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The Best Of The Tokyo Olympics

Published on Mon, 9 Aug 2021 10:00:00 +0000

Watch spottings, fantasy collaborations, and a whole lot more.

Synopsis

In this episode of Hodinkee Radio, host Stephen Pulvirent is joined by colleagues Nora and Danny to wrap up their comprehensive coverage of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. The conversation begins with lighter fare, including discussion of Kevin Hart and Snoop Dogg's entertaining Olympic commentary and their personal favorite Olympic moments, from the record-breaking men's 400-meter hurdles to equestrian eventing.

The trio dives into watch spottings from the Games, with highlights including NBA player Devin Booker wearing a Rolex Pepsi GMT in the locker room, surfer Sally Fitzgibbons rocking a Breitling Aerospace, and tennis player Donna Vekić sporting an F.P. Journe Elegante. They engage in a fun thought experiment about ideal Olympian-watch pairings, with Danny suggesting Katie Ledecky wearing a Rolex Deep Sea, Nora proposing shot putter Raven Saunders (who competes as "the Hulk") wearing a green Rolex Submariner "Hulk," and Stephen advocating for Simone Biles to become an Audemars Piguet ambassador.

The conversation turns more serious as they discuss Danny's interview with Alain Zobrist, Omega's CEO of Timing. They explore the immense responsibility and innovation required to be the official Olympic timekeeper, including advanced technologies like whistle detection systems for basketball and motion sensors for volleyball. The discussion highlights how Omega's timing technology not only ensures accurate results but also helps athletes improve and makes sports more accessible to viewers through real-time data displays.

Nora discusses her work with the Hodinkee Japan team on a story about Fred Isamu Wada, the man who brought the 1964 Olympics to Tokyo, providing historical context for the significance of the Games to Japan. Looking ahead to the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, they express enthusiasm for potential new Olympic limited editions from Omega, with Nora playfully suggesting the brand should create a pocket watch for ice dancers to wear with their costumes.

Transcript

Speaker
Nora This feels like a great time for Omega to put out another pocket watch. I just feel like a pocket watch in an ice skating costume would be a really solid look. I was thinking like, you know, you're doing your ice dance and there's a song where you have to check the time and you pull out your Omega pocket watch in a flourish. Instant gold medal.
Stephen Pulvirent Hey everybody, I'm your host Stephen Polmerant and this is Hodinki Radio. We're coming to you just after the close of the Tokyo Olympic Games, and if you've been paying attention to this site, you'll know that we've been doing wall-to-wall coverage of all things Olympics. We've done watch spottings, we've done interviews with athletes, we've done historical pieces, and we thought it'd be fun to kind of wrap everything up, put a nice bow on it at the end of the games here on Hodingki Radio. So I've got Nora and I've got Danny joining me to talk about their favorite stories we've written, their favorite watches they've spotted, what they want to see for next year's games in Beijing. And we just had a ton of fun talking about all of our own Olympic obsessions. So I think you're really going to enjoy this episode. And without further ado, let's do this. Hey, how are you both doing? Hey Steven. Hi, Steven. Wonderful. It's uh we're here to talk all things Olympics, my friends. Let's do it. Nora, I feel like your life has just been nothing but the Olympics for the past couple weeks
Nora . Yeah. A large part of that also being trying to avoid getting sued, which is uh a huge part of Olympic coverage actually.
Stephen Pulvirent Do say more. Can you can you actually explain that? Because like I when this came up, I was like, oh I never thought about it. But like, yeah, that totally makes sense. Can you just give us the the TLDR version of this? The TLDR is that they have trademar
Nora ked everything. You have to be careful about like summer, Tokyo. Oh my god. It started with the ring usage and then it's quote sort of expanded from there. So it sort of feels like those time square versions of costumes where you're like super fuzzy, friendly street character when we
Stephen Pulvirent have to describe some stuff. But yeah. Sweet. So this is this is not our Olympics wrap-up show. It's our super fun time summer athletic events in Japan show. Yes. One hundred percent. There we go. Sweet. Cool. Cool. Cool. I'll uh I'll make sure I'll make sure to take the twelve ring logos out of the story that we're running with this. Uh make make sure I don't cause you any problem
Danny s there. Thank you. I appreciate it. I mean, I had a ton of just general summer content that I wasn't allowed to write. So, you know, for whatever that's worth. That wasn't about the Olympics though. We just hated that content. Oh, okay. Oops. All right.
