The Olympics... and beyond

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...

One of the great things about covering the Olympics is getting the chance to see some of the best athletes in the world compete on the biggest stage. I was honored to be able to see Lindsey Vonn ski her final Olympic race in PyeongChang in 2018 and watch Allyson Felix run her final Olympic race in Tokyo this summer. Additionally, I got to see Katie Ledecky swim this summer in Tokyo and I've now had the honor of seeing Chloe Kim hit the halfpipe in two different Olympics. Today I got to watch another icon of his sport say his goodbye with one final competition and it was truly special. Shaun White has been to five Olympics, won three halfpipe gold medals and countless competitions over the years but as had been speculated coming in to the Beijing Games, he announced that these Olympics would be his final competition. He fought hard to earn a spot on the Olympic team and then put down a heck of a final run in qualifying to earn a spot in the finals, which took place this morning in t...

In this job you run into all kinds of people. Occasionally, you run into one of the best people. Something tells me, I just did that. As I sat in the Genting Snow Park media center awaiting two-time gold medal winner Chloe Kim's press conference, I was curious as to what I was about to hear. Obviously, most people have heard her before, after all she's the best women's halfpipe snowboarder out there and she won a gold medal in South Korea four years ago.  But at heart, she's also just a 21-year-old young woman and I was curious as to how she would come across facing a room full of media members. I learned pretty quickly that Chloe Kim is a rock star. Yeah, she's talented, but she's also well-spoken, open and honest about all that she's been through and what she feels, no matter whether it's bad or good. She talked a lot about mental health and figuring out who you are and being happy with that person. Her struggles have been documented, as after the mass...

On Monday, when Mikaela Shiffrin skied out of the giant slalom course, I was sitting in the Main Media Center in Beijing watching on television. And it was a shock. When Mikaela Shiffrin skied out of the slalom on Wednesday morning, I was in the stands in the Yanqing Alpine Center. And it was a shock. The large group of people sitting behind me, who I gathered were not Americans, audibly gasped when she missed the mark. And that should have been it. That should have been the end of it. She missed a gate, she's out of the race, on to the next skier. Instead, from accounts I've heard from home, NBC basically stayed on her while she sat off to the side of the course, collecting herself, obviously distraught after things just didn't go right. Now, I know that Mikaela is one of the "faces" of the Olympics for NBC, but I really have to wonder if that was necessary. Did they need to focus on her for that long? Other racers were moving through the course, they surely coul...

  Some random observations as I sit in the Taizicheng train station in the mountain cluster of Zhangjiakou waiting on the train back to the Beijing cluster. The buses here all have signs, but I am amazed by how many people have to ask seven different times before they get on the bus if this is the bus they want. The signs at the bus stop list all the different stops the bus might make, yet still, you always get that one man or woman who has to check with the workers multiple times before getting on the bus. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had to ask a few times myself, but doing it over and over is a bit much. The one thing I would kill for right now is one of those mask extenders that allows you to put the mask strings behind the head instead of behind the ears. My ears are getting pretty sore from the pull of the masks. Sure, there are bigger issues out there, but right now, that’s one of mine. It was nice to check in with Dr. Tamara Lovelace of Alton and Seacoast Spine and Sports Injur...

Sometimes, things just don't fall into place. And that's OK. Sunday I had plans to make my way up to the Yanquing district to see the men's downhill competition. This may seem like a simple task, but here in Beijing, it certainly wasn't that simple. I booked a train ticket from Beijing to the Yanquing station and took two buses (one from my hotel to the media center, the other from the media center to the train station) in order to catch the 8 a.m. train, which arrived in Yanquing in less than a half-hour. The next step was a bus to a parking lot in the middle of nowhere, which is actually the Banquan Service Area, a rest stop along the highway. There, we got off the bus and awaited another bus, which took us to something called "Core Area 2." I guess they ran out of clever names for things when it got to naming this area. Whatever the case may be, Core Area 2 is at the base of the Yanquing Alpine Resort, just below the Yanquing Olympic Village. We were expect...

