I’m not there…
This is the first Winter Olympics since 1998 in Nagano, Japan, I’ve watched. That’s because I covered the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City and the 2006 Games in Italy. When you cover the Olympics you don’t actually SEE the Olympics. What you do see is a lot of security check points and people wearing your jacket (NBC issues official winter coats and every reporter, photographer, broadcast engineer and shuttle driver is sporting the company gear. It’s like prison, everywhere you look, people are dressed exactly like you. )
If you don’t mind, over the next few weeks I’m going to use this spot to reminisce about the Olympics. I’ll give you a behind the scenes look at this colossal event. You have no idea, sitting at home, how insane the Games truly are… from a logistical perspective.
My "workspace" at the 2006 Winter Olympics. I'm logging the tape we shot that day and writing a script that Andy Benton, the greatest photojournalist on earth, will then turn into a broadcast masterpiece.
I’ll post just a few photos today. The first tells you everything you need to know about covering the games. If you’re lucky you get to work on a folding table. If you’re me you work off the shipping crate in which your gear shipped. This is inside the giant warehouse NBC turned into a television broadcast city. A hundred NBC affiliates from around the United States packed like goat cheese into a refrigerated container in Torino. How they pull this off is something I can’t explain. They take an empty warehouse the size of Rhode Island and turn it into a digital city from which 100 different TV stations can do all their work, including LIVE reports for their home towns.
Most reporters covering the Olympics spend their days and
Warehouse turned into NBC broadcast city... this is onlya small part of it.
nights in this warehouse. It’s the most unglamorous thing you can imagine. A reporter and photographer may venture out to an event, but even then they’ll watch most of it on a TV screen in a “media” room.
And that is why on our trip to the Torino, Olympics, I basically lied to my bosses and set out on a week-long road trip of Italy right before the Games started. I’ll explain tomorrow. It’s a whopper.
Until then, I’m sitting on my warm couch, sipping a cold beer and watching these amazing snowboarding events. You can’t believe how big that half-pipe is until you stand in one like I did in Italy. It scared the crap out of me.
Pray for ice. Canada it seems is having trouble making it at the speed skating venue… MR
I really enjoyed your reporting of the Olympics! Thanks for giving us a behind the scenes!
Wasn’t Torino where you and Anna got married?