27th July 2012
Yesterday morning I set off for my shift wearing my attractive nylon uniform and feeling every bit the Olympics geek. I am going to be based at Horse Guards for the duration of the Games, as a Flash Quote Reporter in the Olympic News Service. My role is to interview athletes as they come off the field of play, and write and load up their quotes to the Olympic News Service database for news agencies all over the world to use.
When I arrived at Horse Guards it was a hive of activity in the early morning sun. Teams of security guards were on their orientation tour, and workmen were putting the finishing touches to the venues, fixing up the hoarding and sweeping the paths. It was quite a surreal experience – having interviewed for this role well over eighteen months ago, to be finally arriving at the venue was really a great moment.
I reported to the media centre – an airy portacabin in St James Park and met the rest of my team – a mixture of retired hacks, journalism students and people like me with a bit of PR experience. After a quick talk I was despatched with another volunteer to the training courts to interview the Chinese women’s and Japanese men’s teams. Walking out to the training experience was amazing – with the white sand sparkling in the bright sunshine, it looked like a little slice of Brazilian beach life had been transported into London’s historic centre.
The one thing I am going to have to get used to on this job is the amount of hanging about involved. I stood around in the baking sun waiting for over an hour for the Chinese athletes to finish (they were the priority as they won bronze at Beijing). Suddenly, however, the Japanese men’s team strolled by. We’d already had a chat in the media centre about the issues with collecting quotes from the Japanese teams as they are quite shy. As I speak a bit of Japanese we agreed that I would try greeting them in their own language as a hook to engage them in conversation. It worked – but then their expectation was that I would continue the interview in Japanese, which was quite a clunky affair! Still, it was good experience of being put on the spot and having to come up with the right questions.
Patience paid off and we soon walked on to the court to interview Zhang Xi and Xue Chen. They were absolutely lovely. Despite being current world champions they didn’t have any sort of attitude and humoured our attempts at an interview, answering questions on everything to their thoughts on London, to their hopes for the Olympics (to win Gold, obviously). Then we rushed back to the office to type up the quotes and file them for the sub editor. All of this has to be done within thirty minutes and there is a very specific house writing style that I have to learn to work to. The big challenge for me however, is writing everything down whilst interviewing people, as many of the volunteers have shorthand, and I unfortunately don’t.
After lunch I had to interview Jake Gibb, one half of the men’s team from the USA and he was quite forthcoming about his irritation with the British media’s obsession with the women’s uniforms (or lack thereof) and said that this really isn’t such an issue in the rest of the world. He also expressed his frustration that this level of scrutiny doesn’t apply to the athletics, where the outfits are similarly skimpy. The distracting sight of about 40 cheerleaders rehearsing their routines in their bikinis on the sand behind Jake made the conversation slightly amusing for me. Beach volleyball is a strange old world!
Having filed Jake’s quotes, the final hour of the day was spent exploring the facilities – which included climbing to the top of the grandstand to take some photos of the stunning backdrop of London against a cloudless sky. This was going to be my last chance to have the facilities all to myself before the crowds descend on Saturday when I start at 7am, ready to gather quotes from the very first match of the competition.
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| Ready for the off |
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| Cheerleader warm-up |
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