Make Me Smart about Olympic figure skating
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Hello, everyone. I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us. Thanks for joining us, whether you are watching the YouTube live stream or listening later on the podcast. Wonderful to have you along. If you're new here, this is Economics on Tap. It's our weekly happy hour episode. And I am super excited to get into today's topic. We are talking Winter Olympics, which start next week on February 6th in Milan, Italy. And our guest today is here to make us smart about one of the game's most popular events, figure skating. Jackie Wong is a self-described chief skate nerd at rocker skating and host of the Rocker Skating Podcast. Welcome to the show, Jackie.
Thank you for having me. How are you?
I'm good. I'm good. But I want to talk to you all about the Olympics and figure skating. But first things first, we got to talk drinks. What did you bring?
Okay. I have a non-alcoholic beer from Athletic Brewery.
Wonderful. For dry January or just because?
Just because. It's a work night.
Ah, yes, because you're technically working.
What are the basics of Olympic figure skating?
Well, thank you for working with us on a Friday night. I appreciate it. I have an alcoholic drink. I actually had to go back into my own archives because for the Summer Olympics, I made a version of an Olympic torch cocktail, which was like this mixture of... Goldschlager for, you know, gold medal, Grand Marnier, orange bitters and triple sec and orange juice. And I lit it on fire for the Winter Olympics, but I was at home. I'm in a studio, so I did not light it on fire, but I did like make a batch of it before I came in. And so I'm having my unflamed Olympic torch.
I mean, I mean, it'd be something if I brought that to the Olympics and I'm just like in the press area and all of a sudden I light a cocktail on fire while I'm, you know, live tweeting. Yeah, it'd be great.
You'd be so popular. You'd be so popular. All right.
Who is Jackie Wong and what is his expertise?
Let's talk Olympics. But actually, first of all, tell us about your podcast and the work that you do.
Sure. So I am the host of the Rocker Skating Podcast. I have a brand called Rocker Skating, and a rocker is a figure skating turn. I can get into it if you want me to, but basically... Basically, I cover figure skating all season long, which the season is usually six months out of the year. And once every four years, I pop up on a lot of podcasts because they want to figure out what is going on every four years with all the figure skating. So I will be in Milan covering the whole thing, both for myself and I will be part of some of the NBC Peacock coverage as well while I'm over there.
And what's the rocker term?
Okay. So TLDR is that I used to write for another now defunct content farm, really, publication called examiner.com. And I had at some point during that time established a following on Twitter. And as I was seeing that publication sort of go by the wayside, I was like, I need to get out of here and go do my own thing. And so the rocker turn is actually one of my favorite turns in figure skating that I actually like to do. But it is done on the same edge, but it ends on a different curve. So metaphorically, the same edge, me, different curve, different brand. Nice.
I like it. I like it. Okay. So break down the figure skating events that people can watch at this year's games.
All right. So figure skating has four disciplines. Some will call it five, but four in the Olympics. The fifth one is synchro, which is not an Olympic discipline. But there's men's singles, there's women's singles, so the traditional kind of one-person thing. events. And then there are the two-person events, which is pairs and ice dance. And the difference between pairs and ice dance is that pairs generally will have your jumps and your throws and your high-flying lifts. And then dance is more of the like dancing on ice. So it started off as really just bringing ballroom dance onto the ice. And it's of course, transformed quite a bit over the past few decades as it has become a very different looking sport than it originally started as.
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