Friday
It’s a seven-hour journey from one finish of the opening ceremony to the opposite. I depart Milan at noon and arrive in Cortina simply because the athletes are making their parade across the city sq.. Cortina’s a one-street city, and it’s been closed down, however everybody’s hanging off the balconies. I see three males in lederhosen, 5 in equivalent Wayne Gretzky jerseys, and extra individuals than I can depend in luxurious furs. The primary particular person I speak to is a member of the Qatari police power, who’s working right here as a part of a safety settlement between the 2 nations. That is the sixth Olympics I’ve labored on, however the others all came about in summer season. I’m happy to see he seems to be much more misplaced than me.
Saturday
The Ice Enviornment in Cortina is the one sports activities venue I’ve ever been to with a memorial on the wall for a well-known photoshoot. Apparently it was right here, in 1958, that the legendary Italian photojournalist Giancolombo took his well-known pictures of Brigitte Bardot skating, “capturing the Dolce Vita of Cortina”. Sophia Loren and Ingrid Bergman had been each photographed right here again then as nicely, they usually filmed the James Bond film For Your Eyes Solely right here, too. It’s a gorgeous constructing. Or it was, earlier than they redeveloped it for these Olympics. Seventy years later, I’m right here watching Bruce Mouat and Jen Dodds play Brett Gallant and Jocelyn Peterman in session seven of the combined doubles curling.
Sunday
There may be nothing just like the second a crowded stadium falls totally silent in shock. I’ve been doing this 20 years, and I’ve solely heard it occur as soon as, when Jofra Archer hit Steve Smith on the top with a brief ball at Lord’s in 2019. Right now it occurs once more when Lindsey Vonn crashes 12 seconds into her run within the girls’s downhill and tumbles down the mountain. It felt like all Cortina had come up into the mountains to look at what was essentially the most eagerly anticipated occasion of those Video games. As Vonn goes down, individuals scream, then cease making any noise in any respect. The temper has modified in a cut up second of sudden violence that leaves everybody praying that she’s OK.
Monday
These Video games are being unfold throughout northern Italy, and the organisers have advised everybody collaborating in them to place their belief within the bespoke journey app that may assist us navigate our approach across the venues. Right now it tells my colleague Tom Jenkins {that a} bus to the ski leaping is coming at noon. Three hours later he’s nonetheless ready. I’m fortunate, mine is barely half-hour late. Tom has discovered somebody who talks Italian and I put them on loudspeaker whereas she shouts instructions to my driver to come back and decide them up. From there, it’s a three-hour journey throughout an infinite twist of vertiginous hairpin bends to Predazzo.
I spend the night asking Norwegian followers about ski jumpers’ penises. None of them suppose the scandal is remotely humorous.
The final bus again is 45 minutes after the end and to catch it now we have to get the general public shuttle into city together with 5,000 different individuals. We find yourself strolling down the freeway, Tom dragging his suitcase filled with photograph package behind him. We handle to flag down the final bus because it passes us. The engine is spluttering and the driving force stops to offer it a kick earlier than we head over the mountains at midnight. He doesn’t communicate English. The best way he shrugs at us isn’t very reassuring.
Tuesday
Whereas we had been away Mouat and Dodds misplaced their semi-final in opposition to Sweden. Right now they’re overwhelmed by Italy within the bronze medal match. It’s Nice Britain’s third fourth-place end within the area of 24 hours. Afterwards the group chef de mission, Eve Muirhead, provides us a brief interview. She makes use of the phrase “keep constructive” 4 instances within the area of three solutions.
Wednesday
Somebody decides Tom and I have to be on the biathlon. It seems that is being held in what appears to be the final village in Italy earlier than the Austrian border. The app, which I’m coming to suppose solely exists to offer everybody one thing to stare at whereas they’re ready, tells me it is a easy two-hour journey involving 4 connecting buses and a prepare. It seems to be price it. Biathlon – who knew? – seems to have the largest, and most devoted crowds of any sport I’ve attended but. Everybody’s in fancy costume. It’s like an evening on the darts.
I’ve come to jot down about one of many two Greenlandic athletes competing right here, and I find yourself in a dialog with the territory’s minister for sport, tradition, schooling, and church. She tells me she thinks Donald Trump is “loopy”. The race is received by the Frenchwoman Julia Simon, who has not too long ago been convicted of committing bank card fraud in opposition to certainly one of her personal teammates, and who provides an enjoyably haughty press convention wherein she completely refuses to speak about it. It’s gone midnight earlier than we’re again.
Thursday
Up at daybreak to make it to the sliding monitor in time for the primary warmth of the lads’s skeleton. It should be a British story, the world champion, Matt Weston, units back-to-back monitor information, however every part is overtaken by the IOC’s resolution to disqualify the sledder Vladyslav Heraskevych after he refuses to take away his helmet adorned with pictures of useless Ukrainian athletes.
They announce this by press launch 20 minutes earlier than the beginning of the competitors, and the upshot is that the world’s media spend the complete occasion with their backs to the precise racing whereas Heraskevych provides a press convention close to the end line. I’m satisfied that the sight of him holding his helmet, speaking to the massed ranks of the press, should be one of many iconic pictures of the Video games, however in fact it’s not one the IOC might be pushing out throughout any of their media streams.
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