Stephen Pulvirent Well I'll take it. Before we get into the the watchy stuff, any anything that's like just been super fun for you guys with this this year's Olympics? I know it's been like kind of fits and starts and there's been some controversy and whatever, but like any any sports you discovered, any moments, any you know, triumphs you watched that just kind of like did it for you? I have just
Nora really enjoyed the Kevin Hart Snoop Dogg Olympic coverage. Yes. Um to this and it is amazing. Yeah. It is I am right there with you. Just like the most it's not even chaotic because it just runs so smoothly. They are just having a great time. Kevin Hart is kind of uh I feel like Kevin Hart is used to steering the ship, but Snoop Dogg is really just the one in charge. Yeah. Um and it has just been a joy to watch those um those did and I learned things. So really ideal Olympic coverage coming out of those two
Stephen Pulvirent . Perfect. I completely agree. Uh it's it's been I again, I feel like this year's games have like so much weight on them and it's so nice to see something that's just like pur
Danny ely joyful. I haven't been, you know, I've been watching it, and one of the one things that caught my eye was actually the four the men's 400 meter hurdle where all three medalists sh like shattered the wor
Stephen Pulvirent ld record. Oh, I saw this headline. I didn't I haven't seen the actual race. Do I need to go watch this? You do. It's pretty incredible because imagine being the
Danny bronze medalist knowing you broke the world record. You know, I mean that you're still gonna feel good about yourself, but I mean at the same time, any other year, you're a gold medalist. I mean, that's gotta feel a little bit bad. I don't know. I don't even know. I don't I can't even envision a world where I would be an Olympic anything. Uh but if I were to try to put myself in that guy's shoes, you know, as competitive as they are, that would hurt just a just a bit. My best is never good enough. Exactly. Talk about chip on a
Stephen Pulvirent shoulder. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Some some therapist is gonna make a lot of money off that. Some therapist kids are going to really nice colleges uh off the back of that race. Yeah, mine mine is mostly I I ended up watching a sport that I like don't normally watch, which is equestrian eventing. My wife grew up like dressage? Yeah, so it's actually it's three events, which I I didn't know this at all. So it's it's essentially the triathlon of equestrian. So it's you do uh dressage, you do cross-country, and then you do show jumping. And the scoring is like really complicated. It's basically like your dressage score is a positive score. And then your other two scores, like your goal is to execute it perfectly and you only get penalties. So you basically like set your score with dressage and then your score goes down based on like mistakes you make in the other two. It's it's really strange. And like my my wife grew up riding horses and is into horses. And uh, you know, the other night we were like, oh, what what Olympics stuff should we watch? And she was like, Oh, let's- I saw this happen today. Let's check it out. It is really, really compelling. Like, I'm not like a horse guy, um, but I I found myself really enjoying it and found it really compelling. And like there's something about the like partnership between like a human athlete and an equestrian athlete that's really strange and and charming. And uh yeah, it's just like it's a team sport that doesn't look like a team sport. And I I don't know. I got I watched almost four hours of people jumping over wooden Shinka Send trains the other night and I was really into it.
