Blog
D4: The Circus Begins!
Although the Opening Ceremony isn’t until tomorrow, snowboard slopestyle competition began today (Thursday). Qualifiers selected the 8 men and women who would ride directly into finals and not have to compete in the same-day-as-finals semifinals used in Olympic competition. The course today was great. Any concerns about takeoff angles and landing heights have been alleviated…
Read MoreD3: Trekking to the Black Sea
How many days have I been here again? One? Oh, dear lord. Today was a long one. I think I fell asleep around 5 am, woke up at 10ish and headed to the Gorki Media Center in the mountains, which is about a 15-minute walk from my hotel, for my first press conference. Halfpipe snowboarding.…
Read MoreD2: How’s the Housing?
It’s the number-one question I’ve received from my colleagues here on the ground in Sochi and from friends and family back at home. How’s your housing? Do you have hot water? Towels? Pillows? Giant, gaping holes in your bathroom walls? Stray, dying dogs littering your lobby? My answer: I’m lucky. I packed for this trip…
Read MoreD1: Hawks For Humanity
For the past seven years, ever since the 2014 Winter Olympics was granted to Sochi, Russia, I’ve been talking about going to 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. It’s hard to believe I’m on a plane heading – with a tailwind, I might add – straight into that conversation. But I can’t stop thinking about…
Read MoreDOB Sochi!
It’s back! (Starting tomorrow.) The fourth installment of my bi-annual Daily Olympics Blog. Over the next three weeks, I’ll check in each day with links to my ESPN.com stories, as well as my favorite stories from other writers and photographers here in Sochi and bring you behind the scenes as I cover the 2014 Winter…
Read MoreD21: Behind the Masks
I was once a mascot. It was my senior year at Florida, I was on the varsity cheerleading team and there was a Saturday afternoon women’s basketball game. The JV team cheered at women’s basketball, so I had the day off. Then I got a call from our coach. Alberta was sick. At Florida, there…
Read MoreD20: What a Difference …
The last time I saw IndyCar driver Scott Dixon, I was at the 2009 Long Beach Grand Prix reporting THIS story on the long-held belief that having children slows down drivers. He and his wife Emma were about to have their first daughter, he was coming off the best year of his life and his…
Read MoreD19: 100 Days ‘Til Sochi
Today officially marks 100 days until Opening Ceremonies at the Sochi Olympics. And to celebrate, the USOC held a sort of mixer with 50 athletes, members of the media, sponsors and fans in Times Square all day today. It opened with a press conference – and a protest by a local human rights group –…
Read MoreD16-18: Weekends Free
This, my golfing friends, is what they call taking a Mulligan. [Where does that term come from, anyway? THIS is what the USGA Museum has to say about it.] This weekend was spent unpacking, re-packing, writing and catching up with friends in the little time in between. Needless to say: I wrote zero blogs. Today,…
Read MoreD15: 5miles
Five things that made me smile today … Watching this Coke commercial a few times while writing my piece on the women of Pittsburgh. Watching “Enough Said”, the final film James Gandolfini made before his death. It’s such a sweet, funny film. Worth the 13 bucks. Reading this essay by Kurt Vonnegut from Man Without a Country,…
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