The Long Ciao

I’m sitting in the press center in Sestriere, not far from where Bode has just skied off course and Ted Ligety was disqualified. This is it. I have no more events to cover.

We’ve all been saying it: We can’t wait for the Olympics to be over, yet we’ll be sorry when they do.

I’m exhausted. I’ve eaten badly almost every day (so badly, in fact, that it is literally a struggle to stick to my recently imposed chocolate-only-every-other-day plan), slept not nearly enough, and had a week so frustrating I literally cried into my beer on Tuesday night. And not little tears you can blame on your contact lenses or allergies – it started that way but escalated into proper snuffling blotchy sobs. Not pretty. To top it all off, two night ago I managed to lose my credential. If that doesn’t sounds bad, think again: It’s roughly the equivalent of losing your identity, as you cannot do a thing without the badge, including get to – let alone get into – the places you need to go to replace it. However, in one of the few breaks I’ve managed to catch lately, not only did I manage to get where I need to go, but my charm offensive (a mix of Spanish and Italian but – I’m most proud of this – absolutely no tears) was sufficient that they replaced it immediately, as opposed to the 24 hours they apparently usually need.

That said, I, too, will be sorry when the Olympics are over. I won’t miss the bus rides and the schlepping up and down an icy hill with roughly a 90 degree gradient (and while schlepping my computer) and the lack of time to call my own. But this has been a once-in-a-lifetime experience – a phrase I don’t use lightly.

For one thing, I know I’ll never read Olympics coverage (or the sports page) the same way again, in ways both simple and profound. I’ll probably read the sports page more often than I did before, kind of the way when I visit a foreign country, I’m more apt to read even the tiniest news briefs about it. There are names I’ll look for, because I know them, and now I know how they work. One thing I’ve been surprised to see is how sports are reported. Sometimes the reporters literally just watch the events on TV (like skiing), because you can only see the end of the course if you’re actually there. Other times they watch it on TV because they have to be able to file instantaneously, and they also can’t do that from the stands. It also surprises me how much sports reporters can get away with at the Olympics if they want to. What’s called “flash quotes” – quick quotes – from the athletes are distributed at the press centers, and I’ve seen a few reporters skip even the press conferences and write solely using canned quotes. And it’s not like they can legitimately use “deadline” as an excuse -- I know they’re not wire service reporters, and because of the six-hour-plus time difference, most U.S. reporters have a whole lot more time to file here than they usually would.

In a few minutes, I’ll pack up my computer and walk out of here for the last time. I’m dragging the ending out, coming up with last minute internet searches to do and pottering around looking for my lip balm. It is strange to leave a place you know will never exist again. With a lot of the countries I’ve visited this year, you can leave and think that while it’s unlikely you’ll be back, there’s a chance. Here most of the places I have spent time literally will not exist anymore – they’re temporary Olympics-only digs I can’t come back and see someday even if I wanted to. But it’s not the structures I’ll miss so much as the people and, for the most part, the camaraderie. The random “oh, you again” on the buses and the press centers and the mag and bag lines, and the conspiratorial chats about editors and athletes and all the other dozens of things people choose to chat about when in close quarters with near-strangers. I’m sure I won’t speak to any of these people again – it’s like acquaintances from college classes who you always liked but never became good enough friends to stay in touch with.

Except with college, at least there’s always the prospect of reunion.