The Pour Over Today - TPO Explains: How Do the Winter Olympics Work?

Episode Date: February 21, 2026

Readers of The Pour Over pick a topic to have explained, and Jason and Kathleen have to get Joe to understand it in less than 30 minutes… This week, they’re explaining the Winter Olympics. Sign up for TPO's News Cleanse ⁠here⁠ Looking to support us? You can choose to pay⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Check out our sponsors! We actually use and enjoy every single one. ⁠⁠⁠Cru⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Wild Alaskan⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠HelloFresh⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Safe House Project⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Gloo⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠QAVA⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠CCCU⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Filament Bible⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Upside⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Mosh⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠LMNT⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Not Just Sunday Podcast⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Bible Gateway Plus⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠TPO Corrections Page⁠⁠

So, you know, in my mind, I think I've seen documentaries or just new segments of, you know, XYZ country host the Olympics. And then after the Olympics are over, it's just like deserted, right? And so countries put so much time and effort and investment to get ready. The event happens. And then it just seems like, whoa, what a waste. All right, folks, welcome to another episode of TPO Explains. I'm very excited about this one.

Today we're going to talk about the Winter Olympics. And before we get into understanding more of the logistics behind it and how it all gets set up, Kathleen, have you been tuning into the Winter Olympics? Yes, some when I can't. Okay, some. With the amount that you've been watching, what's a sport that you've been kind of surprised by or impressed with? Okay. We watched the other night.

I can't remember what it was called. the long jump, that's not it. The long hill, the large hill. Large hill. Large hill. I guess there's a small hill. I don't know. But anyway, this one's called the large hill.

It was the women's large hill. And these girls on skis literally just started at the top of this hill and went down it and jumped. And they looked like flying squirrels. And they just went as far as they could. And they had to like, I don't know, aerodynamically see if they could go for, I don't know. It was fascinating because I think that it's both on like distance and there must have been something to like the style because of course the commentators were like, oh yeah, a little bit of, I don't. They were speaking in a different language. They looked like flying squirrels.

It was fascinating. That was really fun to watch. And they like started up this hill like almost like horizontally and just let themselves go and just it was cool. That's amazing. Yeah. For listeners who don't know, our mascot is a squirrel named Shadrack. So we got to get Shatterak to compete in the large hill. Wow.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely missed opportunity there. Yeah. What about you? What's your favorite? Yes.

I'm pretty sure the one that I am thinking of is called Big Air skiing. And it simply is just like, not the same as mine, right? Not the same, I don't think. Because it's just one huge hill. Mine, I said. Yeah, you own that sport. And it's, this one is for sure all about style points. It doesn't matter like how.

far distance-wise you go but the whole point and these these athletes are going up this uh down the slope one big jump and they're doing literally like six rotations and also like flipping and over end and grabbing their skis and landing flawlessly and i'm just like yeah how can they do that and most of the skiers went off the jump backwards And so, yeah, just throw in something else that was to make it even more impressive. It's insane. No kidding. All right.

So let's get started. First off, Kathleen, what are the Winter Olympics at a high level? Okay. You have like the Olympics that started in ancient Greece. And then the first like modern Olympics, the summer Olympics like we know them, started in 1894. It wasn't until, oh gosh, bad. math all the top of my have 14 years later 1908 that they added um figure skating to the summer games and then they added a whole week of winter sports to the 1912 summer games um and then it wasn't

until 1924 that they said we're just going to hold a separate international winter sports week under the same patronage of like the um international Olympic committee that's what that stands for the IOC um so it was actually the same year winter Olympics happened the same year as the Summer Olympics until 1994. And then they decided to have them like on an alternating rotation. Okay, that's good to know that it only split not that long ago, the alternation. If you look at like the years of Winter Olympics, it'll go from 1988 to 1992 and then 1994. So they only had two years in between one time to get it on that alternating rotation.

Gotcha. Let's see what else about the Winter Olympics. Winter Games have been hosted on three continents by 13 countries, but all in the northern hemisphere. No southern hemisphere country has applied to host the Winter Olympic Games, but if they wanted to and were awarded the bid, they would move the Winter Olympics to August instead of February for like weather. Their reasons. Right. Temperature reasons. Winter Olympics have been hosted in the U.S. four times.

Can you name any of the locations? All Lake City, Utah. In 2002, yes. Anywhere else? Any other guesses? All right, that's fine. It was before you were born. Lake Placid, New York has hosted twice in 1932 and 1980.

And then it's now referred to as Olympic Valley, but it's, on the northwest side of Lake Tahoe in California. They hosted in 1960. And then the Winter Olympics will be coming back to the U.S., back to Utah in 2034. So it's just two Winter Olympics away. Get your tickets now. Yeah, I saw 2034.

