The Olympics... and beyond

Eight short months ago, I was on a mountain top two hours outside of downtown Beijing, China, watching as the woman regarded as one of the world's best alpine skiers, had what can only be described as the worst few days of her competition career. It was tough watching Mikaela Shiffrin go through what she went through following disappointing non-finishes in the Beijing Winter Olympics and it led to my most read blog post by far  and stoked many discussions both in Beijing and back at home in the United States. What made me think of this was the week that Mikaela just had, which can only be described as possibly one of the best weeks of her competition career, with three wins in a row, which pushes her closer to Lindsey Vonn's record for World Cup wins for a woman and closer to Ingemar Stenmark's record for World Cup wins for anyone and made her only the third person in history to record 80 World Cup wins. It was truly remarkable to follow the races while I was covering the n...

Those Facebook memories struck again. This time, it was Sunday when I happened to be on the laptop and took a quick break from work and the memory popped up. It was four years ago that day (December 18) that I received the e-mail from the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee that I had been granted credentials for the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics. What a ride that turned out to be. That e-mail came a scant 10 months after I had returned from PyeongChang, South Korea and the 2018 Winter Olympics. On a whim, wanting to see how a Summer Olympics experience would differ from the two Winter Olympics that I had been to, I had applied for credentials for the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo. I was excited to get the chance to see something different, to see the Olympics without having to don a winter coat at any point. The next year proved to be much the same type of processes that I had gone leading up to the 2014 Sochi Winter Games and the aforementioned PyeongChang Games four years later...

The road to Paris has officially begun. However, I am still unsure just exactly how far down that road I am going to go. The United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee sent out the e-mail for press to apply for credentials earlier this week. On Tuesday I completed the form and sent in my application for the Paris Olympics, but did so knowing that if I choose to, I can pass on the opportunity and allow them to go to another journalist. My concerns leading up to Paris have nothing to do with the fact that it's the Summer Olympics or even that it will be less than two years since my most recent Olympic trip. My concerns are almost completely financial. As some people may know, I work part time at the Yum Yum Shop in Wolfeboro. While I started doing this during the pandemic when I got laid off from my writing job, I've kept doing it as a way to pay for the trips that I enjoy taking, be it to the Olympics or Survivor events around the country. Sure, it leads to me being tired a ...

Facebook memories are always reminding you where you were in previous years. Most of my summer memories are from baseball fields and race courses around New Hampshire. But, the one-year-ago memories this week have started coming from the other side of the world, as at this time last year I was in Tokyo, preparing for my first summer Olympics experience, a year later than planned and a few days later than planned thanks to a three-day required quarantine. As I write this on Saturday, July 23, it was exactly one year since the Opening Ceremonies, which I watched from my hotel room, as my quarantine had yet to be completed. I had originally hoped to make the Tokyo Opening Ceremonies my first-ever Olympic ceremony, but that had to wait a few weeks until the Tokyo Closing Ceremony. Over the past six or seven years, I have really enjoyed when Facebook provides me with memories from my Olympic experiences. Most of those have come in the middle of February when the Sochi and PyeongChang Olympi...

This piece previously appeared in Salmon Press Newspapers. I’m putting my foot to the floor, riding inches from the ground as I get up to speed and enter the race track, my heart pounding and a voice in my ear telling me to move up and get between the lines. The number eight Budweiser Monte Carlo, long a fixture of Dale Earnhardt, Jr., is now carrying a guy who barely fit through the window and is super happy he took his blood pressure medication earlier in the day. That being said, as the car circled the track, with my foot hammering down coming out of turns two and four looking to pick up speed on the straightaways, the thrill was real. It felt like I was flying. In reality, I was probably going about the speed I do on Interstate 93 when I’m heading to Littleton to cover a basketball game. A little backstory. A few years ago, I was in the media center at New Hampshire Motor Speedway when someone came in and asked if anyone wanted to take a ride in the pace car. It seemed like a great...

