Pre-games

Back down to Vancouver yesterday to meet with Dick Ebersol and David Neal, basically the head of NBC Sports and NBC Olympics, to discuss the the where, what, who of the Whistler Olympic Park venue that will host ski jumping, XC, Nordic combined, and biathlon. Al Trautwig (xc/biathlon play by play), Matt Vasgersian (ski jumping play by play), Chad Salmela (xc/biathlon analyst), and venue producers Kaare Numme and Mitch Green and me are in the meeting. We are basically told this: virtually everything will be live, and the only pictures we will have will be the world feed. Kaare and Mitch will be in the IBC (International Broadcast Center) in Vancouver and we will be in Whistler. This means we will be talking to pictures that are in no way controlled by NBC and will be directed by producers 75 miles away. Oh, and we will be showing over an hour of the K95 event on Saturday. A great deal of time to try to separate the shades of beige that differentiate ski jumpers and jumps that look remarkable similar, a challenge we are assured we can rise to. With over 800 hours of programming, every sport will have their stage. Frontier days. Also, we are cleared to discuss Project X and memorialize Paul Robbins (more on Paul's absence later) but not in the opening days.

This morning opened early with the traditional production pep rally, a distilled but frankly inspiring 4 hour primer on the does and don'ts on NBC sports: Tell the story, don't over-reach in speculation, let the big moments play, and don't cheer for the Americans. We are to be impartial journalists. They showed the opening tease for the Games which was beautiful... truly gorgeous, poignant, wish-I'd-thought-of-that stuff. Also a couple of features that, again, seemed outstanding: a piece on the role Canadians played housing rerouted plane passengers on 9/11 (I know, what's that got to do with Olympics... try to watch it and not well up) and profile on Norwegian downhiller Askel Svindal who I will now most certainly be cheering for. You will too if you see it.

Much of our programming will go straight to the daytime show which is being produced by Sam Flood who was a couple of years behind me at Williams and whose name I have often heard but whose hand I had never official shaken until yesterday. The main hosts on the daytime show are Al (do you believe in miracles) Michaels and Mary Carillo. A dinner was arranged with Al, Mary and the group from ski jumping/xc- Al T., Matt V., Chad, and me- something to build the "chemisry". It worked. A very nice restaurant- Bear Foot Bistro- with a zealot owner: a showman named Andre who had many tricks up his sleeve including a wine cellar with lessons in opening champagne bottles with a champagne glass (see video) and a walk-in freezer where, once donned in Norwegian Naval coats, shots of vodka were distributed (see photo). As good as the food and drink were they could not compare to hearing Al Michaels recount everything from 1980 hockey to Howard Cosell to Roone Arledge to Art Devlin.
All eyes and ears at the table in one direction, drawn unnoticed to some gap in the space/time continuum, a place we never knew existed and certainly could never return to.