HTDE: Torches and Ski Jumps

0:00Ian Chillag:Greenland has said it is not for sale. Denmark has said it can't even legally sell Greenland. And whether Trump can or will or should try to control or purchase a territory that does not want to be sold is one question. But on Planet Money, we are more interested in how we even got to this moment and how we might gracefully get out of it. Listen to Planet Money on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, it's Peter. Coming up, our sister podcast, How to Do Everything, is back. They're once again tackling your trickiest questions with a lineup of special guests and overqualified experts, including your favorite Winter Olympians.

0:38Ian Chillag:If you have enjoyed listening to How to Do Everything, be sure to follow the show in their own feed, and happy listening. The Winter Olympics start this Friday in Milan, Cortina. We would play the Olympic theme right now, but we're not allowed, so you're hearing this. U.S. ski legend Ted Liggety is there. He's covering downhill skiing for NBC. He's online with us now. So, Ted, you just got in, right? Yes. We got it. Flew into Milan yesterday. I'm up in Bormia right now. We actually got on the race hill today. It snowed a good six, eight inches. So it was more of a powder day than real training for that.

1:15Ian Chillag:It's up there today. It's a lot of snow to clear off. Did you ski it today? I did ski down the downhill track, yeah. So if you have a gold medal, they just let you go down the slope whenever you want? Is that how it works? Yeah, we're in Italy. They know who I am. I have the right credential. That's fantastic. So what's it like to go down an Olympic downhill course when you have no threat of having to compete? Vormio downhill is one of the nastiest downhills in the World Cup. It is a pretty scary downhill. With eight inches of snow and not having to race it, it is a joy. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny because I like skiing.

1:53But when I watch Olympic skiing, I never think it looks like they're having fun.

1:59Ian Chillag:It doesn't look fun the way you're doing it. So I would say if you're like really on top of it, if you're like on the top of your game, it's fun. Nowadays, when I look at it, I'm five years removed from racing. There are very few days that look fun. Most of it looks pretty scary. Do you feel that, that lack of training after five years, that gap? Do your legs and knees feel like, oh, dude? Yeah, my wife jokes that it looks like somebody popped a balloon when she looks at my butt now.

2:29Ian Chillag:I'm definitely not anywhere close to as strong or prepared to do any of that stuff as I once was. Yeah. I don't know quite how to ask this, but one thing I'm curious about when I watch competitive skiing is it seems like the way you win is by pushing as close to the limit of failure as possible. At any given time, how close are you to crashing? Oh, anybody who wins had to take some risk. People who risk it too much have very short careers or short seasons. So you're always trying to find that right line there. And in a downhill or Super G course, like five degrees of difference over a roll can be the difference between being on the perfect line and winning and, you know, burritoing yourself up in the fence and ending your season.

3:18Ian Chillag:So it's a fine line. That feels like good slang for me when I'm watching over the next couple of weeks. He burritoed himself in the fence. Yeah, you'll see. Like the fence is just like wrap its way around him and there'll be the meat in the middle. so you competed in the the 2018 games uh in korea where it was unusually cold can you tell us some of the things you did to keep warm for most like the bigger biggest difference was that our boots would get really cold so when our boots get cold it uh makes the plastic really stiff so we brought like a propane heater to the start and i would stand just close enough that it'd get the plastic warm but not so close that it would melt the plastics that was always like a fine line there and um we read about battery powered pants can you tell us about those yeah we actually tried that a little bit before korea i didn't end up using them because i don't like having like too many battery packs and things like yeah bust around with i think like yeah of course like super heating your muscles before you go is probably an athletic advantage but you know Just walking around in like copper-wired pants is not super comfortable.

4:27Ian Chillag:No, it doesn't sound like it. Well, okay, we read something that some skiers, we learned about this specific to ski jumpers, that they use jet lag to an advantage. When I say that, does that mean anything to you? That's news to me. I never felt like that worked out so well for me. The theory, I think, is that their bodies are relaxed. Ian, help me out here. Well, that there's a lot of nerves that are involved in making yourself go off a ski jump. And if you're a little bit jet lagged, your nerves are calm, which allows you to kind of operate purely on muscle memory. Okay. I don't know that theory.

