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Jul 2515 min read

Beyond Gold: The Unexpected Side of the Olympics

Updated: Oct 24



It’s Olympic season! Join us as we gear up for the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics and explore some angles you might not expect. We'll dive into the mind-boggling logistics of feeding thousands of athletes (millions of bananas!), the innovative ways cities are repurposing Olympic venues, and how digital twin technology is revolutionizing both athletic performance and urban planning. Plus, we'll tackle the challenges of sustainability in mega-events like this. Whether you're a sports fanatic or just curious about the future of global gatherings, this episode offers a unique perspective on the Olympics that goes far beyond the medal count. Tune in for a fun and thought-provoking discussion.





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Episode Transcript:

Sue: Welcome to Signal Shift, by Horizon Shift Lab. We're your hosts, Lana Price, Raakhee Natha, and Sue Chi. Each episode, we explore the latest signals in technology, culture, and society, uncovering insights that will impact our daily lives in the future. Join us as we shift perspectives, explore possibilities, and delve into real changes in our world. Curious to learn more? Go to horizonshiftlab.com.


Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Signal Shift. And I don't know about you, but this weekend I've got some plans, and that's to start watching the Games of the 33rd Olympiad, or better known as the Summer Olympics. It's going to be set in Paris from July 26th up to August 11th. 


A couple fun facts, you know, the modern era of the Olympics, it started in 1896. And 14 nations competed across 241 athletes. There were 43 events in nine sports, and everybody was male. 


Now fast forward to these Olympics. There are 184 nations represented. There are about 10,500 athletes expected across 329 events in 32 sports. So we've come a long way. And a couple new things to expect, there are a couple new sports: so breaking is a new sport for this year, or better known as breakdancing. And then a couple other sports are returning that are new: so that's kayak cross, surfing, skateboarding, and sport climbing, which is kind of similar to rock climbing. 

But sports aside, we know that Olympics is so much more than that. There are things around the cultural aspect, the geopolitics of it, the socioeconomic issues that are really important, and also make their mark on history. And so there are other topics, including food, fashion, tech, sustainability, and more. And so I'm really curious what signals you all found this week that piqued your interest. What does the future hold in terms of the Olympics? Lana, what's your signal?


Lana: OK, I can go first. This was such a fun topic to get into. I had a hard time because I found so many fun signals. But I guess I'll go with the food one. And there was a really great article on Eater about how Paris is, you know, the logistics around how they're going to feed 15,000 athletes, including kind of the teams and the members. And so it's really this huge feat of logistics and sourcing, and just how they're thinking not just about the nutritional needs, but then also the cultural, right? 


And so a couple of things that I learned about how they're planning to, their approach to the food for the Olympics is that it's going to be primarily plant-based. So that's a great, I think, insight into food as fuel, right? And as energy and, you know, what do the top athletes of the world, you know, how they're approaching their own diets, it’s plant-based, and also they're going to try to source as much as they can locally, right? So all the meat will be local and as much of the vegetables as they can, mostly vegetables from France and the rest will be European, but the things that they could not source locally that they have to get internationally are coffee, chocolate, and bananas. 


And so when I saw that, I was like, oh my gosh, because we've already, we've talked about both coffee and chocolate and, and sort of what's under threat there. But I also learned, so bananas are an athlete's favorite food all over the world, and they anticipate that they will need two to three million bananas. 


And so when we think about the future of the Olympics, sports and athletes, and what does it take to fuel yourself to be an athlete, bananas are really important food. And they're one of, they're like the number one fruit of the world. And they're really also under attack. I was like so sad to learn that there's like a banana pandemic. And so, you know, I think one of the things that I learned and sort of an action that we can take is that long story short, we kind of have one primary variety of banana, the one that you're very used to seeing in the grocery store. And that's because they've been, I guess, like intentional that we have this one, one variety, super banana. But because that's the case, it's also vulnerable that, you know, if there's an attack that can hit this banana, then like it hits all the bananas. And so basically, we should anticipate and we should be encouraged to support different varieties of bananas. And so if you happen to see in your grocery store, a banana that's red, or one that's little, or plantains, so as much as the consumer could encourage the production of different varieties of bananas, that can help sustain this form of food, not just for athletes, but for everyone. And so that's just one thing to throw out there to start.


[6:05]


Sue: Thanks, Lana. Talk about a mashup between our food episode and the Olympics. But yeah, just to see the operation of how you get two to three million bananas shipped within a 14 day period is, that would be a sight to see. Raakhee, what signal did you have about the Olympics?


Raakhee: I'm still reeling from the bananas. I mean, I get probably three bananas a day. Yeah, it's staple food. So that is so scary. But I'll refocus my energy here. 


Yeah, it's interesting. I think as you as you both know, I'm not a very sporty person and have to acknowledge and admit that I am not typically one who's deeply into the Olympics, very different to my husband, who of course is into all sports and always watching them. So yeah, I was curious about which angle to take with this. 


