Jul 29
You find interesting people when you get lost.
I spent about 40 minutes trying to get to my photo position on the 5th floor of the Bercy Arena, from the photo work room on the second floor. We were at the gymnastics qualifying event, scoping out the best photo positions for the team event on Tuesday. I will be shooting the floor exercise and I know from experience that an elevated position can be best for what I’ll need.
Read moreI was drenched. Delighted, but drenched.
This particular ceremony was, of course, different than any I‘ve been to. A stadium and a ”walking“ Parade of Nations was replaced by a river and a parade of boats.
Read moreI’ve bought my first-ever scratch-and-sniff stamps.
Another Olympics, another Olympics first for me!
Read moreThe Times folks are still trickling into Paris. Hellos and hugs, hugs and hellos from many we haven’t seen since the last Olympics. And some new faces too. It’s always the first rodeo for at least a few of us. For me, this is Number 11.
Read moreMy longtime friend and Olympics coconspirator, Bedel Saget, has the habit of calling all of us Cuz. And to be fair, when you see us all together, the family resemblances are pretty striking.
But as fate would have it, his actual cousin (or more accurately, his cousin’s son) was on the Canadian Olympic short track team. So we all grabbed our cameras for what Bedel called a “family outing” and headed to the Capital Indoor Stadium for the men’s short track 5,000-meter relay. Canada was favored. Canada, and Bedel’s our cousin, Jordan Pierre-Gilles, won gold. Family reunions will never be the same.
If you’ve seen a short track relay you know it’s mayhem: cutting off your opponents and pushing your teammates. This race was no different. It looked more like a Black Friday sale than an Olympic race.
I tried to capture some of that in the photos below. (As you’ll see, not all are from Jordan’s race. He wore 67 on his helmet).
A very special thanks to all of you for tagging along on another Olympic adventure. It makes all the subzero temperatures and food hunting worthwhile. A special thanks to those who commented, even the ones named Anonymous and Someone. It’s what breathes life into the blog.
Next stop: Paris?
There’s an axiom in sports journalism: No cheering in the press box.
The only thing you can root for is a good story. No rooting for athletes, or teams, or in the case of the Olympics, countries. Most of the time, it’s not that hard. Im not, for instance, the Mets beat writer. I’m almost never in that press box, so I watch and root from the comfort of my couch.
Read moreBeing confined to the Olympic and covid bubble can really make for an uninteresting eating experience. Robots make for good blog posts, but their culinary skills are a bit — rusty? Restaurants in the mountains more than made up for the frigid temps we found there. The first one we found was Green Dragon. which for those of you from Cornwall, should sound familiar. (For the rest of you, Green Dragons is the name nickname for our high school sports teams.
Read moreHi All, in our final assignment of the Games, we’re at the Women’s figure skating free skate. Here is a slideshow of some shots I took at the short program.
Eat at Joe’s 