02/23/2002
There's more to Games than
the games
It sounds like a cut-rate riddle of the Sphinx: If you go the Olympics
but don't go to any events, are you really there?
Wednesday was my 14th day in Salt Lake City, and as of 4:30 p.m., I had
been to exactly zero Olympic events. Zero. At every Olympiad, the kind
folks of Sports Day take pity on a poor, downtrodden reporter from the
Metropolitan staff and lets the reporter come along for the ride. This
time, I'm the lucky one.
But instead of spending our time at the bottom of the slopes or at the
end of the halfpipe, we Metro types are asked to write about everything
non-sports-related at the Games. If there's no puck, snowboard or
bobsled involved, it's our turf.
The result: I've become a mini-expert on 1840s Mormon migration
patterns, Utah's Jell-O fetish, pin trading, and Mormon-Hare Krishna
relations. But I still couldn't tell you what a salchow is, or why
curling is a more legitimate Olympic sport than shuffleboard.
Finally, on Wednesday night, I got a chance to see a few events. At
first, I felt a bit like a fraud – what's an education reporter doing
sitting in the press box at a hockey game? – but I got over that awfully
quick. Like somewhere around Team USA's third goal in its 5-0
dismantling of Germany. I could get used to this job.