One of my favorite Olympic observations took place at Beijing 2008, not far from the Main Press Center and Water Cube.
Dozens of pin collectors -- some veteran, others new to the hobby -- were viewing one another's boards of trading material.
A Chinese collector took notice of a 1970s throwaway pin I offered, featuring the words "Born to Skate" (likely a roller-skating reference).
"What is skate?"
This memory came to mind yesterday as a trio of Team USA skateboarders -- Poe Pinson, Paige Heyn and returning Olympian Mariah Duran, exited the Paris Olympic Village to head out for an afternoon skate about Paris.
Before they set out, I caught up to Pinson and Duran and quizzed them about their arrival at the Village, which turned out to be two days ago (18 July).
Though lowkey (perhaps day two of jetlag), they were positive about the entire experience, with Heyn joining the conversation to mention she looked forward to visiting the athlete hair and nail salon -- the main Village feature about which she had heard -- at some point before the opening ceremony.
With several local French children and kids from neighboring apartment blocks surrounding us, all three Olympians started handing out free swag, including skateboard pins and some Tech Deck miniature plastic boards.
"J'aime le Etats-Unis!"
And then they were off -- the trio of skaters set out on what turned into a 2.5-hour ride (I spotted their return from the corner of an eye but did not speak with them again).
Other observations du jour: A large batch of Dutch athletes (two busloads) though my Olympic crush Femke Bol was not among them (a Team NL official mentioned she'd arrive later), Team Mexico unveiled what may be their Opening Ceremonies sombreros (much to the delight of the local kids who got to wear them), and some trading with volunteers or staff from the International Olympic Committee, Intel and NOCs from Aruba, Montenegro, Team GB and others.
Best moment: Conversation with Venezuela's two-time judo Olympian Anriquelis Barrios, who completed interviews with AFP and me before gifting a Team Venezuela pin in exchange for a blog pin (both featuring the Paris mascot).
Back in 1996, a couple of colleagues with the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG) international relations team composed an original song -- "Village of the World" -- in which almost 200 national Olympic committees got mention in the lyrics.
My missions du jour: Check out the guest pass process, and trade pins.
There were lots of pins.
After trading with several volunteers and Olympic Village workforce members during what seemed to be a shift change, I walked away the happy owner of several new items, including a heart-shaped International Olympic Committee pin given to volunteers earlier in the day, German and Brazil team pins and a few of the new U.S. half-dollar-sized Samsung Rendezvous pins.
Upon arrival at the separate Village transportation area, with a much larger athlete presence, I wasted no time capturing the arrival of the Refugee Olympic Team bus, also speaking with several athletes (three pin exchanges).
The vibe at the transport area among dozens of security, volunteers, NOC officials and athletes was a mix of glee, nervous anticipation (the good kind), a little stress (do I have all of my bags?) and a lot of smiles and hugs.
When the Fiji Olympians arrived, it made me chuckle that each athlete brought their own case of water from their homeland sponsor (you know ... the expensive Fiji Water bottles like at Whole Foods Market).
Other NOC interactions included Australia, Canada, St. Lucia, Liechtenstein, Argentina, Norway, France and, of course, Team USA, who had two full-time staffers on site awaiting a critical luggage and supply delivery truck.
Another eager attendee was a photojournalist for Kyodo News, who was relieved to get his money shots of Team Japan disembarking from their bus as Paris 2024 volunteers helped load airport-style Village-branded luggage carts.
Perhaps the best pin discoveries: Andorra has a really nice jumbo design, and the Peru Olympic Volunteers got creative with their oversized design, using a globe-spinning mascot image I almost picked for one of my Olympic Rings And Other Things pins.
Never did find the guest pass area, but learned this morning it's just around the corner from the transport zone -- will endeavor to explore yet another Village entry in the days ahead.
Another curiosity of the Olympic Village was its proximity to dozens of neighboring apartment buildings.
In the quiet times between pin trades, I spoke with several local residents who revealed a mix of good cheer to live so close to "the action" juxtaposed with "can't we just get this over with" sentiment (one resident was particularly cranky his carpark access had some hiccups).
Looking forward to the next Village visit. Meanwhile, today's task: Paris Media Centre.
Olympic pin collecting is enjoying closer proximity to the digital age thanks to Alibaba.
The official cloud technology and e-commerce services partner introduced the Alibaba Cloud Pin -- a cloud-based digital Olympic pin -- to working media at the Tokyo 2020 Main Press Center and International Broadcast Center last week.
About the size and shape of a Reese's peanut butter cup replacing grooved edges with a smooth and sturdy plastic casing, each cloud Olympic pin includes a liquid crystal display and is app-enabled so its owner may create a pin-specific profile.
Wearable on fabrics like traditional Olympic pins, the cloud pins glow and double as a name badge for the bearer. For social distancing and convenience, two cloud pin holders can simply tap their pins at arm's length, and the collectibles electronically exchange user info.
The pin also functions as a step counter to log one's journeys on foot between pin exchanges. It's not clear how the pins maintain a charge, but one of the launch videos hints at a storage or charging case for this purpose. The other launch video shows more about the tapping and step counting tools.
