A rookie Olympic journalist learns the ins-and-outs
of international sports coverage during the Games in Salt Lake City

By Rial Cummings

We stood shoulder to shoulder in the snow of Park City, Utah, roughly 50 of us, surging toward the orange plastic mesh barrier that separated — shielded might be a better word — Eric Bergoust from the “creme de la crème” of global sports scribblers.

In an out-of-body experience, I looked down at myself, smack-dab in the middle of the “creme,” crushed between a German sportswriter muttering something that sounded like “dumbkopf,” and Michael Wilbon, a heavyweight (literally and figuratively) sports columnist for the Washington Post.

I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, and not just because the German sportswriter’s breath smelled heavily of Limburger cheese. No, my queasiness was prompted by the realization that I was in the fifth row of the seven-deep pack; that Bergoust was speaking so softly than I could barely make out what he was saying; that my Bic ballpoint pen had, in the awful tradition of Murphy’s Law, chosen this exact moment to stop working — and that even by stretching my tape recorder over the shoulder of the poor guy in front of me, it was still, in all likelihood, too far from Bergoust to pick up anything intelligible.

This, I thought to myself, is what happens when you are a Winter Olympics rookie caught in the vise of pack journalism, and when you don’t know enough to position yourself correctly in the “mixed zone.” The Missoulian sent me to cover the Winter Olympics last February in Salt Lake City, something a newspaper of its modest size would do only because a) the Games were nearby, and b) Bergoust, who grew up in Missoula, was the 1998 gold medallist in men’s aerial freestyle skiing when the Olympics were held in Nagano, Japan.

Bergoust had just experienced the bitterest of disappointments. With an opportunity to successfully defend his championship, he had fallen on his final jump, sliding from first to last place.

Now, he had a difficult job ahead of him — explaining his disappointment to the world. He already had talked to TV and radio people farther up the line. Since he hadn’t medaled, he wouldn’t attend the official post-competition press conference. So this was it, my only chance. And I was about to miss his comments which were, I knew only too well, my raison d’etre.

I silently cursed myself. Then I chuckled, bitterly, remembering how the mixed zone had been described in my media packet.

“The mixed zone is so named because of its functional design which allows athletes and journalists to ‘mix’ freely in a designated area near the field of play, following competition.”

Somehow, I hadn’t envisioned it would turn out to be a rugby scrum.

In my panic, I shoved my tape recorder forward, almost toppling a small woman in front of me (she hissed something appropriately obscene) and tapped the shoulder of a man two rows in front of me. He turned briefly to the side, saw my tape recorder and, miracle of miracles, grabbed it and stuck it alongside his, close enough to Bergoust to save my bacon.

I had bungled the first rule of pack journalism: Beat the pack. But I had been saved by the second rule: Help the stranger behind you, because you never know when you’ll need help yourself. It was just another day of education at Salt Lake, where you had the Games, and then the “real world,” which seemed dim and very distant. The Games were world enough for all of us, totally self-absorbing, framed by deadlines, peppered by security hassles, governed by special rules, and spiced by hundreds of little conflicts and dramas involving the athletes and ourselves. Most of the roughly 9,000 journalists, myself included, didn’t seem to mind being wrapped in a little cocoon, where 16-hour work days blended seamlessly into each other; you soon envied those lucky souls who could catnap on a bus en route to a venue, or, better still, steal some blessed sleep on a couch in the Main Media Center.

The Main Media Center, ordinarily the Salt Lake Convention Center, was our mother ship. We slept in motels scattered across the city, but rode on vans to the MMC every morning to eat, gossip, buy newspapers, pester the media attaches, attend press conferences and write stories in an enormous ballroom that was dubbed The Bullpen. It also was from the MMC that dozens of buses came and went, precisely on the half-hour, to take us to the various venues.

Most were at least an hour’s drive away, and some were close to two hours. So if you had to, say, be at Snowbasin Ski Resort, northeast of Salt Lake, to cover the men’s downhill at 10 a.m., you climbed on the bus at 5:30. Most of the time, we wrote about the competition on site, at media sub-centers. There were predictions that the Games would be snarled by traffic nightmares. And yes, there were some traffic jams. But getting there a couple hours early made all the difference.

There also were predictions that heightened security measures, a direct result of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, would ruin the fun. There were long lines, yes, and it took a few days to work out the bugs. But by the second week, all of us were pros at getting through the metal detectors and security searches. You put your watch, wallet, tape recorder, and cell phone in a plastic container, handed your computer bag or camera to the security folks, then walked through the magnetometer and prayed it wouldn’t beep.

I took two pairs of shoes with me, including a pair of snow boots with metal fastenings. Whenever I wore the snow boots, I could count on being beeped. That meant being pulled aside, stretching out my arms, and having a soldier run a wand over my body. You grinned, if you could, and made the best of it. To their credit, I found that most of the security people were courteous, efficient and even friendly. But you never doubted that they were there to do a job, just like you.

I also was surprised, and pleased, to discover that the stars of my profession turned out to be so approachable, whether it was Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe striking up a conversation about his beloved Red Sox or Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press thanking me for a compliment. And it was fun meeting other scribblers from around the globe; at one time or another, I talked at length with writers from Macedonia, Australia, the Ukraine, Brazil, Russia, Japan and Hungary. Not to mention Lawrence, Mass., and Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Before heading south, I told my editor my plan was to “go down there and cover the circus.”

It still feels that way. For a fortnight, I was privileged enough to run away and join the circus. Believe me, it was a blast.