Tag Archives: olympics

880. Is Paris ready for the Olympic Games 2024? (Article + Vocabulary)

I read an article about Paris’ preparations for the 2024 Olympic Games 🏊, discuss the issues, summarise the article and explain plenty of vocabulary. Is Paris ready for the games? What are the attitudes, complaints, expectations and fears ahead of this potentially controversial event.

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Notes

880. Is Paris ready for the Olympic Games 2024? 🏊 (Article + Vocabulary)


Intro

I’m in Paris and it’s less than 100 days until the Olympic Games begin here. 

Is the city ready? 

Let’s read an article on the subject. 

I found this article on www.TheWeek.com  

I’ll read the article to you, then explain and discuss what is written. 

I’ll also go through vocabulary from the article – and there is plenty.

Topic → Reading/Listening → Vocabulary → Discussion

Before we read the article, here are some questions to get you thinking.

  • If you like you can stop the podcast and discuss these questions for some speaking practice. 
  • What are the benefits and costs for a city hosting the Olympic Games?
  • Has the Olympics ever been held in your city or country?
  • How did people feel before, during and after the games?
  • Were people positive about it?
  • Did it have a positive effect on the city?
  • 100 days before the Olympics are due to happen, what do you think people are worrying about?

Article link 👇 https://theweek.com/sports/olympics-2024-is-paris-ready-to-party 

Vocabulary

  1. The build-up to this summer’s Games is being ‘marred’ by rows over national identity, security and pollution
  2. The lighting of the Olympic torch today comes amid a “dampening” of enthusiasm for the Paris Games in an increasingly “fractious” France, commentators warn.

    Light – lit – lit
    To light something
    To light something up

    Lighting
    Lightening (lighten)
    Lightning ⚡
  3. “We’re ready for this final straight,” said Paris Olympics chief organiser Tony Estanguet
  4. to mark the 100-day countdown
  5. With the clock ticking down until the Games kick off on 26 July
  6. France’s “bitter politics and gloomy mindset are dampening the mood” among a “fractious” public, said The Japan Times.
     
  7. The build-up has been “marred by rows” that go to “the heart of a bitter national debate about identity and race”.
  8. Herve Le Bras, a sociologist, told the paper that the Games threaten to “underline the major fractures in France – notably the fracture between Paris and the rest of the country”.
  9. An Odoxa poll of more than 1,200 Paris region residents last November found that 44% thought the Games were a “bad thing”, and that 52% were planning to leave the city during the 16-day event.
  10. One Parisian told the BBC that staying would be “unbearable“, with the Games making it “impossible to park, impossible to move around, impossible to do anything”.
  11. Security fears are also growing amid mounting global tensions.
  12. In a break from the tradition of opening the Games in the main stadium, the organisers have devised a “grandiose” ceremony centred around a parade of barges on the River Seine, said Le Monde.
  13. The original plan was for as many as 600,000 spectators to watch from the riverbanks, but security and logistical concerns have led the government to “progressively scale back” the plan, with the spectator numbers reduced to 300,000.
  14. And President Emmanuel Macron said yesterday that the ceremony might be moved to a new location if the authorities decide that the risk of an attack, potentially by drones, is too great.
  15. “There are Plan Bs and Plan Cs”, including holding the opening at the city’s Stade de France, he told television interviewers. Asked if the Kremlin would seek to disrupt the Olympics, Macron said that he had “no doubt“.
  16. Another potential threat is sewage pollution in the Seine, where swimming events are due to take place.
  17. Bacteria, including “pollution of faecal origin”, remains dangerously high in the river.
  18. Games boss Estanguet said last week that if water quality levels worsen, “there could be a final decision where we could not swim”.
  19. The Switzerland-based International Olympic Committee has “mountains of scepticism to dispel” in France and beyond, said The Associated Press.
  20. The $13 billion cost of the 2021 Tokyo Games and the “unfulfilled promises of beneficial change” for 2016 host Rio de Janeiro triggered widespread anger, and the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi were “tarnished by Russian doping“.
  21. But some previous predictions of Olympics doom have proved incorrect.
  22. In the run-up to the London 2012 Games, the Army was drafted in to bolster the security presence provided by private firm G4S, amid fears of a repeat of the riots that had broken out in the city in 2011.
  23. Journalists emitcyclical loud buzzing noises before every set of Summer Games”, said George Vecsey in The New York Times in 2004.
  24. Reporters will “continue to fret on schedule”, because it’s “in our job description“.

Estanguet acknowledged last week that “before this kind of big event, there are always many questions, many concerns“. But the Paris edition would make his nation “proud”, he said.

421. Skateboarding – A New Olympic Sport (with James)

Here’s a new episode with James about Skateboarding, which will be a new event at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, along with karate, surfing, baseball/softball, sport climbing and surfing. James has been a skater for most of his life and used to write articles for a skateboarding magazine, so he’s exactly the right person to talk to about this.

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Introduction

Skateboarding might seem like an annoying antisocial hobby for children but for the first time it has been accepted by the Olympic Federation as a proper sport and is going to be one of the events at the next Olympic Games happening in Tokyo in 2020. So, skateboarding is now a mainstream sport. When the Olympics are shown on TV in a few years’ time, skateboarding might be one of the most popular events for audiences around the world, especially when you consider the popularity of snowboarding in the winter games. So, let’s find out about skating so we are ready to understand and appreciate it more.

Types of skateboarding

  • Ramp (vert or miniramp)
  • Street
  • Freestyle
  • Park

Parts of a skateboard

  • The Deck – the wooden board itself, made of maple plywood and covered in grip-tape and with the nose at the front and the tail at the back)
  • The Trucks (made of die-cast aluminium – they fix the wheels & axles onto the deck)
  • The Wheels (made of polyurethane or ‘urethane’ and available in different hardnesses)
  • The Bearings (the metal components that allow the wheels to spin on the axles)

Common tricks

  • Ollie (jumping with the board under you, still touching your feet)
  • Kickflip (an ollie in which you flip the board sideways under your feet by kicking it in the air)
  • Shove-it (spinning the board under your feet so the nose spins round from front to back, or back to front)
  • Different types of grab (doing an ollie then grabbing the board in the air)
  • Grind (sliding or scraping the trucks of the board along an object like a curb or rail)
  • Boardslide (sliding along an object on the underside of the board)
  • Blunt (balancing on an object on the back wheels and tail)
  • Nollie – doing an ollie but from the nose not the tail
  • and many more! Click here for a full glossary of skateboarding.

Videos

Here is James’ selection of videos to give you an idea of the different types of skating, and some of his favourite skaters and cool moments in skateboarding. Notes written by James.

Natas Kaupas, one of the first people to develop street skating.

Mark Gonzales skating vert and street and play fighting with Oscar-winning film director, Spike Jonze. From the Real skateboards video Non Fiction. (1997)

The legend of Tom Penny, a skater from Oxford, England: Zen master, legend, space cadet, enigma.

Lizzie Armanto, one of the best female US bowl / park skaters, in an ad for Bones bearings.

Women’s Highlights – Huntington Beach | 2016 Vans Pro Skate Park Series

The Flip skateboards video “Sorry” from 2002, presented by Johnny Rotten – probably the best skate video ever made… Madness. Good soundtrack too.

James describes his skateboarding injury on the podcast in episode 180.

180. How my Brother Dislocated his Shoulder (with James)

McVities Chocolate Digestives

Here’s that advert on the Paris metro “McVitie’s – It’s English, but it’s good!”

mcvities

Click here for the full list of ingredients!

Is skateboarding popular in your country? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.