Joseph Romanos: sports broadcaster ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics

There's less than a week to go until the 2024 Paris Olympics, and sports fans are feeling the hype.

Sports broadcaster Joseph Romanos joined Piney to outline his predictions.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Weekend Sport podcast with Jason Vine
from Newstalk ZB.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
You'd be struggling to find anyone, I reckon with more
knowledge and experience of the Olympic Games in this country
than New Zealand journalist, author and broadcaster Joseph Romanos. He's
about to jet hot jet out to Paris, but he
stopped him for a jet on the way. How many
Olympic Games have you attended, Joseph.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
I've been to them all since nineteen eighty eight, and
I went to a Winter Olympics as well, so ten
or eleven around there.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
See, when you're losing count, that means you've been to
a lot of them, right.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
Yeah, it's starting to get into those misty memories.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Yeah, do you have a favorite Olympic Games?

Speaker 3 (00:49):
Some of them were really good, Like Ethens was great
because it was a centenary. It was because it was
the home of the Olympics. That was good. Sydney was
good because it was so well run, and London was
good because you were so familiar with London that it
was easy.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Paris. What do you expect from the Paris Olympic Games.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
I suppose it'll be good. It'll be hot. I expected
to be hot, really really busy. I mean it's such
a big tourist place, Jason, and I know they were
very determined to do a better job than they did
last time they hosted it.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yeah, well that was was that nineteen twenty four though,
that's ye's one hundred. I'm surely they could do better
one hundred years on.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
They hosted it in nineteen oh four and it was
a total shambles. The Olympics lasted about five months and
they were just part of a World Trades fair and
were a real after thoughts and they every now and
then they'd stick in an Olympic event. It was nothing,
and no one grasped the importance of the occasion at all.
In nineteen twenty four it was a very important Olympics

(01:48):
because after World War One, Antwerp it had the Olympics
nineteen twenty in Belgium devastated by World War One, really devastated,
very poor, and it was it was hardly an Olympics.
I don't know why they gave it to Antwerp. They
weren't ready for it, so it had to be good.
In Paris and nineteen ten, twenty four otherwise there was
a bit of jeopardy for the whole Olympic movement, and

(02:11):
that they did they did well. De Kubertant was there
was quite ever present, and there was quite a few innovations,
like the Olympic Village for athletes the first time that
had been there. There were they come up with the
Citius ltus fortius, the Olympic motto. There were medal ceremonies,

(02:31):
There was quite a lot of things that came in
the first time. And it was a pretty successful Olympics.
Having said that, Jason, there was something like three thousand,
two hundred just rounding it, three two hundred athletes competed
and only one hundred odd were women, so it was
a man's event.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Sounds like it. So if you look at the success
of an Olympics, now, if for example, we get to
the end of the Paris Olympic Games, what sort of
things have to happen for it to be regarded as
a successful Olympics.

Speaker 3 (02:59):
Well, you'd like to get through without a major incident,
a security incident. That would be you know, and they
do spend billions in billion dollars on security, and it's
great of a few heroes of the Olympics can emerge
people like Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps and going back
further as sort of an Olga Corbett or something like that.
So it's nice if you can think, oh, yes, that

(03:21):
was the Olympics that you know Jason Pine was in
the gymnastics and how good he was and so on. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's good. And then you'd like it to be a
friendly Olympics. That for them to be an atmosphere of
conviviality and collegiality and so on. And I mean it
didn't happen in Atlanta. That was not an easy Olympics

(03:43):
because of some absurd security stuff going on and various
other problems. But generally is a nice feeling.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
As far as the athletes are concerned. The Olympics seems
to have retained its relevance. And it's allure is that
the feeling you get.

Speaker 3 (03:58):
Oh more then mean, I mean, they point much more
than forty years ago. They point their whole sports careers
around the next Olympic. That's what they're aiming for, even
in the interim years when they're competing in World champion
so and it's like this is good, this is a
good stepping stone to the Olympics.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
How has that happened? How is it because it's a
crowded sporting marketplace. How attention span seem to be minuscule
by comparison to what they were a while ago. How
has the Olympics retained its relevance?

Speaker 3 (04:26):
Oh, it's more than retained it though, I mean, it's
become the major thing in most sports. I mean, they've
got tennis and golf in there, and I'm not sure
that the tennis players or the golfers would put winning
an Olympic gold medal anywhere near winning a Grand Slam
tennis or a major golf event. And they have cycling,
and I still think they'd rather win the two de

(04:46):
France than an Olympic gold medal. But for virtually every
other sport, a World champs is the next tier down
to winning an Olympic gold medal. And I guess the
longer time goes on and the more tradition there is,
the more important Olympic gold medal is.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
So you mentioned Usain Bolt before, so it's your feeling
that he would revere his li the gold medals more
than the World championship.

Speaker 3 (05:09):
Absolutely, no question. In one world Champce he broke in
the two hundred meters I think it was, and so
he was disqualified from that event, and it was just
a blip in his career. Really, I tell you what
if that happened to him at an Olympics and that
was an Olympic gold medal thrown away, he'd be crying
about that today.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
How do you regard the addition of new sports to
the Olympics, the likes of breakdancing, sport, climbing, skateboarding. How
do you feel about those sports?

Speaker 3 (05:36):
I love it. I think it's great. The Olympics are
supposed to reflect the youth of today, and they do,
and they're great. The young people go out and express
themselves in ways that you couldn't have dreamed of. Its terrific.
I just wish that the IOC had the courage to
discard some of the sports that aren't relevant today. The

(05:57):
modern pentathlon invented over one hundred years ago for army people.
I mean, it's got no relevance today at all. No
one in most countries world has even heard of it.
And also some of the fencing and wrestling events and
some other ones that they could have a look at
and discard without a lot of sweat.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
Who was our greatest Olympian?

