All in a Days Work

Many people ask me what kind of things I am supposed to do at the Athletics desk. Well, officially I'm supposed to do the following:

- Sign in country delegations at first arrival (authorisation forms, team leaders guide, invitations to technical meetings, etc.)
- Provide information regarding the competition to Athletes, Trainers, Team Leader and/of Chef de Missions. This includes training possibilities, transport arrangements, schedule changes and important meetings.
- Hand out start lists before and results after the competition.
- Receive comfirmation from the officials regarding their participating athletes.
- Arrange transport for shot put participants and officials to the Ancient Olympia.
- Arrange tours for viewing the stadium, marathon and race walking courses.
- Take photographs of the official competitions uniforms and track suits.

Yes, we do all those things mentioned above. But as I stated in an earlier posting, we don't send people with requess outside our area to "the next counter", so I also did:

- Call all Athens Head Offices of all major sport brands to find a pair of 100 meter Female Sprinter Spikes for an athlete who lost hers...
- Arrange with the Travel Agency a bus tour to ancient Olympia for those athletes and officials that want to go as a spectator.
- Cover the info desk for Archery and Badminton (our next door neightbours) when they need to go to lunch, as these desks are often manned by one person.
- Call all Athens Head Offices of all major sport brands again as one (major) athletics country had received sets which were a few sizes too big for their athletes. Can you imagine??? Neither could the Chef de Mission. He was so pissed off he didn't care whether the set I could find was of a different brand then their actual clothing sponsor.
- Play translator for most desks whenever a delegation comes by that speaks only Spanish.
- Chase the Chef the Mission of a large European country for two days as he had forgotten to confirm his shot put athlete for the competition... (!) Finally I found him by running through the village and stopping every athlete from his country to ask for him.

In short, never a dull moment...

Roberto