HTDE: Torches and Ski Jumps

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. 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 Ligety 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 a flu 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. 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? Bormio 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. But when I watch Olympic skiing, I never think it looks like they're having fun. It doesn't look fun the way you're doing it. So I would say if you're really on top of it, if you're 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 and she looks at my butt now. I'm definitely not anywhere close to as strong or prepared to do any of that stuff as I once was. I don't know quite how to ask this, but one thing I'm curious about when I watch competitive skiing is it seems. 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? 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. In a downhill or super G course, 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. 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. The fence is just like rapids away around him and there'll be the meat in the middle. So you competed in the 2018 games in Korea where it was unusually cold. Can you tell us some of the things you did to keep warm? Yeah. The biggest difference was that our boots would get really cold. So when our boots get cold, it makes the plastic really stiff. So we brought like a propane heater to the start and I would stand just close enough that it would get the plastic warm, but not so close that it would melt the plastic. So it was always like a fine line there. 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 to have them. I don't like having like too many battery packs and things to like 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. No, it doesn't sound like it. Well, OK, 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. OK, I don't know that theory. I've skied a lot of races jet lagged. Sometimes it works, 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 of days after the Olympics. You know, I got my own room because I won the Olympics. It was like my first time ever rooming by myself. And I slept through the first race there. And, you know, I got woken up by my physio and a security guard, like 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 that. Oh, yeah. Special muscle memory there. Wait, you missed a race you were supposed to be at? Yeah, I slept through the race. I woke up at noon. You know, the race had already happened. And then the next day, you know, luckily there's two races in Korea at 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 the Olympics. World Cup races are the same level of competition as the Olympics. So what, like what, when you realized what had happened? Oh, I was pretty pissed at both myself, but also our hotel was at 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. There's a lot of, like, 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, like I went to lunch after the race was over and I had just woken up. So it was my breakfast and, like, 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. What's funny is, like, you leave putting your carry-on and it looks pretty funny in a x-ray machine. So 100% of the time when I travel with my medals, they take it out of security. 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 can 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. That's good to know. So it depends. I mean, there are racers that make more. There's more of a concerted sound every turn than others. Yeah. There's 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're like, oh. 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. Maybe if you, like, backslap. Otherwise, you're like. Wait. What is backslap? Backslap is if you're, like, laying in the backseat and, like, your back slaps against the snow. And then you might be like. 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. This is How to Do Everything. I'm Mike. And I'm Ian. As we speak, at 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 them. 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? 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. People hanging out of windows on the scaffolding of buildings. 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. It was quite extraordinary. 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? 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. 400 meters were entirely uphill. Very unfair, given that I was arguably one of the oldest people to carry the torch this year, I think. And a knight, no less. 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. So can you describe the torch for us, how heavy it is, what it looks like? 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. Okay. Uh-oh. Because I now have in my hand the Olympic torch, which I carried on that day. And I'm just taking it out of its beautiful canvas bag that it was given to me in. And I am holding in my hand this beautiful. I think it's brass, honeycombed, elegantly shaped torch. It's unmistakably a torch. Wait, don't they need that for the Olympics? 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. Oh, NPR. Oh, excellent. Thank you for that. But it has been decommissioned so you can no longer light it. It won't flame anymore. Oh. Well, now, we're a how-to show. So now, if you could, could you kind of give us, like, maybe a couple tips on how to carry the Olympic torch? 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. Oh, yeah. 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. Oh, all right. Okay. You're not impressed, are you? I can hear you're not impressed. Well, you're going to feel that after. After some distance, I would think. 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. That seems good. Yeah. 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. Was there anything they. Was there anything that any Olympic organizers told you that you couldn't do while carrying the torch? Well, indeed, we, all of us, signed four pages of restrictions. 