February 2006 Archives

They’re packing up in Sestriere media mini-hub, carrying out copy and fax machines. All the volunteers and staff are hugging and kissing each other goodbye. Writers you’ve seen 18 hours a day, come over to shake your hand and wish you save passage home.
In the mountain’s main media venue, one that is normally packed with over 300 writers and photographers, there are four others in here still working.
The Olympics don’t wind down, they come to an almost screeching halt.
This has easily been the most difficult of my six Olympics. There seemed a dearth of good stories. I was on the mountain the entire

We have the forum, we scribes and columnists. We can make our observations, moan about standing in another freezing night waiting for a bus that never comes.
But we are not alone. Waiting beside us, just as tired or more, certainly just as near hypothermia, are the photographers.
Up here on the mountain, they go through every hardship the writers do, perhaps more. They work the same crazy hours, work the same consecutive 21 days, put up with the same repeated press food, the same hapless bureaucracy.
They also have to lug 20-30 pounds of cameras and equipment around. Hustle from one mountain venue to another an hour or more away.

Here at the very end of the Turin Games, I'm seeing reporters I wasn't even sure were here -- the guys and gals who had been up in the mountains, living there and reporting on skiing, sliding, jumping and shooting.

My colleague, Steve Dilbeck, was among them.

Turns out, some of these guys had a pretty sweet gig. Like my friend from USA Today, who told me about his setup in Sestriere.

Get this: On the LAST night of competition over at the figure and short-track skating venue, which I practically lived at the past fortnight, I tumbled to something:

The staff at the Palavela served canapes and wine to reporters, after competition!

Which means I missed, oh, about three bottles of wine in two weeks. Not that I drink, really, but still ...

This originally appeared in the print versions of The Sun and the Daily Bulletin. For those of you who don't read those newspapers, I'm pulling it over here.
I finally asked one of the locals, Enrico Lessona, to explain the varieties of cops on patrol here at the Turin Games.[EP
They seem to be everywhere, often handsome young guys, usually talking to each other, and always wearing elaborate, dashing, almost silly uniforms topped by a snappy hat. (Traffic cops in Rome have plumes.).[EP
The police lineup:

``There he is!’’
``Where?’’
``Right up there, half-way up the slope. Bending over next to that guy in the bright yellow jacket.’’
``Nah, I think that’s Chip Knight.’’
It is the Bode Miller Watch. Humbling, demeaning, frustrating, and normally at these Olympics, unfulfilling.
Millers skied five races at these Games. After participating in their event, athletes are supposedly required to walk through a fenced off mixed zone where the media await. They are not required to stop and talk to the media, but at least walk by so they know they’re

My favorite Winter Olympics event is the four-man bobsled.

It's the one event I feel as if I've done. Well, sort of. At Disneyland, of course, on that concrete and fiber-glass mountain Walt put up all those years ago.

I've ridden as driver, brakeman, and in the "pusher" positions, as well. As a child, I liked to think my leaning this way and that actually made the bobsled go faster.

It's the athletes' mantra of the Turin Games.

"It's the journey, not the destination."

Or its philosophical cousin:

"It's the process."

Are all these kids going to the same sports psychologist? If so, maybe they oughta stop.

Things I won’t miss about Italy:
The smoking. I know it’s a European thing, but feel like I’ll need a chest X-ray when I get home. Thankfully they don’t allow you to smoke inside, but as soon as you step outside a press venue you are overwhelmed by a constant cloud of smoke from those getting their fix.
The men. Decided it’s true what they say, all Italian men are good-looking (OK, there is Lasorda). All these guys with their dark, wavy hair, blue eyes, sharp facial features and slim figures (presumably to fit inside those dinky showers). A guy without a strong ego like myself, could definitely leave here with an

I want everyone to know I "represented" as best I could for the Inland Empire at the women’s free skate Thursday night.

I wore what I call "SoCal formal" for the event. Jeans, sure, but a white shirt, hard black shoes, a black sports coat ... and a red-n-black TIE!

I dragged the coat and tie 6,000 miles, from home, just for this moment, and since we talk a lot about costumes at skating ...

Bryant Gumbel, Mr. Crabby, went off on the Winter Olympics the other day. Said they were a fraud because they have no black athletes.

Said he never watches them. etc.

Is he right? Does no African Americans mean no legitimacy?

Shizaku Arakawa's victory in women's skating Thursday night was notable for a couple of reasons.