Nora I l I loved it. I'm also so charmed by you choose it saying equestrian athlete rather than horse. Yeah, right. Like you are fully in the world now. It's it's if they're an equestrian athlete, right? Were either of you sportsmen like growing up, were you athletes and did you harbor Olympic dreams from like the age of eight or anything? I mean I I was
Stephen Pulvirent was an athlete in maybe like the loosest sense of the word but um you know uh yes I played sports as a kid uh but like not not at any level where I had any uh dreams of of making the Olympics. No. I I coach
Danny ed basketball. Let me put it that way. Oh, I like that. So so physically, absolutely not. There were there were zero zero Olympic ph physical Olympic aspirations on my part. But no. I would love to uh, you know, I think I think I would have loved to have coached, you know, the dre
Stephen Pulvirent am team. The future dream team. Yeah. I mean, I think Danny, you and I are on a a similar team here, which is team too short to be an Olympian. Yep. So I think most sports, uh Danny and I are are vertically disqualified. Can't dunk. I am too clumsy to be an Ol
Nora ympian, so holding it down for that. Okay. Perfect. We're uh yeah. Were you were you an athlete growing up? I was tall, so I played until that was or I am tall and I played until uh they were sort of like, all right, well now you need skill. And then I was like, I'm out. Yeah. Lame
Stephen Pulvirent . Cool. Well, I mean, let's let's get into some of the watchy stuff too. Uh, I feel like the three of us could actually just sit and do like an emotional recap of this Olympics based on our our slack conversations, just like our feelings about the Olympics. I know this is at risk of at some point just becoming a full-on Simone Biles stancast, um, which maybe we'll talk about in a little bit. But uh let's let's get into some watchy stuff. There's been a bunch of watch spottings. We've been kind of tracking them on the site. You know, there's the usual stuff. There's all the brand ambassadors, specifically in like golf and tennis, lots of watch sponsorships. But I wonder if you guys have any any favorite watch spottings from the games. I have one that I saw this morning. It is O
Danny oh, a surprise. Bringing us something hot. Yeah, yeah, this this is this is breaking, late breaking news. Um not breaking at all. Um it is uh one of the members of the men's basketball team, Devin Booker, who famously literally hopped on a plane after losing the NBA Finals and flew to Tokyo and played a game like 48 hours later, which is just like mind blowing and incredible. Love that. So he's kind of a known watch guy, but I've only seen him wear kind of like the standard fair stuff that we've covered, which is like NBA players and and a day date. You know, only so far LeBron has really deviated from that wearing, you know, famously wearing the the is it coral Steven? The the the new OP is that the color of the dial or am I getting it? Yeah the the coral red. Yeah. I I I don't want to like miscolor it. Um no, no, no. You're right, that's spot on. So Devin Booker uh was photographed in the locker room in Tokyo um getting ready for a game wearing the new uh Pepsi GMT on the Jubilee bracelet, which is just like a really cool watch, but you never see that in the NBA. Like, I don't think I've ever seen a player wearing like one of the sort of like quote-unquote iconic new impossible to get Rolex Steel Spsort watches. And he was just like hanging out in the locker room, kind of like psyching himself out before the game, head down, and just like rocking a Pepsi GMT. It was really cool. Do we think that has anything to do with the uh red, white, and blue kind of like team USA vibes. Nothing is an accident. I'll put it that way. I think it has so much to do with it. They they somehow find like vintage t-shirts or like custom tees or custom hoodies to reference like every moment of their life or an inside joke or like a dig at another athlete. So I think like this totally has like has some like America vibes. Ye
Stephen Pulvirent ah. And I mean we're recording this before before the games are over, obviously. And so this was uh US advances to the semifin
Danny als, right? Yep. They are going to be playing Australia. So they just had a they had a comeback win against Spain. Every game besides like two of them have been kind of like too close for comfort. They lost the first game and they had to come back win against Spain, so now they play Australia in the semifinals. So they could win gold, but it won't be uh they won't be running the table like past teams
Stephen Pulvirent . All right. Well we'll we'll have to keep our eyes peeled as as the men's basketball team plays more 'cause I would I would hope that we get some more cool watch spottings uh as as that goes on. Definitely. I'll have my eyes open for it. N
Nora ora, do you have do you have any favorites? I uh really like Sally Fitzgibbons's whole vibe. Yeah. She's wearing a brightling aerospace and just looks so cool. I really don't have any like thing to comment sports-wise on surfing, like dangerous, full of sharks, very good for her for getting out there. But I think that one photo that we put on our watch spotting of her doing that like surfer hang 10 thing with that watch is just like an iconic it just feels like such a good Olympic look. Um that's probably my favor
Stephen Pulvirent ite. Yeah, honestly that's the one I flag too is my favorite. I've got a backup here, but uh I agree with you. Her whole vibe is awesome. And in that picture, her hair looks great like she just looks like the coolest person on the planet at that moment. Yeah. Straight from central casting of like rad surfer. Yeah. They just they put rad in the that's that's all they wanted. They were like, we need someone who's rad. And and they got Sally Fitzgibbons. Um yeah, I think uh as as like a little aside, uh surfing, awesome in the Olympics. Skateboarding, if I'm being honest, kind of lame. Like, I the first day of the Olympics, I turned on skateboarding and was like, this is not neat, like, this doesn't look nearly as cool as like my idiot friends skateboarding in like the middle school parking lot. Like it's just like they've so like sanitized it. And like good for those athletes. Like I'm happy for them. I'm happy it's a sport that they can like hopefully make a little more money at and make build like real careers, like good for them, no shade against the Olympic skateboarders at all. I just feel like presenting it with this like super clean, bright white course in the middle of an empty stadium uh with no music. on They they just like somehow managed to make skateboarding boring, which I'm kinda bummed about. I was I was hoping for something a little more intense. Yeah. And they all had they had the coolest uniforms though, like before it came out and they were like display showing everything and then not so much. Yeah, not so much. I guess my backup watch spotting would be a tennis one, which again, less interesting because we know that tennis players often get these cool watch sponsorships, but uh Donna Vakich is uh wearing an F P Jorn, an Elegant, which, you know, it's quartz, it's on a rubber strap, like it kind of makes sense as a tennis watch. Uh but just like seeing an F Pizorne in Olympic play is is kind of like a double take thing. Like, wait, that doesn't belong there. Like, that's that's this is like a weird thing for nerds on the internet. Like what's uh
Nora what what is this doing at the Olympics? There is kind of a tennis anyone vibe to FP Jorn that makes it make sense, but at that sort of like athletic level, you're right. It is a little surprising. Yeah.
