The Rest of the Story

On March 26, my longtime Olympic friend Brian cornered me (a second time) nudging for a conclusion to the mid-Games cliffhanger posted from PyeongChang in February.

"Time flies when you're having fun," I shrugged.

In our memberships with the International Society of Olympic Historians, Brian and I occasionally summon our inner Paul Harvey, the on air storyteller who, for years, wove detailed color into his radio broadcasts. 

At Brian's request, finally now on April 27 (started April 12), here is the rest of the story:

On the day of my mid-February PyeongChang post, I had a second news story in the works to follow-up the pin trading tales of the Games' first week. 

In that one afternoon at the Main Press Center, it was fun to meet not only the Team USA women's figure skaters at their first press conference of the Games, but also a British reporter I nicknamed "Stephen Merchant's doppelganger" seated near my blogging station. 

The incomplete post -- including answers to my questions posed to Mirai Nagasu, Karen Chen and Bradie Tennell -- was drafted under the headline "Hello, Ladies" in reference and reverence to Merchant's short-lived HBO series, of which I was a big fan (as big a supporter of ladies' Olympic figure skating). 

But here's the deal: I caught a nasty head cold during the middle weekend of PyeongChang, and by the afternoon in question the congestion and coughing was rough. Dog tired, facing a 45-minute snowy mountain commute, and an early morning slated for the next day (to attend figure skating in coastal Gangneung), it made sense to grab a bite, call it a night early and catch some ZZZ's in my AirBNB. 

This plan worked except for sleeping in the next morning and getting a call from my AirBNB hosts who wanted to present me with a going away/New Year's gift. By the time we connected in person, the day's schedule was pretty much shot except for meeting a friend for an evening women's hockey match. 

Illness persisted for three more days, with better health not at all aided by my attendance at a string of outdoor (and Arctic cold/windy) events including a rescheduled downhill ski event and cross-country ski competition. 

Then there was the packing process including nearly a thousand new Olympic pins in need of sorting and two-week's worth of dirty laundry. I would have gladly traded pins with anyone who could read the Korean script on the AirBNB's new clothing washer-dryer. 

The search for new lodging (one-night only at the sweetest Art Hotel on the planet ... resting in a giant bowl-shaped bed) then getting there (a long drive south of Gangneung) devoured a day.

And then the ultimate distraction from blogging arrived ... from Russia with love. 

You see, during Sochi 2014 I made and new friend while attending the Cultural Olympiad concert performed by American jazz musician Brian Lynch. When the Grammy-winning trumpeter asked the mostly-Russian audience whether they knew the location of Milwaukee (where his family was watching the Sochi concert via Skype), I hollered from the balcony my approval of the Wisconsin city much to the amazement of the packed house, the band leader on stage and to a Moscow-based interpreter/translator seated on my row. 

The Russia-born linguist, a woman named Valentina, spoke fluent English then and now, and after four years of friendly Facebook messaging, in January 2018 she accepted my invitation to "meet me in PyeongChang" like good folks sometimes do in St. Louis. 

So the morning after the Art Hotel and viewing its museum (including a Pinocchio collection) and expansive modern sculpture garden, I took the speed train to Seoul's airport to greet Valentina then bring her back to the Olympic city.

Valentina proved to be a very funny and fun-loving travel companion. On our first day of re-acquaintance, she opted to join me for a Korean Cultural Olympiad event, which turned out to be a musical version of a popular folk tale.

The program hinted "audience participation" in the second act, and guess who got picked to go on stage and perform a Korean "fan dance" in female costume?

Answer clue: It wasn't Valentina. 

She instead delighted in snapping photos and video proof of my on-stage humiliation (the mostly female cast dressed me in the finest Korean silks and placed me center stage for a "fan dance" to the glee of, well, everyone but moi.

After the show, Valentina and I shared hearty belly laughs while losing count of the middle-aged Korean women smiling and proclaiming me "the star" of the performance.

Sorry, ladies. No autographs!

Though there was no time to blog about it, the next day my Muscovite buddy and I trekked to the furthest-afield venue to experience the women's ski event at which Lindsey Vonn ended her Olympic career and Mikaela Shiffrin earned a bronze.

Valentina was a natural at securing blog-friendly photos of Slovakia's yak-like fans, and the two of us managed to get her into the venue press center for Shiffrin's press conference. Kinda fun to get in the last question for the two-time gold medalist and her approach to the Beijing 2022 Games (I will post this interview at a future date). 

