It ought to be, right? Cold. Plenty cold. Unpleasantly cold. It’s the Winter Olympics and we have sports based on snow and ice. Opening Ceremonies for the Pyeongchang Games were held tonight, in South Korea, and it did not look like a shorts-and-T-shirt sort of event, no. Well, duh. It seems the current generation of […]

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The Winter Olympics is an acquired taste. Unless you grew up where winter dominates life. Say, Russia. Norway. Lapland. Buffalo. The Winter Games generally are held in a city/town that is hard to get to (from places where people actually live) and feature a lot of winding mounting roads that either are icy or slushy. […]

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With fairly regular access to the Sochi Games, on TV in the office, here in Abu Dhabi, or on the NBC website, at home … I find myself watching more than a little of this silliness. And watching it reminds me of the six Winter Olympics I covered, as a credentialed reporter. When you have […]

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After all the Winter Olympics I went to, and chased around American teams that averaged about two medals every three days … and I miss one for the first time since 1988 … and the U.S. is apparently going to win more medals than anyone. Have you been talking about this, back home? How big […]

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Opening Ceremonies for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics were last night. And I was not there. The last Olympics I didn’t cover? Calgary 1988. I covered two before, and 11 after — including six Winter Games among the total of 13. And how do I feel about not being in Vancouver?

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Note: Originally published here in 2008, after the Beijing Olympics. Twelve was how many I covered, from start to finish, in my journalism career. So this list includes all of them. I was briefly onsite at London 2012, but covering three UAE soccer matches … we will leave that off this list. So, “favorite” is […]

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It’s final. Well, as soon as the rubber-stamp approval of International Olympic Committee voting members next month. But the top guys have agreed with the two cities that bid for the 2024 Games. The 2024 Olympics go to Paris. The 2028 Summer Games go to Los Angeles. Los Angeles will get $1.8 billion in cash […]

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I’ve never really had winter clothes. Because I always lived in places that either were temperate or Just Plain Hot. Long Beach, then the Inland Empire, then Abu Dhabi. But here in Europe, in France, we can go weeks (!) without a single minute in the 60-degree (Fahrenheit) range in December, January, February. Granted, it’s […]

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A fascinating event was staged in Dubai this week, entitled the Emerging Host Cities Summit. The idea? A “how-to” for cities to bid for major sports events. Officials from recent and future World Cups and Olympics were in Dubai, giving talks about how to put together a bid and how to win it. That this […]

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Well, actually, 12 is how many I covered. So this list includes all of them. “Favorite” is a personal thing here. It has nothing to do with performances or where the U.S. finished in the medals standings. It’s a sort of amalgam of “interesting, memorable, scenic, decent housing, media center/local hospitality/internal transport.” Once you do […]

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