Beantown Podcast - Winter Olympics Sport Power Rankings (02062026 Beantown Podcast)

Episode Date: February 7, 2026

Quinn comes to you LIVE to breakdown the 2026 Winter Olympics, the end of Dry January, and bighorn ewes

Hey, what's going on? It's Quinn David Furness. Welcome to my show. Quinn David Furness presents the Beantown podcast for Friday, February 6th, 2026. What's going on? What's happening? How are you? My name is Quinn, and this is my program. Quinn David Furness presents the Beantown podcast. We are coming to you live on a Friday evening here, 6 p.m. On the dot. It's been an eventful day. First event was Mixed doubles curling. USA Round Robbins, Round Robin. I guess it's not Round Robbins, Red Robin, Rockin Robin, Rockin Robin. Round Robin. How do you think Round Robin got its, we got some Robin involved phrases and terminology here in the English language. But Round Robin is one of those things I've never really thought about. Maybe they just liked the alliteration. I don't know, but yeah, I've been watching some of the U.S.

The fun thing is it's mixed doubles, so one male and one female, you don't have like the whole crew like in, you know, team curling, men's or women's. And they only play eight ends in a game rather than the traditional 10. And so the U.S. has played four matches so far. They're four and O. They're kicking butt. It's been a lot of fun to see in my favorite part is that even though it's one male, one female, both of the U.S. players are named Corey, one with a C, one with a K. and they don't have the same last name, which really would have been the kicker, or the hammer, I guess you would say, in curling, right?

But it's one of my favorites, and there's going to be more where that came from because today on the show, we are power-ranking the 16 Winter Olympic Sports. And we've got one new one. I'm sure there over the years, there have been events that have come and gone. And so we're just freezing this moment in time, in 2026 Milan Cortina Dempreza, whatever the second half of the Cortina city name is. We're going to power rank all 16 sports with a special Bean Town podcast ranking scale that we'll get into. But I haven't really thought about it, so I guess I'll let you know.

It's based off of how much I like to watch it, excitement factor, how much it really gets your heart rate going. I think there's less of that in the Winter Olympics across the, the board than summer olympics but we'll try not to be a debby downer i will mention listener discretion is advised when you're listening to this program queen david furnace presents the bean town podcast number one will occasionally some language number two this podcast is objectively terrible i also uh not also but let me just before we get back into our olympics here let me mention briefly because we'll mostly be talking olympics for the rest of the program today so we'll try to let me just get this in before i forget uh

Earlier today, I announced that we are going to be hosting the ninth annual Beantown podcast Pledge Drive Telethon Fundraiser, live on air 12 p.m. Central on Sunday, February 22nd. So that's what we're looking at. Two weeks from this Sunday. So it's really, you got your February Sunday's all set, if I can be frank, because you got this week is Super Bowl Sunday. and then the 15th is Daytona, which everyone's going to be talking about. And then if you can believe it, the 22nd is the Pledgejave Telethon fundraiser, 12 p.m. Central time. For those of you listening in Pakistan, that is 11. I checked this, 11 p.m. Karachi time, Karachi, Hyderabad, and Lahore, wherever you're listening from. Presumably just one time zone in Pakistan. They pulled the China. I don't know. I didn't research it. but let's just assume that's right. So 11 p.m. Pachy stand time.

Wherever you want to call in from, you are encouraged to join the show. We tried to simplify things a little bit this year. So let me just give you the lowdown as efficiently as I can. And as a reminder, there's sort of two sides to this coin in terms of the Pledge Drive Telethon. So February in general for us is Pledge Drive Month.

And what that means, you know, in years past, we've had different donor tiers, and we've had you donate directly to support the cost of the show. That's really, there's a fundamental change this year. So in years, the first eight years of our telethon and pledge drive month, which are capped by the actual telethon. And you can donate live on air if you want call in PBS style, Jerry Lee Lewis style, or you can just, you know, donate throughout the rest of the month. And what we've done is tried to raise around $200, some years it was more. some of years it was less, but that's approximately how much it costs to run the Beantown podcast annually. And I didn't just pull that number out of my ass.

If you're curious, it's like $120 a month for the SoundCloud subscription. And that's what we have. You have to have some sort of subscription to an RSS feed like that to get your show on the airwaves. So that's what we do. And we've been with SoundCloud since the start. And then another like 80 bucks or so for our website hosting, which isn't, we could put the show out on the air without it, but then you wouldn't have the Beantown blog,

you wouldn't have cuts by Q gallery, you wouldn't have the comment section. So it's quintessential, pun intended. So that comes out to about $200. What we've done in the past has started to GoFund me every year, say, hey, you can donate, you know, support the show, and then what I do, and what I take pride in is matching whatever donation I receive one-to-one

to a local charity, the United Way here of Chicago. So that's what we've done in the past. I decided this year, you know what? The idea of like supporting the show is fun and all, but what's more important to me is cutting out the middleman, making things simple. And, you know, I can support,

I can run the Beantown podcast, no problem because I'm loaded. But there's a lot of people in our community who are not loaded. And so being able to support a local charity of your choice is what's more important to me, frankly than you sending me money and me you know money laundering it essentially that was never really part of it there was never any laundering happening like there was no tax incentives for me to receive your donations and then flip them but when you say it out loud it kind of sounds like money laundering doesn't it i feel like nine years ago when he started the show i should have

come up with a way of like figuring out how to take advantage of that but i guess i'm just too wholesome of a person anyways what does that all mean for you for this year. Well, Pledge Drive Month is upon us. It is February, but instead of you sending me money, I'm just asking that you donate money to a local charity of your choice whose mission and goals you feel strongly about. And if you donate, here's the magic number, if you donate $20 or more, it could be $20, it could be $2,000, it could be $250,000, whatever you want to do, Bill Gates, if you're out there, this could be a good distraction for you from all the Epstein files.

Don't donate and, you know, support your local charities. And what that means is if you're $20 or more, you will join the 2026 Season 9 Topaz Elite Club. That's right, Topaz, T-O-P-A-Z. It's back and better than ever. And what we're doing this year for fun in season nine is, like always, there will be a special gift that you receive. You know, in years past we've had, oh gosh,

it's hard to remember over the years what all we've. done. Let's see. Off the top of my head, we've had tote bags, we've had shirts, we've had pins, we've had stickers, signed photographs of yours truly autographed photographs. You know, really everything under the sun as far as swag goes. Well, this year there's going to be something just as special, but it is to be announced. So you're going to have to take that leap of faith, kind of like Harrison Ford at the end of Indiana Jones and the last crusade. You're going to have to take the leap of faith if you want to get to the Holy Grail. And if you want to choose wisely, you're going to want to donate $20 or more to a charity of your choice.

All you have to do, send us your receipt. Email Beantown Podcast at yahoo.com. Forward us your receipt for any $20 plus donations made in the month of February. And we will welcome you into the Topaz Elite Club. It's very similar to the SNL5 times. club in that there's, you know, fun smoking jackets, drinks all over the place, and no one's taking it seriously, and we'll get you your gift. And this is all capped off by the ninth annual Beantown podcast, Pledge, Drive, Telethon fundraiser again, 12 p.m. Sunday, February 22nd.

If you want to just watch and enjoy the show, you're welcome to. It'll be live streamed on my YouTube. If you just YouTube search Quinn David Furness. In fact, this is a good reminder. Go ahead and subscribe and turn on notifications. Click that little. bell icon. What that means is when we go live, you'll know about it. And so you won't miss the live stream. You can listen the next day, just be our normal weekly podcast. And my favorite part, we've always welcomed phone calls, but in the past couple of years, we've started playing listener games. And so you are strongly encouraged to call 815-298-7200. Live on air. We'll go for about two hours usually and you can play a game we set that up in advance it's much more uh the the

telethon is much more structured i would say than your average bean sound podcast episode and this happens every year to someone and i apologize i don't have an intern to help me man the phone lines that's the thing you know when when jerry lee lewis is out there on pbs doing his thing every year he's out there in front he's performing and he's doing great balls of fire and his stand-up act He's got like 20 NPR volunteers behind him or PBS volunteers behind him, man in the phone lines. Well, I'm over here trying to have it all. I'm having my cake. I'm eating it too.

