The Chaser Report - Olympic Fever

Episode Date: July 19, 2021

In a bid to avoid talking about COVID, we preview the Tokyo Olympics – but aren't entirely successful. We also explore interesting Olympic facts, the shocking depths of Charles' boredom, and a novel way for homesick expats to return. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode of The Chaser Report is sponsored by Survivor. This season, Brains v. Braun. Next season, Melbourne versus Sydney. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report for Tuesday, the 20th of July, 2021, which is, of course, Charles, the year in which we're having the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Yes. Just like Gladys Bergerickle always says. Better late than never.

Yes, indeed she does. And Charles, what a great opportunity for not just us here in lockdown Sydney and lockdown Victoria, but the entire world to just put the whole of COVID to one side. Yes. Forget about it. Forget about the outbreak and just embrace Olympic fever. Oh, shit, I should mean this. Don't call it that.

Can we just for once, Charles, have a positive conversation? Oh, shit. No, no, no. I just want to spread some joy. No, not Joey. No. Go on. Okay.

It's going to be a super game. No. But seriously, Charles, it's going to be great. I mean, I'm so looking forward to cheering on our athletes. They've worked so hard for this. It's had to prepare and then it got cancelled. They had to prepare again. Then it probably should have been cancelled, but it wasn't.

And I'm going to be watching so much of this. Oh, yeah. Like Nick Kierios. No, he's not there because he's worried about catching COVID. Well, surely some other Australian tennis players. Well, Alex Domenal was going to represent us, but he... Yeah, Alex Domenal? He had to pull out because he caught COVID.

He's got COVID. He actually has COVID. Don't worry. Right, okay. Well, I'm sure there's somebody down the rankings who we're sending to the tennis. Yeah, I think you can still go if you want. But don't worry, the IOC is playing this very carefully. Yes.

There's a bubble. Oh, good. A bubble. It's going to be absolutely fine. Don't worry. They've assured us it's going to be absolutely safe and all good. Except for the two. people who tested positive inside the Olympic village a couple of days ago.

But they were just workers. They were just workers. They weren't members of any team. Don't worry. Wait, what? They were workers. Yeah, they were just workers on the, you know, just preparing. Well, hang on, I thought this was a bubble.

Well, there's also the... You can't have a bubble if you've got workers inside. Workers always are the reason why everyone catches COVID. Well, I'm sure that they're just like hotel quarantine workers or something. Oh, right, okay. It's probably going to be fine. And so how do you get from the airport? to the Olympic Village.

I think they've probably organized a limo. Oh, great. So they've got a limo draw. Well, that'll be fine. And then removalists to take their bags, of course. But also, Charles, I mean, I don't want to be a down-up, but there are actually two South African football players who have tested positive now.

So two athletes have COVID. Also, seven staff, one of the Olympic hotels, have tested positive in Hammamatsu. But apparently the athletes, the 30 athletes who are there from Brazil, haven't been infected at least yet. But apart from them, the bubble is secure. Right, great. Well, I mean, aside from those string of isolated incidents,

this will be fine because anyway, it's not like, you know, it would only be a problem if COVID worked in a sort of exponential manner. Absolutely. And as we know here in Australia, it's easy to keep people separate from the virus. I mean, as this happens to. Charles. Tokyo is in a state of disaster. Last week, cases were the highest they've been in six months, and it's absolutely rampant out on the streets, but not inside the bubble.

Right, not inside the bubble, because the bubble is protected by a massive, what, dome of plastic? Is that how they're keeping the virus out from the rest of Tokyo? No, I think the main strategy is hope at this stage. But don't worry, because only a few people have tested positive thus far. It's not as though this is a disease that can spread quickly from people who are in close proximity, for instance, at an Olympic village. Yes. Who are all fucking each other.