1. It was Japan's first Olympic women's skate gold.

2. It was Japan's first medal -- of any sort -- here at Turin.

We're talking about a country of 127 million people, a country with plenty of winter and significant money. What's the deal?

My first reaction was, women figure skaters should be in skirts.
Maybe I’m oldschool. Just couldn’t quite warm to the body-stocking approach now popular with several women figure skaters.
Guess I’m a tutu guy and never knew it.
But then Irina Slutskaya wore one during her short program and I thought, ``That sort of works.’’ Maybe it helps that Irina is 27. Maybe they should have a minimum-age requirement. Switzerland’s Sarah Meier’s worked Thursday night, though __ excuse the male heresy __ it was almost too sexy.
The costumes/outfits skaters wear has long come under media critique. Like we’re all Mr. Blackwell at heart.

Ugh, it can’t be happening. Not now. Not this far into the Games.
It’s a lower region thing, as in south of the bellybutton. You know what I mean.
I’ve made it this far clinging to relative health, and I refuse to believe I will succumb now.
And it’s not easy, every Olympics bringing the same near impossible challenge, particularly those played in temperatures that hover in the teens.
Every day the media is jammed into the same enclosed buses and press venues. One person sneezes and 10 people duck. Somebody coughs and you bury your head in the opposite direction.

Contrary to what I wrote earlier this week, Chad Hedrick and Shani Davis WERE scheduled to compete again. In the 10,000-meter race Friday, the final on the men's schedule.

Thursday, however, Davis withdrew from the race, and will be replaced by teammate Charles Leveille.

What's the deal?

That's what Yogi Berra used to say, right? No, it doesn't make much literal sense, but we know exactly what he meant.

It seems to have gotten late, early, here at the Turin Olympics. It feels like it's all but over, and we've got all weekend ahead of us.

Why should that be so?

Those of you older than 30 probably remember when the Soviet Union was the Evil Empire, the perennial rival to the freedom-loving West --and our bitter Olympics rival.

Finishing ahead of The Reds at the Olympics was a high priority for the U.S. team, and lots of us kept a close watch on the medals standings.

Much has changed since 1991, when the Soviet regime collapsed, and now the Russians seem like almost regular guys.

I carry around a 1971 silver dollar. The giant coin with Eisenhower on it. Always. Right-front pocket. For luck, I guess. As a talisman.

Anyway, you might be surprised at how often it elicits comments from foreigners, and this Olympics has been no exception.

While you were sleeping ... Sasha Cohen went to the Palavela arena and practiced. This morning, Thursday, in Turin.

She looked fine. Not ill or sick. Though rumors or one or the other have been sweeping the Olympics since Wednesday, when Sasha skipped practice entirely.

This last 24 hours has got me to thinking about the pressure of these events, particularly the women's skate.

Guess the word has gotten out. Tried to keep it under wraps __ and several layers and hoods __ but it appears the ski bunny-celebrity world has discovered I’m here. Fear there will be no peace until I’m safely home.
It started Tuesday night as I was standing at a traffic signal outside the Main Press Center, about to begin my walk to the figure skating venue.
I glanced at the woman standing next to me waiting for the light to change and thought: That’s an attractive woman. Looks kinda like Katarina Witt.
A few yards later, I hear the woman talking on a cell phone in

Many of you have been to Europe. You know they do things differently here.

The U.S. is, still, mostly a Eurocentric culture, but some of the basic activities of life are markedly different, here in the Old World.

Hence, here is a list of 10 things Euros do better than we do. And 10 things we do better than Euros.

Kinda hard to get your mind around this concept: A real, thriving, interesting (even) SPEEDSKATE rivalry.

Talking about Shani Davis vs. Chad Hedrick, of course. The cobra and mongoose of the U.S. team. I wrote about this for the Wednesday morning papers, but I've been mulling it some more.

Walked over to France today.
Had laundry to do. Alas, there is no place in my temporary home of Claviere that offers such a service.
Since my hotel is a stone’s throw from the Italian entry into their country, crossing the boarder was a snap. Simply walked right over.
In this era of the European Union and the Euro, it’s almost like the whole continent is one big happy country. No passport, no visa, no anything required.
Took a path beneath the highway, completely covered in snow and paralleling a cross-country trail. The sign from Italy said the next city, Montgenerve, was one kilometer away. Coming the other way, the

I'm getting ready for the speedskate 1,500 meters, and I'm looking forward to it. This from a guy who can go, oh, three years and 11 months without paying much attention to the sport.

