Day 7 & 8 - Winter wonderland

The second part of day 7 also had a "highlight" that I'd like to mention! So, I was sitting in the ice stadium, being the sports presenter for the practice in figure skating from 18:00 - 23:10. As expected, not a lot of athletes felt like practicing this late at night, so some athletes simply didn't show up. There is a special practice start list in figure skating. There's usually 4 people in one practice group, so after the warm up time, I have to say which athlete is going to skate, and who has to get ready as they'll skate next.

Next athlete to skate: XY from Z. ABC from DEF, please be prepared.

But as not all athletes showed up, we usually didn't have all four athletes of a group on the ice. What you should do is announce the missing athlete, say that the athlete is not present and that you'll wait for two minutes. I didn't know that. In this special case, the first athletes were missing, so instead of announcing the athletes, that should be first, I started with the second pair. When I announced them, the coaches of the third couple protested, saying they're third and not second. So I ran over to them and explained the situation to them. (I won't name the nations involved here) The coach of the pair, that's second on the list, explained to me that this is wrong, so I told her that I understand and apologised. But right after that, the coach of the third pair on the list walked to me and the coach I was speaking to and started shouting at me in a really rude way. Basically, like this: "WE ARE THIRD! YOU SHOULD WAIT TWO MINUTES AND THEN CONTINUE WITH THE NEXT PAIR!" She shouted, was reaaally angry and rude... I mean, come on, I'm a volunteer, I am working for free to make these games possible, and I also don't understand how this changes anything. Their total practice time doesn't change, they just have their music played earlier... it pissed me off a bit, but I apologised and stayed nice. ;P Afterwards, the angry coach kept speaking to the athletes of the nice coach, I have no idea why. They're from different countries and speak different languages. Either she was also angry at them, or she was hating on me together with them... xD I don't know, but later that evening, we have had the same problem, just that I knew how to handle it. :)

Day 8

My day off! I wanted to go to Kühtai for the ski cross final that was scheduled for today. On the photo, it looks really cool. That village is above 2000m sea height, how cool is that?! xD Obviously I was pretty excited, but the weather was bad (it was foggy and raining/snowing). Nevertheless I got up in the morning, showered, got ready and went to the Olympic village to catch my bus, Y20, to Olympiaworld, and then change to line Y50 to Kühtai.That was the plan, but when I arrived at the village, I read on the sign showing the waiting time that due to the weather conditions, no bus can get up to Kühtai, and that the event was cancelled. Great, right? I took my day off just to see that. I also wanted to see the snowboard slope style final, but, for the same reasons, it was held yesterday... whatever. I decided to get on bus Y20 nevertheless and go to the Tirol-Shop for souvenirs. As soon as I got off the bus in the city centre (IOC Hotel), the rain turned into snow. Literally. All of a sudden it was snow, not rain. xD Afterwards I also checked out Congress Innsbruck and got two pins! This is something I haven't mentioned yet. At Olympic games, the athletes apparently get pins of their own team that they can exchange. There are people who collect those sport pins. At congress, for example, I met a pin collector who had pins from the Beijing 2008 games, for example. This doesn't seem to be a new YOG-thing, and I think it's really neat! :) Volunteers don't get pins they can exchange, but if you're nice, you'll eventually be given one by one of the athletes. I have a pin of team USA from my roommate, a EYOWF 2011 Liberec pin from the security lady I mentioned in a previous blog entry, a pin from Team Japan from an athlete with whom I was waiting for a bus yesterday at 11pm after the training, a pin from "Sun valley" (USA) from a nice lady in my hostel, and two pins that I got at Congress Innsbruck today. I'd upload a pic of them, but my phone's battery ran out of energy!

As I had a day off, I wanted to use it. There was an alpine skiing medal event scheduled for today, so I decided to just go there instead, to Patscherkofel. The second run was scheduled for 1pm, so I made sure to take bus line Y30 to Patscherkofel and arrive on time. What happened was that, AGAIN due to bad weather conditions, the second run started half an hour earlier than planned, so when I arrived, I could only see the two last skiers. -.- Hooray. As I was there, I wanted to look around. I can't ski, so all I could do was walk up the mountain, and that's what I did! xD I was walking somewhere near the race track. It was snowing and there was no one else around. It was a bit tiring, but fun! And I got to take a few photographs. The picture shows me somewhere on Patscherkofel. :) I also look around the Olympic sliding centre, which is also on that mountain, and then went back to Olympiaworld. I watched the hockey games Russia - USA (men) and Austria - Germany (women). Russia won the first game, and Austria the second. Pretty cool ;) Austria is in the final round of women's ice hockey - this is our very first Ice hockey medal at Olympic games!!! It'll be either gold or silver, we'll see. ^^
Afterwards I went to medal plaza, cheered when an Austrian got his gold medal... yes, I sang the anthem - no, I did not sing "Töchtersöhne" ;) And now I am here, at the volunteer centre. Tomorrow are our last three competitions in figure skating, and I'll be the sports presenter for tomorrow mornings training session - I expect a few more athletes to show up. ^^ It's still snowing here, since tomorrow morning, so the competition in Kühtai won't be held tomorrow either! Looks like we'll have an exciting last day of the games on the 22nd. ;) We'll see! Good bye and stay tuned!