Yeah, no, that won't be a problem at all. Well, one good thing, Charles, is that after this is over and all these athletes come back to Australia, it says not as though any of them will spread COVID in hotel quarantine. No, no, no, of course, because of the bubble. On today's show, we're going to talk more about the Olympics, Charles. You've got some fun facts. Yeah, I've got some fun facts about Olympics past just to get into that whole Olympics fever. Is one of the facts that this Olympics is going to be the most disastrous ever

and that people will die? No, no, no. There's a lot more disastrous Olympics, including the 1900 Olympics. That's all coming up. Although I think give this one a chance to surpass it, to be honest. Also, you've got a list of things you did on the weekend when you were bored. Why did dangle some enticing fish in front of our listeners? Oh, yeah.

We're talking boringness coming up. All that and a lot more. But first of all, let's go to Rebecca Dana-Muno with the Jason News headlines. Rival cities, Sydney and Melbourne, have today put aside their differences and declared, we're all in this together, in the mission to rid the country of the toxic disease commonly known as Katie Hopkins. The reality TV star claimed she was opposed to lockdowns, even though she was in Australia to appear on Big Brother, a show literally about locking people down. The New South Wales government has successfully stopped the biggest issue facing its citizens after they successfully trapped TikTok comedian John Bernard K. Ruse into giving out a false prediction.

When asked whether the government should put the same effort into actually stopping the virus, the New South Wales Premier said she would be making a decision about that in about three weeks' time when it's already too late. Scientists have discovered a new cure to the coronavirus. The breakthrough came after experts noted. that private school children were exempt from all the current lockdown rules. Experts say the only logical explanation is that being a private school child makes you immune to the virus.

That's the latest news you can't trust. I'm Rebecca Deunamuno. This episode of The Chaser Report is brought to you by Survivor. Lockdown edition. It's just Jonathan Lopalio yelling at you to get out of bed. So Charles, the opening ceremony for the Tokyo... 2020 Olympics is on Friday, it's almost upon us. It's time to get excited about the Olympics all over again.

I think you're legally actually required to remain at home, Dom, to watch the opening ceremony. I'd planned to be in Tokyo. I was really keen to go over and enjoy it when it was going to be last year. Then I was going to do that when it was going to be this year. And now we'll never travel again. But I do have some fun facts about the Olympics, just to get everyone into the Olympic spirit. We're going to start with the medals. Did you know, Dom, that the gold.

medals awarded at the Olympics are not made of gold. You've got to be kidding me. They are not made of gold. They are made of silver with a little gold around the edge of them. Can you imagine if you worked all your life to try and win a gold medal and you get one? Yeah. And they're like, it's a silver with paint. Yeah, yeah, that's right.

You get one, you get home, you boil it down so that you can cash it in at your local cash cost. That's right. Immediately. Cash converters. Convert it, that's right. And then it turns out to be silver. What a joke.

But the second fact, the 2021 Olympics are the greenest Olympics ever. Well, of course there. No one's going to them, Charles. So the metals are actually going to be made out of recycled metal. Oh. Yes. So because, you know, when you're thinking,

let's green up the things, you don't think, oh, let's get rid of our carbon emissions and stop everyone from flying around the world. Yeah, that's not. have an Olympics at all. It leads to the next fact, which is that all the beds, this is true, in the Olympic Village this year, are made out of cardboard. What a great idea. Yes. Well done, Tokyo. I mean, if there's one thing I would want to do with a bed after

athletes had been lying in them for two or three weeks, it's just burn them. It's not very eco-friendly, but it's a great way to get rid of cardboard. Well, I think someone was saying that it's to stop them from having sex. But I don't think it is, because as far as I'm aware, the cardboard beds are quite strong. You can have sex in a cardboard bed. Look, I'm sure that the Olympians will find a way to do it. And they're very strong, creative people.

Very flexible. Very chiseled. Very handsome. Sorry, sorry. You've been fantasising about this, haven't you? Okay. So, okay, let's get back to some facts. The 1896 Olympics, sorry to go on about the medals.

They didn't even have gold medals. What? What was the point? They had silver and bronze. Oh, no, they had bronze and nothing, right? So the top spot got silver and an olive branch. And then the second place got bronze. And the third place got nothing.

Well, in Australia, we've always known. that first was all that mattered. If any Olympian comes other than first, we hate them. As a nation, we just stop and hate them. Yep, that's right. So, but I do like the idea of giving an olive branch as well. I think that we should bring that one back. Yeah, just cut down trees.

