Number Two (20 page)

At the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park that afternoon we watched Shawn White put together a flawless qualifying run in the Olympic slopestyle event. Sitting in the stands at the bottom of the run was a tremendously rewarding experience. Throughout the other riders' runs music blared from the speakers—hip hop, pop, rock—while images of the riders flashed on a giant screen at the top of the hill. The whole thing felt more like an event at the X Games world tour than the Olympics. When White took his turn, though, the entire
mountain seemed to fall silent. No music played, no one made a sound—it was almost like the whole world stood still for a minute and a half so we could all bask in the greatness of this world-class athlete. And he
was
world class, soaring higher than any of the other riders by a long shot. All the riders were talented and capable athletes, but what separated Shawn White from the pack was the incredible air he got on his jumps—it was almost superhuman. And when he reached the bottom of the mountain to rumbling applause and enthusiastic foot-stomping from Andy, it seemed that nothing could possibly keep this man from a third consecutive gold medal.

Alas, when White went for the gold later that evening, he proved he was indeed human, hitting the lip of the ramp on both of his medal runs and falling off the podium altogether. It was a great example of why I could never have become an Olympic athlete. Even if I had the necessary ability, I could never wrap my head around the idea of training four years for one single day of competition where a single slip-up could cost you a medal—even if, like Shawn White, I was clearly the best athlete competing that day. I couldn't reconcile all that work with a failed result. I wouldn't be able to live with myself.

No one understood this better than Michelle Kwan, who had won the World Figure Skating Championships nine consecutive times but fallen short twice in Olympic competition. After witnessing Canadian Patrick Chan fail to take advantage of a fall from Japanese skater Yuzuru Hanyu and finish a disappointing second in the men's singles, Michelle commented that she really wanted to speak with Patrick about the competition because he hadn't fully experienced the shattering disappointment that was to come. She mentioned that she had suffered through nightmares following her Olympic competition. The pure fact of the matter was that Michelle had handled the crushing disappointment with as much
grace and class as any single human being could ever be expected to. She seemed at least outwardly to have moved on with her life, and if walking into the Iceberg Skating Palace alongside Michelle was any proof, she was certainly well loved by the international skating community.
Worshipped
is more like it. “Like walking into a castle with the queen,” Schrager said.

It was nice to spend the afternoon hanging with Chelios and Finch and Dan. We enjoyed perhaps our best meal in Russia up to that point: “Brooklyn” hotdogs. At the Sochi Games, that meant a hotdog smothered in what could best be described as Cheez Whiz, with just slightly undercooked bacon pieces sprinkled over top. After a week of meals at La Terrassa, that “Brooklyn” hotdog was like foie gras on a ribeye for a carnivore like me. Afterwards, we hopped in the media shuttle—essentially a school bus—and made our way back down to the Rosa Khutor Mountain Village where we were scheduled to meet Vlad in the Street Dragon.

For me, the Street Dragon became one of the most enduring symbols of the 2014 Olympic Winter Games. The Audi Q7s were obviously beautiful, solid, dependable vehicles, but the Street Dragon was kind of like their opposite. If I were to estimate, I'd say the Street Dragon was a mid-'90s Toyota minivan that had mysteriously been stripped of the handle on the sliding door. And the Street Dragon wasn't just a tongue-in-cheek name given to the vehicle by Schrager; it was actually
written
on the side in the form of a decal that included an elaborate tattoo-style dragon. The decal was black, the van was white, and the driver spoke not a single word of English. Often when driving with Vlad in the Street Dragon he would change the song on his MP3 player (no door handle, but the latest in audio technology) while simultaneously taking part in a
spirited discussion on his iPhone. One person on the trip informed me that during a ride he asked Vlad the password for the van's Wi-Fi hotspot. (Yes, the van had Wi-Fi—again, technology one might want to set up
after
fixing the door handle.) Vlad then proceeded to reach back and take the person's phone to punch in the Wi-Fi password as he controlled the wheel with his knees. With all this in mind, we saw Vlad at the curb as the media shuttle dropped us off at the Mountain Village. Chris, Dan, and Andy climbed into the back of the Street Dragon, and I hopped in the front. Little did I know I was about to endure the most terrifying ride of my life.