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? Only in your dreams. Yeah. No, all of that is really frowned on. It is there as a symbol of the Olympic flame carried from Athens. And the flame stays alight all the time. Yeah. Even, I was the last one to run before lunch. So instead of transferring the fire from one torch to another torch, it was transferred to an oil lamp, like a miner's, like an old-fashioned miner's oil lamp. And that was kept. It was burning all the way through lunch. And then the next torch was lit off the oil lamp and so on. And I find that a rather beautiful and touching symbol, the idea of the eternal flame. Well, Sir Patrick, thank you so much for talking to us about this. And thank you for carrying the torch for the Olympic Games. It was a great thrill. I shall never forget it. And I've enjoyed talking to you. hey if you've got a question for us olympic related or otherwise could be anything yeah get it to us at howtoatnpr.org we will do our best our very best our olympic best to answer any question you send our way you might get a gold medal in good questions or you might get a bronze you might get a bronze try and work harder yeah wait wouldn't we we're the ones who need to work harder we're actually competing in the answer division oh fair enough the people are talking right now got it i'd like you to cast your memory back um about 10 minutes to when we talked to ted liggety the olympic skier yeah uh all right we asked about this thing that we had read about how ski jumpers try to get jet lagged because it actually helps calm their anxiety we have a ski jumper on the line with us now to ask him about this kevin bickner is on the team in milan kevin is this a real thing i wouldn't necessarily say that the tactic is using it like to an advantage in the sense that you want to be jet lagged for your competition one thing i did do in 2018 was our events were so late at night you know i thought why adjust all the way over to where we are you know you get home from your event i wouldn't hop into bed and go to sleep and get an early start the next morning i would then hang out and do stuff maybe go eat dinner after midnight uh get to bed at like three o'clock in the morning and then i would sleep in until 10 or 11 in the morning so you just maintain your usa sleep schedule you're on that clock that particular event yes could we i think this is a sport where when i watch it when i watch the olympics i'm wondering what is going through an athlete's head through the whole process so like when you're about to go um tell me what what's in your head typically i would think of the changes i have to make on the hill to make my jump better have a further jump um a jump that's more technically correct and what what would one of those things be just for example are you like jump earlier jump earlier jump earlier what is what does it sound like in your head yeah pretty much you're just going over in your head again and again like this is what you need to do do it so it's like five seconds right that you're in the air something like that have you ever had a thought during that five seconds where you're like dude why am i thinking about tortellini soup right now when does that happen but i do remember one time that was ski flying so ski flying jumps are twice the size of the olympic jumps and typically with a good jump there you're in the air for about 10 seconds dang so that's a lot of a lot of time to be going through your head and i remember when i was a little kid i was watching a ski flying video with my dad and he was like amazed at the 10 seconds he's like that's enough time to read a book and so i remember one time i was in the air for a long time and you know 10 seconds of that air time and you're not like doing a whole lot you're just kind of stretching out and trying to hold it for extra distance and you know i did have like that interesting thought where like damn this is i'm i'm up here for a long time this is enough time to read a book at least like go through like half a page like that's a lot of airtime yeah you found out you qualified four days ago right four or five yeah so you weren't sure if you were on the olympic team until five days before we're talking to you Did you book your plane ticket or did you wait until you were sure? No, thankfully, we don't have to book those plane tickets. The USOPC takes care of that for us. Nice. Although my parents and girlfriend both booked their tickets months ago. Oh, nice. A little bit of a disappointment if I didn't make the team, then they would have those tickets to Milan. I'm sure they'd still go. Yeah, I mean, come on. It's pretty great. Well, Kevin, congratulations on making the team, and we'll look forward to watching you in Milan. Awesome. Hope I can put on a good show for you guys. Well, that does it for this week's show. What did you learn, Ian? Well, I learned, Ted Liggety told us when we talked about grunting and stuff, that a lot of times the skiers will just be making the sound effects of skiing while they're going down the hill. You look at these people, and they're so strong. They're so strong and tough. But that's adorable. That, like, literally, they're going 100 miles an hour and saying, like, whoosh. Yeah. This is like learning that when a fire truck passes you by, inside, the firefighters are in there themselves saying, Yeah. Wee-oo, wee-oo, wee-oo, wee-oo. Yeah. If you ever watch an F1 race, you have to think that they're like, meow, meow. Wow. I learned that the. The Olympic torch, you know, you see it on TV, and one runner hands it to the next runner. They light the next runner's torch, and they move on, and it feels like this continuous thing from Athens all the way to the host city. I learned that they take a lunch break. That is. It kind of bursts the bubble a little bit, doesn't it? I like that they keep the flame going during the lunch break. Well, but it changes your opinion of the Olympic torch if you think that at some point someone's using it to make s'mores. Oh, I bet that is the most delicious. If there's ever a performance-enhancing s'more, it's the Olympic s'more. Yeah. It's weird to say the singular of s'more, I realize. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, you're right. But why. You don't want more than. You shouldn't eat more than one, right? It's. Of all the foods I've ever had, it's the food that you only. That you least want more of. Which is weird that it's called a s'more. But also, I think it's worth noting, a s'more is a thing that if it owned, if it possesses something, it may be the only word in the English language that starts and ends with an S apostrophe or apostrophe S. Is this your Nintendo Switch? No, it's the s'moreses. How to Do Everything is produced by Skylar Swenson with technical direction from Lorna White. Our intern this week is the U.S. Olympic team. Some of the music you heard. In this show was from Moby Gratis. We'll be back next week with more Olympics coverage and more of the non-Olympics stuff we do. Yeah, you can send us your questions. We promise we'll look at them. How to at NPR.org. I'm Mike. And I'm Ian. Thanks. We'll see you next week.