Light The Cauldron

Last week the IAAF World Championships wrapped up, and it was ten days of fun for me! I was able to catch a majority of the coverage, and was not disappointed in what I saw. While I was cheering for my picks to win, I can't say I was ever disappointed in who won the event. I hope that this was a great warmup for all of those athletes, and I'm excited to see many of these athletes in Tokyo next year!

Let's take a look at how I did with my picks!

Men's 100 Meters

My Pick: Christian Coleman

Actual Winner: Christian Coleman (1)

This was a solid pick. When the gun went off, there wasn't any doubt that Coleman was going to take this handily. Plus he won it with the fastest time in the world this year! Justin Gatlin ended up with silver, and Andre de Grasse of Canada won the bronze.

Women's 100 Meters

My pick: Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce

Actual Winner: Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce (1)

Dina Asher-Smith and Marie Josée Ta Lou made competition fierce, but no one can yet challenge Fras…

Yesterday I had the privilege of going to Indianapolis and watching the first ever meet of the International Swimming League - a brand-new, team-based swimming league. I was curious to see how this style of swimming would go, and considering I'm not very far away, I had to jump at the chance.

Before I get to my experience at the meet, let me explain the ISL. It was started this year by Ukranian billionaire Konstantin Grigorishin, who worked to make swimming a bigger deal around the world - and pay the swimmers accordingly. This is professional swimming.

Most swimming meets that take place - from kid meets all the way to the TYR Pro Swim Series - are all the same: compete in heats, place your best time, and then figure out which final you'll be in.

(You can find my articles on the Indianapolis TYR Pro Swim Series here and here.)

In the case of the ISL, there are no heats. There are teams of 24 athletes - 12 men and 12 women, and the roster fluctuates depending on the athlete&#…

On Friday, the IAAF World Championships will take place in Doha, Qatar. Why is it so late? With Qatar's climate, it was thought that putting the World Championships in September/October would help to avoid the hottest time of the year. (Even though the stadium was outfitted with an air cooling and circulation system to bring down the temperature for the athletes and spectators.)

Tokyo, did you see this?

Anyway, I want all of you to watch these awesome athletics events as they air, so I'm going to give you a primer on who to watch! These events are the ones I was able to watch a lot over this season. It doesn't cover everything (hammer throw isn't something I'm familiar with, so I'm not going to try), but it'll give you some names to recognize later!

Men's 100 Meters

2017 Winner: Justin Gatlin

There was some doubt a few weeks ago when Team USA's Christian Coleman did not report his whereabouts properly to USADA and was benched from the Diamond League …

So last year, I applied to be a Volunteer at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. It was a dream of mine to be on the field as athletes did their amazing feats. Plus, it would get me into Olympic venues without having to purchase a ticket!

According to the timetable of the volunteer website, people who registered to volunteer would be contacted in the early part of 2019 and know if they would be granted an interview. I was so excited that I even had a special section of this blog to let people know of updates!

But then, 2019 arrived, and we waited.

And waited.

And waited!

We heard the name of Olympic volunteers ("Field Cast" and "City Cast"), and even caught sight of what the uniforms were going to look like, but no contact to volunteers about their applications.

Finally, I got an email today from the Tokyo 2020 Volunteer Committee:

Thank you for applying to the Tokyo 2020 Games volunteer programme. We would like to extend our sincere gratitude to you and to the more than 200,…

A few months ago, I posted an Olympics viewing blog that demonstrated several of the ways people watch the Olympic games. One of the choices was GIMME EVERYTHING, which means whatever is on, I would watch it.

But what if EVERYTHING is too much? I mean, it is. There could be eight or nine events happening at the exact same time, and it can be overwhelming. And it seems like every year, new events are being added to make watching everything even more impossible.

With the addition of new events are the addition of costs. Yes, the events bring in spectators and the eyes of millions of people all over the world, but it still costs something to put on. Each Olympic budget gets inflated, causing other cities to shy away from bidding because it's just too much.

I do have an unpopular opinion when it comes to this. To me, the Olympics are a spectacular combination of sports that bring together athletes from all over the world in friendly competition. Over time, certain sports have become …

Not getting tickets for an Olympic event is one thing.

But not having a place to sleep is entirely another.

Sometimes we take for granted the lodging choices that we have wherever we go. Then, suddenly, we are faced with a major event in town, and prices for these places of lodging skyrocket.

Such is the issue that people are dealing with for next year's Olympics. Not only are the Olympics in a popular city, it's in a city that almost everyone already wanted to visit sometime in their life! Put the two bucket list items (Olympics, Tokyo) together, and it's a win-win!

But even a large city like Tokyo is dealing with exactly how to find all these people a place to sleep. Places that can be reasonably priced suddenly become impossible to afford, and some hotels are bought out by the IOC and don't have beds available at all!



I saw this when I was looking for my own lodging. My goal was to be near the Olympic National Stadium, but eventually it just turned into, "What…

Let's be hypothetical here. You have your flights booked to Tokyo. You managed to find an AirBNB. You've even managed to get tickets for several Olympic events - some of which are high-profile events!

What is the next obstacle? Food? Not really. Transportation in the world? It has one of the most reliable mass transit systems in the world. Security? Remember: if someone says they have a high level of security, they usually compare it to the Olympics.

The biggest obstacle is the heat.

The average high temperature in August in Tokyo is 88 degrees Fahrenheit.

And it is accompanied by an average of 80% humidity.

Do you see what I'm getting at?

During the first week of August this year, 57 Japanese people died from the heat and over 18,000 were hospitalized from it. When the Olympics were last held in Tokyo, they were actually in October - technically, that doesn't count as summer for any part of the world! But it meant better temperatures for everyone. This time around, w…

Today I'm going to start with the Olympic Channel Video of the Week, and it's for a good reason.

Last Thursday marked the 11th anniversary of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Opening Ceremony - a ceremony named by many professionals and fans as the greatest opening ceremony of all time.

To celebrate, the Olympic Channel YouTube page finally put the entire ceremony up. Watch it - all four hours! - below:

I took several sessions to watch the whole thing, and it was worth every minute. I didn't even fast-forward through the 204 countries and got to see government representatives stand and wave their flag in glee as their country marched into the stadium. I watched the energy level of most of the Chinese volunteers remain high through all two hours of athletes. And I got to hear how many times the Scottish bagpipes and Mexican mariachi music were played!

(I will admit: London 2012 had the best Opening Ceremony soundtrack of all time. I bought it on iTunes and still listen to it regul…

Just the phrase, "World Record" sounds so epic and amazing. If anything or anyone can add the tag "World Record Holder" to their resume, it automatically boosts that resume.

In the past few weeks, several world records have fallen in Olympic sports. The World Championships of Swimming were held last week, and eleven world records were broken. Actually, two of the world records were for the same event; in the men's 200m breaststroke, Australia's Matthew Wilson broke the record, but in the final it was broken again by Russia's Anton Chupkov!

On the track, Dalilah Muhammad broke the 400m hurdles world record during the US National Championships. I got to watch it, and she was basically the only one in the viewing audience that knew she was going to give it a shot! (And looking at Ashley Spencer's reaction behind her makes it even better.) But it wasn't even the first track world record to be broken this month. The Netherlands' Sifan Hassan bro…