And I thought about not the Olympics, but the soccer World Cup happened in South Africa in 2010. And we were there for it. It was such a big moment for the country, like nothing like that had happened, and we invested a lot of money into the stadiums, the stadiums like world class. And it was an amazing event, like it brought the country together. But one of the things since then has been just the use of these stadiums. And they are used for concerts and we have a good amount of sporting events, at least in the main cities. But definitely some of the others are just, you know, a lot of money that was spent on them. And then a lot of money spent on maintaining them after that, right? And I was very curious about this for the Olympics as well, and considering the kinds of venues and the amount of venues that you have to repurpose, at least, or then the new ones you have to build for these very specific sporting events. 


And it's interesting, the Olympics Committee themselves have a project called Olympic Project where these journalists and photographers are looking at exactly this kind of history of, you know, Olympic stadiums and the buildings and how they've been used or repurposed and that sort of thing. 


And my key signal, which is really exciting and I think is a trend of what we'll see to come in this discussion was that the Olympic Park in Montreal, which was, you know, built and used many years ago for the Olympics, they have this massive roof and it was a big project and undertaking and it kind of like rotates down and does some interesting stuff, but it's not working anymore. Instead of spending the money on just trashing it away, they realized that it costs just as much to repurpose this, right? So why spend the money to discard this when they can repurpose it? So they put out a call, like a competition, an ideas competition to architects and student architects to say, what do we do with all this material? What do we, you know, what do we make of it and something that's going to be useful and efficient and that sort of thing. 


And so they got me thinking about, okay, what have they, what have we done interestingly with some of these buildings outside of sports and that one of the interesting ones was Beijing where they turned it into this massive water park. And I think it's the one where Phelps won all those many gold medals or whatever it was. And it's like this massive water park that people really use. Interestingly enough, there’s one in Long Island, New York, which they turn into a prison. So that was really interesting. There's an old one from LA from like, I don't know, the thirties or something like that. That is now a church. And I guess historically, there was smaller buildings. So that purpose kind of suited it. And then there's the one in Finland, which is called Tennis Place, which is now a movie theater. It's a museum and that sort of thing. 


And then outside of those four, we've seen some successful sort of villages, which is Barcelona, I think is one, the Olympic Village, I think is a hub. And it is part of society there now. And the one in Atlanta as well, you know, where people meet there’s a restaurant, there’s food, it's integrated into society and used kind of differently. They're still sporting and stuff, but it's bigger. And the return on investment is there. I think that's the big thing here. It's about the money. 


But anyway, after seeing this Montreal sort of call out in this competition and even something as simple as the roof, but saying, why discard something that's going to cost just as much? I think it's, um, I'm excited about the future because I think when these bids go out, the callback in the response back has got to be around efficiency. Like can these be solar powered? You know, are they efficient with water? And what are we going to do with these buildings after that truly supports the community, right? Not just at a 20% capacity usage or so, but something more. 


Um, cause there's certainly also, there's a harrowing article. It's harrowing because of the images showing some of these abandoned stadiums. And that's not everywhere. The Olympics Committee claims that it's only like 4% abandoned or not used, which is, it's not a, not a massive number, but some of these stadiums already not being used and they're just abandoned and lying there. And there's so much more we can do with these spaces. We've spoken about it on so many episodes. So, um, yeah, that was my signal is I think that's going to be a bigger call and ask, and I think we're going to find more creative ways of using these buildings going forward.


[11:27]


Sue: I saw that one thing that helped Paris win the bid was to use as many existing facilities as possible versus creating new ones. And I think the IOC, yeah, you mentioned that IOC is doing something in terms of their policy for new cities. So that actually segues into one of the signals that I found. 


And I think the overall theme I was seeing in my Olympic signals was the concept of digital twins. And we've discussed this before, mainly in people, right, and individuals, uh, as digital twin versions, but there were two signals I found. 


And one was the idea of a digital twin venue. And so in Paris, they partnered with a company called One Plan that is taking all these different data models of the physical venue and overlaying it so that you get essentially a 360 degree view of the venue, but you overlay it with like the architectural plans, um, all the kind of like traffic flow, weather patterns. So it's helpful for so many different people as you think about putting on an event like this, right? So from a security standpoint, people understand what the exit plan might be or any emergency areas. Um, for all the, you know, civic engineers, where all the traffic patterns. And then for athletes, it's also helpful because just for example, if you're taking a tennis court, you can understand the time of day that you'll be playing and literally see the shadow cast over the tennis court just to get an understanding of what it's going to be like at a certain time. And it may actually change your tactics and your strategy of what you're going to be doing to play. 


And then the other digital twin news that kept coming up was of athletes. And so there was an article in Scientific American of researchers that basically mapped all the data for the top 100 US swimmers in terms of all these different scientific measurements because at such an elite level when you're competing, the difference is like a hundredth of a second between a medal or no medal, right, or even like gold versus silver. And they talked about one particular athlete who by not only showing down to the millisecond, this kind of sensor technology that they could incorporate into this digital twin idea, they could then compute essentially overall the cumulative impact it would have on her time to do a certain distance in the pool. It was really interesting. 


They said, you know, this is the way technology is going to go because the sensor technology can go to capture like 512 frames per second. So now they can measure just like tiny, tiny improvements that will overall make or break your possibility of winning. This might be something you're going to see over and over in more sports where like really just that incremental difference really means something. 


