February 5, 2010 Day 5

Today was all day at Whistler Olympic Park and it was the first day where it was fully open and operational. It is taking some getting used to all of the people and all of the security. It just takes so long to get anywhere but we are learning to get used to it.

Today the Olympic flame came to WOP!It was quite a thrilling experience which surprised me. The entire Anti-Doping team (ADP) waited at the base of the ski hill because we were told that is where the flame would come to the ski hill. So as we waited and more and more people gathered to wait for the flame, everyone got more and more excited and spontaneously everyone started doing the wave and we formed a tunnel or 2 lines of people where we hoped the person carryingthe torch would run to. As they came up the last hill, they saw our tunnel and the torch and all the torch bearers ran right towards us and right into our tunnel with all the photographers following right behind them! SO this meant the torch was about a foot away from me and I got to see the flame right up close. There were ski jumpers practising in the background, helicopters cirlcing overhead and cameras everywhere. It was quite cool.

Because the games haven't started yet, we got the chance to watch the ski jumpers right up close on the hill. They are crazy. they fly so far and it is really dangerous. A big gust of wind came up and a Finnish skier started to drift off to the left and he ended up landing about 5 feet away from the side guard rail which made the crowd gasp all at once. It was really scary.

WOP will be the busiest competition venue at the Olympic games. We expect 20 or so no advance notice, pre-competition tests tomorrow and we have no idea where anyone is at WOP. At least at the athlete village we know where they live, but here, all we have is their wax hut where they prep their skis and the athletes lounge and dinning hall. So we basically just have to wander around and hope we run into them. We get a picture of them and a general whereabouts but that's it. It will be interesting tomorrow.

Last night, we went to a local pizza joint called the creekbed? because one of the DCO's was having her 40th birthday. The Olympic are one of the very few and unique places where you can have dinner with a frenchmen, a Canadian, an Irishman, an Australian, 2 Norwegians, an American and a Englishman, can all get together at the same table to have dinner. Even though we were all speaking English, it was really hard to understand each other. It really interests me how each culture or country has their own little saying like, "What about ya? and Ehhh? and Huh? and Yahhh.

I thought I would include a few pictures of our doping control station and us doing some mock ups...

Another thing that was wierd was that the RCMP use snowmobiles instead of cars to get around everywhere...