MPC – RadMania

SBX at Cypress

The first Monday of Vancouver 2010 was the beginning of a loooong four days (hence no more updates till now). After Sunday late-night drinks it was a 6am wakeup to try and get on the 7am Media bus from the MPC up to Cypress in order to get onto the actual SBX course. It was pitch dark when I woke…which made it all the harder to get out of bed, but it was a pretty spectacular sunrise across the water from Lionsgate Bridge.

Annoyingly, the Cypress media/photo crew had been really restrictive about access to both the pipe and BX track, and about deadlines for access. But after jumping though a million hoops, I was finally strapped onto my board and riding down the side of the course. It felt so good to have the camera bag on the back and to be able to slide on snow again…although it had been only 6 days since I was last up at Northstar. It was great to see Chumpy destroy the course (well, the 2 or 3 turns i could see at a time) and hear about both his fastest time qualification runs. I was hoping to move from location to location between rounds in the afternoon finals, but the VANOC nazis were out in force. Fortuately, I was right near a CTV cameraman who let a few of us look over his shoulder at the live feed of all the action down the course. Without this, and not being able to hear the PA commentary so far away at the finish-line, I would have had no way of knowing who was progressing through each heat. It was a shame Chumpy and Damon couldn’t progress further, but they should both be proud of the gung-ho attacking nature of their riding.

VANOC had a huge ‘fail’ with the location of the Olympic Cauldron, which is nicely located on the water…but surrounded by an ugly, temporary-looking cyclone wire fence! Each morning there are thousands of tourists clogging the streets around the Main Press Centre (MPC) and International Broadcast Centre (IBC) – right next to the Cauldron – who leave disappointed with the view and (lack-of) photo opportunity. It’s a shame they couldn’t get something so obvious right, amongst the other problems of the Games. I managed to check out the scene on the way to Womens SBX. It was rainy and cloudy down in Van, but much, much worse up the hill. But after a couple hours postponement and delay, the girls hit the track. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Steph Hickey with a bigger smile on her face than in the start gate for her first qualy run. I was feeling pretty beat by the time of the Womens finals, and stayed in the warmth to watch the action on the media centre TVs. And with all the halfpipe practice scheduled for the evenings, with the early SBX starts and late partying nights I was pleased to discover that I wasn’t the only one tring to snatch some catch-up sleep wherever I could. After witnessing Lindsey Jacobellis’ brain fade on the second-last jump at Torino 2006, I was hoping she would find some redemption, but again a split-second escape cost her gold (and any medal this time). Boardercross is a pretty harsh sport.

I borrowed a brand-spanking-new Canon EOS 1D MkIV body to shoot some of the SBX, but for some reason my software won’t let me process the RAW files into jpegs. So here are just a few shots taken on my ‘back-up” 1D MkIIN (and pocket Sony Cybershot). I hope to get it sorted soon and put a greater variety of shots up…but checking out the local paper after the first day of snowboarding, clearly i’m doing it all wrong. Himbrechts has started doing agency/newspaper work so this must be what he’s aiming for: a ‘soft’ (due to super cropping) out-of-control “man-in-the-sky”. I must say, it was interesting to see how out of control the riders looked a lot of the time. But I guess with such a challenging, gnarly course and pushing for every bit of speed the aesthetics of your riding are furthest from your mind – the opposite of what we aim to achieve when shooting for one of the mags.

Let the Games begin!

I had heard photo spots were limited for the Opening Ceremony, and as I think that the Olympics are about sport, not ballet I wasn’t overly fussed if I missed out. However, a couple hours before the kick-off, I strolled past the protesters downtown and into the MPC and asked about photo spots…and was handed a ticket! So that meant I had to race to BC Place to get there in time and get a position in the stand. It was a bit of a mission with all the traffic and crowds to get there…and out front was another sign of Vancouver’s “prosperity”: an old woman sitting in the rain collecting plastic bottles for recycling. What a welcome to the Opening Ceremony.

Once inside, the first person I saw was Himbrechts.

Now that the action has started, the games are on, and the niceties are over! Our two super-agencies, SRM and DHP have had a rivalry for ages, he’s Nikon and I’m Canon, and as he is the enemy I made sure I sat right in front of him. This was great, because just as I realised the snowboarder was going to frontside-air through the Olympic Rings and I didn’t have the right lens ready to capture it, I just sneakily bobbed my massive head in front of Himbrechts super-dooper long lens to also stop him getting the shot! Perfect. Unfortunately, you’ll see here that he still managed to get in a few shots from the night despite my best efforts.

The Opening Ceremony was great and I really enjoyed it. They made everyone wear all these hospital-bibs so that it looked better on TV, which was pretty funny. You pay all this huge money to watch an event, then they employ your free labour for the world-wide TV production! The only lull was the innumerable teams that came out and paraded around. Those indian/native american/first nation/aboriginal/original tribes/indigenous/whatever-they-are-called-this-year dancers must have gotten so tired jumping up and down and spinning around and around during the parade!

