of the medals in that sport.
I mean, just completely dominant. But the Atlantic was looking
(38:49):
back at medals over the past eleven Olympics and they
found that the most dominant country in a single sport
those would be Germany's losers, and they took home something
like thirty seven percent of medals over that period of time.
I should note this would include East and West Germany
as well as the unified Germany, so they did get
to have more competitors over that period of time. But
(39:09):
that's still pretty remarkable. Yeah, that's amazing. So the only
winter sport where an American athlete has never meddled is
the biathlon. Um, but you know, I have a feeling
that they're going to pull it off this year. But
I mean, the truth is I'm saying that, like I
know anyone who competes. I don't even know exactly who
does that, but I hope that we win one there.
So all right, Well, earlier we mentioned Norway being a
(39:31):
powerhouse in the Winter Olympics, and it's even more impressive
if you look at their performance per capita. But approximately
five million citizens, they're roughly the same size as my
home state of Alabama, and they've won approximately one Winter
Olympic medal for every seventeen thousand residents. Now that made
I don't know if that sounds like much or not,
but compare that to the U S where it's one
for every one point two million. So I like the fact,
(39:54):
but I can actually top it. And that's because everyone
forgets about Lichtenstein. I forgot about Lichtenstein. So they've won
a total of nine medals, all in alpine skiing, and
that's actually close to one for every people there. That
is pretty crazy that one out of every people that
live there has won a medal. That is, it's on
(40:16):
all the recruiting materials. Well, man, go, I have to
admit it. You you have won it. You win this
week's fact Off Trophy. Thank you so much. Well, thank
you guys for listening. That's it for today. If we
forgot any great facts about the Winter Olympics or just
the Olympics in general, we'd love to hear from you.
It's Part Time Genius at how stuff Works dot Com.
You can always call us on our seven fact hotline.
It is still seven mangoes. That's awesome one eight four
(40:40):
four pt Genius. You can also hit us up on
Facebook or Twitter. Thanks so much for listening, Thanks again
for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of How
(41:01):
Stuff Works and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people
who do the important things we couldn't even begin to understand.
Tristan McNeil does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the
theme song and does the mixy mixy sound thing. Jerry
Rowland does the exact producer thing. Gave Loesier is our
lead researcher, with support from the Research Army including Austin Thompson,
Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams and Eve Jeff Cook gets
(41:22):
the show to your ears. Good job, Eves. If you
like what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe. And if
you really really like what you've heard maybe you could
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