Welcome To London

The flight from Milwaukee via Atlanta to London went very well. Delta Air Lines flight 38 to the U.K. must have circled the city five times before touchdown, giving passengers great views of the city and Olympic venues.

The arrivals area at London Heathrow did not resemble Olympic flight arrivals of past Games. In Beijing, for instance, each and every gate and the airport control tower featured Look of the Games signage, and I suspect London's modest Olympic decoration (nothing visible until leaving the plane indoors) is tied back to austerity measures for the Games.

But inside the airport, Olympic arrivals are greeted with cheery pink London 2012 logos and signs for accreditation in the airport. I traded my first pin of the Games with a man from India dressed in the purple volunteer shirt and khakis. And only 10 minutes later I was already on the Underground to Paddington Station.

My hotel is near Paddington -- the Royal Eagle Hotel of London. Found a decent rate on Hotels.com just a couple of weeks ago, and my flat is not much bigger than my Volvo back home. Though cozy (the shower is smaller than a British phone booth and the bed-to-wall gap is about 12 inches), I enjoyed more than 100 channels and BBC updates via the Olympic Torch Relay channel and BBC 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.

But on Monday there was no time to hang at the room until evening! I spent the afternoon back on the Underground to Westminster Station, destination: London Media Centre (unaccredited media center) for my Olympic blog accreditation.

It amazed me to emerge from Westminster Station to find a cloudless blue sky and an enormous Union Jack flag waving atop one of the Central London buildings. As it turned out, the flag topped the Houses of Parliament, and my eyes met the Tower of London for the first time, just in time to hear the deep bells chiming 4 p.m. GST. A few minutes later I arrived at the London Media Centre and got set up for just about anything needed for the Games, including free rail pass, wi-fi, several event invitations and a new place to work for the next 22 days of Olympic adventure.

Around 6 p.m. it was my intention to grab some groceries and turn in early at the hotel, but a special media tour of the Houses of Parliament started and I joined the party walking a few blocks to the iconic building of more than 1,000 years. It was so cool to tour the building with a small entourage of international reporters, and I bit my tongue at the urge to mention Tod Margaret and his ill-fated visit to the same building on "The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret" during season one (no sign language was used on our tour).

Seated in a committee room facing the Thames during sunset, our media tour group learned several details of U.K.-Asia trade. For instance, there are now 110 direct flights from London to China per week, and of the 7,000+ journalists visiting the London Media Centre for the Games, more than 10 percent (700) are from China. Also, London will host more than 200 CEOs from around the world during the Games, reinforcing or establishing new trade ties for London for decades to come.

A guest panelist representing Harrod's explained that since 2008 the iconic department store increased its business from China by 900 percent, adding more than 150 Mandarin speakers to their employee base at the world's most famous department store.

I also learned there are more than 12,000 Chinese university students now in London, and some London officials estimate that East London recently completed 50 years of development in fewer than five years (it will be a sight to see the Olympic development on this side of town). Our hosts at the House of Commons also fêted us with fabulous salmon, lamb, prawn and grilled tomato treats.

Day one in London concluded with a tube ride back to Paddington and a few more pin exchanges in transit. I'm still on the hunt for an Opening Ceremony ticket and look forward to scoring one if good luck continues as it did with the easy arrival at the Olympic city.

Photos by Nicholas Wolaver

Everything But London

It seems these recent weeks again kept me from blogging. Just about everything was on the brain except blogging about the Olympics -- client projects, a field trip to Wisconsin (followed by a similar trek to Oklahoma), car issues, health concerns (fortunately my health is fine but I've been helping with some family items). It was only a couple of days ago that I finally booked passage to London!

Now it's just 10 days until my eighth on-site Olympiad. On July 23 we'll touch down at Heathrow, catch a train to Paddington Station, drop by the hotel then knock on the doors at the London Media Centre. Can hardly wait!

This week the U.S. Olympic Committee announced the 530 member Team USA for London, including 228 returning Olympians and 76 Olympic Champions. There are some amazing personalities and sports women and men on the roster, and I'll work to profile many of the folks met at the Team USA Summit (in Dallas in May) during the next few days.

 It is cool that more women (269) than men (261) will represent the United States of America in 246 of 302 medal events, according to the Team USA announcement. Be sure to check out the other team fun facts at the USOC link.