5:08Ian Chillag:I've skied a lot of races jet lagged. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't. Yeah. Actually, after the Olympics in 2006, it was right after I won my first gold medal. I'd never won a World Cup race before that. We flew to Korea a couple days after the Olympics. I got my own room because I won the Olympics. It was my first time ever rooming by myself. And I slept through the first race there. And I got woken up by my physio and a security guard thinking that something happened to me. And then the next day, I won my first World Cup. So maybe I needed that extra bit of rest and was going on the special Muslim memory there.

5:47Ian Chillag:Wait, you missed a race you were supposed to be at? Yeah, I slept through the race. I woke up at noon. The race had already happened. And then the next day, luckily there's two races in Korea that time, and I won the next one. That was my first World Cup victory. I just think about, like, I've overslept and been like five minutes late to a Zoom call. but to miss a race at the olympics like what well this is a world cup race so the race after olympics but world cup races are that's a big same level of competition as the olympics yeah yeah so what like what when you realize what had happened oh i was pretty pissed at both myself but also our hotel was the bottom of the mountain so you know at seven o 'clock in the morning when i didn't show up for breakfast and at eight o 'clock in the morning when i wasn't there for warm up and nine o 'clock in the morning when I wasn't there for inspection.

6:36Ian Chillag:There's a lot of touch points that somebody should have realized that I hadn't shown up yet instead of noon after the race is already done. I wonder if this other competitor was like, oh crap, Liggett, he's here today. If they were mad that you didn't sleep in for that second race. No, I went to lunch after the race was over and I had just woken up so it was my breakfast and people had just heard what happened to me and they're just like giggling at me yeah i bet all right so you've won so many medals you're there at the event you're holding on to your gold medal you step off the podium what do you do with it it's on your carry-on bag you don't check it yeah uh what's funny is like you put in your carry-on and it looks pretty funny in a x-ray machine so 100 of the time when i've travels my medals, they take it out of security.

7:30Ian Chillag:No, really? They're like, oh, what's this? What's in your bag? Oh, cool. That's like best case scenario right there, right? Like what's the point of having a gold medal unless you could show it off to people? You don't want to be obnoxious. You want them to discover it. And then you'd be like, oh, well, now that you've asked. Yeah, exactly. Watching on television, the sounds you hear are really cool, like the scrape of the skis on the snow and the ice. But are you grunting a lot during a giant slalom race? When things are going really well, you're not grunting. When things are a little off, you're grunting a lot.

8:08Ian Chillag:That's good to know. So it depends. I mean, there are racers that make more of a concerted sound every turn than others. Yeah. There are some people who are known as grunters. Yeah. And sometimes you almost like make, you know, the sounds just to like get yourself into it. I don't know. Like you make all the sound effects sometimes. And then, you know, if you really get offline, you might curse to yourself, which ends up being out loud. Yeah. I mean, there's always like the moment where I see the skiers get airborne. And that feels like a real moment where a curse might come out where maybe you got a little more air than you expected.

8:46Ian Chillag:Maybe if you like backslap. otherwise you're like wait what is backslap? backslap is you're like laying in the back seat and like your back slaps against the snow and then you might be like beep if that happens you just pop back up and keep going? in the perfect world yeah wow in the less perfect world then no you don't pop right back up yeah well Ted thank you so much for talking us through all of this yeah this is fun

9:18Ian Chillag:This is How to Do Everything. I'm Mike. And I'm Ian. As we speak, this very moment, the Olympic torch is making its way to Milan for the opening ceremonies on Friday. It's been carried by hundreds of athletes and stars throughout Greece and Italy. Everyone from the two guys from heated rivalry to an Italian basketball player none of us have ever heard of. Mike and I once talked to, in our opinion, the greatest torchbearer ever. We're going to play that for you now. Sir Patrick Stewart, what was that experience like?

9:53Mike Danforth:It was a thrilling and really very emotional experience. I was not prepared for that. The sidewalks were deep, right up to the walls of the shops and buildings and stores, There was people hanging out of windows on the scaffolding of building sites, on rooftops even. The enthusiasm and excitement and the hunger for people to see the torch and to touch it and to get close to it was quite extraordinary.

