Volunteer Day 18 - Feb 21 - Organized Mayhem but a great race

The Men's Super Combined was today. One run of downhill, followed by one run of slalom, best combined time wins. This makes for an incredibly busy day for course workers, as running a speed and technical event on same day requires onsiderable co-ordination and timing. Superimposed on this was the fact that since this event had been rescheduled for today, the timing of each run had to be precisely planned so as not to overlap with other events scheduled to be broadcast live. Put simply, we had a narrow window within which to get the slalom portion strated, or else it would have had to be delayed until 3 PM, an extraordinary delay for both racers and workers.

Basically all downhill workers had to be prepared to ski down immediately (i.e. seconds) after last racer in downhill, with all equipment (shovels, rakes, crampons, drills, gate keys), down to slalom start, on the downhill track tat was quite icy. Slalom course had been set the day before, gate positions had been marked, gates removed for downhill, then reinstalled after downhill. Yesterday we (section chiefs, of which I became one today) were canvassed for names of workers with experience looking after slalom gates during a race. Six names. But every few hours or so, things changed in terms of the plan. In the end, we had 16 people to look after 7 gates. For those who have worked slaloms before, back home, if we get one person for every 4 gates we are doing well. It worked out well as some less experienced workers learned by watching/helping others. We raked, shoveled, cut off sharp edges of ruts and rails after every single racer. I had never seen world class men ski slalom live before. It was quite incredible how fast they can ski despite all the ruts. Bode continued his great Olympics by winning the event. He was 3rd in the slalom, but for the gates he skied where we were, he has to have been the fastest. When he skied a flush (3 gates in  a vertical lline), it seemed his skis went straight yet managed to get around all 3 gates. And his line was much tighter (closer to inside pole of each gate) than most others.

After download of all equipment to recycle for next day, and the usual "Please go up to midstation and wait to see if there are any jobs to do before the end of the day", we got to download at a reasonable time, having been on the mountain for a mere 9-10 hours. Some workers were kept behind as there was another major water bar injection program to harden up the Giant slalom hill. Nobody on our crews volunteered, nor were we asked. After doing it for 2 days in a row, I was glad not to be involved with this one.

Tomorrow is my first day off since getting here. Jonah, Roanne, and I are off to Vancouver for 2 semi-fianl hockey games and the finals of the ice dance (Canada is number 1 going into the free skate portion!). Not many pics today, too busy working!

Exhausted, hot and sweaty, after the slalom portion of combined, but time for a quick bite on the side of the hill before our next jobs.