National Scholastic Athletics Foundation

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Getting There

It was pretty uneventful, traveling from Raleigh Durham to Charlotte to Miami to Medellin, Colombia.  Medellin is only about 1400 miles from Miami so it’s a lot shorter flight (3 hours or so) than I had thought it would be.  I arrived at about 7pm.  Steve Underwood (new member of the NSAF staff), traveling from Detroit, had arrived 5 hours earlier, and Joy Kamani arrived the day before.

I arrived at the airport in Medellin and hailed a taxi.  The airport is about 40 miles from the city and the fare was 60,000 pesos (there are about 2000 pesos to a dollar, to it was about $30.00).  The airport is on one side of a mountain and the city is on the other side. 

The roads up and the roads down are like being on a roller coaster.  They are made worse by the carefree driving of taxi drivers.  Once over the top the of mountain was the spectacular site of the city, spread out in the valley below, lights everywhere.

I finally arrived at the hotel and got my room.  Joy had mentioned that though the hotel was modern and clean, the rooms were tiny.  So I requested a “junior suite”.  That means that there is room for a desk and a closet in the room.  The standard rooms just have a bed which barely fits within the 4 walls and 2 hooks to hang one’s clothes.  (We eventually got Joy and Steve a “junior suite” the next day).

So I checked in began to wash up.  There was no hot water in the sink, yet there was hot water in the shower.  So I told the young girl at front desk in my halting Spanish (very few English speakers there).  She said that there is only cold water in the sinks.  So be it.  I’ll survive.

We took a stroll to have some dinner at about 8pm.  We found a chain called “Mondongo”.  It served typical Colombian food which was very good. 

Off to bed.  We had a full day to orient ourselves on Thursday before the meet began on Friday.

 THURSDAY

We began the day with the breakfast at the hotel – scrambled eggs, some kind of meat and an arepa (round baked good made of fine ground corn).  It was passable.

We went to the meet headquarters hotel (Hotel Tryp) across the street and ran into a bunch of athletes we knew, as well as Duffy Mahoney of USATF, an old friend.  Duffy invited us to eat lunch with the team and so we did.  We talked about future events and other areas of the track world.  Also present (beside Joy and Steve U) was Aretha Thurmond and Glenn Mc Micken of USATF media.  Aretha mentioned how awesome the Chicagoland Throwers Series was and hoped that we would continue it (we are).

We asked for credentials from the meet director and were told that they would be at the press center at 2:00pm.  So we headed over there (the stadium) and met a young man named Diego who worked with the organizing committee.  He said that the credentials were not ready yet, but he would deliver them to our hotel rooms before 6:00pm.

Diego gave us a tour of the stadium.  There is an area above the finish line with actual plastic seats.  “This is the press section and this is where you’ll be”.  “Great”, we said.  “What about tables to put our computers on?”  “They will be here in the morning”.  “Terrific”, we said.

There was no delivery of the credentials to the hotel, so we went to the stadium at about 6:30pm for the opening ceremonies.  We saw Diego and he said that the credentials would be ready at 8am on Friday.  “What about start lists?”  “Not quite ready”, he replied.

We attended the opening ceremonies which began with about 45 minutes worth of speeches.  They was followed by a very talented group of dancers who went on for about another 45 minutes.  Then a singer came to the stage and we figured it was time for dinner.

So off we went searching for a place.  Our particular area is lively during the day, but shuts down for the most part after dark (which comes at about 6pm).  So we walked for over a mile and found nothing.  On the way back to the hotel we noticed a small Chinese restaurant and took a chance.  It was really good (and cheap - $25 for the 3 of us, including soft drinks).  Off to bed and then to the track for the first day of competition tomorrow.

 FRIDAY

We got to the track at about 8:30am (the meet begins at 9:00am) and there were no credentials.  We are now loaded down with computers and track books.  We told the guard “Prensa”  (press) and he pointed us to the media room.  We asked about the credentials.  “They will be here at 10am”, the press chief said.  But he gave us each a photo vest in lieu of a credential.

“What about start lists”.   The press chief (a really nice guy) made us a copy of the cover sheet (about 2 events).  “What about the rest?”  “OK, I’ll get them for you”.   Meanwhile, he was doing his main job, which is being a radio commentator.  So no start lists.  I saw an old friend and somehow (I won’t say how), he got me a complete set.  So now I can enjoy the meet.

So now it’s up to the press area over the finish line.  I head up and 2 young security girls yell, “Sir!  You cannot go there”.  I replied, “going to the press area” and virtually ignored them.  I got up there and one of the men there said to me in Spanish, “You cannot sit here”.  I sat there anyway, then realized a sign was blocking the sprint/hurdle start area so I figured it probably wasn’t such a good place after all.  So I left and went into the stands.  The plastic seat area was actually reserved for the heads of all of the various federations.  So there was no place for the media except in the media center under the stands.

I then resolved that I would just watch the meet, take notes, and do the race summaries at the end of each session.