I'm answering phone lines. I'm running tech. It's kind of stupid and kind of silly, but it is a little bit of an overwhelming day as far as a production goes because we are live streaming. And God knows we've had all sorts of technical issues with that in the past. and we're still trying to entertain the masses, then we're picking up the phone calls, we're making sure the audio quality is good enough to pass, muster. Is there any other situation in which we use the word muster?

I guess you muster up some courage, but that's a verb, right? So when you pass muster, that's clearly a noun, right? What the heck? It's, you never see it. It's only in that specific context. But to finish this off, I do encourage you to, call and if you get you know if it's just ringing and ringing and ring and ring and keep trying because we will we try to keep the listeners engaged and encourage your phone calls and simultaneously you know keep you

to five minutes or less so that everyone who wants to participate has a chance to but it's one of my favorite events of the year still get butterflies thinking about it usually there's a song and dance of some sort we'll try to have power rankings try to have special guests uh you know trivia questions go lore and it's just a fun time it usually runs for you know 90 minutes to two hours it's a fun time so that's Sunday afternoon Sunday noon start on February 22nd this year about 15 days from now 16 days looking forward to to having you there okay that's what I wanted to share about the Pledge Drive telethon before we get into Olympics here I do want to mention because I've had this sitting out for about 20 minutes.

I poured myself a glass before we started recording, and then Maple was running out of dog food, so we had to go online and set that up. She gets the, like, 50-pound bag or whatever. It's not 50 pounds. I think it's like 20 pounds. But of her, no, maybe it is. I think it's heavier than 20 pounds.

Whatever it is. She gets the big dog. And, well, it's four little dogs, but I called it the big dogs. It's the biggest size they make of Purina or, kibble one or whatever it is. And so I had to reorder that. Here's what I'm actually trying to say. I, in my hand now, well, on one hand, in one hand, I have the Samson Q2U series, but in my other hand, I have a glass of wine. This is an ox tea red blend, oxy, Oxte. This was like a $7 Trader Joe special.

I think I went on a whole thing last year or last week about how I was committed to the $10 bottle this year, but then my Trader Joe's bill was getting too high last week. And the wine is the last thing you grab as far as our store layout goes. And so I was like, man, I'm already at like 70 bucks. Let's try to stop the bleeding here. And so we went for an oxy. I think it's Spanish. I don't know.

Let's grab the bottle here. It's interesting. I have not had a sip yet. I'm looking forward to it. But I did set my glass back down because I'm a tease to read this bottle. I think I got it from the Spanish section. Produced in bottle by Bodom Bodegas SLO. I don't know where that is.

Spainia, there we go. Oh, it's really dark. I can hardly see it. El Monasida de la Sierra, Zaragoza, Spain. Imported to California, toll-free. Oh, there's a number you can call. We could maybe try that next week. 14% volume, 750 millibliter, sort of your traditional

wine size and here we go this is my first sip i made it uh i i put on an extra six days almost an extra week of dry january here and i'm thinking just it who knows how the next you know 10 and a half 11 months are going to go but this just feels like a lower alcohol year for me i'm still looking forward to like a summer cocktail a beer watching a baseball game and certainly once Once it gets cold again in the fall and the winter, you know, I like my fair share of stouts, porters, and IPAs. And then, of course, there's, you know, summer breeze. Nice, you felt my entire, like, 34-ounce water bottle with a glass or with a bottle of white and some ice cubes. Like, I like that, but I think we're going to go a little bit more moderate here. It helps that my wife

is not really feeling the alcohol thing either. No, she's not pregnant. It's just, it's just a vibe. one with with 2026 for now. But with all that being said, I figured it's a Friday night, just me and Maple, the research team over here, wife is at Galentine. So let me, let me splurge a little bit and have my first sip of alcohol of 2026. So here goes live on air, basically communion. Here it is. It definitely tastes like a six dollar, six dollar bottle of wine. I'll tell you that much. But you know what? It can't complain like that nickel. Creek song. No, she can complain. The other thing, song-wise, that was coming to mind, this bottle is called The Silence.

And that got me thinking about Simon and Garfunkel in the park, right? Didn't they have a famous Central Park concert in like 1990 or something? They'd been feuding and they got back together and now they're feuding again and got back together. Hello, darkness, my old friend. I've come to talk to you again. And da-da-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. You know, my earliest exposure to Art Garfunkel, other than the occasional Simon and Garfunkel song on the radio,

The Boxer, I Am a Rock, Mrs. Robinson, whatever, Bridge Over Troupled Water. There's the classic episode of Arthur. We were just talking about Arthur. This is two weeks in a row for Arthur on the, podcast the Mark Brown children's book series and subsequent PBS TV show but there's a great episode I think it's early on in the show but I also don't have a great sense of like when I got into Arthur you know late 90s how long had it actually been around like when did Arthur start

where they do in one season a year we could look this up but we got so much to get to that we're just going to blow past if you really want to research more on Arthur you can can but there's an episode. There's a storyline in the show where Buster Baxter, the rabbit, Arthur's close friend, like moves because he lives with his mom, his parents are divorced, so he like spends half the year with his dad who's a pilot and he's like off the show, I think for a large portion of the season. He's just like not in the episodes and I don't really remember why the writers or I don't not even remember. I don't know why they chose that. I also I don't remember, like, was it actually, like, a whole season that he was gone for?

Or is it just, like, a two-episode story arc or something? I don't know. The point I'm making, the point I'm getting to is the last thing I'll say before we do our Animal of the Week here, is that when Buster comes back, the whole episode is kind of, it's not a musical, but there's kind of a ballad happened in the whole time, and it's the ballad of Buster Baxter by Art Garfunkel. And it's, he plays a singing moose in the episode, and he's just like, they're in the background and you kind of assume that he's like separate from the rest of the characters like

they don't know he's there like he's not he's not real but then at the end you know they're having buster's welcome back party and they're like who invited the talking moose and he he has to run away before you know the cops come or something like that i don't remember exactly how it goes he's got a couple banger songs right it's buster baxter went away and he came back buster buster buster And then there, he's a sad, sad, sad bunny. A sad, sad bunny. Laughing isn't funny when you're a sad, sad, sad bunny. Lyrics are something like that.

And then there's a part of that episode where they're all square dancing in school. And I was always really jealous when I was growing up because I was homeschooled. So we didn't really have like, there wasn't really a dance. What do you call that when you have like a section of a class that's dedicated to that? That would be in like PE or something, right? A unit, we never had a square dancing unit. Which if you knew my homeschool co-op that I grew up in, you would be very shocked to learn that there was never a square dancing unit.

Because we had every other type of dance you could imagine from swing dancing was not officially like a homeschool thing, but it was largely attended by that community. Thursday night swing dancing and the Lindy Hop used to occasionally get to go to the local ballroom dancing association on Tuesday nights in Belvedere, the next town over. We had an Irish dancing club slash class at our homeschool. And that one was always a lightning rod for poking fun, which in hindsight I feel bad about, not because we were like poking fun to their faces, but it's just like, hey, this is what they wanted to do.

They're expressing themselves. The reason we poked fun, like me and my family and stuff, was not because of Irish dancing necessarily, but there was definitely a part of that. But it was because not only the teacher of Irish dancing, which was someone's mom, as all the teachers were, but there was another mom at the homeschool who had kids who went there. Names shall remain unsaid.

But she was in the class as well, and it was like a groundbreaking thing, like, oh, this parent is taking a class at her home. school this like 35 year old lady and you know when you're eight years old 10 years old it's like oh my gosh that's so silly like she's so stupid why she's taking that class now when i'm almost that age i'm like you know what if i had to spend eight hours on a tuesday just sitting around maybe teaching one class or something i might want to check out irish dancing myself now i personally queen david furnace i would not opt for irish dancing although i wouldn't be it was

It wouldn't be like the last thing on my list. It wouldn't be the first thing on my list. I'm trying to think if we had any other like cool, not strictly academic classes that I could be part of. I don't know. We had like a downhill skiing club to tie this back into the Winter Olympics theme. But that wasn't really a class. Like Irish dancing was actually like a class that I think took up like an hour.

