I was in my hotel room in Stamford, CT, right after the holidays, when I heard a news update about a strange sickness in Wuhan, China, that had the epidemiology world very concerned. Probably like most of you, it kind of went in one ear and out the other. China was a world away. I had Tour de Ski start lists to prep for the next day’s shows. I put my head down, grabbed my highlighters and colored pens and did my thing.
That was January. Same routine as the year before. More start lists would be prepped. More races would get called as 2020 got going. The Wuhan problem continued in the periphery, another world away. I intermittently wondered if it could or would spread to us and what that might look like, but I never really got into it deep. Again, probably like you.
A typical week had me doing biathlon Thursday through Sunday, doubling up on Saturday’s and Sundays with cross country. As soon as Sunday’s shows went off air, Bill and I would quickly break down our cognitive support structure pinned to the walls and fanned out like a day-glow abstract art piece on the desks in front of us in our respective halves of the sound room. We’d rush out to grab our roll-bags, fist bump the control room crew on good shows that week and we’d share a ride to La Guardia. He’d get dropped at Southwest in terminal B, me at Delta in terminal C or D. We’d say “see you Wednesday” and we would see each other two days later, either there at La Guardia to share a car into Stanford, or in the hotel lobby, or at our fave restaurant haunt across the street, bar taco.
I’d try to catch the earlier Sunday flight home on stand-by out of LGA if I could, and sometimes got on, but usually hung out in The Sky Club at La Guardia. If I made it on the earlier flight, I just swapped Sky Club time at LGA for MSP. No matter the flight I took out of La Guardia, I was landing in DLH no earlier than 11:05 pm on any given Sunday. I liked getting to MSP as early as I could though in case the DLH leg got cancelled. Gave me options to rent a car and drive to Duluth, which I’ve done. After all, I only had roughly 60 hours on the ground before I did it all again Wednesday afternoon. I’d be damned if I’m going to get stuck in New York or Minneapolis if I could help it.
And that’s how it went, week in and week out. Sometimes I stayed for 12-14 day stints depending how the event schedule laid out. For those long stretches, I numbed out missing my family by doing stuff non-New Yorkers didn’t get to do. I’d take days off in the city, eating great food, seeing shows on broadway or go to the opera, or a Rangers hockey game. We took a family vacation when I had a break in early February because with cross country running season, track season, and visiting family in Finland season, there was really no other time to actually vacate. But I got into my TV guy routine, as did Mimmu and the kids. I skied every single day I was in Duluth last winter which wasn’t many, and was home two days a week many weeks to walk with the kids to school, drive them to sports, hug them, feed them, and kiss them good night. As I write this, Mimmu looks more and more amazing with every letter that hits the screen. We also got immense support in Duluth from our friend Montana, my mom and dad, and my brother and sister in law, all with their own busy lives.
Then it changed. Biathlon Worlds went without a hitch, in Northern Italy no less. But nearby Bergamo would be super-spreader ground zero for Covid in Europe at nearly the same time. Antholz, which just had 15-20 thousand biathlon fans per day during worlds, yelling in close proximity for their favorite biathletes for the better part of two weeks, could easily have been a super spreader had Covid made its way up the little alpine valley. About 200km away, the super spreader event in Bergamo was a historical soccer match for the home team that packed fans into close proximity in a soccer stadium, cheering for a new found level of sporting success. In the end, it was a costly match. The IBU rightly nixed the crowds for the following World Cup stop in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic, as things got grave and locked down in Italy. And just like that we were in the Covid era.
We called Nove Mesto and Holmenkollen, then went home on Sunday and flew back Wednesday to call the penultimate weekend in Kontiolahti and Quebec City. My flight Wednesday between MSP and LGA was the least full commercial flight I think I ever flew on. We called day 1 of Kontiolahti and went back to the hotel. The NBA had cancelled all events the night before, which led to an avalanche. I got woken from my mid afternoon nap at 2:00 pm. NBC was shutting down. By 3:00 pm I was in a car to the airport. By 11:30 pm I was back in Duluth, where I’d been the previous morning. Kontiolahti day 1 was our last show of 2020. Minneapolis got cancelled. Total heartbreak.
