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Park City, Utah
Hey now, look at that, did she nearly run you down
The other star attraction at Utah Olympic Park, the Bobsleigh was damn cool to watch. Most events were held in late afternoon into evening, the cold temperatures used to ensure a faster course and to ensure even colder spectators. This is the view at the bottom of the course (you can see the course map slightly obscured on the left), not quite at the finish but only a turn away. The sleigh on the course (it's the tiny red thing, lower right/center) is future gold medallists USA 2- Bakken/Flowers. I was fortunate enough to see three American medals in my time in Salt Lake, one bronze, one silver and this one, in the first ever Olympic Women's Bobsleigh event.
A close up, courtesy of my well used telephoto lens, as Team Sweden barrels toward their last turn. The Bobsleigh and, more significantly the Luge were not spectator friendly courses. While intrinsically just damn cool, it was hard to see and often hard to follow.
On the right, valiant volunteer course workers make sure that no one uses flash photography and that the course remains safe. In a session I did not attend, a course worker lost a finger attempting to stop a runaway luge sleigh that was threatening the safety of an athlete. That's impressive dedication for someone on a volunteer's salary.
This is the Bobsleigh/Luge course as 30,000 people try to exit out a single eight foot wide bridge and staircase.
I arrived at the luge track early and worked my way over multiple bridges and a winding mass of spectators all the way to top of the hill, to the top of the course. Finally the officials sent one of the local forerunners down the course, someone who would be traveling noticeably slower than the actual athletes. I know she left, I could see her leave the start but I could not see her as she passed me on the track. There was definitely something there, you could feel a whoosh of air and see a flash of color but honestly I saw nothing. Then the faster athletes started going down the hill. I stopped at multiple locations as I walked down the cold hill, never seeing a luge, just a blur and a short one at that. At eighty miles an hour on a winding track four feet away with limited visibility in either direction does not create ideal spectator conditions. I finally made my way to this location, the straightaway providing a good, almost second long window to see these athletes on their back and in all their unlikely glory.
A terribly detailed, almost in focus picture as an unmarked two man bobsled...
... or, more accurately, a mock up of an unmarked two man bobsled hangs on a fake piece of track inside Salt Lake Olympic Square.
The Women's Bobsleigh Finals made history in both the fact that it was the first ever Women's Bobsleigh medal event, it was the first time an American sled had medalled in a good twenty years and it was also the first time ever that a black athlete had medalled in a Winter Olympics. This is at the moment that the excited crowd learned that all of those statements were in fact coming true. U-S-A! U-S-A!
Also of note is the short, point and shoot camera wielding woman wearing the hat in the front center row. The Team USA beret, worn by athletes in the Opening Ceremony, became an odd status symbol in Salt Lake, especially in the first week. The hats were sold by a Canadian company called Roots, a company which had two small 20'-0" x 10'-0" Team USA stores in downtown Salt Lake and a slightly larger store in the decidedly less Mormon refuge of Park City. The berets were in short supply the whole games but especially that first week, stores had limited supplies and were usually sold out within their first hour of opening, prompting people to wait hours before the store even opened just so that they could buy a hat, and a beret at that. Even the green shopping bags with the nondescript Roots logo became status symbols of sorts, although in reality all it showed was that their owners had lots of free time on their hands. On a late afternoon at the midpoint of the games I walked by one of the Roots stores in Salt Lake and, noticing the crazy long line to get in, asked the people up front how long they had been waiting. They told me they had been waiting four hours. Four hours. Then I witnessed one of the most unbelievable things I have ever seen. A couple walked by the line proudly wearing their berets (which, in all honesty, really aren't a good look for most guys, but I digress). Someone near the back of the line asked if they could buy one of the berets off their heads and offered $200. For a hat, and a beret at that. The couple emphatically refused and walked away.
It took just one day of record warmth to put into ruin the achievements of Provo's first International Ice Sculpture Contest- Eagles and Eiffel Towers and Golden Gate Bridges all faded into memory as the remaining ice slowly, once again, became one with the earth.