Meanwhile, Joy was told that she couldn’t go onto the infield.  This is a person who has been on the infield as a photographer at each of the last several World Youth and World Junior championships in a dozen cities around the world.  She pointed out to that person in the competition guide that accredited photographers were indeed allowed on the infield.  She prevailed.

The meet begins, I have the start lists and begin to watch the meet.  The next crisis is to get the results.  They are nowhere to be found.  There happens to be a room where the results are placed in folders after each event.  They are only for each of the federations as the results come in.  There is no accommodation in any way for results for the press.

They tell us there is a link online where the results will appear.  I go there and there is nothing.  At the end of the morning, some results begin to appear on that web site. But there are only about 6 results total and do not include the first results of the day, the women’s 100m semis.  To my knowledge, they never appeared all day.

I now realize that there are only 3 possible ways for me to get results:  1) beg the very nice young lady in the results room for a copy as they come in; 2) listen to the public address announcer who gives the results, then I write them down; 3) watch the results as the appear on the scrolling finish line display (one name at a time) and write them down.  That is how I have provided results for our web site today.  I don’t think anyone else in the world has published the results except for us.

We got through the morning session and headed for the meet headquarters hotel for a luncheon provided by the Edmonton, Canada Organizing Committee for the 2015 Pan American Junior Championships in Edmonton, July 31-August 2, 2015.  It was a very nice presentation, and I look forward to being there in 2 years.

We went back to our hotel after that and did some work, then headed back to the track for the evening session.

I continued my results routine.  There are no start lists in the media center and the media chief is doing his radio broadcast.  Joy is told that she has to go into the grandstand to take photos of the awards ceremonies.  She points out to the person who told her that he was wrong and continued to take her photos of the ceremonies from her close by vantage point.

After the last event, the internet gets shaky and goes off and on.  And there is no wifi.  There is supposed to be, but it’s not working.  They do have a hard wire which sometimes works.  But it’s not good enough to do our work.  And we’re missing the men’s long jump and discus.  And the little office with the results girl is officially closed for the night.

So we decided to finish our work back at the hotel, but only after we had dinner (it’s about 9:30pm by now).   We go to the hotel restaurant and they are just closing.  So we decide to go to the meet HQ hotel, the Hotel Tryp.  We have dinner and meet with Tracy Sundlun, a close friend and Head Manager of the team.

Tracy tells us that 5 sets of poles are stuck in Bogota in customs (which is one of the reasons that the pole vault competitions were moved back from today).  The only way to get them to Medellin was for someone from USATF to get them.  So Richie Mercado, on the USATF staff, has been given that task for Saturday.

We also see Mike Judge, the great weight coach from Georgia.  He’s on the US staff as well.  Mike tells us that the hammer/discus ring was unusable when he got here on Wednesday.  So yesterday he and some local officials went to a Home Depot equivalent to get the necessary filler to fix it.  The cage netting also had holes in it, so they had to make another trip to Home Depot to get a makeshift repair kit.

(Richie Mercardo & Mike Judge above)

One of these days we’ll venture beyond the hotel and stadium and see some of Medellin, which is truly a beautiful city.  I hope that’s tomorrow during the afternoon break.

Sunday, August 25, 2013

For us the days of competition have been hectic.  The typical day:  breakfast at the hotel, then off to the track for the morning session.   Joy Kamani takes the photos, Steve Underwood does the video interviews and I take notes for the race summaries to be written later in the media center.  (In all world championships, there is a section of the stands reserved for the press, usually over the finish line where one can watch the races and write about them as they occur.  Not so here.  It’s “watch”, then go back to the media center to write).

At the end of the morning session, I go back to the media center and summarize the mornings activities.  That usually takes 1 ½ to 2 hours.  Steve U has to upload the videos to our web site which takes a significant amount of time.  The internet at our hotel and at the media center is too slow, so he generally heads to the meet headquarters hotel to do that.  Joy does the same with the photos, organizing them all and coordinating them with the race summaries I provide.

If there is time we get lunch somewhere (yesterday was the only day so far; see later on in this blog). 

Then it’s back to the track and the cycle begins again.  Add to all this the difficulty to get results – basically I have to write them down as they are announced or beg for them from the organizing committee room.  The decathlon, which finished yesterday, was not available until this morning.  The heptathlon day 1 results from yesterday are not available yet.

We leave the track between 9 and 9:30pm.  Steve heads to the meet HQ hotel to upload videos, and Joy and I head back to our hotel to finish our “duties”.  It usually takes until about midnight to finish everything and post it all to our web site.  Needless to say, we are usually pretty spent by midnight.

(Couple all this with putting up with the noise of the teenagers in the hotel – the home to the Brazilian, Jamaican, St. Kitts and Nevis and other teams.  The combination of late hours and silence have no meaning for them).

But we did get a break yesterday.  We went to the Poblado section of Medellin, sort of the high end.  We had a great meal at Carmen’s restaurant.  Then we walked around the area.  It appears that after a certain hour they shut down the streets to vehicular traffic.  There are a myriad of good restaurants and bars there.