Stephen Pulvirent I also just love tennis anyone as a vibe. Like that's that's a that's kind of like that's a really nice sweet spot to be at. All right, you know, let's I want to move on to one of Danny's stories, but before we do that, if you had an ideal Olympian and watch pairing, what would your ideal Olympian watch pairing be like? The watch spotting that if you saw it, you would be like, yes, like I've been waiting for this. I think
Danny for me, it would be a swimming pairing, but I would want like the most like capable dive watch possible, the one that's supposed to go, you know, as deep as you can. So I I'm gonna take I'm gonna take Katie Ledecki, the swimmer, and I pick her because she's from my hometown. We went to the same bagel place. So that's cool. Love it. And I'm go and I'm gonna and there's like a bagel name for her there and there's a sign that's there that just says Katie Ledecki eats here. That's awesome. So I'm picking her because she's a great swimmer. And you know, I I've always thought about the conversation that we have about what depth ratings mean. And a lot of the times it has m less to do with how deep the watch can go, but how much force is exerted on the watch in the water. Yeah. And I don't think any anybody is exerting more force than an Olympic swimmer. So I want like the the Rolex deep sea, the James Cameron. I want like a huge, like like 40, whatever, 43, 44 millimeter watch on a swimmer. A, I I imagine it would have to slow them down because it's pretty heavy, but I would just love to see a watch like that work. You know, cool that it went down to the Mariana trench or whatever, but I'd like to see it swim in the Olympics. Same. I would I would sign up for that. We can
Stephen Pulvirent talk about this off pod, but I do want to know what's on the Katie Ledecki baby bagal setup. Yeah, me too. Danny, we're we're gonna have a coda there. That's that's uh that sounds pretty awesome. Little plug for Izzy's bagels in Rockville, Maryland. I'll find out. Shout out to Izzy's Bagels. Not a sponsor of the pod. This is free buzz marketing for Izzy's Bagels. Yeah
Nora Um I am also picking a Rolex because I'm of the kind of looks cool is how I pick a watch. Perfect. And I'm very literal. And I would love to see a Hulk on the Hulk. Raven Saunders has this persona where she splits herself into Raven, who can give these interviews and be emotional and talk about her mental health. And then the Hulk is like her like her Sasha fear is like let's go i'm i'm in this sport right now and i just love her and think she's great and so charismatic and was wearing these like ridiculous sunglasses in one of her post-event interviews and I just think that like a huge green Rolex on her arm as she just like hurls to shop it across would just be baller.
