August 9, 2008
It feels like the first day of school all over again. You go in knowing what you have to do (in this case, find an athlete and get quotes), but it never quite ends up exactly as expected. I've talked to athletes in training. I even fought reporters for quotes (here and elsewhere). And of course I've watched gymnastics before, many times. But to put everything together is a whole other ballgame. And you really take NBC's scoring totals for granted. You know how hard it is to watch 6 different events simultaneously, keep track of who did what and why (fall, shaky, whatnot) since they're all competition and still focus on the few particular men who you're going to interview?
Today I went in early. First off, I wanted to see the totally cool cauldron. It must look a lot better from the inside than out. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice – maybe it was all the smog today – it just didn’t impress me as much as I’d have imagined. It does look very cool at night though. I’ll have to get some pictures.
Because I went in early, the first subdivision was still progressing (I was to work the second of three). While watching it in our little office, my manager came in and said one of the individual athletes had finished and was already in the Mixed Zone – and I needed to quote him. At first I’m like “ok, who the heck is it!?” since I hadn’t done much studying of the other subdivisions. But with a 2-second rundown I was out, acted like I knew everything about him and was published as the first official flash quotes of the gymnastics competition! Woohoo! He was really nice, too, and talkative for only speaking English as a second language. Seems to be my specialty.
I technically worked all three subdivisions, voluntarily staying late to help with the last one too. I don’t think my feet or back can take that kind of schedule again tomorrow, but I was happy to help where needed. It’s a real rush to be in the thick of things – journalists from 5+ countries all crammed in trying to get the best quotes possible from their chosen spokesmen. I did screw up once – pretty big in my mind – but I think my overall work made up for it and they didn’t yell at me too much. It’s the first true day of competition, for them and me. I’ll blame it on that. That and the chaos that defines the press Mixed Zone.
Sorry for not being more specific – I'm super tired from 12 hours on my feet. You’ll just have to watch and see…