It's been more than two months since my last blog post. Obviously, this blog focuses on the Olympics and my experiences covering the Games as a local sports reporter. During the time between the Olympics, most of my life is devoted to covering high school sports across the Lakes Region of New Hampshire and north through Franconia Notch. That job keeps me more than busy, with games just about every day and tons of stories to be written. The past few months have been filled with trips to baseball, softball, lacrosse, tennis and track competitions all around the state. While there has been nothing that is comparable to the Olympics, in many ways, my normal life is much busier than the two or three weeks that I spend in foreign countries every couple of years. However, this week there were a couple of noteworthy Olympic announcements and I found them both to be interesting in a few ways. The first announcement was the 800-day mark to the Paris Olympics in the summer of 2024. I have yet...

Near the end of the Tokyo Olympics last summer, I offered up my rankings for the three Olympic experiences I had under my belt at that point. With Beijing officially in the rearview, I have added Beijing into the rankings, which are below. Transportation PyeongChang, Sochi, Beijing, Tokyo Tokyo was last on this list because of the one hub to get anywhere. Beijing also had the one hub within the city, but there was another hub located near the alpine venue and there were buses operating between venues in certain places, which was convenient. Beijing touted the high speed train as a plus, and to get to the Zhangjiakou (biathlon, freestyle skiing, XC skiing, ski jumping), it was great, but to get to Yanqing (alpine, sliding) it wasn't as efficient. The long distances between the venue clusters was also not conducive to people trying to see many things. PyeongChang wins this category for its very efficient system.   Food Beijing, PyeongChang, Tokyo, Sochi Tokyo did a good job in incorp...

It's been a week since my third Winter Olympic experience came to a close and I began the trip home from Beijing.  Since I've been back, I've had a lot of people asking what the experience was like and I think the word I've used to describe it has been 'different.' For the most part, while this was my third Winter Olympics, it's more comparable to my first Summer Olympics, which took place last summer in Tokyo. The main reason is obviously the COVID precautions that enveloped both of these Olympic experiences.  Like in Tokyo, Beijing was restricted on where we could go as media. We were allowed to go to our hotels, the media centers in both Beijing and Zhangjiakou and the numerous venues where the events took place. This means that we were unable to venture out into the city that we were visiting and see the many sights that are to be seen. I saw a lot of the city and the outlying area through the windows of the many buses I traveled on and the high speed tr...

I really thought the hardest part about the trip home from China would be the airport in Beijing. I had no problems coming through Paris on the way over, but I guess they were waiting for me to be on the way home to throw all the roadblocks up. Before I left China, I booked an appointment for a COVID test at the testing facility in the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. I made the appointment for 7 a.m. figuring I had plenty of time to make everything work before my 1 p.m. flight, even if things went wrong. I was concerned about finding the testing facility, but a quick look at the map pointed me in the right direction and I got there before 6 a.m. That was the good part. Once the doors opened, they were looking for a QR code that I didn't seem to have. Thanks to a lot of help from Tamara Lovelace (fluent in French) before I left China, I had been able to input all of my information into the system and figured that was all I needed to do. However, the guy at the security line to g...

It sure felt like more than eight hours. Probably because it was. But on the clock, it was a mere eight hours since I left Beijing. However, in reality, I had spent more than 15 hours on a plane.  My Air France flight took off from Beijing at 10 a.m. and for some strange reason, had to go to Seoul, South Korea first. So we flew more than an hour in the wrong direction, stopped at the Incheon Airport for more than an hour where we couldn't get off the plane. Then took off again and flew back over Beijing and then all the way to France. We arrived in Paris just before 6 p.m. The airport process in Beijing was quite simple, which was a surprise. We were greeted at the airport by volunteers/staff, once again all dressed in the hazmat suits. They directed us to the proper lines we needed to be in to check our baggage and then we passed through security. Because these areas were reserved for just Olympic traffic, the process was pretty quick, then it was just sitting around waiting for a...