Stephen Pulvirent And hearing her talk about the wax would be fun too. Yeah. She also had green and purple hair, right? Like it would color coordinate. It would look awesome. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I'm with you. I'm with you there. Love that one. I'm gonna go non-Rolex here just to, shake things up. I want Simone Biles to get that AP sponsorship. AP, if you're listening, get her in the family. Like I just love that everywhere Serena goes, Serena is rocking an awesome AP. Like Seren Serena does like these migraine commercials for like some migraine medication. And she's like in the front seat of a car, like holding her head, looking all sad because she has a migraine, which as a migraine sufferer, I can say., fair play But she's got this like giant royal oak on while she's doing it. Like she just always looks awesome. And like in the days when LeBron was an AP ambassador, he'd go everywhere. He'd have some big, amazing offshore on whatever. Get Simone Biles on that. Like, I I want to see Simone Biles walking around with frosted gold royal oaks, you know? That that is what I want to see. Get her in the family, guys. Make it happen. Yeah, that's a genius idea. Also,
Nora she's teeny tiny. So the teeny tiny. That's it would just look so baller on her. Like just the biggest watch and like the most graceful person in the world. That's brilliant. Brilliant. It'd
Stephen Pulvirent be awesome. All right, let's let's change gears here. Let's let's do a kind of hard hard shift here. We've been talking about watches. We've been talking about like the fun side of the games. But Danny did this interview that I found really compelling and illuminating with the guy at Omega who actually like is in charge of all this timekeeping stuff. We see Omega logos all over the place. We talk about how oh Omega's the official timekeeper, blah blah blah. But like Danny's interview got to the heart of like what that means, how they develop, you know, these special timekeeping devices for sports that you like don't even think about. Danny, can you kind of kind of set us up here? Like, who is this guy? And like what does it mean that I saw his title is the CEO of Timing, which might be the coolest title I've ever seen. What's
Danny what's this dude's story? Like, what's the deal here? I mean, he first of all, his name is Elaine Zobrist and yes, he's the CEO of Timing for Omega and he is he's great. I mean he's he's like part tech wizard and part keeper of all Omega history uh in terms when it comes to timekeeping. And I mean that in more the athletic event sense. So we're not just talking the Olympics, we're talking talking like any sort of event involving a sport that might someday end up in the Olympics. So there's events going on, you know, monthly in every sport all year, regional, national, um, you name it. What I found most interesting from the story I did, which was basically uh an interview with him about how things are timed at the Olympics, was the notion of what it means to be the timekeeper of the Olympics. And you might think at first blush it's it's a brand partnership where you put your name on it and Omega is sort of like the lead sponsor. In reality, it is a massive responsibility. So if you think about it, Omega's been the official timekeeper for the Olympics since 1932, just about. And back in 1932, Omega was making mechanical watches and mechanical timekeeping devices. And Omega as a watchmaker continues to push the envelope in terms of horology and and precision timekeeping and the coaxial escapement and and all of these things and meta certification, but at the same time to be the official timekeeper of the Olympics, you have the responsibility to make sure that you are also innovating on the technology front better than anybody else because you're responsible for these nanoseconds of timing for finishes at the Olympics, whether it's swimming, running, beach volleyball, any of these sports, you are the record for who wins what and by how much. And that how much is so minuscule that you need the top-of-the-line equipment to be able to measure it. So for me, it was a conversation of how has Omega continued to innovate and push the envelope and research and develop those technologies year over year because they have to be at the front of the line every time. Yeah, I I like the
Stephen Pulvirent idea that the stakes here are are really high. Like it's it actually makes this way more fascinating to me that like there's there's a level of responsibility here that that I find really compelling. I don't know, did that did that stand out to either of you?
Danny I mean it definitely did for me. I mean the whole time what I got from Elaine Zobrist in our conversation was a reverence to the history, and I don't think he fully understands just what they're doing. Like he has a confidence in what they're creating, I think that it is the best, which I think is great. It's like a very calm, cool confidence. But to your point, I recognized from sort of the substance of the conversation when he's explaining things to me, like, you know, how they moved from photo finish cameras, which they still use, but how that's been developed to be able to to not only show what how an athlete finishes a race, but where during the race the athlete may have won or lost it. So a lot of times we look at the ultimate result, but you may have lost the moment that you you started the race, or you may have lost somewhere in the middle of the race. And the ability to track athletes the entire time and get data from the totality of any single event is amazing from a research perspective on the side of Omega. But also for athletes to be able to find out like where they need to improve. Like a runner may decide, like, I need to be faster, but do you like depending on the event, you might have lost it like two seconds into the race? And why, what is it there that you need to improve on? What in your conditioning do you need to improve on? So they're actually developing the technology to allow the athletics to improve, which therefore then pushes the envelope for the timekeeping technology to have to improve and the the stakes are highest. And they're they have created an environment to even raise the stakes, which I think is very cool
