Recently in Paul Oberjuerge Category

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:

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.

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?

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.

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.

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:

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

Today was another low point.

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 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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

I don't speak much Italian, but I love listening to it.

I never pack right for the Winter Olympics. I've been to six of these now; you'd think I'd get it right.

Props to Turin volunteer Maura Bovina, who pretty much singlehandedly kept Steve Dilbeck and me from sleeping on the floor here in the Main Media Center on Tuesday night.

The journey over was so hideous, so tedious, I almost forgot the only part that is worthy of repeating. The lightning-strike on the 757 I was on going to Atlanta, leg one of the three-plane journey to Turin.

Traveling to the Winter Olympics often is a serious trek. We're talking small towns, with limited plane service, and then you've got a drive, usually, to get to the city. Nagano (1998) was nightmarish, the plane ride and then the four-hour bus ride. Ditto for Lillehammer (1994). Sarajevo (1984) was a disaster, but that was more of a travel agent trainwreck (getting us only as far as Zagreb, then having us take a train the rest of the way ... a train that was about five hours late).