Bonus Bugle - Olympic memories

Hello Buglers, I'm Andy Zoltzmann and we are approaching the end of our summer hiatus.

We will be back next week with a full bugle episode to look at everything that's been happening in the world during this crazy month.

Sadly, our summer hiatus coincided with the Tokyo Olympics, so we were unable to report exclusively for you on all the wondrous athletic action and heartbreaking stadium emptiness that the world has been enjoying.

So instead we're going to delve into our archives to classic Olympic years such as 2016.

Oh sorry, I'm just hearing that we were also on hiatus then, in the interregnum in bugle terms, between the before times and the current times.

So we'll go back even further to years such as 2008, London 2012 and Winter Olympics.

So do enjoy our collection of classic Bugle Olympic archive material and we will be back next week to see what is happening in this planet.

Goodbye.

Feature section now and the Olympics.

Well Andy, I've done it again.

Once more, I have developed a dysfunctional relationship with the Olympics.

I found myself every night this week fighting sleep at two in the morning to watch a sport that I know deep down I have no interest in.

Do I need to watch the Croatian men's water polo team in action?

No.

Am I transfixed by their moustaches and the sports seeming encouragement on people drowning each other?

Yes, I am.

I guess what the Olympics really have shown us is that the big question we need to ask is, dallai who for the next week or so?

Let's just all forget about that because there's been some sensational sport.

Michael Phelps, obviously the big star so far.

So much for all Americans being overweight and lazy, John.

This guy's like a cross between a baguette and a speedboat.

I mean, not as fast as a speedboat, but faster than a baguette.

Really good at swimming.

He's really good at swimming.

I'll stand by that.

It's very different, Andy, watching the Olympics over here in America because they win things all the time.

I mean, every day they win stuff, Andy.

It's fantastic.

Phelps alone is giving you more than one gold medal a day.

We should get someone like him on our swimming team.

Can't believe no one's thought of it.

Of course.

Now, this actually means that Britain is winning a lot of gold medals if you, like me, do not recognise American independence.

So well done us.

Michael Phelps is a proud British man.

The Queen must be thrilled at that manfish.

Also, I don't recognise Chinese independence, John.

For me, after the Boxer Rebellion in the early part of the 20th century, we basically ought to own China.

So we are miles and miles ahead.

The Olympics began a week ago with an opening ceremony which proved that yes, there is at least one plus side to human rights abuses because you simply cannot put on a show like that unless the performers live in fear of their lives.

I think what the opening ceremony did show, John, is that the more human rights abuses you're trying to hide, the more spectacular a show you're going to put on.

So I just hope that London learns from this and the government is encouraged to really clamp down on women.

It even featured a number of Chinese performers physically running over a giant globe in what has to be the least subtle threat to the rest of the planet in games history.

Also at the opening ceremony, John, it turns out that the young nine-year-old girl who sang there mimed and that a less attractive girl sang.

Because apparently in this display of China to the world, the girl they used had to be quotes flawless in appearance.

And if you think that was creepy, just don't look at the medals table and compare it with one from 20 years ago.

The big thing I took away from the opening ceremony, Andy, was that we in London are fed in four years because we cannot do anything approaching that as an opening ceremony.

The way I say we've got two options.

One, become a violent dictatorship, or two, do the first ever sarcastic opening ceremony.

We could do that, you know, play each nation's anthem sarcastically as they parade around looking a little bit insulted.

There have been some controversies already at the Olympics.

The Spanish basketball team took a photograph from an ad campaign back home, which involved them pulling their eyes with their fingers to make them look slanted.

Oh, but are you sure this wasn't from the Olympics in 1908 rather than 2008?

I'm afraid not, Andy.

In fact, Polga Sol, one of the players who also plays here for the Lakers, said, I was supposed to be funny or something, but never offensive in any way.

I'm sorry if anybody thought or took it the wrong way and thought that it was offensive.

What?

Everyone finds that offensive.

That is the international language of racism.

It transcends language.

So who is there to look out for in the second week of the Olympics?

Well, a few bugle pics for you now.

We recommend looking out for Stanton Krug of South Africa in the bar and brawling.

Unrivaled bottle technique and an almost supernatural ability to hear non-existent insults in other people's conversation.

That could be crucial in front of a big crowd at the Olympics, John.

Krug's biggest rivals could be the recently divorced Uzbek Army reject Rahim Temzamian.

He's got a lot of issues to work out.

And British Thug of the Year 2007 Mike Prange, veteran of over 200 banning orders.