Stephen Pulvirent too. Yeah. I mean I think you you you get there to to something that that I found fascinating, which is that Omega is not just involved in in timing in the traditional sense, right? Like this isn't like stopwatches and ever more precise stopwatches or like triggers in the pool for activating those stopwatches. This is also about like positioning and imaging and like all kinds of stuff. Like there's a graphic in your story of the the volleyball system that's really incredible. And I I like how you framed it there at the end of your your last comment that like what omega's doing actually allows the sports to get better, which is is cool. It's not just like, oh, it's it's not just a one-way feedback loop. It's it's really like a two-way process
Danny . It's also uh the idea of eliminating human error as much as possible. So in that same part of our conversation, you know, we were talking about volleyball because they were if they were in the process of implementing the same uh motion sensor technology into basketball. And I have like a a noted interest in basketball. But what I found interesting in the basketball timing was the whistle detection system that they had implemented, which basically means that when a whistle's blown by a referee, the clock stops. You don't have to rely on somebody on the sideline hearing the whistle and having a a third or a fourth or fifth referee sitting there to click a button. And the most impressive thing about that is it's not just stopping the clock and it's not just a whistle, it's the whistle. So the detection system knows the exact sound of the only whistle on the floor and any whistle that some, you know, rowdy fan in an Olympics that would have fans would try to blow during a game would not trigger that. I think that kind of stuff is so interesting. Yeah, that
Stephen Pulvirent 's really, really fascinating. I mean, Nora, as as as when Danny and I are like nerding out about this, you know, is is there anything about this that that caught you off guard or surprised you
Nora ? I guess what Danny mentioned about eliminating human error, but also the fact that when I think of precision and I think of developing precision in anything, I often think of it as like very computer and mechanical based and how much they actually involve the athletes during development and how they kind of work with the human body and work with the people playing these in these events and playing these sports to really like see how they operate and then also that they then pressure test it in the real life events at like a local level and then the nationals and then at the Olympics. Like it is a very silly thing for me to now realize, but I'm like, oh yeah, they the stakes are so high and they're not running this in a lab that they really do need to get this technology out in the field on people as early as possible and refine from
Danny there. That was something we touched on in the in the conversation too. I mean that's something that they they are beta testing, they are letting athletes play around with this technology because think about who you're dealing with. I mean, you all played sports when you were younger. Think about sports parents. Think about what the the I mean I mean, co Olympic Olympic coaches and Olympians are are like the ultimate sports parents. So if you screw that up, I mean you will never hear the end of it. So they make sure that all of that is covered in years of development. Ye
Stephen Pulvirent ah. I also really like that, you know, it two two things. I mean, to that point, one, the time horizons they're working on are long, which I think is cool that there's there's a roadmap and there's there's a goals here. Two, I I think the way that they're they're communicating about this and using this technology not just to make the actual events better and not just to make the the athletes themselves better, but to communicate the sort of like importance of timing or the relevance of timing to people, uh, to the audience. You know, on TV, anyone who's been watching like swimming, for example, or some of the track and field events, you know, getting kind of like the the real-time like speed data um and having that be able to be displayed on on TV, I think is a powerful way to get people who who don't know particular sports or don't have a lot of context or don't know what they're watching to understand. I mean, my my personal favorite thing about every Olympics is like turning on some sport that I, you know, have never watched or haven't watched since the last Olympics and getting like way too into it really quickly. And like that's much easier to do if there's like data on the screen that I can relate to. You know, like I don't know, we we've got the winter games coming up soon. And it's like, how fast is a curling stone supposed to move down the ice? Like, I have absolutely no idea, but like show me some numbers and really quickly I'll start having very strong opinions about it. And uh, you know, with the swimmers this year, it's been fun to see that. And I'm I'm excited to see how Omega continues to do that, how how to use timing to actually make the sports more accessible to audien
