Editor’s note: The author is in Turin, Italy, working as an intern for NBC’s Olympic coverage. Medal count is as of Tuesday, Feb. 21.
Hey Fairfield. I hope you enjoyed the past week of the Olympics, but if you haven’t yet tuned in it’s not too late. People around the IBC have been running on nothing but adrenaline as we head down the home stretch. Most of us interns also haven’t done our bodies any favors, realizing that all we have done in the last few weeks is work, so we’re all trying to enjoy our last week in Italy before heading home. Three hours of sleep later we fight our way through another 15-hour workday.
In the past week I got to check out my first event. On Thursday night I was at work as usual, but it was a refreshingly slow night. At 8:50 p.m. an intern walked into our office with two tickets to the USA vs. Kazakhstan hockey game that he couldn’t use.
Surprisingly, my boss jumped at the tickets and sent a production assistant and me to the game. Unfortunately, the faceoff was in 15 minutes, and we didn’t arrive until early in the second period of a 3-0 game (USA was out in front), but it was worth it. The final score was Team USA 4, Kazakhstan 1.
The game wasn’t the most exciting event of the past week. Since my last Mirror entry, there have been some great events, and sadly, many more disappointments from the Americans. They started off well last Thursday when Seth Wescott won gold in snowboard cross, the newest and most exciting event in the Olympics this year.
On Friday Lindsey Jacobellis seemed poised to take home the fourth USA gold in four snowboarding events. In the finals, Jacobellis had an insurmountable lead going into the second to last jump on the final straightaway when she attempted to show off and get fancy with a grab and twist of her board.
Jacobellis then fell on her backside and watched Tanja Frieden of Switzerland fly past her and take gold.
Jacobellis’ gaff wasn’t even the biggest American disappointment of the day. In the semifinal game against Sweden, the heavily favored American women’s hockey team blew a 2-0 lead and fell in a shootout. This would be the first major international championship in women’s hockey history that didn’t feature USA and Canada. USA would beat Finland for the bronze, and as expected, Canada rolled over Sweden for gold.
Saturday featured drama on ice, and for once it wasn’t figure skating. One-thousand-meter world record holder Shani Davis out-skated teammates Chad Hedrick (who won gold in the 5,000-meter event) and silver medal winner Joey Cheek (who also won gold in the 500-meter event) to become the first African-American ever to win an individual gold at the Winter Olympics.
Over the past week, Davis had been under a lot of criticism for opting out of the team pursuit event because he wanted to rest for the 1000-meter event that was three days later.
The Americans probably would have been on the medal podium with Davis skating, but instead were barely knocked out in the quarter-final round by the eventual gold medal winning Italian team. After Davis won the 1,000-meter race, he gave Melissa Stark an interview with nothing more than short, one-sentence answers, refusing to elaborate on the situation.
Sunday marked the beginning of the second half of the games. One American team gave the country something to cheer about, and it wasn’t either ski team, neither of which has seen a medal since Ted Ligety won the combined on Valentine’s Day.
The American men’s curling team clinched a spot in the medal round with a win over Great Britain. For those of you who don’t know, and I’m sure most of you don’t, curling is a combination of bocce and shuffleboard played on ice.
The next couple of days will be my last few at the IBC and I can’t decide if I’ll miss it or not. I will have spent more than 300 hours here in three weeks, which is far too much, but it’s fun not knowing which athlete or TV personality I’ll have lunch with next.
Jerome Bettis, Julie Fowdy, Bob Costas, Jim Lampley, Jamie Sale, Apolo Ohno, Gretchen Bleiler and Kerri Walsh are only a few of the athletes and broadcasters that have been seen around the building, and I wouldn’t be spending any time with any of them if I wasn’t here, completing the most thrilling internship I may ever have.
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