The most amazing thing about working as a journalist is the chance you get to have great, insightful, curiosity-stoking conversations with people – conversations which you document. (This has turned me into the kind of person who hates to let a funny or insightful comment go unrecorded – I am forever reaching for my notebook…
Category: olympics
Heliskiing with Canadian Olympic decathlete, Mike Smith
The second most intimidating moment on a heliskiing trip, (after the Burning Walk of Scrutiny) is not actually watching the safety video, where all the perils that face you are articulated in graphic, litigation-proof detail, but the instant where, standing atop the untracked snow of your first run, the guide says, “Okay. Buddy up.” Having…
Releasing my inner Evil Knievel is as easy as lying down and letting go
One year after Jon Montgomery won his 2010 Olympic gold medal, I lower myself face-first onto a narrow metal toboggan. Called a skeleton because its 1892 prototype resembles a human bone-rack, the 80 pound frame is more like an exo-skeleton and I am counting on it to keep all my bits properly in place, as…
“Celebrating” the one year anniversary of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games
This time last year I was cursing El Nino, stalking the Weasel Workers and realising why the world has such a crush on Lindsey Vonn as I donned my best “I’m a serious sports journalist” face and joined the online reporting team covering the Games for NBCOlympics.com. It was, in all likelihood, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity….
Home-remedies from a viral life and nature-deficit disorder
I meet a colleague who refuses to shake my hand or kiss me hello. She has been body-checked by the dreaded lurgy… falling victim to the massive human petri dish that is the PNE. “But it’s okay, I’m not contagious anymore,” she assures me. My immune response is less assured. In a feverish sleep the next…
Living the Dream: Accommodation Wanted
Yesterday, I stopped in at the South Side Diner in Whistler’s Creekside, for a kick-ass burger and a chance to check out a home-grown photo exhibit, Living the Dream, with photographer Carin Smolinski. Sliding into the booth next to us were a couple of the exhibit subjects, residents of “Shanty-town”, a loft in a 2…
Bode, Write a Book
Word is, VANOC Chief John Furlong is considering writing a book in his imminent retirement, but I must admit, if there’s a memoir coming out of these Games that I’d like to read, it would be Bode Miller’s. At a press conference yesterday after his silver medal winning run in the men’s Super-G, Miller was articulate and insightful…
Biathletes dominate the Callaghan but the Big Guns are in Pemberton
Typically, I suffer a burst of motivation during an Olympic Games – it usually gets me as far as one lap around the block or a couple of days at the pool before it fades and I revert to form. But hope springs in the shape of biathlon – where athletes are still peaking in their thirties and…
Beers and cheers at Weasel House
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…
Highlights from the men’s Olympic downhill
Confession: there were a few moments on Monday during the men’s Olympic downhill that I was hoping the guys would ski a bit slower. Seriously, I can’t type that fast. As Canadian medal hopeful, Cowboy Robbie Dixon said, after he crashed and burned on the course: “I was definitely putting some crazy in there. It didn’t…
Lisa Richardson Bylines 