Danny ces. To your point, because swimming is one of the ones I think you would never imagine that it would become sort of uh such a widely accepted sport the way that it has in Olympics. And I think part of that has to do with the personalities and the people. But um one of those cool technologies is that line that you see, the world record line that any swimmer is chasing in an event. And my favorite piece of the technology is that line doesn't move at a steady pace. It moves at the exact pace of the swimmer who swam that world records swim at the time. So it's real-time moving as if a swimmer was in front of the other swimmer, which I I I imagine that would have to be the case, or else it would be kind of useless. But just like processing what it would take to make that happen and also project that on television in a way that's digestible for someone who might not understand swimming but turns it on for the first time is just amazing to make it so intuitive and real and instantly understandable. Yeah
Stephen Pulvirent , that's that's really fascinating. Honestly, I had never thought about it. And if you had asked me, I probably would have guessed it moved at a consistent pace because of exactly what you're saying. Like, that's that's just really impressive. Like, I'm as you can hear, like, I'm kind of like gobsmacked. That's super cool. I love that. All right, let's let's pause on this year's games and kind of look back for a minute. You know, this was Tokyo 2020, despite the fact that it's happening in 2021. But this isn't the first time Tokyo's hosted the games. Tokyo hosted the games in 1964. And Nora, you worked with our team in Japan who wrote a really cool story, Masa, uh, Masaharwata, wrote a really cool story uh about the man who brought the Olympics to Tokyo back in 1964, Fred Isumuwada. So if you can kind of maybe give us an inside peek there. I I found this tale just unbelievably fascinating
Nora . Yeah. I love this story and I love that it is sort of a peek behind a different curtain of what goes into the Olympics. Like there's the precision of like timekeeping and then the athletics and then this very like human side that comes with getting it set up and the pride that comes with having the um the games in your city. But it started very simply with just sort of like it would be an absolute missed opportunity if we didn't reach out to our colleagues at Hodiki Japan and say, hey, what are you guys working on from your very particular vantage point of a city with the games right now. And they sent us a couple of stories and this one really kind of landed with us. And so, you know, Masa did all of the legwork. He, the story sort of came to him as many things do uh these days very luckily through um through the internet and through a message on Instagram from David Crabitree whose wife is the great granddaughter of um Freddie Samuada. And so then Masa followed up with them to sort of get the first person history of everything that he did to sort of get the Olympics to Tokyo the first time and he just had the had this actu absolutely wild backstory. He did it, it was all in Japanese. We have this wonderful translator that we work with who translated it for us and then James really sort of went in and did some work asking questions and kind of clear like making sure that it was easy to follow. So it was a in the spirit of Olympics, a true team effort from everyone in Dinky Japan and on our team. So it really was just Masa kind of uncovering both the work of this individual and the impact of sort of restored national pride and national identity that bringing the Olympics The sort of reverberation on that for folks in Japan and for the legacy of um Freddy Samuwata
Stephen Pulvirent . Yeah, it's you know, I I think we we focus so much on the the athletes and the the individual sports, but it's like this is a nice reminder of of how much the Olympics can can bring to a host country, you know, and and to the place where they're being hosted, to a host city. And especially with all the chaos I think around around this games, you know, it was kind of easy to lose sight of like how important this was to Tokyo and and how hard they fought for this. And like, you know, obviously putting on a games in a in a pandemic, not easy, in some ways sort of questionable. Not, you know, compromises had to be made, but like, especially in nineteen sixty four, like we're also talking this is less than twenty years after the end of World War Two. Like this this was a it's it's I think this story kind of threw into relief and forced me to think about just how important this must have been in 1964 to to a Japan that was still like kind of reeling after after the war and and trying to like reassert itself on a global stage. And the story
Nora brings up like all of the like anti-Japanese sentiment that he experienced in the US. And it's it was also a reminder that like this year's games felt very politically charged. And it's like, oh, they they always are. Yeah, that's true. So not to detract or draw necessarily parallels, but exact parallels between the conversations we're having now and that we're having in that game, but it is just sort of like um there
Stephen Pulvirent 's so much more than sports happening. Yeah. I think that's that's a great takeaway from this is that like the Olympics are about sports, but they're they're also about a lot more than sports. You know, as we look forward now to the next games. I mean we've we've talked about this year's games, we've looked back. Let's look forward. You know, because of the delay, we're getting another Olympic Games next year. We're gonna get the 2022 games in Beijing, the winter games. Anything that you guys are really looking forward to, whether it's an event, whether it's something watch related, whether it's something timing related, athletes, like what what's on your radar already for the 2022 games?
