1988 Calgary Winter Olympics

 

The morning’s light snow had ended by the time I got off the plane in

Calgary to work my first Olympics. But the sky was still gray at 2 p.m., and

in the cutting breeze the temperature of -4 degrees Fahrenheit was like

13 below, according to the wind chill index.

 

I thought the index erred on the warm side, and I had been skiing in the

Rockies for 10 winters.

 

When I checked in, the power had failed at the media housing complex –

a trailer park built on the outskirts of town – and for several nights I

shivered half asleep in my long johns beneath a pile of blankets.

 

Two weeks later the midday temps in town were consistently in the

mid-60s, thanks to the city’s infamous warm “chinook” winds. Olympic

crowds were eating lunch outdoors at sidewalk cafés while ski jumping

was being repeatedly rescheduled to keep the athletes from being

blown off course in midair. Sandy grit was being swept off the bobsled

track.

 

But the heat was back on.

 

It was not the experience I had hoped for, having been an Olympic fan

since I watched the first Winter Games televised live in the United States

while a third-grader. But it was good training for the Olympics that

would follow.

 

My writing opportunities were limited because I was assigned to Calgary

as an editor in the Knight-Ridder Newspapers bureau. Consequently,

my credential did not allow access to most of the competition venues,

and getting a story out on my own time became a daily struggle.

 

Most of my writing was based on news conferences held in the MPC,

news media-speak for the main press center that’s typically housed in a

convention center or some such facility in the host city.

 

After being denied entrance to – or getting tossed out of – most

competition venues because I lacked the proper credential, I did manage

to sneak into the press room at Nakiska, a resort near Banff where the alpine skiing events were held. I covered the last Olympic race by Tamara McKinney – at the time the best female skier the United States had ever produced.

 

The security guard noticed the plastic badge hanging around my neck was marked “Ep,” which provided only MPC access, instead of the “E” for writers needing access to the competitions. But he allowed himself to be talked out of booting me until I had finished writing and filed my story.

 

The credential game was a competition behind the sports competition.

 

The International Olympic Committee rations each country’s print media credentials, and the job of doling out the United States’ allotment belongs to the U.S. Olympic Committee. At the time, the USOC weighted its allotment of print media credentials based on a points system: The newspapers and magazines that covered the most Olympic-related sports events, such as Olympic trials, earned the most points and were awarded the most credentials.

 

Broadcast media are treated differently. The networks that purchase the broadcast rights in each country get the lion’s share of that nation’s broadcast credentials. Competing networks get very few, and theirs have extremely limited access.

 

Calgary was the only Olympics I worked with an “Ep” credential; the rest I was part of a Mercury News team of a columnist, writer (me) and photographer.