Unfortunately, despite the massive status of SRM (and unfortunately also DHP) we were assigned pretty crap spots far away, and it was a challenge with a long lens and very dark interior (and only being able to shoot at max ISO 1600 on the Canon 1dMkIIN). The big guns at Reuters, Getty, AFP, AP and AAP get the prime spots, and the best shots. It was a challenge to get nice shots – we were both pretty happy with our work…until we checked what the uber-agencies managed to capture. Check-out Fairfax’s gallery here. Those guys have it so sorted – prime spots already assigned, they just fire away till a memory card is full, then hand it to a runner who takes it downstairs to a guy who edits the shots for him, then emails them on so they are online before the Ceremony is even over! So I’ll chalk my night down to a great learning experience and an awesome, fun, general Olympic experience…

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

I was woken up Friday morning by the thunder of helicopters echoing off the buildings and rattling the window next to my bed – fortunately I wasn’t in some sort of Hunter S Thompson bad-acid Vietnam flashback (sorry, i’m currently reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas to get in the right frame of mind for our Snowboard like a Rockstar magazine trip to LA in March). The Olympic flame was in town, and the choppers were catching all the action in downtown Van…and when I got out on the street it was packed, and the real Olympic spirit (not my manufactured, barstool one) had finally hit.

Thursday had been a great first day in town, checking out the massive MPC (Main Press Centre) and picking up my free kit, as well as running into Dan Himbrechts. Check his blog here for some more shots of pre-Olympic Vancouver. It was a busy night, first up with a ritzy reception by the AOC to introduce the Australian Team, and announce Torah as the flag-bearer. Well done, Torah! I knew how these things go, so while everyone was dressed in their semi-formal attire and on best behaviour, I, in my t-shirt and jeans headed straight for the bar and the food buffet to get the most of my tax dollars. Some snowboarders may scoff at the idea of being an Olympian, but I couldn’t help but get a real sense of excitement and pride from the “athletes” representing Australia. More than any other moment, I wanted to be up there with them, part of the Team. Maybe it seems more attainable when you see guys and girls you’ve known for years up on stage? I don’t think I’ve ever seen the last member to sneak into the snowboard team, Steph Hickey, with a bigger smile on her face!

The party was surprisingly full of sports and Channel 9 famous faces, and some out of place swimmers like Grant Hackett and Gian Rooney. The most important man in Australia gave a speech and intoduction, and even K-Rudd sent a video message perpetuating the myth that Australia “punches above its weight” on the world sporting stage – what a crock. If it weren’t for an old High Court interpretation of the Constitution that allows Australia to use taxpayer money to fund communist-styled institutional sporting programs for the “good of the country” we wouldn’t “perform” so well every 4 years. I’m all for public spending on sport, but now that the rest of the western world has cottoned on to taxpayer-funded sports programmes (except the USA, which is privately funded – ie sponsorship) don’t just expect and demand medals, Kevin. And remember, this is the same Labor that wants to cut sport spending unless a sport can guarantee medals (which affects all the marginal winter sports, except snowboarding and freestyle skiing).

After the AOC gig Dan and I then caught a cab to the aquarium where Canon and Nikon were jointly hosting a party – more open bars and hot buffets – for all the 1200 photographers. We just wanted to go along so we could pick up our gift, a limited edition Lowepro Flipside 500 camera backpack, which you can’t buy but would be worth about $300 in Oz. Score! But it was a bad idea to have a photog party at a place with some many bright and shiny things and so many enquiring eyes – I don’t think the jellyfish were allowed to float alone once…I even couldn’t help but get in on the paparazzit act, no matter how hard i tried to resist the obvious. It was a surreal, sort of nerdy party – but fun nevertheless. I got discussing Van’s shitty weather with a Canon Professional Services woman who commented that you don’t need to worry about white balance here – with all the clouds it’s always 18% grey. Haha. Photo humour.

Speaking of weather…it’s been pretty much raining the whole time i’ve been here, and doesn’t look like stopping. And I must say, i’m trying to love this city…but just can’t. What makes a city beautiful? Is it the people, the landscape, the structures or all three, plus that little bit of something else you can’t put your finger on? Van certainly gets a tick for its beautiful women, but a cross for all the pasty, splotchy-half-bearded hockey jocks. Without the advantage of makeup, fake tan or mineral bronzer, all the guys are so pale and weird looking – I swear I saw Edward Cullen yesterday. I understand why they filmed up here – the sun never shines on his glittery skin. And Van should get another tick for the theoretically snow-capped mountains across the bay, but with all this cloud, you can’t see them. The city itself is nothing special, in terms of structures, but where it really lets itself down is it’s slums right on the CBD doorstep. As the warmest city in Canada, Vancouver is mecca for the country’s homeless. They are everywhere, and then there’s all the druggies: I’ve been asked for spare change by cocky mother-fucker losers in the line for McDonalds and Pita Pit! I was walking just a couple hundred metres from the MPC and came across a homeless food shelter (I felt too intrusive to take photos) and on East Hastings there are shops selling everything to make your homeless life comfortable. There are even tourist information signs in front of the old Woodwards building that celebrate the descent into depravity that East Van has become. What’s next, Rio de Janeiro-style motorbike tours of the slums (favelas) to laugh and point at the downtrodden? Even Reno is less visibly sketchy than this place. I’ve never been to Detroit, Philly or the Bronx, but they can’t be much worse than Vancouver, except that in US slums I would be judged by the colour of my skin, and not by the content of my character, and targeted accordingly. It’s mostly white homeless here in Vancouver, which can make it hard to work out if that guy in tatty black clothes is a drug addled drifter, or just an urban hipster/emo punkster…until they get up close and you look at their eyes and skin.

Anyway, enough negativity. The Games are on, and there’s a great festive spirit all around…and I can’t wait till the weather clears (a little) and they can schedule some snowboard practice up at Cypress.