Salt Lake City – 2002

After clamoring for a decade to cover an event in the Winter Games, NBC Sports finally gave me my chance.  Though doing the play by play duties on the ski jumping competition was my first choice, I was assigned as the interviewer for the events at Solider Hollow; X-Country skiing, biathlon, and Nordic Combined.

Those events traditionally do not contain an American story but due to the proliferation of cable coverage of “Games at home” the events at Soldier Hollow were always the first competitions completed in any given day.  Our coverage was often “live” and the duels between the always potent Norwegian team vs. Russia and Italy made for great television.

A fantastic journalistic opportunity fell into my lap when a Russian women’s relay team was pulled from the start list just 2 hours prior to a race they were favored to win.  It seems one of the relay team members had exceeded the allowable level of oxygen in her bloodstream, a possible indicator of blood-doping or EPO consumption.  Being an aerobic sport, X-Country skiing is rife with this type of performance enhancing substance problem.

Due to the relationships I had forged during my 2 weeks at the venue I was able to break the story “live” on MSNBC.  I had finally made the transition from “ex-jock analyst” to legitimate broadcast journalist, proving that my inclusion in a Winter Olympics event, so removed from my area of expertise, was a good idea after all.

The immediate exposure of this drug issue at Soldier Hollow caused a ripple affect that had the Russian team threatening a pull-out from the Games.  This type of tactic might have worked during the IOC presidential tenure of Juan Antonio Samaranch but there was a new “sheriff” in town starting with the Salt Lake Games in one Jacques Rogge, a past Belgian yachting Olympian who didn’t abide the disgrace that cheating brings to the sanctity of the Olympic Games.  Rogge simply brushed-off the threats of the Russian delegation and launched a more thorough investigation into the activities of several of the teams/individuals implicated in the widespread scandal which ended with a number of medals being re-distributed.

Along with the pairs-skating judging scandal at the figure skating venue, Rogge established himself as a no-nonsense champion of the Olympic ideals he staunchly embraces from his days as a participant.  It’s clearly his goal to return the Olympic Games to the exalted place it deserves to occupy at the top of the global sporting realm.  He’s a breath of fresh air to those of us who share his commitment to eliminating all forms of cheating from the Olympic movement.