We've got four American gold-medalists in this race, including the IE's own Derek Parra, Sudanese orphan benefactor Joey Cheek and the two guys who have almost reached "This town ain't big enough for the both of us" territory, Chad Hedrick and Shani Davis.

Journalists mockingly refer to ice-dancing as "The dahnce." With a flat, stretched "a" ... like we'd imagine the French pronouncing it.

A good-ol'-boy columnist was assigned to the dahnce last night, and he spent an hour (while we waited for the medalists) telling everyone in sight that he would buy beer for everyone in the Olympic Village before he ever -- EVER -- covered ice dancing again.

Mary Carrillo of NBC seems to have a feel for silliness of it, which she got at last night.

We don't see or hear NBC's coverage over here, but we've seen the stories about ratings begin down, and how American Idol beat up the Olympics last week.

Here's NBC's Dick Ebersol, talking about the Olympics on Monday. The gist: Nothing gets the numbers it used to get, and we're no worse off than everyone else. (Oh, and "make goods" are free commercials TV runs when ratings don't meet a certain negotiated level with advertisers.)

The quotes:

I am an urban legend.
It’s true. After all these years, my peers speak of me in hushed tones. Even if they do not know my name, they speak of me incredulously, as if maybe it never truly happened.
It’s my mountain trek. The night bus after bus failed to arrive in the middle of the night, while I waited in 28-degree weather in Cesana. Finally deciding just to walk to my hotel __ 4½ miles and straight up for a 2,000-foot elevation climb.
See, whenever reporters wait for a bus __ which happens every single day, several times a day __ they speak of their bus horror stories. Always as a trump, my hike comes up.

Have I mentioned I can't dress for winter? Can't pack for winter? I have?

Today was another low point.

It’s a slow day up in the Alps today. A small amount of events scheduled, where made smaller by the postponement of the women’s super-g.
Which got me to thinking small.
Small rules in Europe, of course, but now into the third week of it, I am ready for something big.
Big is not appreciated in Europe, and Italy fits right in.
Everything seems small. The cars are small; somehow four people actually fit into those things? The roads look like they’re designed for mopeds.
The showers are the real killers. You have to be Houdini just to

Long-track speedskating would be a very dull venue if not for the hundreds of Dutch fans who help fill it up day after day.

These guys love this kind of skating (Remember "Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates?"), and they treat every race as a sort of carnival, complete with oompah band.

How do we know they're Dutch?

We both ducked. We weren’t sure what it was, but it didn’t sound good.
My peer from a Texas newspaper and I looked at each other hoping the other had a quick explanation.
We were sitting in the press venue at Sestriere Borgata. Olympic press venues are essentially temporary press rooms. Up here on the mountain, all but one is an overgrown tent.
As you might imagine, tents propped up in the dead of winter can tend to be on the cold side. As in, freakin’ freezin’.
Wanting international scribes to have feeling at the end of their fingertips when they type, the International Olympic Committee has

We are beginning the third week now. Most journalists get to an Olympics on Monday or Tuesday before it starts. This all began, officially, a week ago Friday. Roughly a month ago.

Some hints you've been in Five Ringville too long, and are ready to go home:

This is NBC's e-mail to journalists about what to look for in their Sunday coverage package.

And this is gonna beat Desperate Housewives?

Dude, thanks for dropping by.
Where would the U.S. be without snowboarding at these Winter Olympics?
We’d be the Netherlands. We’d be struggling to stay ahead of Estonia and South Korea.
By late Saturday afternoon, the U.S. was holding on a disappointing 10 medals. Six of them came from snowboarding, including three golds.
``I told our Olympic committee I thought we could win six medals,’’ said U.S. coach Peter Foley. ``And that’s what we’ve got, with still one event left.’’

The elder daughter posed an interesting question, via e-mail.

"If the American team had a Prom King and a Prom Queen, who would they be?"

I took that to mean someone both attractive AND popular. And I began to think about it ... and as of the middle Saturday of the Turin Games, this is how I would rank the top 10 Prom Kings and Queens.

Lindsay Jacobellis, the snowboardcross woman whose showboating turned gold into silver, did a teleconference call Friday night with reporters who had NOT been at Bardonecchia to see her fall while hotdogging with the finish line in sight.