And this was the ski club was more of just like a, hey, pay $85 or something, we'll go up there on a Saturday morning or something. I never was part of that, but I don't know. The one thing I would do, I don't have regrets about this, but my wife likes to say that she's surprised that I never did any sort of theater, musical, play, whatever when I was growing up. And as a kid, it wasn't like completely out of the question for my family because my oldest brother was in a play or two.

my sister was in a handful of plays. Never musicals. We didn't, the co-op I was part of was much more plays rather than musicals. Musicals rarely was a thing. There's a little bit of it. Prince of Egypt, that was a classic musical at my homeschool co-op in like late 90s, I think right after the movie came out. But, you know, if I had my personality as a 30, soon to be 31,

year old now that I did when I was in middle school and high school, I think I would have done a play. And I think I could have done well at it. Like I actually believe that. I still think I could. Like being in like a community theater production is not completely out of the question. I think I'd be more inclined to do like a choir or something though. I don't know. We'll see.

We'll see. Mostly I'm looking forward to getting a little tyke running around or two so I can really, you know, hammer into them swimming or baseball or something we're going to try to pick one one sport and really be good at that so we don't kind of stretch out you know three months of the year you're doing this sport and then the next three months you're switching to that sport that's the thing like if i could do it all over again i think i really would have just committed to baseball because i think that's where i had my natural talent and swimming was just kind of a way of life in my family because of the family that I was born into,

and I enjoyed swimming, and I still think about going back to the pool here and there, and, like, when I, like, settle down and stuff in the suburbs and maybe start to think about taking some breaks from my knees and from running, swimming is definitely something I want to get back into. And soccer, I was a three-sport athlete in high school for at least, like, a year or two. So soccer was one thing that it just wasn't good at. Like I was fairly athletic, but it just didn't have the skills.

You know, it just wasn't good at it. It doesn't mean I didn't try hard, but it wasn't my, I wasn't a terrible soccer player, wasn't a great soccer player. And that's what, that's okay. But I believe that with my like mental knowledge, my instincts and my physical ability, underrated as a hitter, too, if I can say so myself, stepping into that batters box, really keen eye for the ball. I really think with some more personal dedication as well as some better resources and infrastructure,

I truly think, oh, not to mention the bum shoulder, I think baseball could have been a bigger thing for me. But you know what? Everyone's yearning for the past. Everyone's got nostalgia. It is what it is. let's do our animal of the week here so that we can get to our power ranking of the Olympic sports and also I watched opening ceremonies and just have one or two comments. They don't have a full deep dive or anything like that.

But it is the Super Bowl on Sunday. I had to decide, you know, as I was planning for the show this week, did I want to lean more into Winter Olympics or Super Bowl? And frankly, I decided the animal of the week was a little nod we were going to give to the Super Bowl. role because it's not just like oh it's two teams i don't really care about which is true the seahawks and the patriots not only that it's two teams that have had plenty of success in the last you know 10 20 years they've each won super bowls they've been to what the sea ox have been to what three super bowls in the last 20 years and the Patriots have been to like whatever it is

something stupid like 10 11 um but it's also just two teams without a lot of like character personality the Patriots are not that's the crazy thing about it is rare when you get when you have a team make it to a championship game or a championship round where it is just obvious

this team is not that good the Seahawks even though they weren't like considered to be the team coming into the year with how they've played how they carry themselves their discipline they're strong on all three fronts it's obviously like okay yeah this is a really good team say what you will about sam darnal and he didn't have an amazing year but like all other things consider this is a really good team the patriots

it is absolutely insane in fact let me see if i can find this uh because it's kind of runs you through the patriots season in terms of their strength of schedule and like who they had to play and I'm not and I know I'm like the last person to actually like read this out out loud and go through it because everyone's been talking about this for weeks on weeks at this point but it is crazy and you watch the Patriots and it's like man they're winning these games like 13 to 10 10 to 7 14 to 13 and it's you what I think the biggest thing because like ball don't lie so if you're winning you're winning but for me and I'm not I'm not trying to complain like, oh my gosh, like, I can't believe they got here.

They're so bad. I'm not saying that. It's just shocking to me that with the quality of play, that's the biggest thing. The quality of play between these two teams, just eye tests when you watch them. Seahawks, you're like, oh, my gosh, this is a freight train from hell. Like, they have no weaknesses other than Darnold. Like, this team, good luck. And then you watch the Patriots and you're like, it's kind of like watching the Bears,

where you're like, yeah, they, like, if you told me, this team was like four and eight or, you know, six and ten or something the last week of the season and be like, okay, yeah, like that makes sense because they don't really do anything particularly well other than just being well coached and making good decisions. So the Patriots on top of all of this, I'm trying to see if I can find this tweet. It had a really good breakdown. Here it is. Okay, so this was the Patriots schedule this year and everyone knew coming into the season, they had a week schedule. That's why a lot of people picked them to make the playoffs,

which was, you know, they won, like three games the year before, four games. Drake May had only ever won one game in his life coming, or in the NFL coming into this season. So it was like, yeah, that's a pretty big, bold take to pick the Patriots. And I promise you this is actually leading to our Animal of the Week. This is the last thing I'm going to read here before we announce our Animal of the Week, which might be a surprise to you. Here is the Patriots schedule, and then we'll also tack.

on the three playoff games they've had because this is not in the schedule. So these are, I'm going to read each week, and what I'll say after each week refers to their opponent, okay? Week one, fired coach. Week two, fired coach. Week three, fired coach. Week four, NFC South, which if you're not like a football fan, the winner of the NFC South of Caroline Panthers who went to the playoffs, they had a losing record.

Okay, so when I say NFC South, and I'm going to say it four times. all of those teams had losing records, which is phenomenal. Week 5, fired coach, week 6, NSC South, week 7, fired coach, week 8, fired coach. Week 9, fired coach, week 10, NSE South. Week 11, Jets. So not a fired coach, but out of all these teams, all the teams in the NFL who should have fired a coach, a coach, a coach, the Jets. Week 12 Bengals who were not very good this year. Let's just put that kindly.

Week 13, fired coach. Week 14, bye. Week 15, fired coach. Week 16, fired coach. Week 17, Jets again. Week 18, fired coach. First round of the playoffs, home game against the Chargers. You might be saying all that.

Justin Herbert, he's pretty good. Yeah, the Chargers were legitimately down to, what, was it their third left tackle or their fourth left tackle and their second? in her third right tackle, and they were on their third running back. And that game was, whatever it was. It was like 14 to 10 or something like that. It was sickening. Then divisional round, Patriots play a home game versus, gosh, who did they even play?

Oh, the Texans. CJ Stroud and the snow has the ultimate meltdown. And you can say, oh, yeah, well, the Patriots defense force that. but like, I don't care how good your defense is. The playoffs, you're supposed to be like a functional quarterback, and he had what, like, what was it, four, five interceptions? Just absolutely brutal. And their best player, Nico Collins was out.

And if that sounds familiar, your best player is out. Well, let me introduce you to the AFC championship game where they played the Denver Broncos missing their starting quarterback. And it's just if you, you don't have to, tell me I'm a Vikings fan. If your starting quarterback goes down, it is not good, especially in the AFC championship game. And it's not like a Brock Osweiler, Nick Full's situation where you've got like a couple games to like get warmed up or even the entire season like Case Keenum for the Vikings. This was literally Bo Nix breaks his ankle on the last play of the game in the divisional round.

Excuse me, and Jared Stidham has to step in. So yeah. that's who the Patriots played this year. And again, my parting thought on that is not like, oh, my gosh, like, they're so bad. They don't deserve to be here. You play the games that are in front of you. My point is, I would not be shocked if this was a repeat of the Seahawks Broncos Super Bowl from, what, like 12 years ago, where the Seahawks won 43 to 8. And that was versus the Broncos, Peyton Manning set, the touch.

down record was one of the best offenses of all time. They had Demarius Thomas and Julius Thomas. They were insane. Emmanuel Sanders, I think. Wes Welker might have been on that team. So, yeah, I don't know how this is going to go down. I like to think that the Patriots are well-coached enough that they're not going to get blown out.

