Olympic Memory

Almost everyone living in or visiting Calgary in February of 1988 has a Winter Olympics story to tell. I've got some, too, but there's really only time (and motivation) for one at the moment. Besides, let’s face it – getting through any online text that’s more than a couple of sentences long and not framed like a faux Hallmark greeting is likely challenge enough for most people’s attention span.

In fact it wouldn’t at all surprise me to learn that the only type of person who might read this piece to the last full stop is someone addicted to the preponderant newsstand tabloid-like fluff passing itself off as entertainment and/or meaningful information that’s found across much of the web, and whom cannot help a compulsion to ceaselessly surf for more of it no matter how frivolous, crass, pointless, or baldly self-indulgent the material may be. Ahem.

But I digress. I didn't get in on the Olympics volunteer craze that swept the city months prior to the actual events, simply because I wasn’t paying close enough attention to any of the pre-Games news. I did have some interest to join up beyond selfless service to my fellow man, though: I wanted one of those long winter jackets the volunteers received for their contributions. However, short of stealing one off someone’s back there was no chance of that happening. By the time I did give thought to getting involved, it was far too late to volunteer. Turned out that was just as well; post-Games, what little fashion sense I then possessed put to pasture the thought of owning any Olympics garb, much less wearing it. It was apropos in the moment, but not really beyond that. Think of the Olympic pin craze; I still have a box of them kicking around somewhere, but even if I find them you won’t see me wearing them again.

Fortunately for my Olympics participation ambitions, my then-roomie and still-pal Bill gave me a heads-up that American broadcaster ABC TV would be holding a local hiring fair a few weekends before the Games were scheduled to begin, and I was with him in the hiring line first thing one Saturday morning in late January of '88. Through remarkably better fortune than mine, he got hired as personal valet to Mr. ABC Sports himself, Jim Mackay. The guy got to attend his charge at virtually every Games venue, drive him around in an ABC-supplied sedan, go to cocktail parties and hotel dinners, meet hot women groupies (okay, maybe most of them were sixty-somethings like their idol, but Bill was never picky), and basically have an amazing, three-week, round-the-clock adventure. I got hired on as a go-fer based at the newly renamed Canada Olympic Park’s ski jump venue, working with a bunch of American east coasters, most of them from New Yawk or Joisey. The pay was $50 a day, and included a canary yellow ski jacket with a large ABC crest over the left breast, which was to be worn every shift. I recall Bill mentioning that on top of his salary he got a $1500 bonus at the end of his contract. I got bupkus beyond my daily pittance, but I’m not really bitter about our vastly different Olympics experience with ABC. No, not really. After all, in gratitude for his help in getting me the ABC gig, I made a promise to let him out of the hole in my basement floor where I’ve kept him since the Games ended when their thirtieth anniversary rolls around. "It's almost here, Bill; chin up."

While Bill got to hobnob with all manner of celebs and moneyed hangers-on around town - and listen to MacKay practice the same tired pun on anyone who hadn’t heard it a thousand times before about ‘the agony of his feet’ – a lack of snow kept the athletes and everyone else at the COP ski jump idle for the first week of the Games. I did almost nothing the whole time but act the chauffeur to several open-shirted, hairy-chested, bling-wearing, greasy-haired, sweat-smelling, bargain basement LA movie producers who’d made some bucks casting gun-toting, bikini clad, ex-softcore porn starlets in straight-to-video movies with titles like Picasso Trigger and Hard Ticket to Hawaii, along with their ABC TV crony hosts, who rode in my transport often with their heads out of the windows yelling “Your sister’s ass!” at any driver around us who had the temerity to keep their car positioned within the road lane markings, rather than riding over the middle of them like it was proper to do back home in Newark.