Some picked up pieces as I sit in the media center the day after the Olympics ended, finishing up sending all the stuff for this week's papers before flying out early tomorrow morning. The closing ceremonies were great. The good news was it wasn't as cold as it was during the opening ceremonies, or at least it felt that way. Things were wrapped up in a couple of hours, it was great to see the video preview of Milan-Cortina for the 2026 Winter Olympics and there was plenty of pomp and circumstance as the Olympic flame was extinguished and the Olympic flag was passed along from Beijing to Milan-Cortina. Those Italian Olympics are something I am really looking forward to in four years. Without a doubt, the people that make the Olympics go are the volunteers and/or workers. They are everywhere, from running the bus depot in front of the Main Media Center to staffing the help desks inside, from cleaning seemingly everywhere, all the time to moving foot traffic in the right direction...

I am sitting in the press tribute of the Bird's Nest Stadium, site of the Closing Ceremonies of the Beijing Winter Olympics. It's about four hours before they start and there is rehearsals and general milling around on the stadium floor in front of me. It's been an interesting, intriguing and incredible two-plus weeks on the other side of the world, but that time is slowly drawing to a close.  Like for the Opening Ceremonies back on Feb. 3, I took an early bus to the stadium and arrived well ahead of when I needed to, partly to avoid the crowds and partly because I just wanted to get out of the media center. Unlike with the opening ceremonies, I didn't even bother sitting down in the venue media center, instead opting to head down and find a seat in the press tribune to watch the proceedings going on in the lead-up to the ceremonies. It is decidedly warmer than it was the night of the opening ceremonies when I stayed inside to keep from freezing. So far, I haven't d...

It's the final day of the Beijing Winter Olympics and I am sitting in the Main Media Center getting a bunch of writing done and preparing to go to the Closing Ceremonies in a few hours. I still have one more story to get done before then. While it's been a busy week here in China, it has also been a busy week at home and there are a lot of things to celebrate for the teams I cover. The alpine skiing championship week is one of my favorite weeks of the year since I usually just spend the week out covering meets here and there. While that has gotten tougher over the last few years with the addition of so many schools to my plate and the meets mostly being held on the same day, it's still a lot of fun and unfortunately, when I go to the Olympics, it always falls during the time I'm away. This year, I missed plenty of success, as the Plymouth girls won the Division III alpine championship and the Bobcat boys came in second place. The Kennett girls won the Division II champi...

Today was one of those frustrating days at the Olympics. It wasn't a bad day, just things didn't go the way I had planned or was hoping for them to go and that's always frustrating. I caught the 7 a.m. bus from the Main Media Center toward Yanqing with hopes of catching the alpine team event, as Mikaela Shiffrin would be skiing one more time and I thought it would be nice to see her race again and also see a bunch of the other skiers I hadn't had the chance to ski. Last night the announcement had gone out on the myInfo web site that journalists have access to for results and announcements, that the start of the race, originally slated for 11 a.m., was going to be moved up an hour to 10 a.m. Leaving at 7 a.m. left me plenty of time to take the two buses needed plus the three tram rides to the technical finish area. The buses were on time and I hopped on the first tram that brings us from the base area to the speed finish area. However, once we got there, we couldn't ...

A lot has been made of Eileen Gu and her decisions leading up to the Olympics here in Beijing. Nobody can question the young woman's abilities and talent, as she is one of the best freestyle skiers out there and proved it by winning two gold medals and one silver medal, the first freestyle skier to ever win three medals in one Olympics. And wherever she competes here in Beijing, she draws a crowd. As I boarded the bus this morning at the Main Media Center bound for the train station, there wasn't room for one more person. I was confused as the mass exodus to the train station until I heard a couple of British guys next to me mention that Eileen Gu was skiing. Many of the people on the bus were workers who likely had the day off and were going to the event to see her ski. Like the bus, the train also had the most people I've ever seen on it and when I got to the venue, in addition to the many people inside the closed loop with us, there were a large number of fans in the sta...

For the second day in a row, a stinging defeat.  The gold medal for women's hockey was awarded today in Beijing and as has been the case each time said medal has been distributed but once (Torino), the gold medal game featured the United States against Canada. The United States won the original gold medal in Nagano in 1998 and won the most recent in 2018 in PyeongChang, but in between, Canada had taken every one of the gold medals. When the puck dropped on today's game at Wukesong Sports Center, I was sitting above the US goalie in the press tribune hoping for an upset. The Canadians had beaten the Americans in the only previous matchup between the two teams in these Beijing Olympics and I was hoping for a repeat of PyeongChang, with New Hampton School graduate Cayla Barnes and her teammates coming out with the win. As most everyone knows by now, that did not happen. The Canadians got out to a 3-0 lead and then withstood an American rally that saw them score two goals in the fi...

