Randy in Whistler 2010: Now a Willage Person

My first day back at the Whistler Olympic Village (or Willage as many Euros say). A lot more athletes there now than my first days. And the food for the workforce is a lot better than at WOP- more choice , even real desserts. It was amusing today at lunch - one of the servers was a young woman who was our waitress the night before at the pizza joint- she said she has 3 jobs. Whistler can be an expensive place especially if you have a ski or snowboard habit.

Very sad news about the luge athlete and of course it hit people here very hard. I can't fathom what his parents are going through.

Today we were doing blood screening of athletes under the International Ski Federation. They test for various parameters in the blood and we administer the tests. There is a fancy medical polyclinic next to our station and the blood work goes there for immediate analysis. The polyclinic is a miniature hospital with a lot of equipment including Cat scans and MRI's. One of our US colleagues twisted his knee and had an MRI almost immediatley. Unheard of in Canada unless you're willing to pay $700+. I was talking to the Canada cross country coach who is a Norwegian that has coached amny other national teams. I saw him give $20 to two of his male athletes who wanted to go shopping.

In a big operation like this you're often going to get people mis-assigned to roles. Today a US doping control officer who is a retired MD with 17 years experience and has worked 4 Olympics and a British doping control officer with 20 years experience functioned as traffic directors in the station. The US lady described it as "The Peter Principle in Reverse". Anyway we're at the Olympics so let's enjoy...

Now for my pictures. Canadian readers of this blog will enjoy these more than others. I took some time before dinner and wandered up to the Canadian housing area. A very helpful RCMP officer took the picture of me in front of the moose.