During the half-hour ride back to La Terrassa I saw my life flash in front of my eyes at least six times. That's the exact number of times Vlad pulled into the left lane to pass and I saw another vehicle careening toward us at maximum speed with no apparent regard for the impending doom they were heading straight for. Each and every time, at the very last second, Vlad would pull us back safely into the right lane, all the while maintaining his own breakneck speed. It was as if Liam Neeson from
Taken
were piloting the vehicle with his very particular set of skills, and he had only a finite amount of time to get back to this rather suspect “boutique” hotel to save his wife and daughter. Vlad had a particular set of skills all right—the ability to log on to Wi-Fi while barrelling down a highway on the edge of the Red Sea at a God-forsaken pace; the ability to not understand any English except when someone asked him about Wi-Fi passwords; and the ability to select pretty darn cool tunes for the Street Dragon—and I mean that sincerely (I will never again be able to hear “Bahama Mama” by Boney M without thinking of Vlad and the Street Dragon).

With each close call I got more and more excited. Vlad was a man who clearly understood the streets of rural Russia. Would I want my loved ones to travel with this guy? Hell, no. But the truth
is the drive back to Adler from Rosa Khutor Mountain Village was more exciting than any ride at Disneyland. I began to encourage Vlad, daring him to take more chances and pass more slow-moving vehicles. All the while the peanut gallery in the back were trying to ruin my fun, shouting about concepts like “safety” and “massive four-car accidents” and “lawsuits.” The only thing that slowed Vlad down was finally getting off the freeway into the urban landscape of downtown Adler. But even then Vlad wasn't out for a Sunday drive. Running up against the bumpers of cars and trucks in front of us and liberally using his horn, pushing the speed limits all the while. The whole thing really made me laugh, but I was clearly in the minority. Everyone else in the vehicle had already made the silent decision to never enter the Street Dragon again.

When we finally pulled past the security gate at La Terrassa and the sliding door was opened (from the inside of course), Chris Chelios was the first to spill out. He calmly walked over to the driver's side door where Vlad was sitting, smiling and waiting for us to get out so he could be told about the next person he was scheduled to pick up and terrify. Chris looked him straight in the eye and said: “SLOW. DOWN.”

Vlad just kept on smiling.

A
s members of the press at Sochi 2014, Dan and I had little difficulty getting into events. Typically, just our Olympic credentials were enough to get us past security. But for some high-demand events, we needed our credentials
and
a ticket. And tickets to the big events were scarce. If Fox had any, they always went to the reporters actually covering the event—and like those infamous Sochi strays, Dan and I fed off the scraps.

Take figure skating, for example. Our two designated Fox tickets went to the people actually covering the events, Peter Schrager and our figure skating analyst, Michelle Kwan. But after the first night of competition, they returned to La Terrassa and reported that the security team at the Iceberg Skating Palace was not actually
checking
the tickets for authenticity, barely lifting their heads when Michelle and Peter flashed them. So I ended up sneaking into the Iceberg a few times by taking Michelle's ticket from the previous evening and strategically placing my finger or thumb over the date. Each and every time I attempted the move, I breezed by the crack security team like I was a ghost. I probably should have been more alarmed by how easy it was for me to sneak into a secured Olympic venue, but I was just too thrilled to worry about it.

And thanks to this scam, I was there to see Evgeni Plushenko make his final appearance in front of an adoring home crowd. Unfortunately, that meant witnessing him struggle through the warm-up, then skate over to the judges and pull out of the competition, subsequently retiring from the sport a few hours later. I hadn't seen the life sucked out of a room that fast since our inebriated London makeup artist collapsed in front of 300 Canadians at a closing ceremonies party.

The gold-medal hockey game in Sochi didn't have quite the same buildup and cache as the one in Vancouver—and rightly so. Not only was host nation Russia eliminated before the semifinals, but they had bowed out in a rather depressing fashion. The Games had started well enough for the Russians with a 5-2 win over Slovenia and then a very exciting shootout loss to the United States—that game had one of the best atmospheres I've experienced in my life. The Bolshoy Ice Dome held just under 13,000 spectators, so it was significantly smaller than the arena for the 2010 Games in Vancouver. But the place was absolutely rammed with Russians, and it was a treat to stand beside them as they rode the roller coaster of emotion during the shootout, eventually falling to heartbreak when T.J. Oshie beat my old friend Sergei Bobrovsky for the winning goal.

So much was made of the fact that Alexander Ovechkin had planned to compete for Russia at the Sochi Games, regardless of whether or not the NHL gave its approval. And when the NHL finally
did
give its players the green light, the Russians became the early favourites based on home ice advantage, national pride, and an incredible wealth of hockey talent. Alas, like many Russian teams of the past, the 2014 roster just didn't play as a team. Ovechkin seemed practically invisible, which was truly unfortunate since his gap-toothed grin was plastered around the park and all over Sochi on Coca-Cola ads.

