Whistler Wonderland

Hi from the HQ Team in Whistler.  Sorry I haven’t written earlier but it’s been a crazy busy time up here in the snowy mountains.  We have spent the last 4 days transforming our townhouses into cosy, fully furnished and equiped apartments for our athletes and officials.  The Organising Committee provide a small amount of furniture in each room but to make our athletes stay more comfortable we buy extra furnishings for them such as TVs, DVDs, fridges, kettles and irons, as well as putting up branding and adding little touches such as union jack cushions to create that patriotic  team atmosphere.  We have also been having a bit of a branding competition with our neighbours here in the Olympic Village, Canada, who have stretched the limits with banners, a massive inflatable red and white maple leaf arch, fairy lights and even a huge moose!

Yesterday I went on a recce around Whistler with some of our volunteers driving to the venues and programming in the cars’ sat-nav.  We do this because the pass on our cars only allows us access to certain areas at each venue so we need to know exactly where our officials can park and drop-off equipment etc.  Although we couldn’t get right into the venues it was pretty inspiring driving close-by, particularly the ski-jump which I’d never seen before, what an outrageous sport that is....the inrun (take-off slope) was scarily steep as was the landing slope, must take some guts to fling yourself off that!

We had the official opening of the Olympic Village this morning, a short sincere ceremony attended by the volunteers that work in the Village.  There was a live video feed from the Vancouver Village enabling us to watch the ribbon being cut simultaneously.  It was nice to share the moment with the volunteers as they have been brilliant helping us out and running erands.  No Team can function without them at the Games, they are our life-blood, helping us to ensure everything runs smoothly, fixing and sorting anything we might throw at them.

We have our first athlete and official arrive with us in the Village today so it’s nice to have some new faces in....in fact he’s just walked through the door so gotta dash!

Will write soon....
Amy