Olympic Games (2)

On Feb 12th, 3 friends and me were supposed to attend the Women Giant Slalom in the morning, but one of them sends me a message at 9am while I am in the train, to let me know that the race has just been postponed to Thursday because of the strong wind.

Disappointing, but not surprising: no alpine skiing race could take place so far, all of them had to be rescheduled because of the wind.

So here we are, on the Olympic sites at 9am, having slept only 5 - 6 hours, with not a lot to do until 5pm, when the gates will open at the biathlon stadium, for our next event of the day.
What I haven't mentioned so far is that it is freezing here: yesterday evening, the temperature was -12°C, and with the wind, it feels extreeeeeemely cold.
So having to wait 6 hours outside in the cold, not mentioning the 5 hours that we will spend at the stadium tonight) is not the best news ever.

We head to the Olympic Plaza, in order to see the Flame, do a bit (ok, actually a lot) of shopping at the official store, visit the different exhibitions which are organized, and I eventually leave my buddies and spend a couple of hours in the "spectators shelter", which is basically a 30 square meter room with exactly 3 chairs, but at least there is heating, and I can seat on the floor).

The biathlon stadium is supposed to be 15 minutes away from there with the official bus shuttles.
The problem is that
- none of the volunteers can tell me where to take the shuttle (it will take me more than 20 minutes to get the information)
- it is a 10 minute walk away from there
- the shuttle will wait a long moment before leaving (waiting for more people to join, it makes sense)
- it won't stop at the biathlon center, as they changed the route
- so I had to take another shuttle, which will bring me to biathlon

All of this took 1 hour and 20 minutes and, when I get there, I have to negociate with the security staff, because part of what I bought at the official store earlier today is not allowed in the stadium for security reasons. We are talking about mugs, and one of my friend also bought one today, and could enter the stadium without any problem...

When the races start, you can imagine that I haven't gone through my best day ever so far...
But I join more friends, some of them with whom I have already attended races this winter, other ones that I haven't seen for more than one year.
Now my only fear is that the races tonight get postponed too, because athletes won't run if the temperature goes below -18°C.
Fortunately, this is not going to happen, and we will have an incredible evening, with Anaïs Bescond taking the bronze medal in the women's race and Martin Fourcade the gold one in the men's race.
It was definitely worth going through all of this in order to live those moments, all together.

On Feb 13th, this time it is a cross country race, with the Men Sprint, taking place at the end of the afternoon.
No podium for the French team (we didn't really expect them to get one today, this format is not their specialty), but I am happy with the 3 medalists of the day, as I like the 3 of them.
In the evening, I join my friends for a very emotional official medal ceremony, to see Anaïs and Martin receiving their medals, along with Alexis Pinturault and Victor Muffat-Jeandet who also got medals in the combined alpine skiing event earlier today.

Now that the medal counter is opened, new ones will follow, day after day, making us forget all our troubles with the public transportation and the weather.

Thanks a million times to all the athletes, medalists or not, who gave us incredible emotions during those 2 weeks.