It would be really cool if, you know, other than elite athletes, like this might be something a lot of people are doing to improve their health, try to understand the impact of a certain thing in your life. So I just think it's really cool to see how digital twinning this concept is being applied to the Olympics and how many other ways it can be applied in our lives. 


Curious. Yeah. What is this all bringing up for you?


[14:59]


Raakhee: Yeah. Sue, I mean, gosh, yeah, on the digital twin, you've just got me thinking about so much of stuff there. But just thinking about, you know, we spoke about sensors on a previous episode, right, and that data, but thinking about all the places where we have so much different online data about ourselves and how I'd love all of that compiled and integrated into one place, and that's my digital twin, and I can give them another name and they could be my best friend, but I love that idea of all this information about me, right? That's in one space online that I can play with and manipulate data about myself. I mean, we speak about crafting kind of a future you or managing your health outcomes. Yeah. I imagine all of that integrated and you do have this. So I'm getting really excited about imagining my own digital twin.


Sue: Yeah. And you can imagine Lana going to your signal just of the food, I was thinking, you know, how else can you apply data for a digital twin? You can imagine all these different ways people are going to apply like one new change and see how that might impact their digital twin in terms of performance.


Lana: Yeah. That's true. I mean, one of the other things I learned about the, learning about the food, is that like the food hall apparently is as long as two soccer fields. And so even athletes have to think about how to, they don't want to expend a lot of energy, right, outside of the sport. And so they're even trying to calculate how an athlete might get from one part of the food hall to the other. They're really measuring things on like a really insane level of detail to really hone their performance.


Yeah. So I thought that was interesting and it's, I think what this some of this brings up for me is just like, wow, how much attention that they're paying to all these different variables for that minute in time or whatever there is that they are performing just to be at their very, very best. And so I think that is quite remarkable. 


Sue: I wonder with the signals that we have just around the changing nature of the food or the way cities are thinking about either repurposing or redesigning some of the Olympic venues or the villages, the use of AI and technology. Are there any visions that you're seeing for a particular city in the future that might be hosting the Olympics?


[17:40]


Raakhee: Yeah, I wonder about, just even in the architectural design, it's like not just designing to have a food hall, but if this food hall can be designed in a way where, one, you're growing a lot of fresh produce locally there as well, right? Not having necessarily things you need to bring in from other countries, growing whatever you can there. And that once people leave that the food hall can then become a community or whatever. It's the biggest farmer's market that will happen then in the city and people will come get their fresh produce and thinking about things in that sort of sense. 


But then I know there's this other juxtaposing side of what's happening in society now is like we're going back to our roots. But then I also know that I'm certain it's going to be like nutrition in a pill, like a meal in a pill, you know, and that sort of coming up as well. It's not something that appeals to me, but in this kind of competition that is efficient, that is smart, right? I wonder how these things will play against each other and I think we'll see a bit of all of it maybe.


Lana: Yeah, I think one thing that I wanted to come back to, which you brought up Sue, is the sustainability piece that's really important. And I think as we think about the future of the Olympics and the sites, I mean, we can't ignore that, you know, with the climate crisis, there are a lot of things to consider in having the Summer Olympics and how to account for changing climate and weather conditions. 


But you know, like for example, in this case, Paris for their own sustainability goals said they were not going to provide air conditioning and they had devised this other way to keep the rooms cool through this technology in the floor that uses like running water that they said would be much better and while still maintaining the goals; and, you know, the US team said that they were still going to purchase air conditioners for their team because they felt that they needed those for their performance. 


And so, you know, there's a tension in how we're going to cooperate globally to meet the standards that are for everyone, benefit everyone and impact everyone; yet we all also have our own needs, right, and preferences, I guess. And so I think that this will continue to be a priority and I think it will continue to be a challenge as we keep going down this road.


Sue: That's so true. And yeah, I just wonder what is a good transition plan for different countries or host countries cities and for the people who are really experiencing it. It goes back to that idea of that like Blue Visa similarly; or do you get in some kind of priority-access, incentive, first-in-line-to-the-food-hall if you're there and you kind of are willing to do some of these things. 


So that's one thing to then incorporate into this digital twin is all those temperatures when you're resting in these places like you can do that and hopefully the impact is like, oh, actually, there's no impact. You'll be fine. I mean, that's what you hope the data will say. And if not, that's something they have to work on.


I think for me, this goes to this tension, Raakhee, you are getting at, which is like how much more science and technology will be focused on like making almost the perfect human machine of athletics, right? And they know there's always this constant fight. But then you miss like the heart and the emotion and the inspiration. There's such an inclination to just keep going on the science to win. But I hope it's still going to be both, or at least you'll have teams that are a mix of both things to make it still interesting. 


And so for our listeners, as you go about hearing or watching the Olympics, curious to see what you all find and what some surprising things might be in store for you. So with that, thank you so much for listening. If you like this episode, check out more episodes on Signal Shift, please rate and review or share it with a friend. We would really appreciate it. Thanks so much and catch you all on the next one.


[22:09]

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