But every single aspect of these two teams, the Seahawks have the major advantage in. Even quarterback. Drake May has been playing so mediocre. these last couple of games and Sam Darnold has well he played very well in the NFC championship game but those other two games he hasn't done

anything spectacular he just hasn't turned the ball over which if you're Sam Darnold's a huge win because he led the league in turnovers this year so I guess we'll make our official Beantown picks we have our sponsors here we're going to run over time so I don't want to go through a full ad read but

Bean Town Sportsbook Remember, you can find that at Beantownpodcast.com slash sportsbook. My pick this week is, I want to actually try to get this as close as I can. I'm not doing any betting. I got no squares. I got no fan duel, bonus betback guarantees, underdog, none of that stuff. How I think the game is actually going to go, I think the Seahawks are going to put up some serious points. They've had a lot of time to get that whole machine fine-tuned.

I'm going to say Seahawks. I'll say Seahawks 33 Patriots 16. That's about as close as I think it's going to be. And I wouldn't be shocked at the Patriots struggle to put up 16 either. I just don't see how the Patriots can stop the Seahawks offense. It's just I'm going to be shocked if not only if the Patriots win, I'd be shocked if they keep it within two scores. So there's your official pick.

Let's come back to our notes here before I forget what we were going for. But yeah. Oh, our Animal of the Week, to cap the thought, like, what are the animals? Well, it's Seahawks first Patriots, and we don't have a ton of time to really go down the deep rabbit hole. That would be a good animal of the week as a rabbit of either. But comments on each, and you might be asking, well, what the heck is a patriot as far as animals go? I've got a response for you that popped up for me yesterday. I'll tell you about it in a second.

So a seahawk is not an actual bird. Like there is no bird where it's like, oh yeah, that's the genus species. That's a seahawk. No, it's just like a colloquial name, C-O-L-L-O-Q-U-I-A-L. I think that's how you spell colloquial. And it's an osprey. Is that how we're saying it? Osprey looks like osprey, but I think osprey.

It's just a seafaring bird, I would. would say we already had a seafaring bird a couple weeks ago with the Arctic turn so this is an osprey it looks you know like a bird that would live near the ocean that's all i'm going to say about the ospre it's you know if we had a little bit more time to breathe we would do a deeper dive but that's if you're ever if you're maybe you're a kid out there listening to the bean town podcast you're like man my favorite animal is seahawk well it's even cooler than that it's an osprey you might be wondering okay so seahawks got it patriots what the heck is that well I have an old history professor who, I don't know if he's still a professor or not.

He was at the community college that I attended as a young strapping lad when I was trying to pass muster. And he owns his own, I think like a hobby farm or something. I don't know. I liked the page on Facebook, and so I occasionally see updates from this farm page. And he had an update the other day about an animal that passed away named Patriot, which feels like a bad omen for this upcoming game here. And Patriot was a sheep. And doesn't it, does anyone else feel weird

when you refer to sheep in the singular? It feels like sheep inherently should only be a plural word. I don't know. Maybe it's the whole geese thing. Like what if we, what if the singular of sheep was a sheep? Like goose to geese? Shoop to sheep. I would be okay calling a little you a shup. I think it's kind of nice. Anyways, I don't think this hobby farm in Northern Illinois had a big horn ram, but I wanted to

give a shout out to the big horn ram because it's a type of sheep, but it's just so much more badass. Now here's the question I have. So when we're talking sheep generally, like a lot of animals, you have the name, you have separate kind of distinctions for male versus female. So a male you call a ram, Mola Ram, big episode here for the Indiana Jones heads. And then the female is called the U, E-W-E-U. But then you have a whole separate type of animal, the big horn sheep. And, you know, you know, like Dodge Ram trucks and stuff, right? they got the big horns.

That's why they're called big horn rams or big horn sheep. Do the female big horn sheep, do they still have the horns? Because then you would probably, you would still call them a ram, right? Even if they weren't officially a ram, you look at them and say, oh, that's the rams. Like is every Los Angeles or St. Louis ram or big horn sheep, are they all males? There's got to be female big horn sheep. So let's do one quick Google search here. Do female, big horn, sheep have horns.

Yes, the ewes do have horns, but they are much smaller, thinner, and less curved, than the massive curling horns of the males, the rams. U horns generally, it's like U-Haul. U-horns generally grow only slightly in curvature and rarely grow much after 45 years of age, often appearing straighter or more spike-like compared to the heavy spiraled horns of males so there you go female big horn sheep and if you take a look at it

yeah it looks more like a goat than a actual big horn sheep then you got lambs don't get me started on lambs what is veal when you eat veal that's like eating a lamb that's why I always feel weird I think that's what veal is right email us bean town podcast is at yahoo.com. I'm done Googling for now.

If you have differing research on what veal is, I never really gone for veal all the way back to, you know, being a kid at a restaurant, you know, it was never like, oh yeah, there's the veal, that'll be great, I'll order that. And I think it started off as like, I don't really know what veal is. And then, you know, 25 years later,

it's like, well, I don't want to eat the baby. The veal chop or whatever, the old bowling knees could be absolutely delicious for all I know. But it's just like I don't want to sit here and feel like I'm eating a baby sheep, a baby sheep. It reminds me of when I was in high school and I went over to my girlfriend, quote, unquote, whatever you want to call it, Hannah Johnson's house and her mom, Kathy, God bless her soul. I assume she's still alive.

I don't know. You say God bless her soul for people who are alive, right? It would just be rest in peace if they're. were dead. So God bless her soul. Very nice woman. Worked at the antique store. She was, she had made Cornish game hens. And I had the same reaction as the veal. I didn't tell her this at the time. But it's like, you know, you got these tiny little hens, right? They're game hens. And I just remember thinking like, I don't want to eat this tiny little, I wouldn't eat a baby chicken. So why am I eating a small game hen it's like individually cooked i don't know veal hens i don't want to eat that stuff

i don't want to i don't want to you know silence the lambs as they would say all right we got to get to it it's a we're at 41 minutes and man time flies i got to tell you this feels like an episode maybe the wine is kicking in this feels like an episode you probably feel exactly the opposite where it's like, man, I look up at the clock and we're 41 minutes in. And I feel like I'm just getting going. But let's try to be as efficient as possible here. I watch opening ceremonies. So opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics were today at 12 p.m. Central, 7 p.m. Italy time.

And they went on for a long time. It was like four hours. I was surprised it took so long. Fun performance from Andrea Bocelli. He sang a really famous song. that you would recognize. I don't remember what it's called in Italian, but it's a great one.

It's the... da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. That's like his signature song. All the countries walk in and their athletes and stuff. But let's see. There was one thing I wanted to mention... Oh, well, a couple things. First, they show J.D. Bants and...

Bants. J.D. Vance and Usha. It's a call that an OSHA violation. And everyone just goes nuts on the booze. And the best part of it when they showed them was the announcers, usually when they show, you know, Trump or whomever and they get booed, the announcers are just kind of like they step off to the side and like let it happen and wait until the broadcast kind of picks back up and they jump back in and they don't comment on it.

But the announcers here, I think it was like Sean White and I don't know if it was Scott Hamilton or whomever. was but like oh and there's the booze and it's just like yeah they had to acknowledge it was so bad so good job jd vance nothing like getting booed that that's the thing man if you are like it's one thing if you are you know divisive politician and you go to a you know a blue state or if it's the other side you go to a red state and everyone's booing you it's or even it's like the super bowl which I don't think Trump's going to, but it's like you get booed at the Super Bowl. It's like, okay, you're unpopular in your country.

Like, it is what it is. But you go to halfway across the world and the entire, not the entire country is watching, the entire world is watching, and you're getting booed by this group of people that is not largely American. In fact, the exact opposite. There are very few Americans there.

And everyone else is booing you. that's not great because that's not happening to anyone else. Maybe it's just because like, you know, Assad from Syria, he's not like going around to the Olympics. So I think he's out now, right? Whatever happened to that Assad guy? He got removed from power, right? But it wasn't like a violent coup.

He just like stepped down. I think for a while it was like he's, you know, they're trying to get him. Like snook. him take his head off and then i think he just like it says he got overthrown i feel like generally he got overthrown in 24 generally if you get overthrown like that's it but what i mean like is he just like living in the suburbs hanging out as a dictator let's see okay so in september 2025 a syrian court issued an arrest warrant for assad the arrest warrant said he charges such as

premeditated murder, torture leading to death, and deprivation of liberty. But that's the end of the summary. So what happened after that? They've settled in, he and his family have settled into a luxury skyscraper apartment where he makes occasional visits to a shopping mall, spends much of his time playing online games. Oh, he's under Putin's protection. Oh, is he in Russia?