I suspect these modest media gifts are only a test run for introducing Cloud Pins to athletes at Beijing 2022's Olympic Village, but only time and user feedback from Tokyo 2020 will tell. No matter when cloud pins make it to consumers, I'll be ready with my designated pseudonym for trading: Pinhead.
I'm a longtime critic of Olympic Villages. PyeongChang's Village team nailed it!
Since my first Games experience as an Atlanta Olympic Village housing coordinator/supervisor in 1996, I've looked at the housing areas with a manager's eye -- what works, what elements may remain in place as handed down from the Centennial Olympic Village, and what's new.
South Korea's housing area featured some of each.
Some additional context on my critiques: Later five-ringed travels afforded a day pass or two to the athlete housing areas at six Olympiads.
More specifically, in Sydney I was a pre-Games Village volunteer (will never forget meeting Aussie hero Dawn Fraser on the bus one day after a shift). In Salt Lake I was just a visiting spectator (the director was a former Atlanta colleague), and later as an NOC guest it was fun visiting -- and critiquing -- the temporary homes of the Olympians in Beijing, Vancouver, London and Rio.
Some Villages score on ambiance. Others on efficiency. Some exude an Olympic electricity while others get the job done with measured fun.
Visiting the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Village today, for the first time as a credentialed reporter, was an amazing experience. And the Korean village housing scored two big thumbs up from this blogger.
Here's a Olympic Village first: They have a robot!
The PyeongChang Village near the mountain Alpensia venues sits along a river and in the foothills of a curving and wooded elevation, with about a dozen residential towers (600 rooms) close to a domed sports arena now serving thousands of meals per day as the main dining hall.
After passing through security screening with fellow journalists and athletes from Team GB, Slovenia, Turkey and Ghana (yes, Ghana has a skeleton athlete), the Village Welcome Center opened into an international plaza decked out with flags of all 95 competing nations.
And, yes, the North Korean flag enjoys a spot of prominence near the Olympic and South Korean banners.
Olympic Villages consist of two main areas.
An International Zone featuring the team welcome ceremony stage, entertainment options and necessities like a post office, hair salon, general store and Olympic merchandise.
All of the services for PyeongChang's athlete village are nestled into on giant tent (I understand the coastal village at Gangneung, with its 922 rooms, is similar).
Usually the adjacent Residential Zone forbids non-athletes from visiting, but today media got a rare chance to roam freely across a few acres of the Village, affording me photo opps in an athlete game room (i.e. billiards, pinball), lavanderia (since athletes, too, have dirty laundry) and the entry to the tower housing Team USA (the only larger nation in PyeongChang that did not deck the exterior walls with patriotic banners).
I attended a couple of the Welcoming Ceremonies during which the host nation officially celebrates each arriving nation.
Today's entrants included a lone alpine ski athlete and HRH Henri Grand Duke of Luxembourg, who were down for some pin trading, as well as Turkey, Australia, Thailand and India.
According to the first of two Olympic Athletes from Russia (OAR) competitors met today, their competitors are/were not permitted to create a team pin. Anyone got an egg timer to see how long it takes for bootleg OAR pins to show up on the scene?
While enjoying the warmth of the retail areas, I stamped my passport with an Olympic Village post office postmark and enjoyed an introduction to an Ambassador of Morocco by IOC Member Ms. Nawal El Moutawkel, who asked me to share that her home nation will enjoy an African first: a shot at hosting a future Youth Olympic Games (she also requested a shout-out to her alma matter Iowa State University).
Pin trading was robust both outside and in the Village. It was fun running into fellow Olympin members Bud and Sid (and his wife) trading near the security entrance.
I arrived with about 50 pocketed pins and ran out of trading material in less than 90 minutes of trekking the Village, coming home with coveted 2018 NOC pins from Ghana, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Nigeria, Uzbekistan, Austria, and Mongolia, among others, and even scored a special-design IOC snow globe pin for PyeongChang ... for the win!
Most interesting conversations: short chats with arriving Team USA alpine and snowboard athletes checking in from their Seoul-to-PyeongChang bus ride. Everyone was all smiles, happy for the nomination of luge bronze medalist and four-time Olympian Erin Hamlin, who will carry the Stars and Stripes into the stadium tomorrow night.
Tuesday in the Olympic City was much more centered. The day actually rocked!
CoSport came through with my tickets, the new Metro line to Barra Olympic Park proved clean and easy to navigate, and I finally met the amazing team of "fighters" who are my fellow Press Mixed Zone volunteers for Rio 2016.
Our debut training and venue walk through took place in and around Carioca 3 arena, site of Olympic fencing and taekwondo.
In college I tried fencing for about a week and and it was nothing like the athletic spectacle set to unfold starting this weekend.
The press mixed zone volunteers -- a.k.a. "MX" team or (for our mostly female group) "the Mixes" (to rhyme with "The Mrs." or "The Misses" with an "ex" sound) will assist credentialed broadcast news outlets and print reporters waiting in the wings to interview Olympians following competitions.