I now have tickets to several key wish list London Olympic events: The women's tennis and mixed doubles gold medal matches at Wimbledon; the women's beach volleyball gold medal game (for the Olympic three-peat following attendance at the same event in Athens and Beijing); an all-day archery event, an half-day shooting event, synchronized swimming and women's triathlon. I selected many of the latter events specifically because Team USA athletes impressed me during the Summit event in Dallas, and I hope they do very well in the field of play.

The one remaining wish list item: The coveted Opening Ceremony ticket. I was outbid several times in failed attempts to score this prized item. Any offers and advice to acquire one ticket will be appreciated.

Back To Blogging!

Just in time for my arrival at the Team USA Olympic Summit in Dallas, my blog was hacked or otherwise "taken over" by an unknown force in the universe. For anyone who visited this site May 13 through today, you may have seen the home page quickly switch over to a crud site. For this technical glitch, likely caused by user error on my part, I apologize. It was an excruciating process to get it fixed.

Before jumping back to blogging, I'll take just a moment to thank the helpful Google/Blogger message board contact who did his best to help me navigate a fix. I must say, it would be greatly appreciated if the wizards at Google would create a phone help center as a backup to these boards and chat rooms.

OK, there's TONS of cool Olympic stuff in the news, on the Web and around the globe. The London Olympic Games are popping up everywhere. And there are several ways folks may win their way to the 2012 Olympics if they are willing to click and code their way through some sponsor and other sweepstakes sites:

• VISA encourages entries via several banks offering credit cards, or through the Go World contest
• Proctor & Gamble has several contests underway, including an EveryDay product sweepstakes, a Pampers entry option and a Pro-Health dental competition (the Duracell contest apparently ended)
• United Airlines has an easy to enter contest including (surprise) airfare and all the fixings
• BP will let you enter if you buy eat here and get gas at one of their U.S. service stations (on the drive back from Dallas to Atlanta I picked up game codes in several states)
• Cost Plus World Market is adding some red, white and blue unofficial Games marketing to a big event in the U.K.
• Mini Cooper apparently will give away a trip later in the summer (I could not yet find a link)
• Citi created the Every Step program and contest through which participants may cheer on several key athletes and their charities of choice (I met two of these athletes in Dallas and will profile them in another post)
• Macy's with Ralph Lauren are giving away an Olympic trip
• The UPS Store has an Olympic sweepstakes open with VISA
• Panasonic's got an Olympic contest, too
• I wear my sunglasses at night, and so does Oakley, official supplier with Take London contest
• Dow wants you to know about Great Stuff to enter their London Olympic giveaway
• Hilton Honors rounds out the Olympic giveaways for this post

Special thanks to Shreveport, La., resident and ISOH member Brian Carberry for methodically locating these and other recent five-ringed sweepstakes. Good luck!

Photo via this site

American Experience: Jesse Owens

A few weeks back a couple of friendly publicists for the popular PBS program "American Experience" emailed me to ask if I'd be interested in previewing the new documentary "Jesse Owens" set to premiere nationally on May 1.

Hello! Twist my arm!

"American Experience" is a longtime favorite in the Wolaver home. Outstanding programs. Their series "New York: A Documentary Series by Ric Burns" is an all-time great for Public Broadcasting.

So without hesitation I accepted the opportunity to view "Jesse Owens."

This is not the first film featuring the 1936 Olympic champion. In 1984 there was a made for TV mini-series "The Jesse Owens Story" which was, on the heels of "Chariots of Fire," among the first Olympic films I watched. In the 28 years since, there were other Jesse Owens tributes and specials, and a few years ago I stopped in rural Oakville, Ala., at the Jesse Owens Museum.

And of course, Owens appears in the original Olympic documentary film "Olympia" by Leni Riefenstahl, with several clips from this sports photography masterpiece appearing in the current "American Experience" program.

The new "Jesse Owens" feature comes to us from the team of Laurens Grant and Stanley Nelson, the producers of the Emmy winning documentary "Freedom Riders." They did a nice job with the new documentary, though with a few quirks.

It struck me funny that Owens' first eight years -- among 10 siblings residing in rural Alabama -- received only one mention of the Southern state, with no footage of his hometown museum; the filmmakers instead noted Cleveland as the launching point for the Owens story.

I also had a bone to pick with the film's one odd visual: The opening sequence included some interesting X-ray footage (early black and white X-ray films of bones and joints showcasing movement). "Were these Owens' bones?" I pondered, wondering the source of the skeletal footage (still scratching my head ... why was this inserted?).

With these two initial observations noted, the film quickly got to the Owens tale many already know.

