Asbury College at the Olympics

I was blessed to run into my good friend Ben today here in Torino at the Main Media Center, home to the IBC, which is the distribution point for all the broadcasts from these winter games. Yesterday was the first day of competition at my venue, and it went quite well. I worked at the commentary positions for the slalom portion of the Men’s Combined event yesterday. Unfortunately, I missed gold-medalist Ted Ligety’s run, but I did see Bode Miller’s and local favorite Giorggio Rocca’s.

My main responsibility yesterday was to distribute starting and result lists to the commentators on my level, which included broadcasters from NBC-Radio, CBC, RAI (Italian broadcaster), and many others. There were some French commentators who were very nice and really appreciated that I was an american who could speak French. I was at work from about noon to 9:30. My team of liaison officers is really cool, and our supervisor’s are great as well.

Half of the liaison team is from Asbury, and the other three are Italian. One of them, Federrico, looks dead-on like Michael Keaton, it’s amazing. Most everyone that we work with is very accomodating and understanding, especially since the language barrier has probably proved to be more of a problem than anticipated. I think everyone understands that this is a very stress-filled business and that developing working, communicative relationships is very important.

Our next competition day is Friday, and I’m not sure yet where I’ll be working then. Anyway, I’m all settled and enjoying the beautiful Italian Alps, and I think Ben and I are about to go see some of Torino before I head back to Cesana. Today is one of my few days off. Ciao!