Yeah, it's a perfect idea. So my next fact is that the 1900 Olympics was the worst ever Olympics. Really? the second one. Yes, it spread the competitions over five months and they didn't promote it. So nobody actually turned up. And many athletes who competed in the Olympic Games didn't know that they'd competed in the Olympic Games. That's great.

I mean, a great way to reduce the pressure. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And the best fact about it is that many of the national teams were comprised of people from lots of different countries. right so you know if you're australia and you're ending i don't know the hockey or something you could just get all the best people in the world and put them all in your hockey team and say oh we're from australia this is the australian hockey team just how i thought we already handed out passports to people i mean i'm surprised katie hopkins isn't representing

australia in some sport well she's sort of she's as an australian in spirit isn't she she is she's a racist who knows nothing about anything yes and the other the other really great detail of the 1900 Olympics and I again think that they should repeat it in 2021 is that the umpire in um or the judge in the rowing oh yeah was a seven-year-old Parisian boy that's fantastic isn't that great it's like a Wes Anderson movie yeah so you know there you go that's what you know well I suppose he'd be impartial wouldn't he he probably Seven-year-olds have a lot of integrity. I think that's probably a good idea.

Okay. So there's been a lot of cheats in the Olympics over the years, Dom. Yeah. But by far, the best cheat ever was in 1904. His name was Fred Lortz. He was a marathon runner. And can you guess, Dom, how he cheated? What did he do?

Did he take a shortcut on the course maybe, like just sort of snuck off to the thing? the side through some bushes and then then leapt ahead. See, that's what a normal cheat would do, Dom. This cheat was a genius cheat. All right. What would you do if you, Dom, had to run a marathon? Probably get an Uber.

Exactly. That's what he did. He got a car, which were very rare. He hopped in a car, and he drove all the way to just four miles before the end. And then he ran the last four miles. miles and he won. That is a brilliant hack. I love it.

I love it. So I think we should be, you know, keeping an eye out on the, on the Tokyo marathoners. And if they don't catch, they should catch the bullet train. They should. That would be much better. Is your gym too quiet and peaceful? Yes. Then join Doff Doff Fitness, where the in-house music is deafening.

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I want to talk about how goddamn bored I have been. This lockdown thing, especially now that there's all these new rules where you're not allowed to go and buy handbags anymore. You can't even spend hours wandering around for non-essential purchases. They're actually locked to stay. down, Charles. I actually feel locked down. Anyway, I just want to go through some of the things that I found myself doing over the

weekend. The first one is my son, my 10-year-old, showed me that you can actually download on your Apple Watch games, right? Right. And I literally, there's this very moronic game where you're just throwing a ball at other balls and then you've got to match them up in the colours. And I spent like an hour and a half playing that game on my watch. I love that. And it was not like anyone came along at the end of when, come on, you've got something to do. It was just like, okay, well, I probably should stop playing this now.

I mean, you and your, I've been to your house. You have so many gaming computers. You've got multiple iPads. You've got like an Apple TV on a big screen. You had 10 devices you could have used, all of which were less shit than the gaming experience on an Apple watch. That is desperate, my friend. On Sunday morning, I went to go for a jog. And I'm so bored of my jogging route that I decided.

You know what? I'm going to do it in the opposite direction. I'm just going to take the circuit in the opposite way. Not because it was any better or anything. Just because that'll be interesting. That's something new in my life. I mean, I hear you on that one, Charles. I was so bored.

I actually exercised. Oh, my God. At all. You exercised. I know. I went for like a five-kilometer walk. Did you have to go to hospital afterwards? We live quite near a public hospital.

I walked up there and back just in coming. And we had this game on the weekend. We invented this game with the kids where we went to our local skate park and there's a sort of half pipe there. And we played handball like on either side of the half pipe. Oh yeah, that actually sounds quite fun. Yeah, it was quite fun, right. But the funest part we discovered of the game,

because handball's handball. You play it for 20 minutes and, you know, it's not the board's most injuring thing, was we discovered going and getting the ball So the game devolved into this game of trying to get the ball out in handball so that people could slide down the half pipe and go and get the ball. So literally we're more interested in going and getting the ball. So, yeah, the bit that's annoying in handball was the one thing that you did. That does sound quite fun though, to be honest, half pipe handball.