A long bus ride, a lost mobile phone, countless pin trades, two days and at least two Korean barbecue meals later -- as well as a 90-minute drive down the South Korean coast to meet V's longtime mentor (an interpreter and his wife who worked at the MPC for the Olympic Athletes of Russia), and it was already time for Valentina and I to hit the PyeongChang Olympic Superstore, attend the Closing Ceremony and then drive 3.5 hours back to Seoul.

Between work assignments, venue visits, meals and drive times, I think we averaged about four hours of sleep per night, making for one exhausted Olympic blogger by the Monday after Games' end.

Valentina must have enjoyed my company, too, for she said "meet me in ... Istanbul" as a follow-up experience. We're both flying in to the Turkish tourism capital on May Day.

Before our reunion on the other side (west end) of Asia, there's one upcoming 2018 Olympic experience yet to unfurl: The USOC's announcement of the Team USA Awards presented by Dow in Washington on April 26, followed by the athletes' visit to The White House just like in 2016.

Of course my credential request is submitted, and here's hoping for more time to blog this month following a visit to D.C.

And that is ... the rest of the story.

Photos by Nicholas Wolaver and Valentina Kucheriavenko

Olympic Pin Fever Spreads Across PyeongChang

Olympic pin trading is an unofficial sport of the Games, and in PyeongChang this longtime five-ringed tradition has taken off like a full-speed ski jumper.

Whether collectors seek Korea's sponsor pins, 2018 media badges, national Olympic committee (NOC) treasures from athletes of competing nations or more generic local organizing committee and volunteer pins, there's something for everyone and everyone seems willing to exchange across all corners of the Olympic venues, Main Press Center and Olympic Parks in PyeongChang and Gangneung. 

There's even robust trading opportunities, I learned, in the main Gangneung Station and spectator park-and-ride lots. 

One of my best 2018 trades so far was at the team competition of figure skating, where Mirai Nagasu walked up to me in the press mixed zone after winning bronze. She reached out and pointed to my blog pin and asked for it!

Later in the week, TODAY Show host Hoda Kotb accepted a pin in exchange for a selfie. Sweet!

I started pin trading, sort of, during the national championships what is now named Odyssey of the Mind (formerly Olympics of the Mind), a creative competition for elementary and junior high school students. 

One of my favorites from that era of my youth was an Expo '86 pin promoting the World's Fair in Vancouver, then as far away from Oklahoma as I could imagine. 

Fast forward to Calgary '88 and the winter Olympic pin trading magazine feature that ran in Sports Illustrated. I got hooked big-time, and as a volunteer for U.S. Olympic Festival '89 in Oklahoma City, my Olympic pin collection got going with free Seoul pins from mail-order coupons in the Sunday newspaper. 

Thousands of trades and hundreds of Ebay sales later, my core collection now includes about 10 fabric pin books, five framed sets and badges spanning the 1930s to present. 

Photo via WABE.com

My specialty is Olympic bid pins followed by NOCs and media pins -- or pretty much any pin I think is high quality and easy on the eyes. 

My rarest find, by far, is a hand-made Rome 1960 pin carved on a shell from the beaches near the sailing venue and Mount Vesuvius "steaming" out five Olympic rings. Found it an an antique store in Mankato, Minn., during college and cannot wait to visit that part of Italy someday to see if some little family-owned gift shop as a trove of these beauties. 

Here in PyeongChang my favorite trades were exchanges with officials and athletes. For our third conversation in as many Olympiads, HRH Prince Albert of Monaco (IOC member) presented me a Team Monaco pin in exchange for a blog pin. 

Mister Tonga's team generously shared several pins (two designs as shown with this post) as did Nigeria, Lichtenstein, Jamaica, Finland, Luxembourg (a tiny pin) and several other NOC athletes in the Olympic Village. 

On the media pin front, Reuters created three large pins in green, red and yellow to represent 'Citius-Altius-Fortius' and faster-higher-stronger trading. 

Several Japan media pins are proving to be difficult acquisitions, as is the large Sports Illustrated pin featuring a colorful pagoda. 

The Associated Press, I am told, made pins but they remain in someone's stateside (a pin-headed blunder if there every was one).