When the snow finally started to fall and things got busy, I spent much of my time running miles of power cable all over the jump site. Sometimes I watched the athletes mill about - smallish guys in skin-tight lycra suits who on non-event days shouted friendly encouragements to one another with the guttural accents common to people from northern European climes - but each of whom on competition days stared out at the world with a psychopathic gaze reminiscent of a medieval Mongol drunk on airag and thirsting for blood. They’d often inspect their skis for possible tampering by nefarious-minded competitors, or (which I didn’t need to see) re-position their junk for the hundredth time in an hour. The only respite from the black and whiteness of their presence was that of Great Britain’s sole competitor in the sport, Eddie the Eagle, who added much-needed color to the whole affair; and I’m not referring to what he did each morning after being out at the bars every night. A more unlikely athlete there never was, but while he may not have performed very well at the ski jump, he excelled at socializing. Which I suppose was the one thing most everyone at the Games had in common, so he was in good company.

It wasn't all drudgery at the jump. Every morning I had my coffee at the top of the 90 meter tower, watching the day’s hot air balloon race over the city's core, and sending electronic messages to my then-girlfriend over a new internal mail system built just for the Games. I had no idea it presaged the advent of e-mail; it was just a cool new tool to play with. Similarly to modern e-mail, though, I got frustrated when there weren’t any replies to my messages due to technical glitches. Didn’t see that coming down the road, oh no.

Regardless, I also had opportunity during the weeks’ lull to add a few moments to my fifteen minutes of fame tally by prompting Finnish ski jumping phenom Matti Nykanen (pronounced Nuke-a-nin) to start his ski jump run at the end of an exclusive ABC interview with the guy. He’d won a gold medal in '84 at the Sarajevo Winter Olympics, and would add three more golds in Calgary. About five seconds of that clip made it on to the official Games video, and my canary yellow-clad back can clearly be seen off to the side of the jump track as Nykanen starts down it. Don't worry, though; I haven't let stardom go to my head; I'm not evenly remotely suicidal, nor do I feel inclined to pay to have sex in a public place.

Helping me keep my sanity after all the dullness was being in and amongst the incredible energy of some 80,000 spectators crowded into the lower bowl when ski jumping began in earnest. That more than made up for the relative boredom of the first week, when we were greeting callers to our compound by answering the phone, "Ski Waiting."

Now to the most memorable anecdote, and the reason I've recorded it for posterity. One evening after a shift at the ski jump, I was in the lounge at what was then the Four Seasons hotel, located across from the Calgary Tower. I was waiting for friend Bill to fetch me, and having a preparatory drink in anticipation of another night of non-stop imbibing; which was what the entire city populace seemed at the time to have made the latest ‘thing’ (not much of a stretch for Calgary, really). I think I got two or three hours of sleep each night for the duration of the Games, but being young and full of excitement, I never once noticed any tiredness, or felt hungover. Those were the days.

The lounge was sparsely peopled with a couple of geezers at the bar, an attractive, slightly older woman (who looked vaguely familiar) sitting by herself at a table near the dance floor, and of course me. There were Olympics playing on the bar televisions, and Cole Porter playing on the stereo system. The lighting was dim, my stomach was grumbling with hunger, and I was just mulling over food options on the bar menu when I espied the woman turning in her seat just prior to standing up. She was medium height, slender, and sporting long, wavy, dirty blonde tresses that cascaded luxuriously down and around her shoulders. Her glorious mane framed a round face with a pointed chin and long, strong nose, prominent cheek bones, thin lips curved ever-so-slightly in a wisp of a smile, and bright blue eyes shining under arched eyebrows. My interest level went up a notch at this different view of her (and in case you’re wondering, I used to have remarkably good night vision, so spotting the lady’s features from forty feet away in a dimly lit bar wasn’t an issue). Her long, silvery, ankle-length dress clung to her lithe form like the proverbial second skin, and swirled around her legs and feet like a silk sheet in a gentle breeze as she stepped ever as lightly as a ballerina across the dance floor. As I watched her progress, it became obvious that a) she was making her way straight toward me, b) she was actually pretty damned attractive, and c) I was staring at her with my mouth hanging open and the glass of scotch I was holding in one hand poised halfway to it. I gathered my wits, sat up straighter, quickly and (I hope) surreptitiously felt ‘down there’ to ensure my fly was up (‘cause one always stands in the presence of a lady), took a sip of the drink, and cleared my throat in anticipation of making a complete fool of myself as soon as I was called upon to utter more than a casual greeting to such a lovely woman. As it turned out all I had to do was reply with a “Sure” to her query, and beam back a smile to match the full one she was wearing by the time she reached me. She'd come over to ask me to dance.