I’ve not returned to Stamford, nor does it look like I will any time soon. I haven’t taken an Uber since the ride home from the airport. I think about the economy. I used to take a couple Uber’s every day. Now who knows when I ever will again. I used to eat every other meal somewhere in the Stamford area. None of us who worked at NBC are there, riding to and from the building or eating lunches and dinners. And that's just a tiny group in one place.
We open the first season opener in the Covid era in Kontiolahti, where we left off in March. As places go--Kontiolahti and Ruka for XC--both are as good as any to launch a Covid era season; relatively small towns in nearly an “island nation” by Covid rate standards. Fans have been allowed to buy tickets due to numbers being low enough in Finland a month and a half ago, but as COVID spiked recently, the fan plan has evaporated.
The latest Covid surge returns not all of, but a great portion of the uncertainty last March carried with it. We know and understand more than back then, but not enough more to make it all feel safe to any degree--health-wise nor schedule-wise. Other sports have pulled it off through the summer. I watched and marveled at F1 as they navigated their abbreviated season with great care and success. Like F1, the IBU has cut the travel of their circus in half, which at the very least, looks like an honest effort on the surface of things, and is in fact evidence of a very big commitment behind the scenes. FIS’s decision to stick to their normal traveling circus has already created a hole in the Lillehammer weekend, which has been “postponed,” whatever that even means.
Crises will find the cracks in the veneer of any operation. We’ve witnessed this all too glaringly in the United States since the start of 2020. The ski world now has its challenges with no real guarantees. Biathlon’s IBU has taken great measures to limit the damage for its stakeholders against the virus’s impact. They’ve put their money where it matters—to the safety of the athletes, and the support of the event organizers and their member federations; by trying to prop up the costs associated with conducting a safe world cup season. They've even sent financial gestures to perennial hosts who lost their events this year. They are doing the same with member federations to at least cover the cost of some of the testing that will be necessary to pull it all off. I doubt everyone thinks they’ve done enough for their stakeholders, but they have dropped travel and border crossings by about half. That's at least something and mimics F1's efforts to some degree.
Meanwhile, Lillehammer's FIS Cross Country World Cup slated for December 5-6, was recently shut down by the Norwegian government, off of an FIS plan that augmented not a single travel date nor competition venue from its originally-planned season. FIS and its partners have established robust safety protocols that on the surface appear to address the concerns, and that couldn't have been easy by any means to research, consider, and implement. Good people had to work hard on those initiatives. The vastness of testing required by the system, however, is already a hot button issue with the teams, and FIS has given very little guidance in how the testing necessary to keep the train on the tracks will be funded, short of the national federations simply sucking it up. But the most glaring and obvious response is already playing out in the faces and reactions of the athletes in news stories here, that FIS has moved forward with not a single augmentation to their already head-spinning rate of trans-national travel even for a non-pandemic situation. To not lift a finger to adjust, feels, well, like the organization is asleep at the wheel to some folks.
The uncertainty for xc teams was only compounded by Lillehammer—which is in Norway, which is the strongest nation and greatest per capita fan base—being shuttered for its December date. The German ski federation’s and Olympic silver medalist, Peter Schlickenrieder, minced no words upon the Lillehammer flop. I won’t be so bold as to come down on the side of a public argument, the details of which I am far from privy to, but I do know Peter. A more impressive combination of mind, wit, and sober, lucid perspective on his surroundings, you’d be hard pressed find anywhere. Peter isn’t a loose canon. He's bright, articulate, experienced outside of just ski racing, and forward thinking. It's not the first time he's taken FIS CC to task publicly. I feel like the XC ski world has to consider their situation for what it is. FIS probably need to act with greater conviction and agility than they’ve displayed so far.
The gap between the IBU's and FIS's preparation for the similar challenges they each face as the season begins, is certainly on the minds and tongues of many observers who understand the differences at the organizational level. Crossing one's fingers is probably advisable regardless. Relying on it as an apparent strategy has already played out in full view in America where Covid has had the most devastation worldwide. Hopefully both the IBU and FIS CC approaches prove to be adequate in keeping the athletes, coaches, and organizers, safe enough to conduct a season of some semblance we recognize.
