Seeing It All an Olympic Task

The assignment: Get to as many Winter Olympic events as possible in one day.

The question: Why would anyone want to do that?

The answer: That’s something for greater minds. Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do--or else.

First, let’s check the schedule and see what’s available. Of course, a fully credentialed reporter has a big advantage in that getting tickets is no concern.

On the schedule are curling in Ogden, the men’s giant slalom in Park City, women’s cross-country relay at Soldier Hollow, the men’s Nordic combined at Utah Olympic Park and Soldier Hollow, the women’s bronze- and gold-medal hockey games, one at the Peaks in Provo, the other at the E Center south of town, and the glamour event of the Games, the women’s figure skating free program downtown.

Nobody can be everywhere, so we’re going to have to eliminate some of the events on our schedule. Curling offers the women’s bronze- and gold-medal matches, one at 9 a.m., the other at 2 p.m. The complicating catch is, they’re in Ogden. Scratch curling. Scratch that women’s hockey game in Provo too.

On to the giant slalom. This is an all-day event--one run in the morning, the other in the afternoon. Still, a day at the Winter Olympics would be incomplete without some Alpine skiing, so let’s see if we can fit it in.

But that will mean cutting more corners. Looking at these times, it’s obvious we aren’t going to see all of anything. We’ll have to settle for bits and pieces. And expect lunch. There’ll be no time for that.

OK, we’ll start at the giant slalom and go from there.

The journey starts where all journeys for an Olympic reporter begin, at the Main Media Center--the Salt Palace--downtown. Once we find bus MO481, the one to Park City Mountain Resort, we’re on our way.

While we’re riding, let’s figure out the rest of the day. It takes only a little more than a minute for each giant slalom run so we probably can see half an hour’s worth of the morning runs. Then we’ll hustle over to nearby Olympic Park for the big-hill ski-jumping portion of the Nordic combined. Nordic combined athletes can’t decide whether they like jumping better than cross-country skiing, or vice versa, so they do both. Today, they’ll jump for a while, then take off the wide jumping boards, put on the skinny skis, and go for a 7.5-kilometer sprint.

We’ll have to take another bus from Park City to the Olympic Park but we have the number of that bus, thanks to Kelly Crompton of Salt Lake Olympic Committee transportation services. It’s right ... Well, it was right here.

The jumping starts at 10:30, so we probably can catch the last part. Unfortunately, although it’s a pleasant downhill stroll to the ski jumps, it’s a killer hike back up to the shuttle buses. Your knees may never recover. On second thought, maybe we should skip the jumping and just go on to Soldier Hollow. That’s where they’ll ski the second part of the Nordic combined and then the women’s 20k relay and we can get there on bus No. 711. We might even get there in time to catch the last of the jumping on TV. And maybe have time for lunch after all.

Well, we’ve seen the Nordic combined sprint, and the women are relaying, but it’s time to leave. We’ve got to get back to the MMC so we can catch another bus to the E Center. The women’s gold-medal hockey game starts at 5, so we can watch the first period, then get back on the bus and head downtown.

Figure skating starts at 5:45, and we’ll have to walk from the MMC to the Salt Lake Ice Center--it’s really the Delta Center, where the Utah Jazz play, but they pretend it’s the Salt Lake Ice Center during the Games--and they always save the best skaters for last so we should be able to catch the medal winners in action.

Whew, pretty hectic day, huh? What’s that you say? You reek of bus fumes? And we blew dinner? And curling, the only thing we didn’t see--if you don’t count the ski jumping--was the only thing you wanted to see?

C’mon, let me buy you a hot dog. You know, they’re going to do this again in four years in Turin. Bet you’ve never watched curling in Italy. Then there’s the giant slalom, Nordic combined, women’s hockey, figure skating....