A few days after Team Russia was eliminated, Ovechkin's father suffered a heart attack. Thankfully, he survived. Still, I couldn't help but think how different the Games must have been from the way Ovechkin had envisioned them.

The other factor contributing to the lack of hype leading up to the gold-medal game was the matchup. Team Canada was playing better and better as the tournament went on, pouring 57 shots on Latvian goaltender Kristers Gudlevskis in the quarter-finals and then dispatching the U.S. in the semis. Really, the only surprise was the lacklustre, uninspired play of the Americans in that semifinal game against Canada. While down 1-0 in the third period, a “guaranteed to tie” situation if there ever was one, the U.S. basically stopped playing (or perhaps the Canadians wouldn't
let
them play). The end result was never really in doubt, and the Canadians breezed into the final to face the Swedes—a formidable opponent to be sure, but perhaps not the sexiest matchup for a North American or Russian hockey audience. Still, as a hockey fan I was aware Sweden was no pushover, especially with “King Henrik” Lundqvist between the pipes for the Tre Kroner.

As anyone familiar with
Anchorboy
will remember, I ran a marathon to get into the gold-medal game in 2010. Surely I could
figure out a way to sneak into this one too. I mean, I couldn't come all the way to Russia and
not
go to the gold-medal game, could I?

Peter Schrager, being the crafty and charming man that he is, found a hookup for tickets. A friend at Nike had informed him that because of the Russian team's epic collapse earlier that week, a few tickets that had been earmarked for important clients within the country had suddenly become available. Schrags secured a pair of tickets soon after the semifinals, and then on the day of the game, he was promised an additional pair that he offered up to Dan and me. What a gem.

The only catch was that we would have to meet the Nike representative in possession of the tickets over at USA Olympic House before the game.
No problem
, I thought to myself.
This'll be a lot easier than running a marathon through the streets of Vancouver.

I left Dan to sleep in at the hotel while I made my way over to the park to meet up with the Nike rep—I figured I'd meet up with Dan later before the game. Leaving La Terrassa for what was likely the last time, I headed down the sidewalk, past Mooka, the lazy but adorable dog who parked himself in front of the hotel; past the silent, sullen security guards who loitered around the gate without a word; and past the open sewer, with its rich, pungent-smelling contents—the remnants of the past few weeks in Sochi. I was going to . . . miss this place?

The truth is I
was
going to miss it, but not for the architecture or the questionable food or the occasional phantom odour that assaulted my nose. I would miss Sochi because of the people.

The Russian people were not at all like I had expected. It's such a cliché, but I seriously thought our entire time in Russia would be spent encountering cold, closed-off, sullen ex-Soviets forced to endure two weeks of hell with foreigners who didn't understand or appreciate them or their culture. Instead, I found everyone I
met to be kind, warm, friendly, and completely supportive of my feeble attempts to speak their language. Everyone was extremely passionate about
being
Russian. At every venue the crowds were deafening for Russian athletes who happened to be competing. Regardless of the sport or gender of the athlete, if they saw that white stripe on top, that blue stripe in the middle, and that red stripe on the bottom, they were going to support their athletes and support them loudly. I didn't get into politics with the Russians much, but anytime a botoxed Vladmir Putin appeared on-screen I would look back at our driver, Kostya, and he would simply say, “Bullshit.” A few weeks after we left Russia, the army was deployed along the border with Ukraine to “protect the safety and security of Russia.” Safely back home in Los Angeles I wondered about Kostya and Dasha and Irina and all the young Russians we had encountered in Sochi. What did they think of this madness?

I continued to walk the streets of Sochi, through the initial security gate, through a second security gate, and past the International Broadcast Centre, which housed the McDonald's we'd eaten at so many times. Oh, how I would miss that McDonald's! I can remember vividly as a kid, in about the fifth or sixth grade, when the first ever “Russian” McDonald's opened up in Moscow's Red Square. It was international news. The lineups were said to be unfathomable. And now here I was, some thirty years later, attending and covering the Olympic Games in the same country, forever grateful that I had this familiar taste of home to enjoy almost every single day—health be damned. Finally, after walking another kilometre or so, I arrived at the last security gate before the Bolshoy Ice Dome, at which point I was stopped dead in my tracks by one of those nice friendly Russians.

“You need ticket,” said the superkind and sweet female volunteer at the gate.