Oh, yeah, he lives in Moscow. I didn't even know that. let's see syrian president al shahra in october requested extradition of assad back to syria and nothing i i learned something new i had no idea that assad had gone to moscow and was just living there in a luxury skyscraper so i was going to say good for him i don't feel that way i think assad probably would have gotten booed too in italy maybe boris johnson what is boris johnson still in charge Is he the Prime Minister of England? For a while there, he was very unpopular with the whole Brexit thing.

But I haven't seen a lot from Boris lately. He was, let's see. Oh yeah, he was second mayor of London until 2016. He was prime minister until 2022. So what does he do now? Lives in a skyscraper in Moscow, I suppose. The only other thing I wanted to mention here, there was something else but I can't remember oh two things one and I don't think this is an

overly hot take but I do have to put it out there I don't know if this has anything to do with winter versus summer but we you know the ceremony the opening ceremony was from what like 12 to 4 p.m. something like that today so I just threw it on on the TV had it on the background the whole time wasn't really listening following until Andrea bocelli came on because his voice is an angel but man this is it opening ceremony is really boring and even like the spectacle where they're doing all sorts of artsy stuff is just not that interesting and then you get the three hours of countries walking in and it's not like you know hunger games where each district of panam like has their own flair like the girl on fire or one girl probably turns into coal or something so there's

something interesting the only thing different and unique about these countries as they're walking in is as they all have you know they all have matching outfits throughout the entire country and so you just see like a hundred plus different groups of people all wearing the same outfit as each other hundred distinct outfits but you know what i'm saying but but there's nothing else going on they're just walking and waving the flag. And I'm not, you know, I'm not taking a hard stance on this because if you were involved in that, like, that's a really cool moment. But as a spectator, and I know I'm late to the party on this, on this hot take, but it's really boring to watch. Like, I literally saw a bunch of posts on Facebook and Reddit today. People were asking, like,

oh, who's, what bars are good to, like, watch the opening ceremonies tonight? And half the people were being snarky because they were like, oh, that already happened. But then the other half of people who are giving suggestions, and they're like, okay, yeah, they'll reshow it on NBC, yada, yada, yada, whatever. But all this is to say, I'm just sitting there in my head thinking, like, I can't imagine going to a bar and sipping on some cocktails while you watch Eritrea walked in, walk in, and then Egypt and Laos and Iswatini. That's right, Iswatini.

and they're all just, it's like one or two people. You know, they're not fueling a whole hockey team or anything like that. And they're all, you know, they're not doing anything interesting. They're just walking and waving a flag. And it's just, you wanted to make it a night out out of this? Hopefully you brought a book or something. And then the last thing I will mention here before we rank, power rank, are Winter Olympic sports.

So you're probably aware that the Winter Olympics is hosted by two cities this year in partnership with each other. Milan and Cortina, it's like Dempaza or something, right? It's like D-A-E-Z-A, something like that. So I don't know a lot about Italian geography. I had to look up today where Milan was.

I was like, look, I've obviously heard of Milan before but I didn't know for example it's the second most populated city in Italy I didn't know that it's like 1.28 million or something and I also figure like if you know they're doing winter Olympics is probably more in the north than the south which is true but like a lot of people I especially did not know where Cortina was and so I do a Google map search off of my search on Milan and all of a sudden and it is zooming way over to the right, almost to, I don't know, Slovakia, Slovenia, I suppose.

Did you guys realize, so these are the two host cities, they're doing it in partnership with each other. Milan and Cortina, it's a seven-hour drive from each other. And I know it's mountainous, so, you know, it's not that crazy as far as, like, the kilometers go.

But just the thought of having two host cities that are seven hours apart. I mean, I'm not going to go down a whole rabbit hole of what that means in the U.S., but just off the top of my head, a handful of major cities that are seven hours apart. I mean, this is a good example right here.

What if you had a Winter Olympics that was Chicago, Minneapolis? Maybe it's just because I live in one of those cities and I know both of them well, but just the thought of like, oh yeah, those two cities like, yeah, we'll host the Winter Olympics together. Like two completely different ball games.

And I recognize, the U.S. is a very different country in many regards than Italy, much larger. But same driving distance, seven hours. This is probably a more extreme example because of the population density, but what's, you know, seven hours would be like, what, like Boston to Washington, D.C.? Approximately. Imagine a jointly hosted Olympics, Boston, Washington, D.C., or I guess the last thing I'll go off of here as what, like, what do you think? Like Tampa to, I was going to say Tampa in New Orleans. That's longer than seven hours.

Probably not by a ton. Well, Florida's pretty long. I don't know. Seattle to San Francisco, that's got to be about seven hours. More than that. No, it's way more than that. Like Portland, what did I say? Portland is San Francisco?

Around seven hours. Probably like eight or nine, right? But it's not completely out of the ballpark. Anyways, if you wanted to get really like winter with it, because Utah is hosting the Olympics, the Winter Olympics in two shots here. This is, I was going to give like a Utah to Montana type of thing. But here's the last thing I want to say before we power ink.

I'm getting tired of these repeat offenders as far as the Olympics goes. Beijing was obviously a thing because they got 2008 and 2022. But now we're getting Milan Cortina in the Alps, key word there, the Alps in Winter Olympics, 26. And the 2030 Winter Olympics, French Alps. So we're literally just going on the other side of the mountains here. And it's like, how lazy are we? Can we not sprinkle in a little bit of,

I don't know, New Zealand or North Korea could be exciting. Or I don't know, you got some mountains up there in Columbia or something. I saw Columbia's only got one Winter Olympic representative. Or how about Finland? You know, Finland always gets the short end of the stick as far as Scandinavia goes. It's not even in Scandinavia. That's the thing. Scandinavia is what, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland.

And Finland just gets left out. I think we need to give Finland some love. That's my personal opinion. I'm not even Finnish. I'm Norwegian. But I think Finland needs some help. We could do Helsinki, Copenhagen. There's a seven-hour drive.

I have no idea. I don't have a good sense of time. Bonus trivia question here. Take your guesses right now. 7 p.m. Chicago time. So that's about 3 in the morning in Helsinki. what do you think the driving time from Copenhagen to Helsinki is? So Copenhagen's right across the way from Sweden.

And so you just got to get across Sweden and do a little hop-skip and a jump, and then you're in Helsinki driving time. But this is a good one, though, because your sense of time and space up there is kind of warped. For me, at least it is around the Baltic Sea. How long do you think it takes? I'm going to guess nine hours to go from Copenhagen to Helsinki. So we have a whole quiz that we're going to play on the Winter Olympics.

That'll be a trivia question today. This episode is going to run long. I apologize. Helsinki to Copenhagen. Here we go. Take your guesses on the hours as far as driving time goes. Oh, man, I was way off. What did I miss?

Oh, I missed the fact that, yeah, that was embarrassing. I was thinking, you know, here's what I'm thinking. Let me tell you the answer first is 26 hours. And what did I say, nine? Just a bit short. What I'm thinking in my mind is I'm visualizing this is like, oh, yeah, you go, Copenhagen is right next to Sweden. So you just got to cross Sweden.

Then you're good to go, well, I forgot, what is this, the Gulf of Bothnia or something? can confirm. I thought maybe there was a nice little bridge from Stockholm over to Helsinki and there's this nice big island in the middle that looks like it's got a lot of action going on. I thought maybe you could bridge that gap. And from there, then it probably is closer to like, I don't know,

12 hours, something like that. But you either have to go all the way up and around, all the way to the top of that Scandinavian Peninsula and then come back down. and that has tolls, by the way, so good luck. Actually, all of these Google Maps routes have tolls. The shortest option, what they recommend is going all the way back through Denmark, down through Germany, over through Poland,

up through Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia. And then there is a nice big, what do we think? Is that a bridge or is that a ferry? To go from Tallinn to Helsinki? That's got to be a ferry, right? That would be way too far for a bridge. Yeah, it's like 30. miles.

So it would be a hollow of a bridge though. Well, there you go. I failed extremely in our first trivia question. Maybe the site. We're playing the second trivia question together because it's just like an online quiz that I haven't parsed through yet. Okay. We need some more wine.