Building upon its sponsorship tradition of London, Sochi and Rio, the Samsung pavilions in the Olympic parks and MPC feature a pin-earning opportunity. 

For each interactive activity visitors explore to learn about Samsung products, guests may earn one of 20 free pin designs featuring winter Olympic sports disciplines and icons of the host nation. As in previous Games, once collectors secure their first five badges, they earn a free display board. And for the few who fill a board, they have an opportunity to take home a rare Samsung Worldwide Partner Galaxy Note 8 featuring the Olympic rings. 

The last time I fell in love with a mobile phone was the Galaxy Note 3 in Sochi, and the Note 8 was also love at first touch (so light, so delicate, so powerful). 

Must ... get ... Note 8!

In the Samsung at Gangneung Olympic Park, the interactive options to secure points and pins, are very cool. 

Visitors should be sure to look at all of the museum display Olympic torches and pins from 1998 Nagano to 2016 Rio, then pose for a photo holding the classy white porcelain 2018 torch design. 

There's also an Infinity Room experience in which guests may project their Instagram photos and descriptions set to music, and another area to put a selfie into famous works of art or local sports venues. 

I have a couple of media questions in to Samsung: First, how many of the PyeongChang contest pins exist, and second, why not include the Olympic rings on more of the designs. Their New York-based public relations counsel is looking to the answers (stay tuned for updates here). 

Other sponsor pavilions seem to be generous with their pins at this Games, with designs from new TOP sponsor Alibaba Group, as well as PyeongChang suppliers The North Face, Toyota and Coca-Cola opting to give our pins for free.

A fancy-schmancy set of mascot pins comes in the form of a thick plastic mascot pin in which a VISA credit card chip is embedded. Load up your pin with W100,000 or more (about $100US) and scan it anywhere VISA is accepted (I bought mine at the MPC then used the funds at the Super Store in Olympic Park for the win, er, pin). 

Coming back to Coca-Cola pin trading, the longtime pin hobbyist partner opted to create only one small version of an Olympic pin trading centre at this Games.

Nestled along the south end of the Gangneung Live Site, about five to seven volunteer collectors man the trading area in one half of the centre, while visitors enjoy a peek at pin collecting history and etiquette chatted up by Coca-Cola employees in the adjacent room. Brisk business seems to be underway in the centre each time I stopped by (twice so far).

For those not in South Korea, there's a new option to showcase personal collections or keep up with the action and emerging pin designs spotted in PyeongChang.

Tucker, Ga.-based Pincentives created a new online "Collector Dash" platform -- "an organized encyclopedia of pins" -- and app the company is beta testing during PyeongChang 2018. 

Users sign up for a free account then have the option to upload a pin photo from their mobile phone "in the field" or via their laptop when the collecting day is complete. 

I put the new Pincentives.com features to the test last week and found the site generally easy and fun to navigate, and some 347 of the 2018 designs popped up on the site so far, indicative fellow collectors and Olympin members may be enjoying the test phase as did I. 

My mission by next Sunday is to unload all of the 500 or so remaining traders packed in my Olympic luggage, and to return to Atlanta with more PyeongChang pinventory than any recent Olympiad. Also on a hunt to earn a POGOG staff pin from an employee of the local organizing committee (do they exist?) or a volunteer Swatch watch. 

Wish me luck.

Happy collecting!

Photos by Nicholas Wolaver

The Scene At Olympic Figure Skating

With Saturday as a scheduled recovery/logistics day -- resting/relocating to coastal Gangneung for the next 12 days -- all bright eyed on Sunday I made it to my first PyeongChang 2018 Olympic event: Figure skating.

As I write this Monday afternoon, the two-day Team Event just concluded with Canada taking home gold, Olympic Athletes from Russia (OAR) silver and Team USA earning bronze. 

For non-photo journalists, the venue is set up with a media tribune spanning a couple of seating areas for broadcasters to air live commentaries, a few rows of tabled seats for writers with laptops, then corners of the arena for non-tabled press (that's me). 

Generally we are able to roam freely and to the ground level of the venue, which includes a "mixed zone" for athletes and journalists to stand in a queue for 1x1 or group interviews. 

There's also a big media tent with tables space for about 300 reporters, mostly filled both days. 

I read that spectators filled about 88 percent of the stands on Sunday, and today was probably more like 90 percent. 