Also in fruit description, the Romanian star Constantina Florinescu's brilliant description description of a ripe apricot as quote, a velvety extravagance of peach-like delight, a journey into the very heart of succulents, may have won her the European title last year, but will she choke on the big stage again like in Athens in 2004 when with the gold at her mercy she lost it completely and said that a pineapple was like a rabid mongrel dog trying to play the harmonica.

Featured drugs of the week at the Olympics this week are chroniflambutamol, a steroid which boosts female gymnas ability to look like they haven't been psychologically scarred by years of being aggressively hothoused into not falling off planks and embutrophragogrotine, a mind-doping drug favoured by pole vaulters that makes them think they're being chased by a man-eating rhinoceros, which are scared of people falling onto big mats from a height of over five meters.

Top story this week!

Are there more important things to care about?

Of course.

Can you name any of those things right now?

Of course not.

What's the first thing you think of when you think of the word news?

That's right.

It's Michael Phelps' face, isn't it?

That's because it's the Olympics, Andy.

Humanity's emotional morphine.

It doesn't make everything okay,

but it sure as shit makes it feel okay.

It's Olympics update time.

I'm about 30% joking when I say any of that, Andy.

And I know that for you, that number is currently significantly lower.

Well

there was a news bulletin the

other day I heard on the radio and it had about I think I think it was maybe even it was radio four actually.

So I mean this is you know the serious bit of British media and it was like a three minute news bulletin on the hour and the first two minutes were all about the Olympics and then other news was there's been a massacre in Syria.

Yeah.

And I think that showed, I mean you might see that in a negative light.

I see that in a positive light because that just shows that things don't need to be bad, even when they are.

You know, it's just, so the human, it's like an evolutionary thing.

We've seen the evolution of humanity.

You know, there didn't used to be Olympic Games.

Then we developed Olympic Games, and now we are able to ignore major catastrophes.

That is self-preservation, John.

It is mental self-preservation.

It's the evolution of the species, Andy.

That's reaction.

Well done, Darwin.

So the Olympics is a week in now, and after a spectacular Olympics opening ceremony that saw a five-minute Mr.

Bean sketch and James Bond bursting in on the Queen with a look in his eyes that made me think he was about to shoot her in the head, the Queen, of course, then jumped out of a helicopter and even more spectacularly, managed to scowl her way through the rest of the opening ceremony.

She did look like she absolutely hated it.

She had a face like a bored trout,

Would it have killed her to smile just once rather than have a permanent expression that seemed to say, I f ⁇ ing hate all of you.

All of you.

I think, and I think I mentioned this in the very first microbugle last week, that there was an explanation for this, John, that she'd just spent 10 minutes in a helicopter with James Bond.

Now, what happens to women when they get in bits of transport alone

with James Bond?

And it could have really set off our arthritis.

That's all I'm saying.

The point is, Andy, what a week.

There's been triumph, there's been despair, there's been sunshine, there has been rain, and there have been cheating badminton players bringing that noble sport into disrepute.

How dare they disgrace badminton, Andy?

They brought shame upon the shuttlecock.

What happened

about shuttlecocks, John?

Yeah.

The feathers feathers on shuttlecocks are made only from the left wing of a goose.

They said this, I went to badminton last night and it was announced during the pre-match bill that I'm filling a bit of time.

They said, incidentally, the shuttlecock was made using feathers only from the left wing

of the goose.

That sounds like one of your lies.

Yeah, I know.

I was listening to that thinking, have I been...

I'm a bit confused.

I've been very busy, but I don't remember writing the continuity links for Olympic badminton.

I think that might be the single most pointless fact I've ever heard I mean that literally has no use to me yeah and yet I'm probably never gonna forget it now but disappointingly they have removed the original phase of badminton from when it was invented in around about the 17th century of competitors having to chase and de-feather a goose to make the shuttle cock now of course

originally it wasn't from the left-wing of the goose it was from the the shuttle of the goose which is like the turkey's wattle underneath the goose's chin and the cock was made from the um

the cock cock of the goose.

Now, obviously for the sake of the flight of the shuttlecock,

you need the cock bit to be...

You need the shuttle bit to be feathery and you need the cock bit to be hard.

So

it needed to be removed in an aroused state.

Now, clearly, this is a tricky maneuver for a Badlington player to pull off to sever the aroused penis of a goose.

And it's okay for the goose because they just, their wangs grow back like hydras, which is why, you know, in the 18th century, century you couldn't move for geese with about 50 penises.

