Covering The Olympics

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I’m pretty sure most of you have watched at least some of the Winter Olympics from Milano Cortina in Italy.

The Olympics used to be held every four years, but in the age of money rules, they are now held every two years, with the winter and summer games alternating.

The Olympics have always been an attraction because it is not strictly for the sports fan, but for men and women who enjoy seeing athletic competition in sports they rarely see, and the spectacle of it all is hard to resist. When people ask me about my broadcasting career their eyes widen when I mention my participation in two winter games. I covered the men’s alpine skiing competition in France in 1990, and the speed skating events in Norway two years later. I wrote about my experiences in a column eight years ago, but this time I will also touch on the reality of what it’s like to be an Olympic commentator.

Television coverage has expanded greatly since the days I was on the scene, and even before that, when viewing the Olympics on ABC, anchored by the great Jim McKay was must-see watching.

Back then, the networks would provide three-hours of prime-time coverage during the week and considerably more on the weekends for the two-week event.

Very little of Olympic competition was presented live due to the time change from the country that hosted the games, except, of course, when the games were held in the United States.

In 1992, Albertville, France was the host country. CBS had won the rights to televise those, and several other Olympics and I was assigned to cover the men’s skiing events held in Val D’Isere, which was 53 miles from Albertville. In every Olympics, both summer and winter, the venues for the various events can span huge distances. They don’t all happen a couple of miles from one another.

The men’s competition featured the crown jewel of skiing, the downhill, as well as the slalom and Giant Slalom races which were a combination of pure speed and the navigating of gates which the slalom is all about.

1992 was the year Alberto Tomba, the flamboyant Italian skier was the hero of the games, capturing the gold in giant slalom and the silver medal in the slalom.

My job was to call the races, identifying the racer, his time during his run and how ahead or behind he was to the leader, a personal note or two, and his finishing time and what that meant in the competition.

Andy Mill, a two-time Olympian was my expert-analyst, who described how a skier was performing. We were supported by Billy Kidd who was the first American ever to win an Olympic medal when he brought home the silver in the slalom in the 1964 games in Innsbruck.

Two years later in Norway, I called the speed skating competition which proved to be notable and record-breaking. The building for that event was called the Viking Ship in Hamar, 40 miles from Lillehammer the host city. My partner was one of the legendary Olympic athletes of all time, Eric Heiden, who won an unthinkable five gold medals at Lake Placid in 1980. The speed skating competition was thrilling, with Americans the outright stars of the two-week event. Bonnie Blair captured the Gold medal in both sprints, the 500m and the 1000m.

It was part of an incredible run of six medals (five gold, one bronze) across four Olympic Games spanning a decade. Perhaps one of the biggest stories of the entire Olympics was the victory by Dan Jansen in the men’s 1000 meters. Over four Olympics, Jansen had to overcome significant heartbreak, including his failure in 1988 after hearing the news of his sister’s passing, several slips and falls ruining other attempts at an elusive Gold medal until he finally won, setting a world record in the process in his last career race in Norway.

Without question one of the big moments of my career is calling that race, but the true story of covering the Olympics might not be what people imagine.

Most events, with the exception of figure skating take place in the morning, beginning at 10am.

Europe has  6-hour time difference from the eastern time zone in the U.S. So, most of the competition is over long before the 3-hour prime time show airs in America.  The three hours you see at night feature an array of the day’s events. The time for each one is budgeted by the show’s producer. On a particular day, 45 minutes may be budgeted for skiing, or speed skating. The times would vary from night to night. We may have 45, we may be allotted, say 30 minutes. The producer at our venue edits the day’s races to the prescribed time.

We are on hand before the start to record our “open”, our on-camera introduction of a particular race.

Then we would simply watch the event unfold, not knowing which races would be included in the final presentation. Thus, we could not call the races as they happen, not knowing how they would be used. So my partners and I would have lunch, kill the afternoon some way, have dinner, then retire to our rooms awaiting the call, usually near or after midnight to be picked up for the voice-over in a make-shift studio.

We would voice the races in segments, and if we flubbed a line, the tape would be rewound and we’d do the pickups. Sound exciting?  Leaving the studio compound at 1am in the cold is not as thrilling as viewing the Olympics with all the pomp and excitement that TV production brings. Remember, 1am is still an hour before the prime-time show begins. We never see the nighttime show. We are countless miles from the center as all the venues are, and it’s not the same.

I will say that we did call the Dan Jansen gold medal race live as it happened because we knew it was going to be the centerpiece of our presentation.

Today, the games are shown on a variety of channels and many of the daytime events are called live. But also keep in mind that more than half of NBC’s production team are covering the games from their Connecticut studios. Not everyone makes it to Milano Cortina, Italy. I am delighted I was on hand at the site of two Winter Olympics, the memories are countless, but I just thought I would give our readers a peek at what’s truly behind the scenes.

The Slopes of Val D’Isere

Viking Ship Norway

With Dan Jansen after victory!

With Dan Jansen 11 years ago