Quotes we likely won't be using, collected via phone while sitting in the ice hockey arena:

Our dear, sweet Johnny Weir was roughed up by NBC commentator Scott Hamilton, who (if anyone) can say what he darn well pleases because Hamilton actually won Olympic gold.

This is after Weir said he got to the arena late for the free skate, melted down on the ice, dumping half his jumps, and fell from second to fifth.

There is this odd bus hub for media staying up in Alps for mountain events. It is next to no venue, yet is the centerpiece of mountain travel.
You get on one bus (or in my case, two) to get to the Oulx hub and then wait in the freezing weather for another bus to take you where you really want to go. It’s the Olympics.
The other night upon my arrival at Oulx, I was directed to a bus No.4, which is actually in bay No.10. It’s the Olympics.
But when I got there, the bus was off and the door close. The transportation guy sees me standing outside the bus a few minutes, comes over and raps on the bus.

My colleague in the mountain, Steve Dilbeck, will correct me if I'm wrong, but it looked to me as if Visa Girl Lindsay Jacobellis just blew a gold medal by SHOWBOATING just short of the snowboardcross finish line.

This puts her in some pretty dubious company.

This "revelation" came to me on the bus ride back to the media village at 3 a.m. last night/this morning ... and I wish I'd written it in the column I did out of the men's free skate.

I didn't make this up. This is the exact wording of a sign on the door to the media sub-center at the figure skating venue, Thursday, at the sequin-bespattered men's free skate competition.

As I crawled into my hotel in Claviere __which I believe is French for ``the last outpost’’ __ around 1 a.m. Thursday, it began to snow. Beautiful, light snow.
When I awoke this morning, it was still snowing. Maybe a foot or more of delicate snow covered the entire village. It felt almost like a fairy tale.
A Winter Games that had almost been devoid of winter, save for the freezing temperatures, suddenly looked right. Trees and hills and cars were dusted with white.
These are the Italian Alps after all, and they were in dire need of some real snow. The sides of the mountains that face the sun all day

Every Winter Games it's the same thing. The dutiful U.S. Olympic Committee media-relations folks for the "minor" sports (the ones we're not any good in, never have been and never will be) have to report on the absolutely expected non-success of their athletes.

The reports (below) could have come from 1984, 1994, whenever. Under what we in journalism call a "standing headline."

I wonder how the U.S. athletes in these sports keep themselves motivated.

Landon Donovan, pride of Redlands and the U.S. national soccer team, was fired up to be on the 2000 Olympics team in Sydney.

We asked him if he's following the Winter version of the Games, back in his "MTV Cribs" home in Manhattan Beach.

Not even sure what our mahvelous Johnny Weir meant when he told this to NBC's Mary Carrillo last night.

And, no, they’re not all swell guys and girls.
Not to say the vast majority aren’t, but you’re so used to athletes being so excited to participate in the Olympics, that when you run across someone who acts like they haven’t had a bowel movement in 10 days, it can be jarring.
Take Australia’s Dale Begg-Smith, pretty please.
He acts like one seriously unhappy 21 year old. One extremely wealthy, talented, successful 21 year old.
Begg-Smith won the Olympic gold medal in moguls Wednesday. He is the current World Cup leader.
He looked and acted fairly miserable.

Now what happens?
It’s a question a respectable journalist is never supposed to admit to asking, but after one week of freezin’ our patoodies off, we get weak.
The horrid truth: We don’t know everything about every sport in the Winter Games. We may not know half of it.
The trouble is we’re covering a lot of events most of us report once every four years. Yeah, we really are experts at freestyle aerials and the biathlon.
Watch the moguls and find the difference between the sliver- and bronze-medal winners. Uh, think that second guy struggled a tad on

A woman across the way from me, here in the Main Media Center, is eating a salad. Which remains me, my diet here probably doesn't rank as something the surgeon general would consider healthy.

Perhaps the most pitiful soul I've seen in Turin was U.S. skater Evan Lysacek after he bombed his short program Tuesday night, falling on a triple and stepping out of another. He appeared to be in shock.

Seems like a nice-enough kid. Trains in L.A. with Frank Carroll. But Evan was a broken dude, late Tuesday, just mumbling and rambling.

Here's the audio I got of him in the mixed zone, moments after he came off the ice. He was still going when I left; I couldn't take any more. It was like watching someone dissolve before your eyes.

