It’s show time! After months and months AND MONTHS of hype, the London Olympics are finally upon us. If, like the majority of sane people who own TVs, you plan on enjoying the action from the comfort of your couch, I wish you all the best in tracking down equestrian coverage. If CTV and NBC leave you wanting for more, I hope you will visit either this blog or my other blog Low-Down to hear all about it from my position in the press tribune.
It looks like I’ll be covering these Olympics without the support of that most venerable of institutions, the Canadian Olympic Committee, whose communications department has deemed me unworthy of being on their media distribution list, in spite of my repeated emails requesting that I be added – or rather, restored, since I USED TO get their press releases. Just because I got my credentials from the IOC directly thanks to the help of the FEI (after the COC led me through their inaction to correctly assume I wouldn’t be getting any London joy from them), that doesn’t mean I’m not Canadian, does it? The COC ‘communicators’ have also decided not to respond to my request for a ticket to the opening ceremonies, in keeping with the fine Canadian bureaucratic tradition of using the term ‘communications’ only in jest in the job titles of its staff. Oh well, I’ve learned to do without the support of other Canadian bureaucracies, all of which seem to march to the random beat of the same drummer. Thank goodness the IOC, LOCOG, FEI, USEF, BEF etc. etc. saw fit to include me in their emailings so that I can keep up with these Games.
I sure do hope all my unanswered emails to the COC are not a sign that their hard working communications staff are sitting bound and gagged in a dimly lit basement, awaiting the cruel lashes of a demented gimp…
To give credit where credit is due, I must commend EC for their most recent magazine, which arrived in time for me to pack it in my bag. And yes, I really am taking it to London because it’s a handy guide to our Olympic Equestrian Team, without a single misspelled name that I can find. After all my waxing critical of EC over the past few weeks, I say ‘two thumbs way up’.
Now a bit of explaining about what to expect from me over the next two weeks: my London coverage here on Straight-Up will be focused primarily on Canadian content, so please make sure you check out the Low-Down every day as well, where I’ll be blogging about all things not Canadian and also introducing an exciting new format for some of those posts – the first of which is planned to launch this weekend some time.
As I fly away on a Virgin airplane into the wild blue yonder, I hope you will join me in wishing all our Canadian athletes, equestrian and otherwise, four legged and two, a safe, successful and memorable Olympic experience.
Go Canada!