Highlights from the experience:

• First interview in the mixed zone with Nicole Schott (GER) just after her Olympic debut. Her team publicist said she opted out of opening ceremony for rest, and I asked if she had any regrets about that choice. "I'm a really early sleeper, so I decided to concentrate on practice, but I'm going to do the closing." She considers one of her fellow competitors, Carolina Kostner (ITA) a hero, and Schott skated to one of my favorite Ennio Morricone compositions, "Nella Fantasia" performed by Jackie Evancho.

• Conversation with pairs skaters Maia and Alex Shibutani, who spoke with The New York Times' Jere Longman II for a story on the 10 a.m. competition times to accommodate the Western Hemisphere broadcast schedule. "There is no extra challenge; it's not like we found out a week ago. These are the best athletes in the world and they're gonna figure out how to get the job done" before answering my question about returning to Gangneung Ice Arena for their first 2018 skate on Olympic ice. Maia said, "It was really special to return. Before Sochi we did not have the opportunity to skate in the venue, so coming in [here] we had a year of positive visualization and just really happy memories, so being back here just feels really comfortable."

• Group interview with Bradie Tennell, a first-time Olympian, who explained she gets psyched up for competition with 70s and 80s rock music by the likes of Metallica, Queen and AC/DC. "It's kinda weird because people look at me like, 'oh, blond hair blue eyes' but that music is great for getting pumped up."

• Longer 1x1 interview with Canadian pairs skaters Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford. I cornered them about their choice of music, "Hometown Glory" performed by Adele, which left this blogger in tears during their skate. Duhamel explained that she first heard the song in 2007 at a small venue in Montreal where Adele performed she was "ADELE" selling out arenas. "She was wearing this big, blue T-shirt and I yelled, 'I like your T-shirt' and she was like, 'Thanks, I don't like getting dressed up' and I was like oh, my god, I love this girl and I really loved that song and always have, so we started using it in 2012," said Duhamel, who added that last year she saw Adele perform again at one of Canada's biggest arenas. "She's inspired us., From the day we heard [Adele's] music we were so inspired by her passion."

• Spotting Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir in their commentary booth, later interviewing them about their PyeongChang experience so far. Donning my own Kodak Olympic pin featuring Lipinski's likeness, I asked the NBC Olympics duo if they ever thought of creating their own pins. "We know that the Olympics are big about pin collecting and trading, but we don't have our own pin but that's something to think about," said Weir. I brought up meeting Lipinski at Bud House in Vancouver (no surprise, she did not remember but was nice about it and laughed) and asked how things are going compared to Sochi. "We're having a blast," said Lipinski. "We've been waiting for this moment since Sochi to sit in a prime time booth, and it's overwhelming -- we're loving it." Weir said they'd go the distance for many more future Olympiads if given the chance. "As long as people will have us -- we love this job, it's a privilege and an honor to represent our sport to the masses in the United States and to teach them what they're seeing and give them real talk; we have the most fun doing it -- it's a dream," said Weir.

• Accepting a request from Mirai Nagasu to trade a pin; she offered a huge U.S. Figure Skating pin in exchange for a blogger pin for PyeongChang only moments after standing on the ceremonial medals podium (the medalist teams will accept their hard-earned hardware at Olympic Medals Plaza later tonight). 

Photos by Nicholas Wolaver

Breaking the Ice in Greensboro, N.C.

I'm not an uber fan of figure skating.

 

On par with seasonally tuning in to only championship events like the Super Bowl, Wimbledon or the World Series as touchstones for limited fandom, my attention for skating usually comes in tandem with the Winter Olympiad.

But the curious convergence of good weather, an open calendar and Atlanta's proximity to Greensboro, N.C. -- site of the 2015 U.S. Figure Skating Championships underway -- brought a last-

minute opportunity to trek to The Gate City to see some top figure skaters in person.

Glad to be here; though not my first time in this part of the Carolinas, the experience at #NC2015 is going well considering I just drove five hours and got set up in the press room. The championship pairs free skate is underway, so heading to the media seating shortly.

I won't pretend to know the latest stats and facts on this year's favorites, though coverage by some of the media here (led by the hometown News & Record) helped me get up to speed that several Sochi Olympians including Ashley Wagner, Gracie Gold, Jason Brown and others are poised for success in the finals later today and tomorrow.

More updates and photos from the experience to follow.

Logo via U.S. Figure Skating. Photo from 2013 by Nicholas Wolaver.