To Russia, With Glove(s)

With client projects and holiday deadlines galore, November and December were a wash for free time to blog. Crud!

Lots of big Olympic news headlines of late, notably the selection of initial Team USA competitors and some final preparations for Sochi 2014.

Of course, troubling headlines are also on the brain given recent events in Central Russia.

During Christmas break, time at last arrived to finalize travel plans for the Winter Olympics.

"Are you going to Sochi?" is finally answered: YES!

For those who remain interested, it's not too late to book passage to Russia. Accommodations are available on several cruise ships set to dock at Sochi Port and Adler (with thanks to Tom Burke for the pointers on reservations). Also found an actual hotel available via Hotels.com, though I will be biting my nails until checking-in on 3 Feb that the hotel is there and open for business.

The cruise ship agency includes with their fee the required host documents needed for inclusion in the Russian tourist visa application process (more on that in a few paragraphs).

Flights are not cheap. Fortunately, after banking tens of thousands of SkyMiles, I'll get half-way to Sochi on Delta Air Lines' dime. The second half of the journey will be via Aeroflot from Germany, one of three nations with direct flights to Sochi available for the Games (it pleased me to avoid long layovers and out-of-the-way connecting flights via Moscow). Yahoo! Travel was helpful to locate these direct flight options.

And individual Sochi Olympic tickets remain available via CoSport -- it will be fun to visit Krasnaya Polyana for ski jump (the one ticket purchased so far). Locating a single Opening Ceremony ticket is on my wish list, but the Sochi ticketing process (which includes a new layer of security via the Spectator Pass process -- Meh) will prevent last minute wheeling and dealing like in Beijing.

Now, about that tourist visa for Russia Federation. Whew! I've put in a dozen hours and still the process is a work in progress. There are plenty of (nearly too many) checklist items to keep in mind, and that's just to get the paperwork in an envelope to the embassy (in my case, to a company that helps process the applications). I think only the visa application for China was more detailed, but it will be worth the time investment when arriving at the host city.

With just over 30 days to go, the time is now to get things booked without delay. Here's hoping others who are finalizing their plans will comment and share pointers.

During the booking process, I reflected many times that just 25 years ago a visit to Russia was likened to flying to the moon. It will be great fun to learn the culture in person, and I do wish to visit St. Petersburg, Moscow and other Russia Federation destinations in the future. Sochi will be a good place to start the Russia travel experience.

See you there!

Image via RussiaMap.org

Rio in M

Another pre-Games milestone crept up on the calendar this week: 1,000 days to Rio!

Looks like the Brazilian team organizing the 2016 Olympic Games celebrated the countdown with special events and photo opps. The Associated Press chose to mark the occasion with an update on an ambitious sponsorship goal, while reporters provided a journalistic kick-in-the-rear to underscore the urgency of Games prep yet to come.

The pictograms turned out nice. Though the designers refer to their round outlines as "pebbles" they struck me as individual guitar picks like the ones Charlie Byrd may have used in the studio sessions for "Brazilian Byrd."

Images via Rio 2016

Coming Soon: High Flying Adored

If you didn't yet hear that women's ski jump competition gets its Olympic debut in Sochi, you will.

Count on it.

The P.R. machine for Women's Ski Jumping USA is hitting its stride, and the Salt Lake Tribune's July 6 headline "Women's ski jump team prepping for Olympic media onslaught" was and remains apt.

At the recent Team USA Olympic Media Summit in Park City, Utah, where the women's team lives and trains, dozens of sports and entertainment reporters -- and even a few Olympic bloggers -- flocked to meet the Sochi Olympic hopefuls who are medal stand favorites going into the Games. At times, journalists huddled in rows three or four deep to pose questions, with photographers and TV cameras encircling each young woman.

All the attention is well-deserved. At the media summit, Sarah Hendrickson, Jessica Jerome and Lindsey Van explained their version of events leading to women's ski jump gaining Olympic competition status. It took, after all, several years, legal battles, IOC lobbying and an abundance of perseverance to create the five-ringed opportunity for Team USA and international competitors to jump in Russia during 2014.

To my bewildered eyes, the English language version of the Sochi.ru website still does not (at less than 100 days to the Games) include Women's Ski Jump in the official description of the 2014 ski jump competition.

However, the schedule section does note February 11 as the big day for women's jumping for joy (and gold).

I aim to be among the 7,500+ spectators in the RusSki Gorki venue. From a peek at the Sochi.ru interactive map (screen grab shown), the viewing stands and the jumps are nestled among the tracks for bobsled, luge and skeleton competition, much like the set-up in Park City for 2002. Globally, women's ski jump athlete qualification -- which involves number crunching of FIS World

Cup and Grand Prix results -- continues through January 19, according to the Team USA Media Guide. Here in the USA, the athletes are selected through rankings and results of competitions held Nov. 15 to Jan. 19, with one spot TBD on Dec. 29 at the Olympic Trials.