The Winter Olympics this year have 16 sports. And I'll say this. Within those 16 sports, there's a lot of, like, like variations, for lack of a better word. So, for example, there's curling, which we were talking about earlier. Well, there's mixed doubles, which is just two people on a team, two corys. And then there's men's, there's women's, and those are all three separate metal tracks, if you will. So that exists, that sort of thing exists with a lot of these events, like figure skating, for example.

There's individual and there's pairs. but it's just one event figure skating that we're going to be power ranking. The only exception to this rule, I guess because it's materially different enough to have two different things, is speed skating because there's regular speed skating, which is two people on the ice at one time, and then there's short track, which is, I guess, a spoiler alert, one of my favorites. And that's where you got like the five or the six. basically, you know, it's like the mile in track or something.

They're all next to each other. It's all just go, go, go the whole time. So that's short track. That's the one sport, at least according to olympics.com, that has this kind of variation where they're both going to be in our list. Otherwise, everything's kind of, you know, self-contained. So if we had gotten started on this 45 minutes ago, we could have really, dove into some of these a little bit more but let's uh let's do it here so 16 winter

olympic sports number 16 it's the new the newbie the newbie excuse me it is the newest olympic event it is brand new this year and i kind of like the idea of it i'm going to be honest with you because it sounds like a leom nison movie or something but it's its first year so we're going to have to see how it plays out and that's why it starts at the bottom starting in the rear of the field as they would say at daytona it is six No mountaineering. And what I read very briefly is you hike up a mountain and you ski down, which sounds kind of badass, right?

Because it's like, oh yeah, you got to like use both your up and your down skills. The skiing is like whatever, but the hiking up, I think that's kind of like there isn't a hiking event at the Olympics. Everything you do it seems like it's always on like flat surfaces. Or you're going down like in ski jump. which by the way is our fifth number 15 ski jump we'll talk about both of these but yes snow mountaineering I mean it sounds really cool

I would actually like to watch it I got to set my alarm for 3.30 a.m. is when some of these events start but it's a wait and see because I don't know exactly what it's going to look like that's right I put ski jumping at 15 I actually you know here's the thing when I came up with the idea

to power rank the sports which maybe we did it four or eight years ago also. I don't even remember. But at first I was like, oh, winter Olympics. I don't like it as much as the Summer Olympics. So it's probably going to be easy to power rank. And then I started doing it. I was like, this is not easy at all.

Like, it's not like I really hate ski jumping. It's just not that gripping to me. There's no, it's got chills because it's in the snow, but not as many thrills. So it's lacking thrills, average on chills. That's really the core ranking we're concerned about the thrills and the chills. Most of these events are good on chills, so it's really where do the thrills fall. And I don't know. It's just like you just go down this big thing, you try to get some air.

People are taking ED pills to get more fabric on their crotch. If you don't know that story, it was all over the news last week. ski jumping for me is number 15. Number 14, Nordic combined, which is a little bit of ski jump and a little bit of cross-country skiing. And if you're curious, so that was 14,

cross-country skiing for me comes in at number 12. It was hard to figure out what to do with it. Like, do I want to put Nordic combined lower than cross-country and ski jump? Because I think it's kind of silly that we're just like, you know, in the Summer Olympics, you get pentathlon and decathlon,

and here you're just getting like two together. It's just kind of like, I don't know. Do we want to put it above, below in the middle? And I couldn't decide. So I put it in the middle. That is the Nordic combined. Cross-country skiing, we're out of order here. But cross-country skiing, look, it's very traditional.

It's cool. If you grew up in like the Upper Midwest or New England or something, you probably did it as a kid, maybe still do it. No shade. But I compare it to like watching the marathon. where there's aspects of that that are interesting and cool, but largely it's just a really long time for very little drama. So that's why I put cross-country at 12.

I skipped over freestyle skiing at 13. Now this was out of all the ones on the list other than the new one, snow mountaineering. Freestyle skiing was the one when I saw it. I was like, I got to look up what this is because I don't really know. So it's a lot of like mogul. M-U-G-O-U-L-I-N-G, which is like the ski hills that are just like all the little humps and you just, it looks like, you know, your knees are about to, every, every little bump

looks like your ACL is going to go. So it's a lot of that and a lot of like jumps and aerials and spins in the air and stuff and it's like, it's a really cool concept. But I think I just got to watch it more to feel more invested in it because right now I just you tell me about freestyle skiing and I'm just like, I don't know, not convinced yet. So that's why I put it so low at 13. So we get to number 11 here.

This might be our first hot take that we got here. I put snowboard at number 11. And I know, you know, snowboard is interesting because a lot of the, like, you know, the Winter Olympics obviously doesn't have as many faces. for the U.S. as the Summer Olympics. But you got, like, Chloe Kim, is probably the most popular female athlete other than Lindsey Vaughn.

And, of course, on the men's side, who's now retired, but yes, Sean White, the Flying Tomato for, he did, what, like four Winter Olympics, it was crazy. Half pipe, it's fun. And I enjoy watching those and the crazy tricks they do. But, again, plenty of chills,

not as many thrills. Some thrills, right? We're into the middle portion of our power ranking here. I'm not shitting on the half pipe. But I don't know. It's just, we're into the part of the power rankings here where it's like if it's prime time and it's on,

yeah, I'm watching it. I'm plugged in. I want to see that, you know, those finals. But I'm not like waking up at 3.30 a.m. for it if you catch my drift, snow drift. So that's why snowboard is number 11. Now we're into the middle portion where it's like, These are definitely events I want to watch, but if I have to watch it straight for like two hours, I will start to lose interest.

That's probably true for the next, I would say five or six of these. So number 10, I put luge. So you got three separate or three different things that are all very similar with slight minor variations, right? You got the luge, you got the bobsled, and then you got the skeleton. I put luge lowest, even though it might be the most traditional out of these. I don't know, maybe bobsled's more traditional, but you got the single-person luge and the two-person luge. And it really, where luge is for me, in my opinions on it, are really representative of my larger challenge I have with the Winter Olympics, and that is that there are so few events where you are directly competing against your opponents,

and it's so many more events where it's just a time. trial kind of thing. And I just, the direct competition, imagine like if the 100 freestyle in the pool and swimming was just one person at a time, it's just, it would take all the air out of your balloon, right? And so that's kind of how I feel about Luge. It's like it's exciting. But I think that's the thing.

When you're watching it, with the exception of the timer and like the plus minus of the halfway mark, the quarter mark, whatever, like, It's hard to tell as a casual observer, oh, this person is killing it. Or, man, this person sucks unless you, like, are constantly banging up against the edge and stuff. That's what's hard for me about all of these, you know, the ones I just mentioned, Luge, bobsled and skeleton. But Luge is just the most boring because it's just like one person, sometimes two, just lying on their back. They look frightened to be there. So that's why I put Luge at 10.

But it is fun to say, L-U-G-E-L-L-U-S-E-L-U-S. So I should have bumped it up based off of that. I've got a personal introspective kind of hot take here. We've already mentioned this. But speed skating at 9. And again, this is not the one with like, this is not short track, short circuit. This is just you got two people on the ice at the same time. And it's a longer course.

It's a quarter mile, I think. And I like the direct competition 1V1 with this. speed skating, but it's just not, there's, it's definitely up there on the thrills and chills meter, we're about halfway through here, but it's not quite all the way there. But I still enjoy it, but there's a variation on speed skating I enjoy a lot more, and we'll get to that in a second here. Number eight and number seven will package together. Eight, I have skeletons, seven, I have bobsled. Skeleton is just so badass because you're going face down into the ice. It just feels luge is kind of like you're long for the ride. Skeleton is like your life feels

like it's kind of on the line here. Like if you F up, you might need a new mandible, whereas Luge it's like you might just bruise your hip. So that's why I put skeleton at 8 and I put bobsled. Now the interesting thing, everyone I have ever known, we're all just calling it bobsled. But if you look at the spelling, it's B-O-B-S-L-E-I-G-H, which would hint towards Bob Slay. Now, what's the deal? Is this sort of like a kernel mustard sort of thing, passing Colonel Muster, passing Colonel Muster, where it's like, yeah, the way we're spelling it out is not how we're going to say it at all,

and it's just okay. So is that like, it looks like Bob Slay, but we're going to just say Bob Sled? Or is like, oh, yeah, it's actually called Bob Slay, but we usually just call it Bob Sled. What's the deal here? If someone could explain that for us, that would be really nice. But I like the team element of bobsled. Cool runninges aside.