She was graceful on the dance floor, and I was thoroughly ensconced in our warm embrace as we turned slow circles, ignoring the emptiness of the space by being lost in the moment. While I felt like I had two left feet at first - not being a dance champion by any means - the feeling passed quickly as I followed her far more graceful lead. I sort of got lost in the moment as we made small talk, stared into each other's eyes, and felt each other up. Out. Out, I meant. Got to know one another.

With apologies for preferring discretion to the more common and ubiquitous vulgarity we’re exposed to these days, I'm going to skip over the nuances of what transpired during the twenty minutes or so that we danced before Bill showed up (untimely, I’ve occasioned to think) to interrupt our little dalliance. It was an experience that I felt had the potential to become more than what it was, but instead it became the stuff of dreams and memory. Besides, I learned (long after the event) that she was happily married. I’ve sometimes wondered since why she didn’t tell me, not to mention why I didn’t think to look for a ring; have wondered all the more because, at one point during our slow-turning idyll across the hardwood, she'd asked after my plans for the rest of the night.

As attractive a proposition as it might have been to spend the evening in the company of a gorgeous woman who could make good conversation while looking you in the eyes - without any self-conscious laughter or question marks after her every utterance - a woman all the more attractive for having the chutzpah to show a sincere interest in a strange guy in a bar in a city that was (as it turned out) far from her home; it wasn’t to be. Unlikely as it may appear now to anyone knowing me well, rather than passing time in a darkened, near-empty hotel lounge with a woman enticing enough to send an hormonal surge through my body that could have energized an entire stable of stallions, in that moment I was more interested in running around bar-hopping all night with my pals. After all, I had a girlfriend of sorts (not going to explain that statement right now), and was feeling something akin to guilt at being in another woman’s arms. My dance partner was also fourteen years my senior, and despite how she was affecting me and where those effects were leading my thoughts, ego was doing its utmost to convince me that she could probably read my deeper intentions as easily as a clock on the wall, and their very obviousness would only preclude her from any desire to share them.

I was beyond flattered by the attention I was being given by Peggy (as she’d introduced herself), as well as more than a little tempted to remain in her inviting presence. After all I'm only human, and I'd just had an entirely pleasant (not to mention mildly hot) close encounter with a belle dame whom I found all the more alluring after the fact when, later that night, I happened to catch an ABC Olympics coverage re-broadcast of a segment from earlier in the day. The spot was of an interview with Elizabeth Manley, the Canadian Olympic women’s figure skating medal hopeful. The interviewer was former four-time World Champion and 1968 Sarajevo Winter Olympics woman’s figure skating gold medalist, Peggy Fleming. My dance partner.

Buddy Bill, who’s a couple of years older than I, would ask me later that night how I failed to recognize her. Being all of six years old when she shot to fame I didn’t think his question all that relevant, but I suppose given Olympics fever and the media blitz up to and during the Games in Calgary, I might have caught some wind of her name. However, I didn’t watch TV much back then (and none at all now), so it’s maybe not all that big a mystery how she escaped my notice. There were a lot of TV people in Calgary then, not to mention stars of every stripe imaginable. I could be forgiven for missing out on who they all were.

In some daydreams I enjoyed after the Games had ended, Peggy and I went beyond being dance partners to blotting bingo cards together at the local community hall; but that was long ago. Our little dance that night has been a nice, albeit fading, remembrance, but I know that with this (only very slightly stretched) re-telling of the encounter, the memory is destined to disappear into recesses of the mind from whence it’s unlikely to re-surface. That’s just how it goes sometimes. So be it. So long, Peggy, and thanks for the memories.

(With apologies to Peggy Fleming, Jim Mackay’s surviving family, and of course, Bill, for the artistic license.)