After being buried into more armpits on the metro and taking ages getting through security, we headed into the office for our briefing, which turned out to be simple, get out there and get some interviews with the athletes as they train. We headed into the mixed zone, our home for the next 4 days, and waited with patience and optimism for our first interviewees. Mine, I must say, couldn't have been any better. A young blonde girl, sporting the Welsh dragon, came up the ramp and passed us, I managed to secure a decent set of flash quotes from her and we had a friendly chat off the record. Three days later this same 18 year old girl is walking out of the Velodrome with a Bronze and Silver medal to her name. Know who it is? Hot Welsh Cycling prospect Rebecca James! We were told by Chris (Supervisor) that if you get friendly with the athletes, it's more than likely they will take time to recognise you in the media scrum, which I'm pleased to say she did, giving me the time to talk to her after winning both her medals, selecting me ahead of established journalists. Amazing.
I've been lucky in the past three days. I've had chats with numerous accomplished and decorated athletes and have established great relationships with them all. Mark Christian, Bronze medallist from the Isle of Man, Ross Edgar; flag bearer for Scotland in the opening ceremony and a brilliant rider; Anna Meares; 4 time Gold medallist for track cycling; Travis Smith, Canadian cycling hero; Scott Sunderland and Shane Perkins, a young Australian pair who have smashed 3 CWG records between them in just 2 days; Jenny Davis; the Scottish silver medallist who switched from Judo to Cycling, Megan Dunn; 2 gold medals in 2 days with still the road race to go. The list goes on and on. Besides the athletes, I've even met legends in broadcasting. Today I was in the media lounge talking to sports commentator Simon Brotherton, and on all three days have hung about the BBC section, speaking to Jill Douglas and her crew. On a lesser scale, I spent the majority of yesterday morning giving BBC Wales sports reporter Tomos Daffyd a crash course on the rules of cycling. Madness!
It's funny how a lot of journalists take your opinion really seriously. I think I offended a member of the Indian press today by saying that it was a waste of time for the Indians to send in a team. They haven't competed in cycling since 1978.... and it showed. I wasn't being malicious, It was great they had a team. But in all fairness, they were shocking. One member of the Indian press even asked Megan Dunn in the press conference how the Indian cyclists can improve on their performance by learning from her. So I wasn't completely wrong.
The work itself is fairly straight forward, get to the mixed zone at the end of a race, jostle for a decent spot at the barrier, send the supervisor to the person you want quotes from, interview an athlete (preferably a medallist), get back to the News Room, whack in the quotes on the Games News Service website and repeat for 10 hours. Easy. Of course you have lunch in between, however after going into the Volunteers mess hall on the first day (which to be honest, was an absolute mess) we decided we belonged in the more up-scale media lounge around the corner. The food was eadable and the water was actually cold. Some bloke in the mess hall took my tea off me because he said it was "broken". How you can 'break' a cup of tea is something i'm still trying to get my head around, but the media lounge served English breakfast tea, none of this saffron 'spirit calming' nonsense.
Tomorrow is our final day at the track, hopefully I'll be able to sum it all up a bit better after the track cycling comes to a close at 2 o'clock. Can't be too long though, we've been invited to a fashion show at 7 o'clock at the British Council which includes a free cocktail reception afterwards. I could get used to these free bar soirees.
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