 It's been a few days now, so there's been plenty of time to reflect on the Opening Ceremonies. As I've written here numerous times over the past few months, I had missed out on all the previous Opening Ceremonies for one reason or another. So this was the chance I had been waiting for. And it lived up to the hype, at least in my mind. Yes, it was much more subdued than the ceremonies that Beijing brought to the world to open up the Summer Games back in 2008. I don't think anyone expected the spectacle that those ceremonies brought. It's different times, with COVID still a thing and the world still recovering from a pandemic, it was expected that things would be a bit more toned down. That was OK. The parade of athletes was something to behold and the athletes moved into the stands after marching in and by the time the host nation, China, which is traditionally the last group of athletes to enter the stadium, came in, it seemed like a pretty full house at the Bird...

  After spending the first two days of the Beijing Olympics in the Beijing cluster, Saturday brought the first trip up to the mountains, where I wanted to catch a couple of different events, including seeing Kennett graduate Sean Doherty kick off his third Olympics. Getting to the mountains is not the easiest of tasks in the time of COVID. The first thing I did when I got to the Main Media Center this morning was stop at the transportation desk to inquire about the process for getting on the high-speed train, which connects Beijing to the Yanquing and Zhangziakou clusters in the mountains. As it turns out, it’s not too hard, as there in an app that allows us to log in as Olympic participants and book tickets.  So, I booked a seat heading up to the mountains on the 9:30 train to the furthest cluster, Zhangziakou, since that is where the biathlon, cross-country skiing and ski jumping venues are located, along with the snow park that is home to the freestyle skiing and snowboardi...

I am sitting in the press work room at Beijing's National Stadium, also known as the Bird's Nest. Just outside my window, rehearsals are going on for the Opening Ceremonies, which now start in less than five hours.  Obviously, I got here more than five hours before the start of the ceremonies, so I must have been excited about something. First and foremost, we were advised to get here a little early to avoid overcrowding on later buses, but also, what does it hurt? I wasn't on the first bus out of the media center, but there was also no way I was going to be on the last bus.  This has been a long time coming for me. I know I have told this story before, but I'm telling it again. In my Olympic newness back in 2014, I didn't even think about booking flights for earlier than the start of the Olympics and I was in the Moscow airport awaiting my flight to Sochi while watching the opening ceremonies on television. Four years later, I thought to myself, I would schedule an...

Yesterday, the first day in Beijing, provided many challenges and frustrations, as mentioned in yesterday's blog post. But, there should also be some attention on some of the good things that have happened both yesterday and so far this morning. First and foremost, I got on the shuttle bus after clearing my COVID testing yesterday and found out that the bus to the media center doesn't make another stop along the way and the total time is just 15 minutes each way. After the trips from the hotel to the media center in Tokyo that took up to an hour on some days, this was a welcome development. With the closed loop in place, the bus literally comes right to the hotel door and drops us off right in front of the media center. And it works out well on days like today, when I leave my hotel and forget things and have to go back. While the hotel internet leaves a lot to be desired and the wireless in the media center is not great, the breakfast at the hotel was absolutely more than I ex...

The first day of any experience is going to bring frustrations and that was definitely the case today as I tried to navigate my way through the first day of the Beijing experience. Like many people, I saw the video of the woman making her way through the airport processes and was feeling pretty good. Now I am wondering just who she was having relations with that allowed her to go through "in about an hour." Because that certainly didn't happen with our flight. All told, we were in the airport for more than three hours. While the testing, the paperwork, etc., was all efficiently done, the waiting was what took the time. We got in to the airport a bit after 7 a.m. this morning (Thursday). We exited the plane and made our way through the empty airport to a large waiting area. It was surreal, creepy in a way. The airport was completely empty besides us, which is just so strange. We waited in the seats and every once in a while a person in a hazmat suit would come up and tell ...

A lot of planning, a lot of worrying, a lot of frustration and a lot of work went into this trip to Beijing for the Winter Olympics. The last few months have been pretty frustrating at times, but there was the end goal of making it there and that was always on the mind. While the first part of my journey is over, all of that is still around as I prepare this morning for my second half of the journey, my trip from Paris to Beijing. The flight from Logan to Paris was smooth and we arrived at the airport earlier than anticipated. Much to my delight, my luggage arrived as well and I set out to sit around the airport for a while. I had booked a hotel, but I couldn't check in there until after 3 p.m. and I had also received an e-mail from Air France that I could check my checked baggage at 4 p.m. the day before, so I figured that would make life easier on the day of the flight. So, I hung around the airport for about 10 hours, basically doing nothing but watching people wander by, some i...