Danny I mean, we've already gotten our first LE, I think. Omega released their Beijing one of I mean, I'm assuming they'll have many, like they did for for these Olympics, but before these Olympics even began, we got a fairly cool C Master 300 M with kind of a Olympic rings rainbow configuration around. I mean it's not actually a rainbow, but the colors of the Olympic rings configuration around the markers on a kind of icy blue dial, uh, which was very cool. Um, so I wanted to see more I mean I know it's kind of like, you know, some some people could call it a bit lame, but some of these Olympic limited edition watches have been pretty cool from Omega, I'm not gonna lie. Um the one that most of the Omega ambassadors were wearing this year, the white dial blue bezel 300M Seamaster is cool too. They're watches that they don't make regularly. Um and despite how you feel about having an Olympic engraving on the back of your watch, which is hiding, by the way, when you wear it, um these watches can look pretty cool. Um and if you can keep that secret between you and your wrist on
Stephen Pulvirent the case back, then you're all good. Yeah, I I really like on this 300 M the um the titanium bezel ring, the like it's got this like frosted or like kind of yeah, I guess frosted finish to it with like the numbers in relief. I just think that's an awesome bezel. I think it's a thing that I I'd I'd like to see Omega use more. And I agree with you. This this is a watch that like nods to the Olympics, but' isnt like, hey everybody, look
Danny , I'm an Olympic super fan, you know? Right. And I think I think they are going to use that more. It's like the second time in the last year they've deployed that bezel. I think the Necton edition uses it too. Yep. And it's just it' its' as a good way to like mute that watch a little bit because with the ceramic bezel and the size, it can come across as like a bit intense. Yeah. And it's a great way to to to chill it out and make it a little bit more wearable and a little less overtly modern, but without, you know, taking anything away from it. Ye
Stephen Pulvirent ah, I'm hoping we get another cool set of speedmasters. You know, these were Yeah. These dropped Nora Will before you joined the Hinky team. These these dropped back when the games were supposed to be last summer. But it was five Speedmasters each a color of the Olympic ring. So there's uh there's it's five watches, each of which is a limited edition. You could buy them individually. There were also some box sets, I believe. But they're just super cool speedmasters that again to Danny's point, like you know, you could wear the red bezel white dial speedy and nobody would ever know it's an like that that red bezel is supposed to be an Olympic ring. It's just a super dope speedmaster. And so I hope I hope we see more of those. I think these these Olympic speedies were killer and uh kind of again like one of the things that got lost in the shuffle of of moving the games around. I haven't really heard anything about these watches. They kind of like disappeared into the night. Ye
Danny ah, same, actually. But I totally agree. And any kind of speedmaster Ellie they could deploy would be great. I mean Omega's really good at at iterating on the Speedmaster, right? If they can put Snoopy on a Speedmaster, the way that they do it, they can they can pretty much do
Stephen Pulvirent no wrong with those LEs. Yeah. When Enery, our our uh chief brand officer and I were in Tokyo working with the Hodingi Japan team in late 2019, we popped into the Omega boutique in Ginza and they happened to have one of these red Tokyo edition Speedies. Uh, and like both of us thought about buying it. Um, and neither one of us did. And I uh it is the thing, Annary and I have probably talked about like a dozen times since then. We we both regret having not picked this watch up in Tokyo. Um, but you know, say say lovey. This feels like a great time for Omega to put out another pocket watch. Ooh, I I like that. Why not? I love I love that Nora's going full n
Nora erd on this and going pocket watch. Again, I'm doing it in um kind of a frivolous way. I just feel like a pocket watch in an ice skating costume would be a really sol
Stephen Pulvirent id look. Like a pocket watch. Like are we are we talking you wear this like flava flav style like around your neck? Um because that that I'm signed up for. Like let's get Johnny Weir a like giant omega chain. I'm I'm totally
Nora down for that. I mean that's one way to do it. I was thinking like, you know, you're doing your ice dance and there's a song where you have to check the time and you pull out your Omega pocket watch and a flourish. Oof. And uh ye
Danny ah. Instant gold medal. I love the idea that it's just for a Halloween costume. That that's the ultimate stunt. Buy this limited edition Omega pocket watch for your Halloween costume. And that's it. Only time. Old metal ice dancing Olympic costume. Yeah.
Stephen Pulvirent Norris, Norris, Norris talking real shit here, Danny. Come on, man
Danny . The ultimate flex. I bought this for Halloween. I don't I don't need it anymore. I used it already. You're all good.
Stephen Pulvirent I love that. All right. So we've got we've got dope speedmasters on one side, uh, tons of buyer's remorse, or I guess non-buyer's remorse. And on the other side, we're going gold ice dancing pocket watches. All right. Well, uh, we still got some Olympics to watch w while we're recording this. People will be hearing this after the closing ceremonies, but uh we still got some some events to watch. So uh I don't know. I might go answer some emails in front of the TV and uh catch up catch up on some sports. How about you guys? Hoping the dream team can
Danny bring home gold. Go men's basketball. I'm going to go research my new favorite equestrian at
Stephen Pulvirent hlete. Perfect. Love it. Awesome guys. Thank you so much. Thanks, Steven. Thanks, Steven.