The Olympics... and beyond

Those who follow along on my Olympic journey online or listen to me on the radio when I get the chance to talk Olympics, may notice that I spend a lot of time at biathlon. This is by design, despite the fact that biathlon is one of the lesser-known and lesser-appreciated sports in the United States.  The reason for my consistent appearance at biathlon is Sean Doherty. He may not be a household name in the United States like Mikaela Shiffrin, Lindsey Vonn, Chloe Kim or Hillary Knight, but to many of the people who read the papers I write for, particularly those papers where I started my journalism journey, they are well aware of Sean. Sean went to Kennett High School where he was a standout cross-country skier during the heyday of Kennett Nordic. During that time he started working at biathlon and it wasn't long after he graduated from high school that he was named to the Olympic team for the Sochi 2014 Games. As many know, Sochi was my first Olympics. I originally applied for crede...

Back in PyeongChang in 2018, the media were offered a chance to take a tour of the DMZ, the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. We visited the DMZ museum, journeyed out to a lookout on the edge of the DMZ where we looked directly into North Korea and also stopped at a Buddhist temple. To this day, it remains one of the coolest things I've ever had the chance to experience. In the next two Olympics, the chances to do things out in the cities that I was visiting was completely limited by COVID. In Tokyo, once we cleared 14 days in the city, we were free to move about the city if we wanted, but COVID was in a major spike in Tokyo at the time and it was advised that if you do go out, be careful. I chose not to, for a number of reasons. Then in Beijing, once we were in the bubble, we were not allowed out until it was time for us to go. It would've been great to visit the Great Wall or see numerous other things, but it just wasn't possible. Then came Paris when all ...

They say it's not good to have favorites. And maybe that's true, but I most certainly have a favorite when it comes to the Winter Olympics and that favorite is alpine skiing. Truthfully, it's one of my favorite sports to cover at the high school level as well, as sometimes the pictures come out great and I also usually get a chance to ski too, so that's a bonus. But when it comes to the Olympics, there is no doubt that I love alpine skiing. But alpine skiing can also be weird when you watch in person. At the Tofane Alpine Center, where the women's alpine skiing is taking place at the Milan-Cortina Olympics, I was standing in what is called the mixed zone, an area just beside the finish area where press gather to wait for athletes to come through and talk following the conclusion of their day. I was standing there with many other American journalists (the corrals are divided by country to make it easier for everyone involved) just watching the action unfold. Like any...

I've made a few trips from my hotel in the Valle di Casies over to Cortina over the course of the last week and each time I make one of those trips, we stop in the small town of Dobbiaco. And every time we do, I feel like I want to get out and walk around because it just looks like a cool place. So, today, that's what I did. There was nothing on the Olympic schedule that I needed to see or at least nothing that I needed to see that I was able to get to in an hour or two. My original plan was to walk up to the ski area up the hill from my hotel and rent some skis. One of the photographers staying at my hotel said he went up there and it was very inexpensive. Despite not having gloves or ski pants, I walked up with the intention of spending a few hours skiing, but there was a pretty big race going on and the race course was taking up most of the trail and there were lots of kids and parents racing and watching, so I thought it might be a good idea to wait for a day when there was...

If you're watching the Olympics on television, you see all the venues. If it's an indoor venue, they will often show it from the outside before heading inside, while the outdoor venues get the panning camera shots and the wide angle looks. But, what you don't see is what it's like behind the scenes in a venue, so I thought maybe I would share a little bit about what we, as media members, experience when we are at a venue. First, like everyone else, we have to go through security before we enter a venue. This traditionally includes a scanning of our credential, a look through our bags and a wanding by a security person to make sure we're not carrying anything illegal. Weirdly, we are not allowed to bring cans of soda into the venue, but plastic bottles are OK. Once we are in a venue, often times, like the public, it is a walk to get where we need to get. Sometimes it's not. Each venue has a venue media center (VMC), which has a room with tables and chairs and pow...

If you happened to hear me this morning on Greg and the Morning Buzz (who I should note have been so great with letting me talk Olympics the last 12 years), you heard me tell the story of the bus issue last night. I hopped on the bus in Cortina, which was running a few minutes late, heading over the mountains toward Anterselva, where I had to walk to another bus stop to get the bus to my hotel, which is about a 40-minute drive without traffic. I walked to the other bus stop, just missing the bus that was scheduled for just before 8:30 p.m., so I waited about 45 minutes for the 9:30 bus. And I waited. And I waited some more. Eventually, I waited all the way to the 10:30 p.m. bus, the final one back up to my valley hotel. The one other person waiting with me said that an earlier night the same thing had happened to him and they had to put him up in a hotel because he had no way of getting back to his hotel. It seems that this is kind of an Italian thing. You just don't know. I expect...