Speaker 3 (06:19):
Well, ever, I always said Peter Snell, But I think
you'd have to I would. I would pass the torch
on to Lisa Carrington. Now, I think over three Olympics,
that level of achievement in the modern sports world, when
it's so competitive, pretty hard to go past her.

Speaker 2 (06:35):
Absolutely, yeah, no, I think you do. You're necessarily I
think whenever we talk about a greater sports person, I
think so Peter Snell jumps to the front of the
queue for a lot of people, doesn't he. But in
terms of because medals are only one part of it,
aren't they. But Dame Lisa has been consistently brilliant for
a long time.

Speaker 3 (06:51):
Well, she was never beaten in her specialty event, the
two hundred.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
Meters gone now course, yeah, yeah, they do that.

Speaker 3 (06:57):
They did that with Olma when you know for three
thousand meters individual pursuit, Okay, that's out. Yeah, So she
was never beaten at any time in that in a
succession of world titles, and then the ability to go
to the five hundred meters, a longer distance event. It's
like a sprinter going to the eight hundred meters on
the track and then also then to team up in
the pears and the fours and be winning medals there too.

(07:19):
So it's really fantastic and you have to you have
to salute her and go has anyone done that well
for New Zealand?

Speaker 2 (07:26):
There could be more to come as well. Do you
have a favorite Olympic moment or do you have a
couple of moments that stand out from all of the
games she've covered.

Speaker 3 (07:33):
I think the Olympic moment that stands out for me
was in Sydney in two thousand when Kathy Freeman won
the two the four hundred meters gold medal and a
home home at home, homegirl. She'd been the facy the Olympics.
She had fifteen story high billboards of her on buildings.
She carried the Olympic flame into the stadium. She was

(07:55):
the face of the Olympics. The pressure on that woman
was monumental. She came out onto the track, that Sydney
stadium was overflowing with people, one hundred and eight one
hundred and twelve thousand people. I remember Brendan Telfer saying
to me, the city's gone Kathy Freeman mad. And she
came out in that space age suit she wore, and
she went out there and she won the gold medal

(08:18):
and when it finished, she just squatted down on the
track in shock. And you know what, I'm not surprised
she never ran that well again, because I don't think
you can climb that high a mountain twice.

Speaker 2 (08:31):
Sydney wasn't a great Olympics for New Zealand, was it?
Considering how close it was? We don't win many medals?

Speaker 3 (08:36):
Are there?

Speaker 2 (08:36):
Want to we?

Speaker 3 (08:37):
No? No, it was terrible. We won one gold. I
think Robertell won a gold and Barbara Kendall won a
bronze and we got a I think a board sailing medal.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
That was it.

Speaker 3 (08:46):
I think or no, Todd might have got a medal. Yeah,
that was it. Not much at all, and it really
signaled the end of the Sports Foundation. That model wasn't
working clearly, and a more professional attitude towards distributing funds
through what became Spark Sport New Zealand.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
Well, it's gone well in the last three I think,
you know, London, Rio, Tokyo, we've gone up each time.
Tokyo was our best ever buy by the metric of
total medals. What twenty in Tokyo. Do you think twenty's
under threaten in Paris?

Speaker 3 (09:19):
No, I don't think we'll get to twenty. I mean
that was a fantastic achievement and the team behind the
team in Tokyo did so well to prepare those athletes
in that COVID environment and to make it comfortable for
them and able to perform well. It was a fantastic
effort by the Olympic Committee and by the competitors themselves.
Really fantastic and not easy circumstances. But you know, some

(09:43):
of these sports, rowing is a good example. We did
really well in Tokyo, and talking to the rowing people,
I don't think they're expecting anything like that medal hall
this time, and in fact they'll treasure every medal they get.

Speaker 2 (09:55):
So you're over there, I think aligned to the New
Zealand Olympic Committee. But will you get the chance to
watch other Are there sports that kiwis don't you know,
compete in or at a very high level that you
like to watch if you get the opportunity.

Speaker 3 (10:09):
No, No, I probably wouldn't. You mean like gymnastics, No,
I probably wouldn't. Jason, I'm busy enough, but I try
to get. I try to get to the rock climbing,
for example, and that sort of thing, you know, something
novel and special. And I always made a point of
going to watch Bolt run because there was a performance
like watching Muhammad Ali, except he's running, not boxing. Yeah,

(10:31):
so there are things you set your sights on.

Speaker 2 (10:34):
Is working in the sports media at an Olympic Games
easy or challenging.

Speaker 3 (10:41):
It's easy on one hand because all the information is supplied,
it's incredible. There's in the main press center, which is
a massive, massive building, and the main room is huge.
There's TVs all around, and there's results flooding in, and
there's a lot of information available. But on the other hand,
you're jostling with you know, Peruvian TV and some African

(11:03):
radio stations doing practice broadcasts two meters away from you,
and it's a very hectic, busy environment.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
Twenty twenty eight, you're off to twenty twenty eight.

Speaker 3 (11:14):
Oh, I'm just trying to get through twenty four justin jeez,
I'm just happy I'm breathing when I wake up in
the morning.

Speaker 2 (11:22):
Well, safe travels to Paris. Thanks for popping in before
your head off. Look forward to seeing whether that twenty
is under threat, and which new Olympic heroes are Both
New Zealanders and others emerge.

Speaker 3 (11:33):
Good to Chatty and Joseph, you too, Jason thinks, no.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
Thanks for Bring on Joseph Romanos their honors way to
the Paris Olympic Games.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
For more from Weekend Sport with Jason Fine, listen live
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