I was like, wow, that's 34 years from now, but it's not. Time flies. Time flies. Yeah. All right. Let's see. What other questions do you have about Winter Olympics? Well, you mentioned the IOC and are they, do they make all these decisions on anything like the big decisions, Olympic related?

Yeah, I mean, the IOC is who's in charge. There's like a whole Olympic charter rules, like that's who's in charge. It's who owns the Olympics. They set the rules. They own the brand, control the brand. They choose the host country. But then the host city and country are responsible for actually like. putting things on, building the infrastructure for the Olympics and stuff like that.

And then there's also like a local Olympic organizing committee that'll be in charge of the Olympics that are in that city. Looking under the hood of how a city actually gets chosen, as a city, you have to, I think, I know this because growing up around Chicagoland area, Chicago put in a bid for a summer games, I believe and didn't win it. But so from what I understand, cities have to put a proposal together to bid on hosting. So then you're saying it goes to that this IOC group. Yeah.

So it used to be that they would have to, it used to be like a big competition. And a city would have to officially bid to host the Olympics. They'd spend like millions of dollars just trying to win. There were multiple rounds where you were like an applicant city. and then a candidate city and then a final vote. And you had to create this huge package showing how you were going to get everything done. There was a lot of marketing and lobbying. But then like obviously only one place wins.

And so all these other cities have spent a lot of money and now the IOC is really focused on. Like their carbon footprint and stuff like that. Anyway, it kind of goes against their new operating principles. They've in the, I want to say around 2020, they came up with some new like operating principles that were really more focused on environmental efficiency and stuff like that. Plus, there were a couple scandals. Gotcha. Yeah, in 2002 was the scandal.

So Salt Lake City hosted the Winter Olympics in 2002, and it was discovered that local organizers had given gifts and, like, financial considerations to the people who said they'd vote for Salt Lake City to win. and some of the bribes included medical treatment for relatives, a college scholarship for one member's son, and like even a land deal in Utah. Whoa. Yeah, these aren't like edible arrangements. It's like a big deal. So anyway, they had an investigation and the investigation basically revealed that there had been inconsistencies for every Olympics, both summer and winter, since like 1988. 10 IOC members were expelled, 10 more were sanctioned, and I think that kind of was the catalyst for like, we're going to do things differently. Okay, well, hearing you talk about all that, my mind just naturally curious, who is even on this IOC?

Like, how do people get involved with it? Who's on this? Well, I would tell you, but I quite literally don't think I could pronounce half their names. There's, so I think anywhere from like 100 to 110 members right now, there's 106 members. They're just individual people. They're not country representatives. They represent the committee and what they call the Olympic movement. So they are all in on the Olympics.

They're not necessarily like the United States delegate to the Olympics. It could be they intentionally mix backgrounds. So you have independent individuals, business leaders, public. figures, athletes, you can have current or former Olympians, leaders of sports organizations, but they do have limits, like I said, to keep like a balance to things. So you can only have 15 active athletes, for example, or like 15 from National Olympic committees. So there are limits that way.

And then there's age limits. So you have to be 18 and you have to be, I think, under 70. But like you could get an extension. if you turn 70 and you want to keep going. You have term limits. I think it's eight years. And then you can like renew your term. They're not really paid.

There's no salary. So they're considered volunteers, but they do get travel lodging and meals covered and like per diems for their work. So just people all throughout the world who really care about the Olympics. Hey, it's Emily from the pourover. You know how everyone has their gas station for their own set of reasons? Mine is the one that gives me the most cashback on Upside. I'm not just talking about cashback at the gas tank.

I even get it on some restaurants and grocery stores in my area. It's perfect for my family that loves cashback like we love Friday pizza nights in the middle of a cold Midwest winter. And I'm not alone. Upside has given back $1 billion to its users. To find out how much you could earn, download the free Upside app and use promo code TPO to get an extra 25 cents back for every gallon on your first tank of gas. That's an extra 25 cents back for every gallon on your first tank of gas using promo code TPO. Oh.

So, you know, in my mind, I think I've seen documentaries or just new segments of, you know, XYZ country host the Olympics. And then after the Olympics are over, it's just like deserted, right? And so countries put so much time and effort and investment to get ready. The event happens. And then it just seems like, whoa, what a waste. So do you know, like, what's the cost of hosting? I mean, it varies.

