Bill Hancock’s Olympic adventure: Day 16
Old pal Bill Hancock, executive director of the BCS, on his 16th day in Vancouver for the Winter Olympics, where he is a media volunteer:
“Comment from home, from former modern pentathlon PR good guy, on George Patton’s performance in that event in the 1912 Olympics: ‘One legend is that George Patton should actually have won the shooting event and gone on to earn a medal. The story goes that two of his shots went through the exact same hole on the target but that he was only credited for one of the two hits. The field judges either chose to ignore the fact or were unable to agree whether Patton had hit the target once or twice. The second shot was assumed to have been an errant shot and Patton, who was a very good shot, lost the opportunity for a medal based on this ruling.’ Breakfast: Half a chocolate chip cookie.
“Factoid from Olympic historian extraordinaire Jim Constandt who ably staffs the help desk: Mack Robinson, 1936 track and field Olympic silver medalist, was the brother of Brooklyn Dodger great Jackie Robinson.
“Another big morning in ticketing. Don’t have enough good seats for the U.S. media who want to cover the Canada-Russia hockey game. Some folks will have to watch on television.
“If you could travel only one more road in your life and have already made the beautiful drive from Hobart to Frederick, go take incredible sea-to-sky highway from Vancouver to Whistler. The first half looks like fjords in Norway; the second half goes through beautiful mountains. The rain stopped as our bus left Vancouver and we drove along the fjords with whispy Angel-hair clouds floating at bus level. We passed little communities hugging the water and also the fancy but still cute town of Squamish and its Wal-Mart. I knew there were snowy mountain peaks along the route from having seen photos, but we couldn’t see them because of the clouds. It hardly mattered. The dark gray clouds and the water made me feel like Jack London.
“Many journalists have complained that the bus ride takes too long. But for me, it was too short. Such scenery! Such a privilege to see it! It’s like ‘The Sound of Music;’ who the heck ever wants it to end? The journalist in the next seat carried on a long telephone conversation in German but stopped halfway through to sing ‘Happy Birthday to you’ in perfect English, surely to some child back in the old country or maybe in Chattanooga.
“A group of our folks had left at 7 a.m. but I had ticketing work to do and caught the noon bus by myself at noon. Then I accidentally ran into Craig B. at the USOC office located in the Whistler Media Center. Whistler is gorgeous. It may be Disney Bavaria as one writer said, but it sure is cute. At least one ski slope was open and occupied by regular Joes and some beautiful Jos.
“We walked through the nifty ski-town square and joined spectators riding the gondola up the mountain to the bobsleigh run. A Whistler resident joined us in the four-person cocoon. He said the town has a population of 19,000 which grows to 55,000 on some ski weekends. Folks ski here through June and even through July on the glacier high up. I can’t ski but am a world-class gondola rider. We hopped out of the moving gondola (no small feat for a man with big feet) and walked through the snow to the bobsleigh media center, where we ran into photographers Daniel and Larry, who told us how to enjoy the event. At their suggestion, we took a shuttle bus to the top of the course and walked back down. Big whipped-cream fields of snow lined the road. There’s certainly no shortage of the white stuff up here.
“Lunch: Delicious bowl of chili ($7.50 Canadian) in the media center at the bobsleigh venue. Nobody could ever make chili as good as my mother’s, particularly chili on a snowy day. But this was very close. Craig and I snapped photos of ourselves beside a noisy waterfall in the snow and found the big tent near the starting line where the athletes were waiting their turn to compete. Their shiny sleds, draped bottom-up on long racks, looked like oblong Easter eggs. The colors of their uniforms added to the festive afternoon. They chatted and laughed like just plain young people. Which they are. Outside on a long wet red rug, some athletes stretched and ran wind sprints like track and field runners preparing for a meet.
“We put our hands on the icy run, and speculated about how they make the ice. (I know, I know….they freeze water.) The ‘forerunners’ (a skeleton athlete and three bobsleds) roared past, clearing the run and exciting the crowd. Several volunteers carried bright yellow whistles, which they are to blow if a camera, or sandwich, or tree branch, or a dachshund, falls onto the run. If the whistle blew, an official would slide down and remove the obstacle. Then we walked down the spectator pathway. Someone had built a snowman by the first turn. I tried to snap photos as the sleds went by but only got empty track. It was like trying to catch a fly barehanded. Many other amateurs were having the same poor luck and I gained still more admiration for professional photographers. I walked slower than Craig and got lost which was fun, but Craig used his mobile phone to locate me in the crowd a quarter-mile down the mountain.
“Fans can watch bobsleigh (and luge and skeleton) either by sitting in the stands and following the action on a big-screen television until the sleds come shooting down the track that finishes in a semi-circle with the stands and press box at the radius, or by walking up a pathway to the top. Along the pathway, the sleds seem to be an arm’s reach from the fans. I stood next to one of those vertical turns where the sleds fly along the wall like Donald O’Connor.
“‘Oh, my (goodness), this is as far as I can go,’ said one panting woman about 20 yards up the path. I had the easy chore of walking down, so I couldn’t make fun of her. But lots of more fit people did walk up the spectator path, and they were rewarded with up-close views of the sleds that shot down faster than I was expecting.
“The snow changed to light rain as we rode the gondola back down in the dark. Whistler’s famous bars were full of fans watching Canada whip Russia in hockey. The loud music didn’t really fit in with the forest. Thoreau would have been uncomfortable. We missed our bus and tried one place which offered cold beer and hot wings and no place to sit. So we went for hot chocolate in the USOC office in the Whistler Media Center, but I broke their microwave and settled for room-temperature chocolate instead. First Dinner: (6 p.m.) Peanut butter crackers, cookies. Second Dinner: (midnight) Red Truck lager, meatballs, Red Truck ale, pasta, cookie (with Vahe, Jason S., John B. and Sean G) at good and trendy place on Denman Street not far from Stanley Park.
“Volunteers du jour: Cassandra and Ashley Trevisani. Sisters from Hamilton, Ontario, ages about 17 and about 20. Guarding the entrance from the general public area to the athletes’ area at the bobsleigh run. Staying with their aunt. Today was their last day to work. They’re beginning to get sad.
“Weather: Rainy in Vancouver. Rainy and snowy in the mountains. The moisture seemed to bring out even more piney-woods smell, which combined with the salt air to make me think Denver had met up with Destin. High 46, low 40.
“Our bus driver took a call on his cell phone while driving back from Whistler. Disconcerting. ‘I’ve been driving this route since January 27 and I know the road like the back of my hand,’ he said, whistling and singing as he drove. He passed two other buses on the way. Everyone else was asleep. I would have slept if it hadn’t been for the noisy windshield wipers that screamed like banshees the whole way.
“Vancouver Fact that surely must be true because somebody told me: Around $30 million was spent on a heating system for Vancouver’s Olympic village; it uses heat recovered from sewage waste to provide about 70 percent of the heat required for the complex. These people are SO friendly, including one volunteer with a broken arm who gave us a mini-tour of the Whistler Media Center. You wouldn’t want to go to the Olympics with a broken anything. What a privilege to be here! Every day is an adventure. With glowing hearts, eh?”
-------------Berry Tramel can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including AM-640 and FM-98.1. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter @BerryTramel. Visit Berry's website here.
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