“My ticket is inside,” I replied innocently.

“Sorry, you need ticket here,” she said.

“I need a ticket here? I haven't needed a ticket here before.”

“You need ticket here today,” she said, with an air of finality.

Turns out that on this, the final day of the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games, the Russians had decided to ramp up security and not let
anyone
into the park who wasn't carrying a ticket to the gold-medal hockey game or closing ceremonies. This was going to be a major problem. I had a ticket to the gold-medal hockey game for the second Olympics in a row, and for the second Olympics in a row I was faced with an obstacle that would push me to my physical limits, the physical limits of an inactive third grader. This was going to require some serious effort on my part.

I texted the number of Peter Schrager's Nike contact. She informed me she was running late and that she was on her way to USA Olympic House but would probably be ten or twenty minutes behind the originally scheduled time. At least this would give me some time to figure out how I might get into what was perhaps the most heavily secured one-mile radius in the world, next to the Vatican of course. I knew from experience that at the very least I could wander over to the Iceberg Skating Palace and see the people walking by inside the park through the chain link fence and over the barriers. Perhaps I could convince one of the guards to allow me to accept my ticket—
our
tickets—through the gate. There had to be a way. I just couldn't accept the idea of having a ticket to the second straight Olympic gold-medal game—a game taking place just over a kilometre away—and not actually getting to attend because I wasn't smart enough to figure out a way in. I would not allow this to happen. Not on my watch!

I ran from the “security gate of denial” about 500 metres to the Iceberg Skating Palace, where much to my surprise the media gate
was accessible without any pass whatsoever. In fact, I strolled right up to the entrance of the Iceberg Skating Palace and was initially elated that I would be able to enter the park from there, only to realize that the reason they had allowed access to the facility was because it was completely empty. The entrance to the actual park had indeed been closed off. Not using any sophisticated means, mind you; there was no massive gate with barbed wire. Workers had simply taken two good-sized barricades and instead of standing them on their legs—like the original designer had intended—they had stacked them vertically and then crossed them over each other like giants might build a shoddy house of cards. This was the elaborate security system that had been set up on the side of the park where events were no longer taking place. Did I still feel comfortable about our safety in this part of the world? Had Russian promises about security been fulfilled? And more importantly, could I actually sneak into the 2014 Olympic Winter Games by hopping over a couple of barricades that were haphazardly leaned against each other like popsicle sticks?

I approached the “leaners” and looked around. Technically, I was already in the park, but the barricades were there to prevent me or anyone else from going any farther. Occasionally I would spot a security guy lurking outside the craft services building next door. The guy would usually give me a disinterested look and then turn away. This happened two or three times, as if he was saying, “I know you're probably up to no good, and I should do something about it, but I've been standing here for the past three weeks and you're clearly not a threat, so do what you need to do. I'll be over here waiting for you to go home.”

It was entirely plausible that this might work, that I might be able to break into the park and meet the nice Nike lady with our tickets, and Dan and I would be able to watch Canada battle Sweden
for a gold medal and everything would be all right! It would be just like when I had to run through the streets of Vancouver to fetch a ticket that had been promised to me for the gold-medal game in 2010. I would make it through all the obstacles before me now, just as I had then. Only this time, the obstacles were actual physical obstacles.

It was also entirely plausible that I might be caught by security and told to leave the country, never to return. Or that I might be caught by security and thrown into a Russian jail. So many fun possibilities.

When I was confident the security guy wasn't looking I made my move. Ten minutes had passed by this point, meaning that if the nice Nike lady was actually on time, I had only ten more minutes to make it to the rendezvous point. There was really no time to spare.

I thought of it like a ladder. I just had to carefully scale the barricades and climb over without the security guy seeing what I was doing. Simple. I put my size thirteen Nike into the first bar of the barricade, turned around, and there was the security guy. I felt a wave of panic go through me. But he simply smiled and shook his head, “no,” then walked back to the craft services building.

I had come very close to shitting myself. As many of you know, I've shit myself in much less stressful situations in the past. Honestly, it's amazing I was able to maintain my constitution.

That very second, my phone rang. Thank God for the international data plan.

I reached into my back pocket, grabbed my phone, and answered it.

“Hello?”

“Jay? This is Irena from Nike!”

Oh, no
.

“I'm still running a little late.”

Yes!

“I'm so sorry for the inconvenience.”

Little did she know she was actually saving my ass! Finally, I was catching a break.

“I'm actually having a little problem getting to the meeting point myself,” I told her.