So the, I want to say for both summer and winter games, and there's a pretty big range, but the average since 1960, the average cost of the winter games has been $393 million. For summer games, $5.2 billion. The highest recorded total cost for any, like, recent Olympics was Sochi. 2014 and it cost 55 billion to build all that because I mean part of like their new principles that I was talking about is they really don't want places to have to build a bunch of new you know arenas or anything like that to host so what they'll look at a lot of different factors when they're choosing a host they'll look at um like do they have long term plans for anything that they are going to build do they have um you know locations that are already running.

for use? Do they have, like, travel already set up? Like, people have built bullet trains before to get people from place to place for the Olympics. Like, is that, is there a plan for that, or is that already, you know, in existence? What's the funding strategy? Like, is the public supportive of it? So they look at a lot of different factors when they're weighing who's going to be a host country. And one of them is, like, how much new stuff do you have to build? But I did find that let's see since 1896 to Beijing 2022 they've used 982 venues and of those 868 were permanent so 88% of those were not just like temporary venues and then of the permanent ones 86% of those are still in use so their definition of still in use is a little bit broad it's like, oh, well, if you use it multiple signs a year, then it's still in use. So it could be used like twice or something.

And they're like, yeah, count it. But it seems like, because I had the same idea that, you know, the long hill or whatever, large hill. You know, for the one sport that I called out, I'm really not remembering the name of it, but just had this vision of it like sitting there unused for years. But I guess that's just not as prominent as I thought it was. So with those huge dollar numbers that you're thrown out, and you also mentioned like, yeah, is it going to be public funded? So yeah, who ends up paying for this for these events to be hosted?

The host country. I mean, the International Olympic Committee will contribute some toward it, but typically it's that city or that country that's going to pay for. And more often than not, they're hoping, like revenue from people coming at, you know, from tourism will help pay for that. but there have been countries that have netted like a loss after the Olympics and they just didn't pan out like I think the example of the bullet train they had assumed like hey we're going to build this and there's going to be a cost associated with building this for the Olympics and then it's going to actually have a long tail of like boosting tourism for years after the Olympics and they did see that for a couple years but not to the extent that they were planning so they ended up like losing money on it so just the host putting it all out there. For these current Winter Olympics in Milan, Cortina, did they have to build anything or was it already in place? I think most places have some sort of combination, but I will say this current Olympics, like it used to be for the Winter Olympics specifically. Like, you couldn't have a lot of distance between events.

So for like summer Olympics, I know there have been long distances between like sailing and equestrian events, for example. But for winter Olympics, they're like, oh, it has to be high in the mountains for like alpine events. And you can't have more than X amount of kilometers between events. But for this Olympics, they kind of have been really accommodating. So there's actually eight different venues across northern Italy where they're doing all the different events. And I think there's, Milan is actually 410 kilometers from Cortina. So spreading that. So they're kind of using what's available there so they don't have to build a lot of new stuff.

Does that make sense? Yes. Yeah. But it also like the winter games, they were having a hard time getting people to submit bids to host with those restraints about like, oh, you need to be high in the mountains and don't build a lot of stuff. And it's like most places high in the mountains are like small. Like that's why Lake Placid hosted twice because it's like a smaller city that's high in the mountains that still has, you know. So by loosening the requirements a little bit and letting there be more space between venues, they opened up a lot of opportunity. Continuing on with the example of Milan Cortina and how they're already utilizing a lot of the infrastructure that was in place.

So after the Olympics, like what usually happens? I know you mentioned the statistics about it is a vast majority that they're still running the places. Maybe there's a few that use, quote, multiple times a year and it's, you know, just a handful. But after the Olympics, you know, will Milan Cortina just continue to be a local economy that is ski resorts and, you know, things like that? Yeah, I mean, the goal is, and going back to those, like, principles, they have what's called a legacy plan that host cities are required to put together of saying, like, even for the stuff that we have to build, here's how we plan to use it. So the best case from the Olympic Committee's perspective is that the city benefits long term. They have better infrastructure. They have more tourism.

Like, this was where the Olympics were held, right? Like, this is something cool that the city's better off for having hosted the Olympics. and then the worst case is that you know you have facilities that don't get used but as we said that happens less often than I think we thought or maybe then it used to with some of the parameters they put around it now all right I just thought of a random but related question do athletes get paid uh yes there's like you're not paid as in like you're going doing your job but different countries will pay their athletes based on like a if you bring home a gold, silver, or bronze.

So, for example, the United States will pay athletes $37,500 for a gold medal, $22,500 for a silver medal and $15,000 for a bronze medal. Norway pays their athletes nothing. But Singapore will pay $788,000, almost $789,000 for a gold medal. So quite the range. And then actually this year, a billionaire Ross Stevens, I don't know if you know him. I don't know him personally. But he said he would pay all Olympic athletes $200,000.