But it did make making the shuttlecock

difficult.

It's been a long week.

Get some sleep Andy.

It's been a very long week.

You're hallucinating.

Is this still the fact?

If it was a 20 all in the game, rather than nowadays you have to get two points ahead

until you hit the 29all, then you have like a golden point.

A 20 all,

the bald, angry, and recently de-penised goose was released onto the court.

And the last player to be pecked by the angry goose won the game.

That is no less useful a fact than the actual fact you started that with.

Those are the same amount of use.

What happened in the badminton, if you missed it, was that four women's doubles teams were disqualified from the Olympics after deliberately trying to lose their final group games to secure an easier draw in the knockout round.

It looks bad when one team in a match tries that.

It looks terrible when both teams are simultaneously doing it.

It's not technically cheating, but it did turn the crowd on them and did cause a badminton scandal.

And you don't often hear those two words anywhere near each other, Andy, badminton scandal.

In fact, there hasn't been a badminton scandal since 1986, I believe, when for a couple of days the then world champion Park Jubong was briefly thought to have caused the Chernobyl nuclear disaster with an Aaron Shuttlecock

until the investigation eventually blamed electrical engineering equipment and the use of graphite in construction materials.

But for 48 hours, it looked to have been the single worst combined badminton and nuclear reactor disaster in decades.

Badminton scandal used to open the bowling third Jamaica in the 1980s.

Erin Corney.

There was a great feature on the BBC Olympic website this week which gives you a chance to find out, and I quote, your Olympic athlete body match.

Now you can put your height and weight into the programme and it will tell you which Olympian's body you most resemble.

So you know I'm about six feet and around 175 pounds so I put that in and it turns out that I'm most like Stefan Feck,

the German Olympic three meter springboard diver and also Ian Lewis, the British men's team hockey player.

Now this means I technically have the body of an Olympic diver, Andy.

That is a numerical fact.

It's not a visual fact, but which do you trust more, your eyes or numbers?

Exactly.

without numbers you wouldn't even have two eyes to see things with you just have some eyes that's my point so it turns out that I have the body of an Olympic diver Andy and I'm as pleased with that fact as I imagine Stefan Feck is angry with the fact that after a lifetime's dedication to carving his body into its perfect sleek form he numerically has the body type of a 35 year old British comedian.

Well I did the same on that same test John and it turns out that I have exactly the same body as the 15-year-old British gymnast, Rebecca Tummy.

Are you shy?

I mean, I haven't measured myself for a while, to be honest.

So I was just going on my last recorded

measurements from six months ago.

But, you know, then I was six stone

and four foot ten.

The point stands.

Just time for a quick look ahead to the Winter Olympics now, which, as we record, they've just held the opening ceremony.

And it has not, Chris, you can confirm this, has not been

part of the Olympic ceremony was not the North Korea invading at that very moment.

No, they haven't.

Oh, that's good.

Not yet.

We will cover the Winter Olympics exclusively

over the next few weeks.

What I'm most looking forward to, some fantastic events coming up.

Snowball fighting.

For the first time, controversially, snow drones are being allowed.

The purists don't like it.

But it gives teams a different angle, and you've still got to compact your snowball and load it onto the drone.

So you get what you gain in accuracy and payload, you may lose in speed of delivery.

Look out for the North Korean team.

They had some very oddly shaped snowballs in yesterday's final free practice, one of which landed halfway across the Pacific.

Ski jump jousting.

That could be the ratings winner of this Winter Olympics.

Surely there can be no more dramatic sight in sport than two pugilist athletes clashing jousting pole to jousting pole, 30 meters above ground, having just flown off a 90-metre ski jump ramp at opposite ends of a stadium.

That is real sport.

Also, a real chance for some of the less fancied contestants in both the men's and women's events after a very exciting World Cup season.

Sadly, none of the top 150-ranked jousters are out of hospital yet.

So

new additional disciplines, the bobsled biathlon.

Bobsled biathlon could be a real, real sensation this time, testing the skills of the driver and the rear gunner who has to fire at five different targets whilst plummeting downhill at 85 miles an hour.

That one's sadly being held behind closed doors after the test events.

Well, we can't say too much about it, it's still an active legal matter.

The skeleton event has proved hugely popular because, well, who the f doesn't want to watch someone flamak themselves face down a concrete pie at idiotic velocity?

And they've souped it up this time.

They have the skeleton Pac-Man events inspired by the 1980s computer game.

It's going to be a huge hit.

