Okay, so my motivation might not have been entirely pure when I popped by Whistler’s Weasel House after the downhill event yesterday to interview members of the Blue Army about their epic efforts to fight back the weather and prepare the race courses for the alpine Olympic events.

After all, there was free beer on hand.

But while gold medalist Didier Defago was being crowned, a crew of unsung heroes were heading out to battle 20cm of new snow, in an effort to prepare the course for the women’s downhill on Wednesday.

Their efforts are being praised by the athletes and race directors.  FIS men’s Alpine skiing director Guenter Hujara offered huge kudos for the volunteers at a gathering of the team captain’s from every nation last night. “Most of us are too exhausted to really celebrate. Right after the race, everything went really calm because people had been out there for 70 hours, and it was good to prove that we know how to deal with the problems and the team worked really well. I want to thank the course crew, but particularly all the volunteers who were out there. If you meet them, please give them respect for what they do, because this is not normal, working all through the night.”

Abnormal, maybe. Awesome, most definitely. Check out the action in this NBCOlympics.com slideshow.