We learn about his early track days, coaches and initial success juxtaposed with racial inequality that was the norm of his time, with Owens denied restaurant service and hotel accommodations -- and even an on-campus dorm room -- due to segregation.

We're also introduced to Owens fans who were his contemporaries, including U.S. Olympic Teammates Iris Cummings Critchell (swimming) and Louis Zamperini (athletics), as well as Berlin Olympiad spectators Theodor Michael and Hilmar Dressler, who read about Owens in German newspapers during the buildup to the Games. There's also the great sportsmanship shared by Owens and German long jump rival Carl "Luz" Long, who famously walked arm in arm after receiving their Olympic medals, an Olympic-sized flipping of the bird to Hitler and all he stood for in front of the world.

One thing I learned in this documentary was how the NAACP encouraged Owens to speak out against Team USA heading to Berlin at all. But after Owens brought up this opposition, many of the key influencers of the time, including his own coach and American Olympic Committee leader Avery Brundage, quickly quashed the track star's anti-Games remarks.

This was not the last time Brundage and others overruled Owens and teammates, as viewers learn of Games-time politics and post-Olympic promotions that Owens endured for several months, ultimately denying him many opportunities to cash in on his success.

Sidebar: Brundage is a controversial figure in Olympic history worthy of his own "American Experience" documentary -- in this "Jesse Owens" film, Brundage is painted in a negative light, cast perhaps unfairly with near-Hitler-level "bad guy" status, without noting enough context about Brundage's multiple hats for the IOC, AOC and AAU while delving into his perspectives on Jewish athletes -- I write this not in defense of Brundage's reprehensible actions; rather, to encourage viewers and readers of this blog to absorb the "Jesse Owens" Brundage footage and voiceovers with a grain of salt, or to learn more about Brundage beyond the film.

Another key learning from "American Experience: Jesse Owens" was Owens' main pre-Games competition, a runner named Eulace Peacock (if NBC was the host broadcaster for the 1936 Olympics, where television debuted, they would have had a field day given their winged logo). Unfortunately, Peacock -- named by the AP as the gold medal favorite for Berlin -- was denied a spot on Team USA due to an injury.

The film also notes Thomas Wolfe's perspectives on the Games as he attended the Opening Ceremony and track competitions as a celebrity guest. Zamperini also tells of the unfortunate aftermath of cannon fire (during the opening ceremony) which startled thousands of peace doves, er, pigeons released above the athletes who marched into the stadium. It was fun to see some of my fellow members of the International Society of Olympic Historians on the small screen.

An interesting visual element during the Berlin sequences: Animation using iconic Olympic posters for the Berlin Games. The producers also converted several still photos into animation, an appealing move that brought to life several of Owens' races.

The film concludes with a brief sequence of Owens' post-Games activities, which saw him fade into obscurity for decades before desegregation and renewed Olympic and U.S. patriotism brought him back into the limelight during the 1960s and 1970s.

I enjoyed the "Jesse Owens" feature for "American Experience" and it is worth one's time to tune in to local PBS stations. One of the best things about "American Experience" is that the series always inspires me to do more of my own research, and that is true of the "Jesse Owens" documentary.

In preparing this Olympic blog post, for instance, I learned more about Wolfe, and that Peacock (also from a rural Alabama town) and  Owens later opened a business together, according to this biography. I also learned that Owens opened his own public relations firm in Chicago, according to this timeline (in step with Dan Edelman, founder of the world's largest independent P.R. firm, my former employer). These fun facts did not make it to the final version of "American Experience: Jesse Owens" but I am thankful the documentary led me to learn these details.

Photos via this link, this link and this link

Heavy Medal

A few nights ago my Olympic buddy Brian and I went back to age 10, if only for a few hours, as we absorbed about two hours of expertly crafted hard rock music.

Van Halen. In concert. It was so ... ON!

Yes, Eddie Van Halen, David Lee Roth & Co. put on a good show. Neither Philips Arena, nor my eardrums, may ever be the same.

Who knew that an ocean away some heavy metal was unveiled in the form of the London 2012 Olympic medals.

Check out The Princess Royal (former resident of the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Village -- I still have one of her custom porcelain Centennial Games plates, thank you) with LOCOG Chairman Sebastian Coe opening Pandora's Box of praise and criticism for the newly minted designs.

I like the traditional side featuring Nike above the 1896 Athens Olympic Stadium (see design of 1896 Greek Olympic stamp a couple of posts prior to this one). Not sure what to make of the "modern" and logo-clad side, though the design is growing on me.