After watching the American men's hockey team play in their first two games in person and then the third on the television in the media center, I had a pretty good feeling about the team's chances in the tournament when it began today. I should know better than to trust my feelings. They are rarely right. I had an interview this afternoon and then had to catch a bus to the train station to make it up to the mountain zone, so I wasn't at the game, but I was in the Main Media Center watching from the second period on. It really looked like the Americans were going to pull out a close win over Slovakia and move on to the semifinals. But, as we all know by now, that didn't happen. A bad bounce that was tipped past the US goaltender in the final minute of the game sent the two teams to overtime and then to penalty shots before the Slovakian team was able to get one by in the fifth round of the shootout, ending the American team's Olympics a bit too early. This is a simil...

Before I left for Beijing, I put together a schedule that I hoped I would be able to follow while I was here. I knew that things would probably have to change here and there, but the schedule I put together had me seeing a lot of different sports and different venues. Today, the plan was to head up to the alpine venue in Yanqing to see the women's downhill, but I was planning on leaving before the race ended so I could make my way back down the mountain and catch the long bus to Zhangjiakou to see Sean Doherty race in his final biathlon of these Olympics. And, the plan was to possibly get to aerials to see Eric Loughran compete in qualifying. After catching a 7 a.m. bus, I eventually made it up the mountain to the alpine speed finish area and was checking the daily schedule and noticed that the biathlon had been changed to a 2:30 p.m. start. By the time I saw the change from the scheduled 5 p.m. start, it was too late to make the trip out of the mountains and back to the other moun...

In my two previous Winter Olympic experiences, I have spent a lot of time writing on buses. The buses between the ice venues and the mountain venues was somewhere between 45 minutes and an hour so I was able to get a little work done. That didn't really apply to Tokyo, since most of the buses we were on were not the normal coach buses, but rather they are city buses, so it was a bit tougher to get work done on them. That is the same here in Beijing, as we move around the city on the buses like you would find on city streets. The exception is in the Yanqing district, where there are coach buses that bring us from the train station out to the service area and then up to the mountains are coach buses. Today, in my quest to get to the mountains a bit earlier than the earlier train would allow, I got on the 7 a.m. cross zone bus, which leaves the media center and makes stops at the aforementioned service area and then goes on to Zhangjiakou further along. Since it was a longer bus ride ...

The first time I applied for Olympic credentials was for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. I did so under the impression that I probably wouldn't get them, but I thought it was be good to at least try. The whole idea, in my mind anyway, was to be able to cover local athletes that made it to the top of their sport and were competing in the Olympics. Much to my surprise I was granted the credentials for what I thought was a once in a lifetime experience. The first athlete to be named to an Olympic team that I had covered was Kennett graduate Leanne Smith, who was on the Olympic alpine team in 2010 for Vancouver and again in 2014 for Sochi. I covered Leanne when she raced for Kennett as well as on the softball diamond and the soccer field, where she was a dominant athlete in addition to her skills on a ski slope. The other local athlete that I ended up covering in Sochi was also a Kennett graduate. In fact, at the time, he had only been a graduate for less than a year. Sean D...

After a couple days of the more serious side of the Olympics, today's post is going to look at something a little less serious... food. I am a notoriously picky eater, so I like the fact that when I come to the Olympics, there is almost always an attempt at making foods that people from the western part of the world will be familiar with. It may not taste the same as it does at home, but usually it's something I can handle. In my first two Olympic experiences, McDonald's was still an Olympic sponsor. There was a McDonald's in the Media Center in Sochi and one in the Olympic square in PyeongChang. That wasn't an option in Tokyo until after I had been there 14 days and was able to leave the bubble and explore Tokyo a little bit. Now, there are plenty of McDonald's here in Beijing, I see them all the time from my bus window, but they are not available to us, since we are inside the closed loop and none of them are. However, I have not struggled to find things to ea...