It was fun to learn a new range of Olympic-level media relations tasks specific to the international fencing federation. And *bonus* they treated our volunteer group to lunch after handing over a gorgeous work force Swatch watch.
Our uniforms are functional but not my first choice for shirt color -- still don't know what to name this shade of yellow (Volvo had a similar color during the early 1970s), but I do take pride in donning the official volunteer team kit.
As our team walked into Carioca 3's main floor for the first time, I started crying happy tears when the sound system swelled with Dian Schuur singing "The Man I Love" -- it wasn't so much the song but the emotion of the jazz underscoring how very happy I was to be in the Olympic element.
It was the first great day for pin trading, too -- came home with more than 40 new items including gems from conversations with Tokyo 2020's Observer Team, media from several nations and even a gorgeous St. Lucia NOC pin from an Olympic Channel volunteer, Daniella, who is my new favorite Brazilian friend (when she is not volunteering, I learned, she is a ballet and journalism student who may also be my guest for Usain Bolt's gold medal 100m final).
Off duty by 2 p.m., we were encouraged to explore all outdoor points of Barra Olympic Park, which was built on a huge delta of land facing one of Greater Rio's largest lakes.
After photographing the enormous venues for Olympic tennis, gymnastics and cycling, I spotted a curious scene unfolding at the Aquatics Center.
Beside a flatbed truck a team was offloading a set of the Olympic rings still in shrinkwrap, and a handful of journalists were having a ball, as I was, photographing and interviewing the Brazilian workers led by a European chief who explained his freelance status.
Check out this video for more details.
Also spotted at Barra Olympic Park: Two- and three-level pavilions for Nissan, Samsung, a Brazilian bank and Coca-Cola, home to Olympic pin trading set to open on Saturday.
I shook hands with a Maryland-based Associated Press photographer, an IOC staff liaison for Toyota, and numerous fellow volunteers who enjoyed our special sneak peek of the site sans crowds (definitely a "calm before the storm" feeling).
Before returning to Ipanema for the evening, I stumbled into Carioca 1 and got to stand on the corner of the main basketball court as one of the team medals stands -- likely to be occupied by WNBA and NBA players in 2.5 weeks -- was moved into place for measurements.
Looking forward to Rio's slam dunks on many Olympic fronts.
Sochi is buzzing now. Foot traffic is getting crowded with more international team jackets and fans with flags.
After putting in a few hours at Sochi Media Center, where attendees were treated to a visit by a historic Russian Folk Group (among them a designated octogenarian Olympic Torchbearer), on Thursday I trekked over to the Coastal Cluster of venues for my first look at the Olympic Stadium.
A-MAZE-ING!
Another reason for the seaside train ride was to retrieve Day Passes to volunteer at the Coca-Cola Olympic Pin Trading Center inside the Team Russia House, a massive and very cool activity center for fans of all ages and nationalities. While inside, word spread that Olympic silver medalist Maria Sharapova would visit with a crew from NBC to film her experience at the venue. Hello!
Since capturing many action shots of both players that day in London, I've looked forward to another opportunity to speak with the Russian tennis star, icon and founder of the candy enterprise named Sugarpova.
How sweet it was to spot Maria flanked with a dozen NBC camera, sound, editing and production team members and a legion of fans with cameras like mine fixed on Sharapova, who professionally worked through her taped interviews (set to air during the Opening Ceremony tomorrow via NBC). She also graciously signed autographs for Olympic volunteers.
Then it happened -- a pin collector (not me, but Pete C., in the photo) shouted out to Sharapova those words only a pinhead can proudly exclaim ... "want to trade a pin?"
Apologetically, Sharapova declined with a smile, stating "Sorry, I don't have any pins to trade" over the heads of the entourage.
Enter Nick Wolaver, a.k.a. Johnny on the Spot, with a hot-off-the-press Olympic blog pin and business card.
Sharapova accepted my pin offer and others' then proceeded to complete the pin trade (for fun, note the person she traded with already is wearing one of my blog pins in the photo).
Sharapova, therefore, held on to the pin this blogger gave to her, and only time will tell whether it may lead her back to this site and/or post. As you may concur from the images below, the tennis great is holding an "Olympic Rings And Other Things" business card and pin during the post-trade NBC filming.
Moments later, at the conclusion of her official NBC taping duties, I showed Sharapova my camera and the action shot photographed in London (shown above, with this post).
She said, "O.K." to a 'selfie' pose beside me, and voila! the serendipitous Olympic Park experience du jour was over.
I'm so appreciative of Sharapova's kind response there is no time to frown that the 'selfie' only has my partial forehead, eyewear and cheek. Besides, I have that photo with the octogenarian Olympic Torchbearer to keep me company.
LOVING the Olympics!
Photos by Nicholas Wolaver are copyright Nicholas Wolaver not to be reproduced without written permission
A public relations executive by day, small-time eBayer by night and weekends, lifetime member of the International Society of Olympic Historians (ISOH) and full-time Olympic enthusiast who also looks at "BoingBoing-style" unusual news with interest. Please e-mail me at olympiada@yahoo.com or if you can't get enough try my Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/people/Nicholas_Wolaver/713593008
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