So I think there's a lot of like stipulations to it. Like, you know, I think you have to get the first $100,000 up front and then maybe the second $100,000 later on. There's taxes and stuff. But anyway, so somebody did say that this year, which is kind of cool. Okay. And then I want to ask you about the Paralympics. How does that fit into the Winter Games? Yeah.

Okay. So Paralympics, actually when you bid to host the Olympics, the Paralympics are included in that bid. So the Paralympics for the summer Paralympics will happen like a week or two after summer Olympics and then this year the Milan Cortina Paralympics will happen the first week of March starting the first week of March and so that's you know the Olympics for people with physical disabilities and it's included in the bid their partner a partner deal so they'll happen same place roughly the same time um same venues you're not building building a lot of new stuff and then you also have um youth Olympics did you know that like like like

sanctioned under the International Olympic Committee, there's Youth Olympic Games. And they're on the same four-year rotation. So this year, there will be Youth Olympic Games. But unlike the Paralympics, they're in a different place. And they are on like the alternate seasons. So this summer, they'll be Youth Olympic Games in Synaecal. And then in 2028, they'll be Winter Youth Olympic Games in Italy. So that's for ages 15 to 18. So more Olympics than you thought. Cool. No, I did not know that. Have you ever opened your Bible and thought, man, I really wish I understood this better. We've all been there. The Bible can feel overwhelming when you don't have the right guidance or context around what you're reading.

That's why we love Kavah, a Christian streaming platform designed to help you understand scripture and live out your faith with confidence. It's like digital discipleship in your pocket. You'll find Bible studies, biblical documentaries, and conversations with trusted teachers who can help you see scripture in context, so it finally comes alive in your everyday life. And the cherry on top? Kavaa is a non-profit subscriber-funded ministry. That means when you join, you're not just getting

great content. You're helping create biblical resources that help people around the world grow in their faith. Move from confusion to confidence with Kava. Watch anytime, anywhere from any device, and use code the pourover 50 to get 50% off your first six months. Start streaming today at the link in the show notes. And speaking of things I did not know, but am interested in learning more about, are you ready to move on to fun facts? Yes. Okay, I have two, man, I told you before we started recording, there were just, there were a lot of rabbit trails I could go down for this one.

And so I'm going to limit myself to two. First, there is like an ancient tradition associated with the Olympics called the Olympic truce, where they basically say based on what the Olympics is supposed to stand for, this like, you know, international camaraderie coming together, good sportsmanship. They call for a pause on all worldwide wars for the duration of time like before the opening ceremony and after the closing ceremonies. So this year, they even, like specifically this year, 2026 said we're calling for a seven-week pause on all wars in honor of like the Olympics. So I had never heard that before. Yeah, an ancient tradition that I could get behind. It's amazing.

I did not know that. I know. Other fun fact. The, I thought it was neat looking into like the opening and closing ceremonies. There's so much like symbolism there. some of which you know might not want to get into but one thing that I did think was interesting they have the Olympic flag the closing ceremony that the host city will take and pass on to the next host city of like the winter Olympics so this Olympic flag technically will get flown again in the summer

Olympics but the closing ceremonies which on the day this podcast comes out it'll be tomorrow so the closing ceremonies are on Sunday, February 22nd, the flag will get handed to someone in, someone from France, because the next Winter Olympics are in the French Alps. So that's kind of cool that they like symbolically handed over. And they're like, okay, no, it's your circus now. Circus, yep, there you go.

No, that's really, really cool. Great tradition. All right, you ready for Christian perspectives? I whenever we talk about sports, I like the perspective of just keeping an eternal perspective and trying to remember like we can learn a lot about sports. They can teach us about teamwork and perseverance and even loyalty, like an athlete's commitment to their sport, especially these Olympians who have been doing it probably since they were toddlers. like that can be an encouragement to us if you look at it kind of like you know a lesson for us and we as Christians are pressing toward our um our imperishable crown so Christians will one day receive um and have the greatest celebration history when we go you know spend time with Jesus

so keeping our eyes on that our eyes on eternity and then also acknowledging like we can definitely learn things good things from how an athlete's committed to their sport it. All right, well, thanks everyone for joining us on another episode of TPO Explains. As a reminder, you can watch this episode on YouTube and Spotify. Make sure to like, comment, and subscribe. We'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Thanks for tuning in.

Until next time. Bye. If you've ever finished a Bible reading and thought, okay, but what do I do with this? The Life Application Study Bible was made for you. This Bible isn't just about knowing scripture, it's about living it out. And with over 10,000 notes, the Life Application Study Bible walks you through the meaning of the text, connects it to today, and shows you practical ways to apply God's truth in everyday life. For readers age 9 to 90, the Life Application Study Bible helps move scripture off the page and into your life.

Check out the link in the show notes to learn more.