Olympic Jobs

[#image: /photos/59095308ebe912338a372f53]

A pox on NBC for many of its broadcasting decisions during these Games, but major kudos for the various online streams available through its Web site. They linger on the actual sports longer than the network’s drama-filled broadcasts, offering viewers more time to assess what happens in the various unfamiliar venues of competition. As enjoyably, they also linger on what happens just off the field, pool, or court—and more specifically, on the thousands of workers and volunteers who make the Games run. Many of the jobs are strange, and to judge from these Olympics, the Games remain relatively immune to the terrors of robotic outsourcing. Some favorites:

  • The pair of retirees who, with the discus, shot put, and hammer still in midair, dart from the edges of the field to accurately mark the landing spot. They tend to waddle.

  • The beach-volleyball announcer who is loud enough to be picked up by the television mics. Yesterday, at the beginning of the second set between the American and Latvian teams, his scream filled the fifteen-thousand-seat venue: “This is party central: population fifteen thousand!”

  • This woman.

  • The man sitting in a folding chair next to the long jump who watches the runners’ takeoff points and declares each jump fair or foul. It would not be enough for him to simply raise his hand in objection. Instead, a white flag means a fair jump, while red is foul. He whips the flag up dramatically, as if he were overseeing the voting-off ceremony of a reality show.

  • The swimming judges, in suit jackets, who stand at each end of the pool assessing false starts and improper turns.

  • The people who, before track events, stand behind each runner’s starting block with a clear plastic bin to carry off the competitors’ discarded clothes.

  • The people who drive the remote-controlled mini-Mini Coopers that retrieve tossed javelins, discuses, shot puts, and hammers. They are off-camera, but we imagine them as the world’s luckiest twelve-year-old boys.

  • The weightlifting attendants who scramble onstage to attach ever increasing amounts of resistance.

  • The ballpersons at Wimbledon, who are always fascinating, and the ballpersons at the volleyball matches, who get to sit in chairs and roll errant balls as if they were bowling. It is disappointing that table tennis, sticking to its barroom roots, requires players to do the retrieving.

  • The diving judges who sit on high chairs, all in a row, at the side of the pool.

  • The person in each medal ceremony who carries a platter topped by a bundle of thick-stemmed flowers and three medals. We like to think these are the survivors of a pre-Olympic competition to determine England’s best cocktail waiters—or that the Royal Family has donated its servants for the fortnight.

  • The volleyball judges who, like their long-jump counterparts, insist on raising flags to signify in and out.

  • The person who sits in a chair next to the pole vault and rises after each miss to pick up the displaced bar from the ground. How does it get back to the top? Some mysteries even NBC has not revealed.

  • The various men and women who sit in folding chairs during the field events and scribble down violations on pads of paper.

  • The coaches biking along the rowing and canoeing course. They aren’t even watching the road. Most don’t appear to be wearing helmets. Several have crashed. Safety is second at the Olympics, apparently.

See our full coverage of the Games at The Olympic Scene.