The Daily Mail newspaper crafted an interesting albeit commentary-rich Olympic medals infographic.

What do you think of the Olympic medals for London 2012?

Photo of The Princess Royal and Sebastian Coe via Getty Images; Infographic via the Daily Mail.

London Olympic Stadium

Catching up on Olympic website reading lately, found an outstanding London 2012 photo gallery of aerial shots around the Olympic Stadium. Check this link for some amazing images.

Photos via LOCOG

Sticking It To The U.S. Postal Service

It's a bummer to research the upcoming 2012 postage stamp designs due for distribution by the U.S. Postal Service, which apparently is skipping London 2012 for a new Olympic stamp design.

I'm still learning about 2012 Olympic stamps and the Olympic philatelic traditions, but will just write briefly tonight that the U.S.P.S. is missing out on an opportunity to maintain several consecutive Olympiads of original and beautiful five-ringed designs (some of my personal favorites include Robert Peak's iconic Olympic stamps for 1984 in Los Angeles as well as Bart Forbes' designs for 1988 and 1992, the latter released during the 1990 U.S. Olympic Festival in Minneapolis/St. Paul).

What Olympic stamps are due out for other nations in 2012? I'm just starting to research this. If you see one you like, or loathe, please send me a link.

Olympic stamp images via links for dealers showcasing Athens 1896 and Los Angeles 1932 designs

A Stitch In Time Saves Nine

Kudos to the U.S. Olympic Committee, which unfurled a new fundraising campaign that should sew up some hefty donations to Team USA.

Through the "Raise Our Flag" campaign unveiled in tandem with 100 days to go until the London 2012 Olympic opening ceremony, the national Olympic committee for USA invites anyone with a stitch of patriotism and a Visa credit card to fork over $12 (a bargain by many modern fundraiser standards) for an honorary, virtual loop of thread in the American flag to be carried into the Olympic Stadium on July 27.

The purchasing process is quick, easy and also impressive in its social media savvy -- in less than two minutes and with just a few clicks, I selected the quantity of stitches to purchase, entered payment details then crafted a Tweet-length dedication for thread marks No. 2861 and No. 2862 in case you want a peek -- these initial two donations are in honor of my mother, a seamstress, and father, who is a retired federal employee.

What I love most about this fundraiser is how simple it is to see who else is donating (assuming they opt to share their name disclosed via the online donor wall), and also the ease with which others may be guilted into a donation via Facebook, Twitter and other social media means.

For instance, as of tonight (Friday 20 April), many of the leading Olympic journalists -- such as USA Today's Christine Brennan, the Chicago Tribune's Philip Hersh, CNBC's Darren Rovell and Around The Rings' Ed Hula -- did not yet post a donation to the domestic portion of the Olympic Movement that's inspired their work and countless keystrokes of reporting. When they donate I will cheerfully update this post to reflect their generosity.

Not too many of the big sponsors' CEOs or USOC staff -- like Chief Communications Officer Patrick Sandusky -- yet purchased their stitches. But it's been a busy week and the program is new, and there's still time for these and other key folks to contribute.

It is cool to see two donors confirmed so far with the surname "Ross" (though neither with the first name Betsy) and that USOC CEO Scott Blackmun purchased several loops about which Julie Andrews listed among a few of her favorite things.

So, a needle pulling thread may eventually see donations posted by President Obama, Oprah Winfrey or even Steve Martin and costars from The Three Amigos (famous for exclaiming "We can sew!" and "Sew like the wind!" -- though not sure we may count on a donation to Team USA from amigo Martin Short, who is Canadian; oh, well, they've got red mittens to sew north of the border).

I sincerely hope this fundraising program meets tremendous success. Like the headline of this post proclaims, a stitch in time saves nine (and it's all about the Benjamins).

Photos via USOC

Are You Going to London?

The 100 days to London countdown brought several questions to my inbox and Facebook posts, generally asking "are you going to London?"

In my case, the answer is "yes" but the details such as "when" and "how" are yet to be determined. The search for accomodations is underway, with suggestions and invitations welcome.

I noticed USA Today's travel reporter Kitty Bean Yancey posted a reader survey asking a similar question, and with early voting in progress, the "yes" crowd is not exactly in the lead. Check out the poll to cast your own vote.

Also, one one less days to go until the Olympic opening ceremonies, check out this great rhyme for No. 99. Sorry, U.K. the German original has a better (and the original) video online.

Photo via this link