By my count via the FIS ski jump athlete pages, there are 22 nations who may field women's ski jump entrants from three continents: North America (Canada, USA), Europe (Austria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, The Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Romania, Poland) and Asia (China, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea and Russia).

May the best woman ski faster, lunge higher and land stronger in the Sochi ski jump competition.

Images via Sochi.ru, WSJ-USA and Newscom

Puff, Puff, Pass ... On Olympic Mascots



Olympic mascots are getting too complicated.

Gone are the days of "easy" Olympic marketing to kids. Who can forget Sam the Olympic Eagle of 1984, flapping his wings and pecking with his over sized, Big Bird-yellow beak? He was simple. All American. Easy to "get it" that he was a patriotic symbol of LA84. Perfect!

Apparently, his likeness continues to appear in Japanese animation almost 30 years post-Games, indicative of staying power not often enjoyed by mascots of the five-ringed variety.

My earliest Games mascot memory is actually Sam's winter Olympic cousin, Roni the Raccoon of Lake Placid, N.Y. I have vivid memories of shopping with mom at the drug store during first grade winter months, selecting a giant coloring book filled with images of Roni donning winter sports gear, ready to be filled with Crayon wax while watching ABC Sports.

Roni, too, was simple. Two dimensional. One of the good mascots.

Somewhere along the way -- I think with Barcelona's 1992 Cobi (a mascot to love, by an artist who is now among my favorites), or perhaps with Atlanta's "Jimmy Carter sperm" mascot, IZZY (terrible) -- when Olympic mascots got off track. WAY off track. Then they mutated and multiplied, and some host city selection teams even looked to other worlds for inspiration (remember Neve and Gliz from Torino?).

My brain is still processing those "things" they selected as London's Olympic icons.

When I looked tonight at Sochi's trio of Winter Olympic mascots, my head was shaking. What psychotropic drug did they take to come up with the back stories for the hare, bear and snow leopard? A few thoughts:

For the creators of "The Leopard" it may have been LSD. How else would they take this lovely big cat from a mountaintop tree and set him (or her? or it?) on a makeshift snowboard to warn nearby villagers of an approaching avalanche by banging a large stone on a church bell?

Next, put this one under your tongue: For "The Hare" methinks the meds of choice may have been Ecstasy given the creature's manic pace, as detailed in the Sochi.ru video introducing this character as a figure skater and family restaurant employee. Huh? (He, she or it also plays guitar like Forrest Gump's girlfriend, Jenny, on a stool before summoning the fire department much like "Lassie" in any rescue situation.)

It may have just been some weed or good shrooms that inspired the Sochi team's morphing of Russia's 1980 bear mascot Misha into a North Pole-based polar bear (there is a facial resemblance, sort of, for the 2014 mascot "The Polar Bear"). This guy was rescued from a chunk of glacier that broke off and floated to sea. Raised by scientists/humans on a ship, he later learned sledding sports. Oh, and he carries a cell phone.

All of the Sochi mascots carry a cell phone -- WTF!?!

The cell phone for the bear is ringing now (in my head ... sans shrooms). It's the Charmin bears calling wanting a rewrite to the story their creators shat.

Well, on the plus side, the Sochi Olympic site includes a clever "Mascot Home" page featuring the aforementioned characters, as well as their other-worldly Paralympic mascot cousins (don't get me started) and handy links to the history of other summer and winter Games critters. I liked the recycling/green message, and the videos are of "high" quality (thank you, double-entendres).

What or who is your favorite Olympic mascot? And your least favorite? And which do you remember as your "first" Olympic mascot?

Images via Sochi.ru

See You In Sochi In C Days

One hundred (a.k.a. C) days to Sochi hardly seems possible.

After a challenging year (still in progress) including elder care duties with family and many interesting freelance P.R. client projects, the pre-Games milestone for Russia's Winter Olympiad didn't exactly sneak up on me, but it does enforce some urgency to lock in travel details to get to the host city.

Plans are going alright, though at a Siberian glacial pace. Found a hotel for opening ceremonies eve (and booked it!), and soon my purchase of a state room aboard an Adler-docked cruise ship will be complete. That leaves the Super Bowl Sunday flight (via Frankfurt), ground transportation and a mobile device as the remaining "travel to do's" for Sochi. Happy to report I will be there.

Will you? Who among readers is going to Sochi, and what were the biggest surprises and challenges of your travel planning so far? (I might just send an Olympic blog pin to someone who posts an answer via comments.)

As was the case with Torino in 2006, my brain's been lukewarm to the whole lead up to Sochi. It's surprising the Olympic security story lines did not resonate more in media and conversations of recent months, trumped by the Russian law banter as the "controversy d'Olympiade" drummed with about the same six-months-out timing as human rights for Beijing, security for Athens, homeless rights for Vancouverites, etc.

