Sunday, August 17, 2008

08/16/08

Hurry up and wait day - kept getting to events two to three hours early and just sitting there...

Made sure I went to bed early last night cause I knew today was going to be a long day. I got up at 6:10 so that I could catch an early bus. On the way out of the media village as i was going through security I ran in Sean Haffey from the San Diego Union Tribune. So by the way - because it's getting repetitive I am no longer going to say "such-and-such is a supernice guy and a great photographer" - just assume that I feel that way :)

We walked over to the Cube together. So we got there super early cause we thought it'd be busy - you know Phelps tying Spitz's record of 7 golds and all - well take a look... this is the #3 photo spot... no one else showed up for another 45 minutes after I got there...


Sean ended up going to the #2 photo spot and I went to #3. I had been at the #2 spot the last two times I was there and he had been at #3 - so we swapped places. The #3 spot is nice - the seats are much wider than in #2 and the row below us is open to store gear - you can't shoot from down there because there is a metal railing, which isn't too bad but on top of that they put some weird plexiglass and a nice banding of metal on top of that - so it's basically impossible to shoot from there unless you stood up - and then you'd block the second row - so...

Today's race was pretty amazing - Phelps won again - I know you already know this - but got his 7th by .01 of a second - I thought for sure he had "lost" and gotten silver - so he was pretty psyched - broke yet anther world record - ho-hum just kidding, it really was very exciting.

Oh and to correct a post from 08/11/08 Phelps was swimming against the world record holder in the 100m for his leg of the relay and they were in second after the first leg - not fourth - I looked up at the scoreboard and they were in the fourth position - but the scoreboard isn't 100% accurate during the race. A dude emailed me... either way Lezak won that race for them - he totally had to make up at least a full body's length on that last leg...

We both finished up about the same time so we headed back to the MPC, on they way out at 1 p.m. he mentioned that he was going to go and put up his remote for the Men's 100m dash - brilliant idea! The 100m was at 10:30 p.m. I had three hours until I had to go to tennis so I figured I should do that as well.

So we grabbed a bus and headed over there. There were already over 70 remote cameras up and many had gotten there at 6 a.m. to get a good remote spot or shooting spot! So our remotes were basically next to each other, not straight on, but just around the curve a little bit, which is good cause then you can get them jubing around the corner.

Headed back to the MPC grabbed some lunch at MickyD's and then headed over to tennis - sorry Nol - consisted of nuggets, a hamburger, fries (excellent again) and a drink. Boy was tennis annoying. So the matches started at 4, so I thought I'd be out of there by 6, but unfortunately the match I need to cover with James Blake started after the match that started at 4. Luckily that match didn't go to three sets because just the two sets lasted 2 1/2 hours.

I was only able to shoot about 45 minutes of that match - which didn't start until 6:30ish and then headed out to the National Stadium for the 100m. So I got to the National Stadium - shout out to Michael Goulding! (Orange County Register) - it was the So-Cal convention down in front of my remote where I had left my magic arm and lens on a metal bar that runs across the photo moat to reserve my spot. Yes photo moat is just what is sounds like - a moat with photographers in it. Anyway, Goulding, Haffey and Wally Skalij (LA Times) were all in the moat - I wimped out and went upstairs on the press tribune, the pictures are better from the ground but it's easier so see what the heck is going on from up top.


This was my first track event of the Olympics and the 100m is a stressful one. It's a one shot deal - in Athens, if I remember correctly the winner came out of no where - like lane 7 and won... this year I guess the Jamaican aptly named Bolt was heavily favored to win and he was in lane four. Well it was freaking hilarious - he started to jube before he crossed the finish line! I was thinking to myself either he is a total idiot or he's really confident that he's going to win - it's really hard to tell who is winning when they are running straight at you mega fast - but this time it was obvious - the dude still broke a world record - but I think he could have done even better if he had just waited to jube until after he had crossed the finish line! But it was quite funny...

While Bolt was running all over the stadium jubing it up the pool photographers were following him around - at one point they told him to go and have his picture taken with the sign that had his word record time lit-up on it... we couldn't see anything because they all had their wide-angle lenses on but some Italian dude near me was just livid - yelling at them (which there was no way they could have heard) - but I'm pretty sure I learned some Italian curse words...

Oh, can I just tell you that the weather today was freaking awesome - so nice - party cloudy skies low humidity and a very cool breeze - it was almost like being back in the Bay Area!

Afterwards I booked it out of there ran into Chris Detrick on the way out and we took a super packed shuttle back to the MPC - I went straight to the Media Village bus and headed back because I knew I had to get up at 5:45 a.m. for the last day (phew) of swimming - this is the advantage of our deadlines - 12 p.m. here - since I knew I was going to get to the Cube 3 hours early I would scan in my images during that time and still make deadline. So I was able to go to bed at about 1 a.m. and get a solid 4 1/2 hours of sleep.





4 comments:

Juliette said...

Nhat is my hero!!!

Juliette said...

Next time you go in the moat, Nhat. You got mad photo skills.

Jeff said...

Nice work on the 100 meters. You speak kindly of your fellow Olympic photogs, are you saying we back in the lowly Bay Area are not supernice?

Nol Le Meyer said...

Just tell me now . . . are you going to eat anywhere else besides McD's???