Olympic Wrestling Notes for August 7: Finding your way around
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Gary Abbott (USA Wrestling)
08/07/2004
Where is everything? This is the first question you have to ask when you are at an Olympic Games. You are usually unfamiliar with the city where they are held. Then you have to find out where the various sports venues, training sites and work areas are held. And then you have to figure out the transportation systems to get you to these locations. For an athlete or coach, there are three key places to learn: where you sleep and eat, where you train and where you compete. For those working the Games, there are many other locations that might be included on that list. We started our day at the Athlete Village, where the athletes from around the world will be staying during the Olympic Games. This will be the last time I will be in the village for awhile, as the U.S. wrestlers will not be staying there for quite a few days. The press staff for the U.S. Olympic Committee is housed in a number of locations. Most of us are in a "hotel" near the Main Press Center, which is in the O.A.K.A section of Athens. Today was check in day for the press officers at our housing, which is not really a hotel, but a converted maternity ward. Working an Olympics means taking many buses and other public transportation, and the first trip was on a media bus from the Olympic Village to the Main Press Center. We had to load up all of our belongings and get them from the housing at the village to the bus stop outside the International Zone of the Village. With a number of us moving that much luggage, the U.S. Olympic Committee needed a van to get the bags from the housing to the other end of the village. With security barriers in place, we couldn't get the bags all the way to the bus stop. We still needed to drag the bags through the International Zone, which took some time and effort. The bus driver was a bit surprised when we opened up the baggage storage areas and threw in our suitcases. Usually these media buses aren't used to transport suitcases for large groups. The bus driver had a set route, from location A to B, which he drives on a set schedule. When we asked him to drop us off closer to the hotel, just a slight change in the route, we were told it was "impossible." That meant an extra block to drag our bags before we got to the hotel/maternity ward/media housing. The room we had was nice enough, with all the necessities: a bed, a TV, a bathroom, a desk and enough storage for my clothes. You don't spend much time in these places anyway. The great part is that it is just a minute walk away from the Main Press Center, one of our work locations and an important place where we can promote wrestling. The Main Press Center is a large building (actually two buildings connected by an overpass). We went up to the USOC Press office, where all the U.S. press officers are based, which is on the fourth floor of the facility. (Actually the floor is numbered 4, but the elevator number for the floor is 2). It is a comparable work space to other Olympic Games, with an area where media can get information on all of the sports and a nice work area for the press staff. Part of the early days of an Olympics is getting things to work. That includes equipment, such as the USOC-issued cell phone and laptop computer. The laptop, with a little assistance from the IT person, is now wire-fi (wireless connection), at least here in the Main Press Center. The IT guy also loaded 300 cell phone numbers of USOC people onto our cell phones. (This list was not perfect, since I was not even on the list, and the number for Greco-Roman Team Leader Jeff Levitetz was not correct). I had a chance to walk around the Main Press Center to talk with some journalists about our upcoming press conference for the Greco-Roman team. This place is a maze, not as easy to get around as in other Olympics. It is a large and impressive place, and soon it will be filled with more journalists, who are arriving by the hour here. The afternoon was spent working on some press materials, and finding our way around. John Fuller and I planned to go up to the American College of Greece, where the U.S. teams will be training starting on Monday, but the bus that was scheduled to take us there never showed up. We waited the first time, made a few phone calls, then showed up an hour later for the second time, when once again there was no bus. We will be visiting the site tomorrow for team processing, so the decision to go up there to scout out the wrestling training facility, as well as where our teams will be housed, will be put off until tomorrow. Instead, we will find a place to eat dinner near the press center and scout out the areas around the Main Press Center. There will be much more to discover in a very short time.