Can the likes of Sochi gold medal winner Lizzie Yarnold adapt to the new requirement to catch tennis balls in her mouth on the way down?

Loop Deluge, enough said.

And I'm particularly looking forward to the, well, two events really.

The Polar Bear Rodeo, which could be really sensational this time.

Polar Bears, of course, in a real mood at the moment due to the devastation of their natural habitat by climate change.

So anyone who could stay on the bear for more than 15 seconds will be doing very well, Norwegian hopes, in the mixed doubles event rest with Stigval Bjop Gluggerson and Ethel Frieda Vjork returning after a four-year ban for polarisation after they painted a sloth head to toe in an off-white emulsion.

And the Captain Oates Athlon, arguably the toughest of the many disciplines in this toughest of all Olympics winter.

That's the event inspired by the death of Lawrence Oates on Captain Scott's silver medal winning squaz to the South Pole in the 1911-12 World Polar Exploration League season.

The competitors have to leave the start tent and the winner is the one who takes the longest some time to return to the tent.

Still waiting for the result from Sochi.

And sadly, the Vancouver Games gold medalist from 2010, Dreisk Jork Humellison of Denmark, unable to defend the title.

He was confirmed as winning only last year.

Not the best event for TV, but tough, tough competitors.

And

any news on how the Olympic ceremony?

Because the last time South Korea held an Olympic opening ceremony, it turned into a barbecue of flame-grilled doves.

And I can reveal the breaking news from the opening ceremony is that the Tongan flag bearer

in conditions of up to minus 20 degrees has gone out shirtless and greased up, waving his flag.

Why change a winning formula?

I love the Winter Olympics.

There are two sports that I'm looking forward to, the real sports in the Olympics.

I'm looking forward to figure skating for two reasons.

First, because it is extremely silly people in beige stockings and sparkly leotards trying to tell a graceful, romantic physical story with what are undeniably knives strapped to their boots.

The second reason is that my merciless Jewish-Hungarian grandmother had a real old world sort of Austro-Hungarian Empire idea of what children's education should involve, and so she would regularly hijack me and my twin brother from our hippie parents for things like, but not limited to figure skating lessons.

She wanted to turn us into a horrifying sibling ice dancing duo so when I watched the figure skating it's with this real joyous relieved sense of there but for the grace of God go high.

And I'm also looking forward to Skeleton which is the one as you mentioned before where they go face down and head first because somebody very high at the top of a mountain once gave someone else a thousand drugs and a boogie board.

Did you know Bugle listener and top-notch comedian Alex Edelman has a twin brother AJ who is representing Israel in the skeleton, which is a brutal dilemma for a Jewish parent because, on one hand, you definitely want them to be successful and famous and the best in the world at something.

On the other hand, you would prefer it not to be like hilariously dangerous.

So, if Moses had that way down the mountain, who knows what would have happened?

Skeleton is one of those sports that I'm definitely supporting, but you couldn't pay me to actually watch it.

You know,

like, unless you've got a prolapse that needs cringing to retract,

you just

right.

Are you a qualified doctor?

My brother is a doctor of law.

Right.

Just passed his fibre, so I think I probably count.

Yeah, that does.

Let me do surgery now, Andy.

Anuvab,

is the Winter Olympics big news in

India?

A nation with not the most glorious of

Olympic records?

We've got one guy, Andy.

We're sending one guy.

Right.

Not even a joke.

His name is Shiva Keshavan.

He's taking part in Luge.

He's built his own frozen little luge practice area in India.

He's been all over the news because

we were all worried as to how he found all that snow and he managed to keep it frozen through the Indian summer.

But most of all, nobody in India knows what Luge is.

So they thought he was a crazy guy sliding down an ice rack wearing a helmet and he was probably mentally unstable.

I mean, it is about time for there to be a gridgy reboot of cool runnings.

So, we've got Shiva Keshivan.

You know, he's

the various world headlines say that he's India's lone resilient luge champion.

I don't know what that means because he's competed with exactly zero people in India.

But we've sent him, you know, we've sent him.

He's cold and ready.

And,

you know, I hear that at the Olympics people send teams.

But look, I think one's a start.

I always feel one is a start.

Look out for him, Shiva Keshivan.

He's going to lose it up over there in Pyongchang.

Hi buglers, it's producer Chris here.

I just wanted to very quickly tell you about my new podcast, Mildly Informed, which is in podcast feeds and YouTube right now.

Quite simply, it's a show where me and my friend Richie review literally anything.

So please come join us wherever you get your podcasts right now.