Steve Dilbeck: 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.

``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

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

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.

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

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 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.

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

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

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.’’

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.

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

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

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

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

``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

``You’re so lucky to go to the Olympics.’’ Well, yes, I truly am. ``It must be just so much fun.’’ It certainly has its memorable athletic moments. But all the effort that goes into covering these things can border on the unbelievable and I am certain I have already experienced my most memorable 2006 Winter Games moment. And they’ve yet to award a single medal.
This journey begin begins at 1 a.m. when I am dropped off in the ski village of Cesana after two hours of bus rides up the mountain from Turin. One more to go to reach my hotel in Claviere, on the very edge of the French border. The transportation guy tells me the next bus __ actually for this line it’s more a van __ is due in 30 minutes

My nose, I can feel my nose. The toes may take awhile longer, but progress is underway. The problem started with a tap on the shoulder. ``You have to go,’’ she said. ``I’m sorry we’re closing, you have to go.’’ I was in the main media hub up the mountain and it was midnight. Mentioned I’d been told the venue was open until 2 a.m., but the venue chief looked at me like I was a crazy American. My column was maybe half done; if I left, I wouldn’t be able to finish, let alone send the story. She came back, said I could stay and just let the security guys know when I was leaving. Seemed simple.
Ten minutes later, another tap on the shoulder. ``You have to go.’’ It was Bruno, the venue security chief with three assistants.

Today, at this moment, I am able to file. Tomorrow, five minutes from now, who knows? The Main Press Center has gone wireless for this Olympics, which sure sounds like a good idea. It took about 40 minutes for someone from Vancouver to hook up my laptop Tuesday. Called him my ``Hero from Turino.'' On Wednesday it wouldn't work. It took five guys who mostly spoke Italian about 45 minutes to get it up. Yet if I go five minutes without using it, it gets knocked off and have to enter the 73,246-character secret code all over again. You gotta love your challenges at the Games. About to take the first of my three buses up the mountain to my hotel. They may even have wireless up there.