Where does that put me then? In Crazy Town. No, seriously.
Our family move mirrored somewhat the reaction to Covid of NBC Sports. They wanted as little to do with its spread as possible. Since my fast retreat back to Minnesota in mid March, I’ve picked up bits and pieces of the scuttlebutt from Stamford. NBC had to send its greatest sports asset, the Olympics, out an uncertain year further into the future. Devastating is probably not strong enough an adjective to its operation.
The fact I received an IT kit to set up in Finland from NBC--a block from where my family and I sleep, eat, and live--to communicate with the Stamford control room and Bill back in Denver, feels at this point, a bit miraculous. Like the skiers I met in Vuokatti and Ruka this past weekend though, the kit for me just like their presence in Finland, guarantees us nothing at this point. To call World Cup biathlon and cross country ski races for an American audience who needs every single scrap of hope, relief, and healthy distraction they can muster right now, well, feels like winning the lottery to me. But I've only been notified I'm the lottery winner. We'll feel better when the money is in the bank account, so to speak.
My new remote VO booth in Crazy Town
Since March, everyone in the world has been affected somehow by Covid. Everyone. It seems like with communication worldwide never easier, that a common, universal threat to our species might have the potential to unite us like nothing else, ever. But that's not happening, and while I get why, I’m also a little perplexed by it. America of all places, did the worst with it, which has been devastating to watch. I turned to caveman instincts to do best for my wife and our offspring. So, here we are, in a modern world, locked down to our reality in the face of a global crisis, like you. We hope you are finding silver linings like we are. The biathlon and ski season happening even in some respect, certainly would be a big one!
My office space is in Crazy Town—a hip business incubation workspace in an old retail department store in the center of Jyväskylä’s shopping district. If that isn’t an apt metaphor on several levels for our life and times...
Bill and I see things totally differently from within ourselves, he from Denver, me from Jyväskylä, but we work beyond differing viewpoints, joined in a common purpose by a cable and internet signal to a Paul/Budish/Paige/Katie sandwich, between us in Connecticut. Collectively, we can bring something good and at least somewhat normal-feeling to our English-speaking ski fan community at this tough time. I wish that kind of common bridge-making were more prevalent across the world. We’ll hopefully spend much of the winter bringing these sports a little more to life via cable TV or NBC's new TV streaming app, Peacock, to people dealing with being locked down or coming out of lockdown, safely and healthy, from within their communities. I hope we’ll be able to bring these folks a reprieve from the stress and concern, for a few hours every week. I hope we'll be an oasis of sport when it's probably most needed. It has at once never felt more frivolous work, nor more vital.
After our production zoom in preparation for Kontiolahti tonight, I felt a small wave of gratitude and joy. This is what I do. It’s what I’m my best at. It's what I can provide. Never have I needed that feeling more. Seeing our team’s faces, hearing their voices and ideas, prepping the stories, and seeing what we could do to to make the shows better, it was a rush that brought life into me that I didn’t even really know I needed. It felt like riding a bike after a long hiatus, but somebody else’s bike. But riding a bike is still riding a bike, and I’ve been happy riding Suvi’s since August in my own bike’s absence.
I won’t be next to Bill in the booth. I’ll be on a screen and so will he. It’s new, but still the same. I doubt you’ll know the difference unless you just read all of this. You can still find us, no differently, on the Olympic Channel on cable, and you can now stream the channel in real time via Peacock app if you don't have cable.
We won’t have our 4:00 am Ubers to the studio to bemoan the job that delights us in its middle-of-the-nightness. We won’t have our airport limo ritual to decompress and wax poetic for a half hour each week before we fly home. We’ll have time zone warp to bemoan instead. Bill will be home with Shaggy. I’ll be on my new bike, live from Crazy Town, with all the love I’ve ever had for it. I hope we’ll be ringing in your ears soon.