We even, on the weekend, we even made popcorn from scratch. So instead of, you know how you have microwave. I didn't know there was any other kind. You get microwave popcorn because it only takes a couple of minutes. Well, when you're making it from scratch, you get the little corn kernels. You put them in the saucepan. That takes at least five minutes. So that's the extra three minutes of just waiting around, you know, getting rid of some

of the time that you've got on your hands, waiting for the popcorn to, to pop. Charles, this is tragic. This is deeply tragic. I'm desperate I am, Dom. I'm fucking desperate. I mean, how did Melbourne get through 117 days of this? That must have been programming games for Apple Watch by that point. I went out for a walk yesterday afternoon and I decided that there was no traffic.

There was no one around. I decided I'd wait at the traffic lights, even though there was no chance of me being run over until the green wind because it would while away a few extra minutes. It's just getting absurd. Probably the worst thing is that over the weekend, Australia versus South Africa, the T20, fifth game, Australia was defeated. So they lost four one in the series. Like it's just a horrible thing to have happened.

I watched that game twice. Dom, I watched it twice. I watched it once and then I watched it again to, I don't know, lift my spirits. Watching my own national team fails. to the worst team in the world? Just because you'd watch some people running around who are allowed to play team sports. So anyway, look, I think it's terribly boring here in Sydney. I'm sure it is in Melbourne as well.

But our only hope is that Scott Morrison also lives in Sydney. So with any luck, he's going to get, been so bored this weekend that maybe, just maybe, he'll think about actually doing something about the vaccine rollout. No, no, Charles. Charles, Scott Morrison is not working on this problem at the moment. He's a non-essential worker. Ah, yeah, of course. This episode of The Chaser Report brought to you by Australian Survivor.

Watch as the average taxpayer struggles to get a vaccine, welfare payments and a house. It's been a bit of a tough time. We're feeling a little bit exhausted. We're feeling a little bit frustrated. So I want to leave you today with a really inspiring story. Charles. I am. A lot of Australians are stuck overseas, as we know.

Can't get back. I know. Isn't it inspiring? I love it, whereas Katie Hopkins can just waltz in, apparently. Anyway, there's a young couple. Their names are Jake Shepherd and Tamara Illich. They're from tweetheads, and they found themselves in Mexico, trying to work out how to get home. They couldn't afford flight, so they thought, what are we going to do?

What they did, Charles, was they looked around for anyone who was going on a boat anywhere, and they managed very slowly and very surely to get their way back towards Australia, right? That is extraordinary. Yeah. So their first captain, they had to bail out 356 buckets of water because the bilge pump broke in the middle of the ocean, nowhere near anywhere. Then they made it to Mexico to French Polynesia. Then they made it to Fiji, and they're almost back.

They're pretty much on the verge of getting back here. After 62 days, an massively difficult journey. They're about to arrive back in Sydney. Yes. To a lockdown. But they've saved the cost of those flights. But are they even allowed? Like I thought the whole law now is that if you arrive by boat,

you're basically not a person. Imagine if they got met by Border Force and told they had to go to Christmas Island. Well, it'd actually be better than Sydney at the moment. Yeah, well, they'll probably have to go into a hotel quarantine where they will get the Delta strain of COVID. Yes, that's what's going to happen. Imagine sailing across the ocean back towards. your COVID-free home of Australia

and then when you land at your port of destination discovering that it's in a massive outbreak and you basically fucked it. God, we are such fuckwits. We're fuckwits to foreigners, we're fuckwits to our own citizens. But not to race its commentators from Britain. Yeah, but not to them.

They can come on right down. But Charles, the real moral of this story is, do you want to get on a boat and sail to Mexico with me tomorrow? Fuck yeah. There's more news at chaser.com. dot a u and we do appreciate a five-star review on apple podcast it helps us out um the code word for today is olympic fever olympic fever yeah that's got that olympic fever absolutely our gear is from road microphones and we're part of the acast creator network see ya