The only hitch was being the last person on the bus, again. It hadn’t started to roll away but the 05:50 bus was soon to take off.
A quiet bus ride to Whistler Paralympic Park, some furtive glances towards the end there but too early to really interact with people.
07:03 and I’m remembering all of these times from memory, I’m impressed, we have had our assignment for the day in Event Services, as Hosts.
I’ve been given a sport card. Tomorrow it will probably be different, but this was a good start – what I wanted, and close to the action.
The first role is acquiring a radio and inform Sport 10 (I being Sport 20) that a client with special requirements (young children, wheelchair, a blown knee from yesterdays moguls) has arrived on the shuttle … and someone is to come escort them to seating in the bleachers.
Lunch around 10:45 and monitoring exits upon returns. Athletes hop out past me through the mix zone where journalists (accredited), photographers, and broadcasters all vie for interviews or photographs as the athletes finish their qualification or medal event.
The middle of the day is spent access monitoring – either you have a very intense look (Russian) look and no amount of English will stop you from barging past me, a “4” (for zone control) or yellow E as part of the accreditation indicating a member of the press.
Some understand, some are belligerent – the Host is expected to do the best they can, asking for accreditation if the two requirements are not visible to them.
The afternoon, the best part - back on the radio, escorting people from the bleachers in reverse direction – to the shuttle to take them where they needed to go.
And an afternoon with a real and memorable story – albeit brief.
Anne-Mette Bredahl (didn’t know her name at the time) was making her way towards the wax rooms and needed some assistance – the person guiding her ended up hopping on the shuttle but ended up asking if I could escort her, Norwegian cameras rolling alongside me, documenting her experience. She gently took the crook of my arm like the best of dates I’ve been with – the other hand guiding a walking stick on the pavement.
We walked cautiously to the Danish Wax Trailer. I opened the door and she instinctively went to her bag. The zipper caught so I finished the job for her and carried her bag back – she requested a pit stop – so I watched her bag as she entered the Race Center bathroom.
Squawking on the radio was Sport 30 and Sport 10 – wondering if I could escort more clients to the shuttle.
“I’m escorting an athlete – it’ll be one minute.”
We left the restroom, making our way back to the cobblestones paving the path between the Paralympic Family Lounge ( requirement = #6), I passed her gingerly off to my supervisor.
“This is a Danish skier – she’s great.”
I took off to escort the next group.
More on this one story as a piece of more of what I saw today, tomorrow. You now know as much about Event Services (and being a Host) as I do.
He's a French biathlete.
Or so I'm told, by Solen. I had to ask just who I was snapping pictures of that day. The French coach confirmed it for me though.
Dead batteries = few photos of the Men's 4x10 Relay. At least I got a gold medalist with a few up-close shots ... ?
I receive a call on the 24th, approximately 9:03 AM.
An extra ticket to the Men’s Cross-Country 4x10 Relay.
In love with my life.
It’s the premiere event of the Games for cross-country skiing, I would argue, topped only by the grueling endurance of the 50 km mass sprint.
The soundless segments of the 4x10 were often our motivation on the last race of the “regular season” -- the Grand Marais race – to keep the mental image of perfect technique in our minds.
Double pole, stride, rest, draft. Fluids, lunch, bibs back on and skating our way to stack ourselves up before the Sections team was named.
To see cross-country skiing, nobody narrating anything for me; I’m watching it, they come by directly twelve times from my vantage point, fresh snow on the ground, fresh snow falling as huge flakes, no more notes as the racers go by me a skate-pole length away.
Those extra centimeters gained from the classic poles come and go with the pushing and jostling into place to see the racers. Sometimes I’m close, the closest one, yelling as loud as I can at the entity of Petter Northug (with ghosts of Alsgaard propelling his glidewax and visions of Bjorn Daehlie and capturing his spirited sprint to the finish) and a cardboard sign to forever be there on camera. Then they are all gone, reemerging around the tricky right-hand corner and it’s a flat sprint in, one last side-step left, maybe forever as a racer, the final straightaway past the fans and Canadian flags and the camera-on-a-track.
And somehow Northug did it.
And somehow I’m being interviewed on NRK news for my (Pasha Kahn’s) sign.
Somehow something tells me that now’s the time to make my once-in-a-lifetime-swag-Olympic-memorabilia: a hat, of all things. DnB NOR (think: the new Cresco) that I think I might be the only Minnesotan to own.
I scoop it right off of the head of a Norwegian, who got it from his brother Eldar Ronning. I cannot verify that it was his brother. I can verify I was standing in the queue waiting for the bus. He says it was his brother? Wrote the name down. Norwegians can be sly. The guy I bought it from was a Norwegian skiing out in Bozeman … so … perhaps either way.
The skiing, being there in person, without access to the big screen or Bob Costas brings back that intense moment of knowing the moment as an athlete. A desire to compete; to ski, to go fast and to go faster than others. That was love then; a requirement, training as an afterthought. Nobody is creating drama. No commercial breaks on course. No TV timeouts in a hotly contested relay.
My concerted efforts to make it to Whistler Olympic Park as a volunteer paid off. People on the Volunteer crew knew how much I wanted to go to a cross-country event.
Nothing but gratitude in return.
Things work out with emotion.
Back to Work, but volunteering, through the fog, to Whistler.
Time is not a concern -- only happiness – to be in love with my life as it unfolds now.
Work ends.
A visitor from Minnesota arrives, freshly arriving from Victoria.
No posts while entertaining guests.
I do my best to show him around Whistler as to the best a quasi-local can.
Adventures begin.
More Norwegians tomorrow.
Entering the venue. Powder blue jackets and skies.
I’m so excited for this event.
To reconnect with my skiing self, the cross-country scene and everything it entails.
Nordic gods. The excitement of sprints, qualifications, the drama of finishing.
There isn’t much time to capture the experience with words, nor a desire. This is something I just want to live through – plus, the skiers pass so quickly at the spot I’ve wedged into (between a group of Frenchmen and Americans from Vermont and Alaska) that only a few pictures are managed each time.
Before the woman’s race starts, one of the Alaskans I recognized from a past life was Rob Whitney of the Subaru Factory Team. Being colloquially called “Rob” by the Alaskan-flag wearing friend clicked something in my mind; so I asked him if I’d seen him from somewhere; West Yellowstone maybe? And then my mind kept working as I was talking with him and realized he had been with the team.
At Whistler Olympic Park he was handing out “Go Holly!” stickers in support of his wife, Holly Brooks, attempting to qualify for the Quarterfinals of the women’s sprint (classic technique). We talk a little Alaskan politics.
Holly skiing past us -- Rob wedged in for a picture (he's cropped out).
The view allows us to see the finish, the skiers going down the hill coming up from the start in the stadium, and the up-close shots of them passing by before re-entry through the last big turn into the stadium.
The men's turn to ski.
Andy Newell (#2) -- who failed to qualify, unfortunately.
Torin Koos (#28) transitioning from double pole to diagonal stride.
Simi Hamilton #(42) double-poling through the slight uphill section below.
(#48) Kuzzy!!!
The Official Kikkan Randall fan club. Rob is in the top right, back row.
The Norway section!
Looking out at the final downhill curve before entering the stadium.
Patrick Bateman makes an appearance.
Norwegian Marit Bjorgen in a qualifying heat.
Petter Northug (#6). (For J. Marcos).
