Obviously I am playing catch up with the blog. It has been so busy that I have not even had time to journal things that have been happening. So sadly, there are going to be details that I have forgotten about these first couple of days. There is the jet lag factor and the nonstop days from early morning until I finally stop answering emails around midnight. I am going to do my best to recount some of the stories from the early days and then do my best to keep up going forward. We will see how it goes.
February 7-
This day is a definite blur. I know that I had my morning office hours at the hotel. After the previous day with families coming up to my room we decided that a table in the lobby was going to be a must. So this morning I have a table at one end of the lobby by the couch. A much better set up than my room. I was already thinking that it would be a good idea to set up shop in a corner down there. Now I have an official location. At one point I had to step outside and take photos in the dark of our hotel and text them to one of the dads so he could find me. Somehow it worked and he was able to pick up his tickets. If memory serves me at all I think I took the rest of the Hendrickson crew over to pick up spectator passes after helping Bill register for his online. Nothing like setting up an informal photo shot so that we had a photo to upload for his pass. What I do remember is returning to the hotel and discovering that P&G had decided at the last moment to give away approximately 40 tickets for parents to the Opening Ceremony. I sat in our lobby scrolling through my phone list of every parent I had talked to on Thursday and Friday giving names and # in the group to Bridget. I had to go back over to the park to meet a parent and was waiting on word to see who would get the ceremony tickets.
We eventually discovered that just about everyone we had suggested got tickets so we were frantically emailing, texting or calling to let them know. I met up with a group of them at the train station where we would find a person connected to P&G. Then we waited and waited. She was finally able to get there and hand out tickets. A few families were already in the park at P&G so they picked their tickets up there. The families were so excited and grateful. I even got an offer to use a beach house at Bear Lake because of my part in coordinating everything. I ended up walking over to the park with the P&G rep and the McPhie siblings to find the last couple of people we were missing. I still did not have access to the Family House. I checked just in case. Instead Sheri went in looking for our last people. I discovered they were at USA House and told them to run. At this point I had no idea how far away that was. Turns out, it is far. By the time Elise was able to get to P&G the tickets had been given to others. At least we had some very happy parents. The Alexanders had only found out a couple hours before that their son would be walking in the ceremony. He did not walk in Vancouver. So they were thrilled they would now get to see him in the opening here. I have to admit, as happy as I was for all the parents, it was emotionally draining getting it all done before the ceremony started. Once the last tickets had been disbursed I headed back to the hotel to eat dinner and watch the show.
My hotel room had the best view of the stadium. I was able to watch the show on TV and the lights and fireworks on the balcony. I kept getting distracted by the show outside and would miss things on the TV. It was all gorgeous. The fireworks at the end were just amazing. They were so loud and close that the whole building was shaking. The Russians know how to put on a show.
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| Stadium kept changing colors. |
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| Fireworks in the middle. |
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| Fireworks at the end. |
Saturday, February 8th-
During my office hours on Saturday I got to watch snowboard slopestyle. I am learning quickly that this might be a great thing. I cannot understand the commentators, which means I cannot be annoyed with them. The downside is that if I am working I might not catch the name of my athlete who is about to go down. This involves a lot of checking to make sure it is not an American on course. And it also means missing some runs. When Sage Kotsenburg won his gold medal, a whole new aspect of my job kicked in. Since I am down at the coast, I get to coordinate with the USOC for medal ceremony tickets and Order of Ikkos ceremony invites. Fortunately, Abbi had given me a preliminary list for their group in the morning before the event. All we had to do in the afternoon was tweak it a little bit. They started me out with an easy one. Since the whole group coming for Sage's ceremony were staff, I was able to have the USOC staff meet them at the Welcome Center for the Athlete Village. I have a feeling it will not always be that simple, but I will enjoy it whenever I can.