10:27Ian Chillag:We watched some video of you carrying the torch, and you looked pretty fit. I wondered, did you work out? Did you prepare for this, knowing you were going to be running with the torch?

10:37Mike Danforth:I work out anyway. You know, I had 17 years in California, and you know, you work out or die in California. And I gave up running, but I really got into power walking, which is what I do at least three times a week, maybe four times a week. But running is another issue. I don't run anymore. So I did go into training. I was running half a mile, given that I knew I only had 400 meters to go. And I thought if I run half a mile, I can comfortably run with a torch in my hand 400 meters. But I got off the bus. I was the last one to be dropped. I got off a bus at the bottom of a hill, and my 400 meters were entirely uphill.

11:25Mike Danforth:So, very unfair, given that I was arguably one of the oldest people to carry the torch this year, I think.

11:32Ian Chillag:And a knight, no less.

11:34Mike Danforth:You would have thought, wouldn't you, that the knighthood and my great age, combined with the fact that I am Jean-Luc Picard and Professor Xavier, they would have arranged it more comfortably for me.

11:47Ian Chillag:So, can you describe the torch for us, how heavy it is, what it looks like?

11:53Mike Danforth:Well, you know, if you will just bear with me for one second of silence. I know silence is anathema on the radio, but you keep talking for, I do mean two seconds.

12:02Ian Chillag:Okay. Uh-oh. Because I now have in my hand the Olympic torch, which I carried on that day,

12:12Mike Danforth:and I'm just taking it out of its beautiful canvas bag that it was given to me. And I am holding in my hand this beautiful, I think it's brass, honeycombed, elegantly shaped torch. It's unmistakably a torch.

12:30Ian Chillag:Wait, don't they need that for the Olympics?

12:33Mike Danforth:Okay, I'm going to let you in on a huge secret. There are lots of them, not just one. Every runner gets his own torch. Every runner. And I think there have been over 8 ,000 relay torch carriers. So a lot of these were made, and they give you an opportunity, if you wish, to purchase your own personal torch when your run is over. And it's a beautiful object, and I'm going to think of some way of mounting it. And it has a scorch mark at the top where the flames came up. And, you know, I may charge visitors. I may let them run around my garden carrying this, and there'll be a small payment, which, of course, I will donate probably to NPR.

13:22Ian Chillag:Oh, excellent. Thank you for that.

13:24Mike Danforth:But it has been decommissioned, so you can no longer light it. It won't flame anymore.

13:31Ian Chillag:Well, now, we're a how-to show, so now, if you could, could you kind of give us maybe a couple tips on how to carry the Olympic torch?

13:40Mike Danforth:Yes. First of all, with gratitude, I would say that you're doing it at all. And then I think it needs a good arm elevation with a slight bend in the arm. But for safety reasons, you need to have it well above your head. However, I would recommend, you guys are young, aren't you? You're really youthful. You could probably keep the torch in the same hand. I had to switch hands two or three times because I'm holding it in my hand now and I would say it weighs, I would say it weighs six pounds.

14:16Ian Chillag:Oh, all right. Okay.

14:18Mike Danforth:You're not impressed, are you? I can hear you're not impressed. Well,

14:20Ian Chillag:you're going to feel that after some distance, I would think.

14:23Mike Danforth:Exactly. And I would say maybe the one other piece of advice I would give, and I think this is very important, try really hard not to fall over.

14:34Ian Chillag:That seems good.

14:36Mike Danforth:I think so. I think perhaps that's maybe the best thing that I can pass on to any of your listeners who find themselves Olympic torchbearers in the future. Try and stay upright, if possible.

14:49Ian Chillag:Was there anything the Olympic organizers told you that you couldn't do while carrying the torch?

14:56Mike Danforth:Well, indeed. We, all of us, signed four pages of restrictions.

15:02Ian Chillag:One thing I think, you're carrying a torch. If you were to see maybe an elegant woman pull a cigarette out of her purse, are you allowed to walk over to her and say, let me get that for you?