We don't listen to NBC commentators, over here, and it's probably a good thing. But NBC flacks flood our "in" baskets with self-congratulatory e-mails every morning.

At least one of them contains what the PR department considers "bons mot" from their talking heads. These two, below, made me laugh.

He skates for the U.S., yet wears an old Soviet Union jacket.

If you can't get enough of Johnny Weir, and a lot of skate fans can't, we're emptying the notebook here. This includes stuff not going into print in the Wednesday newspaper.

He also went off on a tangent, while moving around before about 50 reporters in the "mixed zone", about how he loves Russia and Russian skating, and how he's learning to speak Russian ... but he was out of my earshot when he said all that stuff.

Admittedly, he was a little drunk.
``I love to surf,’’ he said.
This is great and not unusual, except this was an Italian and he works in the Alps.
I would give you his name, but it has more letters in it than some Italians menus. Safe to say, he works behind the desk and bar of my hotel. Think he’d like it if I called him ``dude.’’
He has blond thin hair, kind of a scraggily beard. Grins a lot. Very thin. Looks sorta like a 22-year-old surfer.
Turns out he’s 27. That he’s college educated. Said he graduated from the university in Milan. Actually has a masters degree in

Hey, maybe Michelle should have given herself a few more days, see if the medicos could have transplanted a groin from a cadaver or something, or maybe she could have trekked over to Lourdes and had that groin blessed ...

Because the Ring Heads are ragging on her replacement, Emily Hughes, pretty fiercely.

This is the 12th edition of the Olympics I've covered. The reporters who come to these events tend to be a clubby little crew (sports writers call them Ring Heads, and not in a loving way). Many of them returning time and again. (Just like me, but I'm not really one of Them.)

Anyway, I might not see the Ring Heads between Olympic cycles. Two years, maybe four. The really sad thing is how rapidly these people are aging! I wonder if they even notice!

I'm tellin' ya, if you see a Michelle Kwan fan coming, take off in the other direction.

Another love note, just in time for Valentine's Day, from a Kwaniac ... though he/she denies it.

As we all know, "admitting" is the first step to recovery ...

Curling is bizarre, with a terminology all its own. This isn't the worst example, by far, but I just got this out of my e-mail inbox.

We’d like all our star athletes to be mature, well-spoken, admirable. Someone you could look up to, feel good about children idolizing.
Yet many times Olympic athletics who are champions in their sport are still developing the rest of their character. That’s OK, of course, and should be anticipated. They are young and shouldn’t be expected to all carry themselves with wisdom beyond their years.
Snowboarder Hannah Teter just tore up the halfpipe course in capturing the gold Monday. Some of her moves bordered on death

The U.S. men's hockey team begins play Wednesday night, vs. Latvia. As of Monday afternoon, exactly two members of the team were in Turin. If that sounds like a recipe for disaster, welcome to the kitchen.

Something about Michelle Kwan appealed to fans on a very visceral level. Anything remotely resembling an attack on her has been sure to generate angry e-mail from her more, uh, emotional fans. One journalist I know said "they'll come after you if they don't like an adjective you used." Said another: "These people will drink the Kool-aid."

Anyway, I suggested Kwan pull out of the Olympics the day before she did, and the hardcore responded. See a selection, below. (The items are uncut and unedited.)

``Who is that?’’ Maybe three people ask. ``It’s Daron Rahlves,’’ someone offers.
It’s hard to be sure here with that wonderful international invention called the mixed zone. That is the supposed interview area, where athletes walk behind a nylon fence and stop to talk to the press on the other side, if they choose. Most do, some don’t. Journalists come from all over the planet to cover the Olympics, and if your guy doesn’t earn a medal and make it to the interview room, you’re only access is in the mixed zone.
Most are ridiculously small areas, and now they’ve taken to

Once it turned daylight in New York, reporters here (and in the U.S.) did a conference call with Michelle Kwan's replacement, Emily Hughes.

I was sitting next to the journalist who said, "I feel bad I'm the one who made her cry, but somebody had to do it."

I feel kinda bad for the journalists who were on their way to the men's downhill, way up at Sestriere. Some of those people are the lead columnists for their newspapers, or reporters who are here on their own, with no backup/colleagues. I feel bad because Michelle Kwan is the story of the day, unless Bode Miller wins the downhill -- or explodes trying. And even then ...

With figure skating, it's always something. This sport seems to have drama by the bucketfuls. Maybe because it's so personality-driven.