Michelle from P&G got in touch with me today and told me to stop by. She said that I would be on the list and to come see her. When I arrived at the Family Home the front desk staff and I had to laugh. Once again I was not on the list. But this time Michelle was around to figure it out for them. So I am now accredited to go in there when needed. Once I had filled out forms and waivers Michelle gave me a tour. I have been told that it is not as big as the one in Vancouver or London, but I think it is nice. They have a USA side and a Global side. There are family rooms with tables, couches and TVs on both sides. And there are also more open rooms that aren't completely enclosed but do have cover with picnic tables and more TVs. They have lunch and dinner that they serve daily, there are snacks sitting out on tables and there are drinks (alcohol, water, soda) available any time. There is also a salon. They can do cuts, color, manicures, make up and also give the guys a shave. I wonder if at the end when it slows down if I can sneak in for a full make over. I did not even bring a hair dryer, so I probably need help. It really is a great place for the families of our athletes to hang out on days off or between events. I do not want to take advantage of their hospitality, but I do think it will be a good place to grab a seat when I am at the park and need to work on a computer for a few minutes or charge the phone.
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| USA Family Room |
This is my fourth Winter Olympics but I have never seen a medal ceremony. In the past you had to be at a certain location to pick up a free ticket to the medal ceremonies. Since I was generally at an event during those times I always miss the medals. I love the Winter Olympics but this is one of my biggest frustrations. I do not understand why the fans who spent the money and took the time to go to an event are not able to see the medal ceremony. Anyway, in Sochi they have a large medal plaza in the Olympic Park down at the coast. All you have to do is get into the park and then anyone can watch the ceremony. There are tickets that can get family down closer to the stage, but the lay out is pretty good for anyone to see, even in the back. I decided to go watch the medal ceremony for Sage. I was back behind the flag poles, but I had a great view. There were only two medal events that day. So first we saw the Cross Country women's skiathlon medalists and then the Snowboard Slopestyle medalists. When I went to Norway for World Championships in 2011 I spent a lot of time seeing Marit win. I had to laugh that the first time I get to see an Olympic medal ceremony is the night she wins again. It was great to see Sage get his medal. I am so happy for him and for Park City.
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| USA's first gold medal. |
Since I was in the park I decided to walk back slowly so I could enjoy everything there was to see. The park is massive. You think that because it is so contained that it would be easy to get around. But it is a hike from the back near the flame and medal plaza to the front. The weirdest thing is walking in through the spectator entrance and hardly seeing any people. The further back into the park you get the more people you see. There are country houses (USA, Canada, Switzerland, etc), sponsor buildings, all the ice event stadiums and of course the amusement park.
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| Olympic Flame |
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| Massive hotel |
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| Concession options |
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| Russian Bank has an ice climbing wall. |
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| Megafon- Must be able to do something inside because this outer wall changes. |
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| Made from shipping containers. |
When I got back to the hotel I noticed that the medal # outside the USOC office had not changed. I asked if they knew about results from Women's Moguls. Turns out that finals had not even started. So I went to my room and watched it on my computer. I loved seeing Heather McPhie come down and throw two fabulous jumps. She had a big smile on her face. It looked like Eliza and Hannah also had good runs. The hard part about watching in Russian is that you do not understand what they are saying or know where people stand. When the next round began I realized that I did not see Heather, but I had no idea why. It was later explained to me that she had thrown two newer tricks off the jumps and it seems they just did not know how to judge them together. Sounds similar to 2002 when Johnny Mosely threw the dinner roll at the Olympics and ended up 4th. I knew Heather had been happy with her run just from the smile on her face, so hopefully she is happy despite not making the next round. In the end Hannah finished third with two Canadian sisters taking 1st and 2nd. I have watched these sports for 8 years and it is very rare for me to notice the things that make an athlete lose points on their score. But this time I saw the ski get away from Hannah and knew it was going to hurt her. I am so proud of her for fighting through that mistake and continuing on without giving up. I think she should be incredibly proud of her bronze medal. And I hope that people back in the USA will realize how hard she fought to finish that run and earn bronze.
It is going to be an interesting Olympics.
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