Primed and ready

Brushing up on curling, boning up on skeleton in Salt Lake

SALT LAKE CITY -- Arriving here almost a week ahead of the 19th Olympic Winter Games offers a fine opportunity to witness final preparations for one of the grandest shows on earth, examine if a dinner roll has potential for gold and ponder the finer points of the sport that involves a man, a tray and a lycra suit.

My immediate impressions? Security, security all around and a finely tuned organizational machine ready to purr into action.

Collecting a media credential at the city's airport in Olympic record time (perhaps two minutes or less) was the most positive of starts. It's often the little things.

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As for the bigger things, seeing armed National Guardsmen here, there and almost everywhere -- protecting the Games and the men and women that play and observe them -- was one of life's disconcerting assurances.

For all the safety concerns in the wake of Sept. 11, there's also an undeniable sense of buoyancy. Mitt Romney, head of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, carries the air of a man who knows he and his SLOC colleagues have rebounded from the city's bribery scandal and are about to deliver a slam dunk of an Olympics.

He even took time out at a press conference on Wednesday to demonstrate to we media folk the correct garb to wear at the Opening Ceremonies. Rubber-soled boots, two pairs of socks, a hat and lots of bodily layers, says Mr. Romney. Otherwise those lucky enough to obtain tickets for the Friday spectacular won't last long on the metal seats and frozen ground, and that could be US$885 down the pan. That's a caring leader for you.

Now we overworked, invariably stressed-out members of the press won't survive the two-weeks-plus of competition without a few other added extras. Therefore, it is a delight to see massage therapists dotted around the media center ready to unknot the knotted. There's even a hair salon to trim the untrimmed. Ten dollars a haircut, I'm told. It's almost rude not to take advantage of both.

Now as for the brushing up on curling, directing my sights at the biathlon and boning up on skeleton -- all puns very much intended -- it is a journey of discovery and rediscovery. Only at Winter Olympics time do most of us at World Sport take lashings of such winter sports with our more standard fare of soccer, basketball, cricket and rugby.

Only at Games time do many of us more fully appreciate a magazine doesn't have to be Vanity Fair or Vogue, but something biathletes use in their rifles... that booties are worn not only by babies but by adult lugers... that a flat bottom has less to do with a slender posterior and more to do with the lower reaches of a halfpipe snowboarding run.

And isn't that the fun of it? Embracing sports that rarely hog the airwaves in many a nation. Getting better acquainted with athletes of modest-profile but supreme talent. For every Michelle Kwan, there are many more Chris Soules.

So let the games begin: safe and secure, slick and smooth, clean and competitive, festive and fun. Salt Lake City appears primed and ready to deliver on all fronts.

Phil Jones is co-host of World Sport, the international sports show that airs live on CNN/Sports Illustrated and CNN International.

 

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