It's just you got to get everyone's buy-in. I think the starting aspect of bobsled is more interesting as well. All right, number six, this one might be in the hardest one for me to rank. Excuse me, because I was torn between. It's a really badass thing. And I also am not obsessed with watching it. So for me, number six is the biathlon. That's right.

It's three cellulables, not four. A lot of people say biathlon. It's biathlon. And that is a mixture of cross-country skiing and shooting. It's the only one of these events that's got shooting in it. The Summer Olympics just has shooting, like, straight up as a sport. You guys remember that guy from, where was he from? It was like Chechia or something where he just had, like, one hand in his pocket, the other

and his pistol. He got like a silver medal or something. But I like what I like about biathlon, it kind of inverts that. You know, with shooting, it's like, oh yeah,

you get it as close as you can, you earn more points with biathlon. It's like if you mess up, you lose time or you lose points or whatever it is. So it's like, I don't know, I like the kind of the sadistic element of the punishment where it's like,

oh yeah, if you missed it, like you fucked up. Where shooting, it's just like, oh yeah, you're just not going to, to get those points by athon it's like nope more time so i think that's kind of fun but again it's like

i don't you sit me down in front of the tv i'm like yeah this is fine for 20 minutes but i don't want to spend i don't want to watch the whole thing if that makes sense we're now into our top five and i'd say these are five where i like actually happy to watch uh number five for me is alpine skiing now it does have the like time trial versus directly against each other sort of thing but it's just such a classic, you know, downhill. The stars are out. Boady Miller, remember that guy? It's just iconic. It's, if you, you know, you want to think about like, Mir Maple. Look like she's about to pee on the carpet. That wouldn't be fun. You want to talk about just like the iconic sports, right? Summer Olympics, you talk about your, you know, track,

you know, your 800 meters and for, you know, medley relay in the pool. and stuff like that. You get to Winter Olympics, it's like, dude, the downhill skiing. That's what this is all about. Hockey, which we'll get to in a second here. So that's why I think, you know, I'm not in love with watching Alpine skiing, but you've got to put some respect on its name. Number four, this is one I really loved as a kid.

And now I don't, if I'm being completely brutally honest with you, I don't love watching it as much as I used to 20, 30 years ago, but you got to give it its respect. figure skating at number four. I mean, how can you forget? What's her name? That wasn't actually a planned bit, but that's actually what happened.

Michelle Kwan, Christi Yamaguchi. The one name I didn't forget, because it was my crush growing up as a kid, but I wanted to save it once I realized I could get that joke in there, is Sasha Cohen. And I just love the fact that we had a Sasha Cohen,

and then here comes English, comedian actor Sasha Baron Cohen. It's like you guys have the same name. Why haven't you done something together? And now in figure skating, you get the males, doing the quadruple axles. But it's fun. You know, that's the thing,

kind of like what I was talking about earlier with the luge. It's like if you're just watching it, unless they, like, fall, they stumble, which happens all the time, which is interesting. I feel like figure skating is a sport where you see people mess up a lot more than like your average sport and it's just like part of it. It's kind of like gymnastics in that sense. But you unless, you know, if everyone does like if if you're watching a routine and they don't fall,

you're like, oh my gosh, that was really good. And then the score is coming in and it's like a seven and a half out of ten. And the announcer's like, yeah, they didn't take any risks. And then five routines later, the Chinese come up and it's, you know, they're doing, sex tuba axles and stuff and they're getting tens out of tens and you're like well i guess it's kind of like diving in that sense right swimming and diving where it's like oh yeah that was a really good dive and it's like oh they didn't actually rotate that much in the air and you're like well guess i don't know shit so that's why figure skating is number four and we're down to our top

three here my number three might be a hot take i don't know but as i've gotten older i've really enjoyed it i've done this myself on a faux course it wasn't actual ice it was just like PVC or something, but here in Chicago a number of years ago, I put curling at number three. So curling is basically like shuffleboard on ice, but it's a really easy sport to like learn the rules of. And it's especially when you get these two teams that are, if you get two teams that are so evenly matched, just the back and forth. I love the terminology too. We already talked about a little bit at the top of the show. But you got the house. the hammer, the stones, the brush.

I don't know. I just, I love curling. I'll admit if you got 10 ends, an end is like an inning in baseball. It's going to take you a while. So it's definitely good for just like turning on in the background and going about your day and like, you know, chiming in here and there.

I get it. But man, curling is a great strategy game. I love it. I think that's the thing. It's like, it's one of the few sports we were going to head to head with someone else in Winter Olympics. There's so much strategy involved and then obviously the skill too. It's just fun.

It just feels essential. For me, number two, we talked about this number of times already, but short track, speed skating. It's the closest thing you have to like the 100 meter dash or like a relay race in track or swimming. It's just chaos right there. You got so many, you got five or six people. out there. You're trying to get the inside track. You see crashes all the time. I want to give a quick shout out to my church growing up, rock church. We had like a special one-off Olympics themed night when I was a kid. And there's film footage of this out there. I don't know who has it. I probably

will never see it again. And I didn't participate in any of the stuff because it was for like the high schoolers and I was younger. But there were multiple events. And one of the, them was like a figure skating type of thing, but with roller blades, it was in the gym, or the fellowship hall, actually, we would call it. It was carpeted, so watch out for carpet burn on your knees and elbows. But what stands out to me the most was the like faux speed skating thing, so it was just like a giant circle in the middle. It was basically like roller derby. But, you know, we had a bunch of these kids and my friend, friend Jared was in it, and he did really well and it was just it was chaotic and they're you know going around this gym on their rollerblades

uh you know four or five laps whatever and it's just like watching short track uh short yeah short track speed skating and i think maybe that's why i still love watching it so much it's just chaotic people are falling it's fast it's quick it's good stuff i could watch that for days and then number one look it's hard to de-thrown this it is a team sport it's the miracle on ice it's you got all the NHL players in it this time around i don't know how you can sit there and be like anything is more thrills and chills than this ice hockey i mean come on women's men's i don't i don't watch women's as much but i'm sure it's fantastic men's ice hockey winter olympics i mean that is to me that's bigger than winning a stanley cup i don't know if players

would agree with that or disagree with that. I actually don't have a sense of that. But, excuse me, winning the gold medal winter Olympics hockey. Because that's the thing. The competition, it's not like some of these sports. Nothing comes to mind in particular, but there's got to be sports where it's just like two or three countries just have the monopoly on it.

With hockey, I can give you in any average year. I feel like he can give you like 10 nations. And it's like, yeah, if they won the gold medal, that wouldn't be entirely surprising. U.S., Canada, then you jump over to Europe. But don't forget about like a China. I know they're a dark horse, but they got a lot of people. Russia, whatever we're calling them, I know in the past they were OAR. I don't know what they are this year.

And then obviously the Europe contenders, you got, I mean, who are the biggest players? Sweden, Chechia, Finland, Norway to a lesser extent. But then, I mean, you get some sneaky from like Slovenia, you get some action. Even like your Estonia's, your Latvias, you get some competitive teams. I don't know how well France does, but like France and Italy, they're not going to go down without a fight. Iceland might be up there. So, yeah, you got at least like eight to ten teams where it's like, oh, yeah, they could definitely win it all.

And that's exciting to me. I don't know. Because you go to the marathon or something. It's like, oh, yeah, if you are from Kenya or Ethiopia, yeah, you're going to be first. And everyone else can just have fun back there. Ice hockey, it's not that way, baby. I love how spread out the competition is. It's kind of like I feel like ice hockey in winter Olympics and basketball and summer

Olympics are kind of the twins there because summer Olympics is like you think oh yeah U.S. they're going to win like obviously and then France comes in and like kicks our ass and it's like what the heck just happened. So there's my winter Olympic sports power ranked. I won't list the numbers here. I'll just list the titles in order from my least to most thrilled and chilled. snow mountaineering, thin ski jumping, Nordic combined, freestyle skiing, cross-country skiing, snowboard, luge, speed skating, skeleton, bobsled, biathlon, alpine skiing, figure skating, curling, short track speed skating, and ice hockey. And you can watch and stream the Winter Olympics now on NBC and Peacock.