The good news is that the global public discourse about Russia's policies may emerge as a positive turning point (five, 10 or 20 years from now, hopefully things will be better as a result of recent protests and such). Thank goodness the Games will go on sans boycott.

A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to attend the Team USA Olympic Media Summit in Park City, Utah, to visit with many Sochi Olympic hopefuls and to learn about winter Olympic training underway at many venues across the USA and around the world.

During the next 100 days, I'll strive to post daily some of the athlete photos and stories learned at the Summit, and to delve into Sochi Olympic sponsor activation, observations on Olympic public relations (good or otherwise) and Olympic travel or Sochi Cultural Olympiad items in the news.

I'm most excited to witness the debut of women's Olympic ski jump and the combine male/female team events (ticket leads are appreciated).

The Sochi Olympic Torch Relay now underway is also very interesting as the largest single-nation relay in history, almost taking the flame to the moon and back (they reached the North Pole a few days ago, as I understand it, and the notion of the Torch aglow under the Northern Lights is inspiring).

What do you want to see and learn through this Olympic blog? Share via comments and I'll see what I can do.

C U in Sochi!

Screen grab image via OMEGA Watches; North Pole photo via Sochi.ru

Let's Talk Turkey (and Tokyo, and Madrid)

Later today in Buenos Aires, the International Olympic Committee selects the host city for the Games of 2020. Istanbul, Madrid and Tokyo will present their cases in Argentina, each pleading why their city may be the best place for the future Olympiad.

While following the bid process over many months, no clear favorite came to mind for this blogger until today. It should be a close vote, probably going multiple rounds, but only the election action will tell.

Istanbul will win, I think, for a few major strengths of note:

-- This is the Turkish city's fifth Olympic bid. They've gutted out several recent (though non-consecutive) bid processes, learning and refining along the way. Their staying power is a major asset
-- Istanbul lets the IOC dip its five-ringed toes into the Arab market (new for the Olympics) while tethering to Western/European familiarity. It's bid-trendy for the IOC to tap new regions as they did with Rio 2016 and Beijing 2008
-- Istanbul is a beautiful city with some of the best hospitality/tourism options worldwide, with plenty of hotels and TV-ready ancient historic sites, gorgeous and modern sports venues, and an accomplished record of hosting major global sporting events (personally, my girlfriend and I consider Istanbul as the site of our most relaxing and fun holiday experience -- we fell in love with the people, culture, history and climate there)
-- The IOC is used to protests; recent incidents in Istanbul are challenges the IOC voters may consider "normal" and manageable.

While Tokyo has as many bids under its belt, and a similar strong record, I think there are a couple of Achilles' heels for Japan's bid. Geography may be a factor (too close to Korea, hosting the 2018 Winter Games), and the potential headaches of post-Fukushima and soaring costs (Tokyo being among the world's most expensive cities in which to work and live). In some ways, Tokyo's hosting of the 1964 Games may also turn off a few IOC voters who may be looking for a fully new location in lieu of building on a legacy.

And while Madrid is a repeat bidder with an outstanding record, I don't think their modest budgets will resonate with IOC members with a bigger is better mindset. This city was more of a sentimental favorite for past bids (given longtime IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch's Spanish roots), and there may be less sentiment during this vote.

For both Tokyo and Madrid, their presentations may come across as slightly more "what's in it for us" rather than "what's in it for the IOC" (its unavoidable that Japan present that the 2020 Games would lead to more recovery from recent disasters, and Spain's presentation can't get around the economy factor and how the Games would help on the money side).

I wish for all three candidate cities the greatest success with their presentations, and certainly will plan travel to the city ultimately selected for 2020.

Afternoon Update (added 9/7/2013 at 4 p.m. CT): Congratulations to Tokyo, which won the 2020 Olympic bid. Early reports on the vote show Japan's bid city took the lead in the first round, then picked up more votes for the win in IOC ballots round two. I've only experienced Tokyo via Narita International Airport, and anticipate today's selection will bring more travel to Asia in the near future.  It's a bummer for Istanbul supporters, particularly those in the media room in Argentina, according to Inside The Games. It will be fun to see if Turkey and Spain both give it another go for 2024.

Support Wrestling Via Ebay

Happy to read via NBCSports.com there's a set of Ebay auctions underway in support of Olympic wrestling's attempt to return to the 2020 Olympic schedule.

Readers may recall my initial (and ongoing) frustration the IOC voted out wrestling in the first place.

Glancing at the Ebay listings -- which include an experience with Jay Leno, training sessions with celebrity athletes and (according to the NBC post) a Rio de Janiero 2016 Olympic VIP trip -- looks like USA Wrestling is the benefactor of the fundraising auctions.

Consider a bid! Pin it to win it!

Photo via this link