The Olympics... and beyond

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...