All right, to close this episode, this is the longest Beantown podcast we've had in a long time. Thanks for bearing with me. trivia question for you all. It is from the New York Times, and we're going to play it together. I haven't gone through these questions. I don't know how long it is. We'll play it by year. How much do you know about the Winter Olympics? Take Our Quiz by Daniel Adkinson, Adkisson, no end, published February 5th. Updated February 6th, so he's on top of it. Okay, we got 10 questions, and we're just going to do our best, and we're going to go quickly here. So if you really want to ruminate on some of these questions, turn me down to 0.25 speed.

but otherwise, I mean, I'm hungry. I got to take a shower. Got to take the dog out. It's 7.30 almost. We got stuff to do. Okay? Number one, where were the first officially designated Winter Olympics held in 1924?

Hint, they were in the same country as that year's summer games. Now, that doesn't help me, because I don't know where the 1924 Olympics were. Our four choices, Lake Placid, that's in New York, Chamonie, France, St. Mort, Switzerland, or Lilliehammer, Norway.

I'm going to guess Lake Placis has had two, right? 1980, but I thought the other ones were in the 30s. So am I thinking too hard on this? Where was the 1924 Summer Olympics hell? Was it in the U.S.? Was that a St. Louis year? I don't know. Let's just go with Lake Placid.

Nope, it was France, Chamonie, France. I don't know when the first Lake Placid Winter Olympics was. I'm not going to look it up now, but I think it was like 1936 or something like that. All right, number two, we're 0 for one. For decades, the winter and summer games took place in the same year, which were the first Winter Olympics on the new Stager schedule that is still in use today? I've definitely seen this a handful of times. So what schedule we're on?

2000 is a summer Olympics year. So 98 was a Winter Olympics year. 94. Oh, we got answer choices here. this is helpful. I'm almost positive. So it's Oslo, 52, Sarajevo, 84, or Pyongchang, 2018. It's got to be Lillehammer 1994, and it is. Okay, so we're one for two.

Number three, which of these sports was not part of the first winter Olympics? Hint, Germany dominates this event, though its roots date back to 16th century, Switzerland. Figure skating, ice hockey, bobsled, or luge. Now, New York Times calls it Bob Sled. with a D. Interesting. So which was not part of the first Winter Olympics and it's an event Germany dominates? Well, that doesn't, then it means it's not ice hockey. It's not figure skating.

It's got to be bobsled or luge. I feel like bobsled has got to be older than luge, right? Community, team. Let's go bobsled. No, it's luge. Damn it. Luge was added in 1964. Interesting.

All right. One for three. Here's question four. Which figure skater is known as the quadruple god for his quadruple axle A jump never successfully landed in Olympic competition? I could have sworn going back like two or three Winter Olympics, they finally landed a quad. Am I crazy?

I feel like I'm high right now. I feel like it was all the rage maybe in like Vancouver or Beijing or something. Beijing was just the last one. Whoever was Sochi, 2014, right? I feel like it was like, oh my gosh, they finally landed a quad. So now this article is saying they've never landed a quad. I don't know. The answers are Ilya Malinin, Johnny Weir, traders fans know.

Maxim Naumov or Brian Boitano. I have no idea. Let's go with Namov. Nope, it's Ilya Malinin. He's 21 years old. He's the first successful quadruple axle in competition. I feel like I'm going crazy I'm sorry I have to stop

I have to Google this quadruple Axle I'm so confident that this has happened in previous Olympics Google AI says he's the only person to have successfully landed the quadruple axle in competition okay let's see what Wikipedia says

like I know this has been a conversation in past Olympics um what says they've been been done more frequently in women's? That's interesting. Execution. All quadruble jumps have four revolutions.

Except for the quadruble axle, which has four and a half revolutions. I don't know why. All right. There's not going to be enough time here to go into all these details, but I don't know if that feels... I'm misinformed.

Let's just leave it there. Question number five, or a hot one for... What, one for three start? One for four start. At the 1980 winter games, which country did the U.S. Sorry, which country did the gold medal winning U.S. men's hockey team go on to defeat after the Miracle on Ice against the Soviet Union? Canada, Finland, Czechoslovakia, or Sweden.

I think it's Finland. That's my guess. It is Finland. All right. We're back on track. We're two out of five. Number six, which athlete has won the most winter games medals with 15 total? Is it Michaela Schifrin of the U.S.?

Baudi Miller of the U.S. Marit Bjorgen of Norway or Ariana Fontana of Italy? I have no idea. I'm certain without any logic to back it up that it's not Bode Miller. I don't even, is Michaela Schifrin? Was she downhill skiing? I don't remember what she did.

Don't know the other two, but you know what? Let's go with our Norwegian roots and go for Marit Bjorgan. It is Marit Bjorn. He's a cross-country skier. competed in Salt Lake City, Turin, Vancouver, Sochi, and Pyongchang winning eight gold medals. Good for you. All right, we're three for, what, six now? Okay, not bad.

Here's question seven. Which of these countries has never competed in the Winter Olympics? Saithi Frica, Mongolia, Senegal, Iraq. That's tough. I thought maybe we were going to get a bone thrown our way. South Africa, I feel like they have. I will say this. there was a segment on the opening ceremonies with Charlie's Theron.

I call her Chuck Theron. And she was doing a tribute to Nelson Mandela or something. South Africa, they got the mountains up there. They got to be in it. I'm ruling out safety break out. That leads us with Senegal, Mongolia, Iraq. Now, Mongolia is sneakily sparsely populated, but it's very cold. So I'm going to keep Mongolia in this or out of it, if you will.

So I'm between Senegal and Iraq. Senegal has a lot of people, but so does Iraq. But there's nothing cold about Senegal, man. I've got to go with my gut because I saw Iran had some people today. And I just, I got to go with the info I have. So I'm going to go with Senegal. No, it's Iraq. God damn it.

The process is there. We just can't close it. Tough. All right, we're three for seven. Here's question eight. which city kudos to the writer by the way good trivia questions

which city in one of the snowiest areas on earth hosted the 1972 winter Olympics and still draws millions of visitors to an annual festival that features elaborate ice and snow sculptures Sapporo, Japan, Calgary, Alberta, Oslo, Norway, or Innsbruck, Austria

I think all four of these have had Winter Olympics so that doesn't help me much and gosh I got nothing. I feel like Oslo wouldn't need to attract visitors for its ice and snow sculpture, so I'm going to roll that out. And beyond that, I don't have a great sense. I'm pretty sure all of these have hosted,

and I don't really know. Who would need a festival to draw visitors? I think I'm going with Sapporo or Innsbruck. I'm going to guess Sapporo. Yes, it is. Hey, look at that. The logic paid off. All right, we're four of eight.

Last two questions. Number nine, in which of these now vanished countries did the 1984 winter games take place? East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and USSR or USSR. 1984. Seems like a big year. Like I should know that? Was it Czechoslovakia? Hmm.

Like Prague, 1984. I think it might be Sarajevo. That sounds right. Yugoslavia, Sarajevo. Let's lock it in. Got it. Nails. All right, we're, what, five of nine?

So at the very least we hit 50%. We're going for 60%. Here comes question number 10. Our last one, last thing we got to do here. Which event that includes uphill skiing, hiking? Oh, here we go. And downhill skiing makes its Olympic debut in Cortina this year. Super in order to combine extreme slope style alpine triathlon

or, of course, ski. mountaineering. There we go. All right, we got bailed out. Six out of ten, not bad. Guys, that's what I had for you. I appreciate you hanging in there. Man, if you listen to all 90 minutes of the Beantown podcast, you are a champ, a gold medalist in my eyes. My name is Quinn David Furness. Thank you so much for listening to my program. Quinn David Furness presents the Beantown podcast. We'll come at you next week. That's not it's sexual. We'll be here next week for more Winter Olympics coverage and Super Bowl results and all that stuff. I hope you're staying safe. I hope you're staying sane. I'm exhausted. I'll check in on you

guys later. Bye-bye. Hoo.