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- Sara Hunninghake will flip 40 in Tokyo, the place she might be managing Olympians’ media interviews.
- She’s performed it at each Olympics since 2008 and takes day off her PR function to suit it in.
- “It’s excessive vitality and excessive stress preserving observe of who’s speaking to who,” she stated.
I will be spending my fortieth birthday in a quarantined resort room, like all Olympic employees and athletes who will solely be allowed at their lodging or the venue. I will not be celebrating with my mates in Portland, Oregon.
I would not need it every other method.
Tokyo might be my seventh Olympics managing athletes for his or her interviews with broadcasters. As a child, I bear in mind staying as much as watch the Olympics. Working for the Olympic Broadcasting Companies (OBS), I’m able to assist broadcast this historical past to new generations.
My first job out of school was as a media coordinator with USA Swimming. I left however OBS later invited me to come back to the 2008 Beijing Olympics as a result of I knew the swimmers.
I bear in mind sitting within the stands with a journalist the day Michael Phelps received his second gold, making historical past earlier than our eyes.
He hardly ever did a couple of or two interviews after every race though each journalist wished to talk to him. My job was to assist him navigate the journalists. Ultimately, he talked with nearly each journalist after his closing race.
After the 2008 Olympics, OBS invited me to the Winter Olympics to work with skiers. I’ve labored each Olympics since.
In Tokyo, I will intention to place two hours in with my PR job with WE Communications earlier than I get on the bus to go to the venue. I am grateful they permit me to go part-time for 3 weeks.
After I end, I’ll take a bus to the venue, sometimes arriving three hours earlier than the occasion begins to be obtainable for broadcasters.
As soon as we arrive, we’re on-the-go till we go away. I joke that my each day schedule is figure, eat, bus, venue after which repeat.
I do the whole lot from coordinating athlete interviews to telling folks the place they’ll file. I am liable for the Combined Zone, the place journalists and athletes meet. We collect all of the broadcasters and ask athletes who they wish to communicate to.
The interviews need to be a minute or much less. Broadcasters request interviews and we do our greatest to assist facilitate them. Athletes at all times have the choice of claiming no.
It’s excessive vitality and excessive stress preserving observe of who’s speaking to who and for the way lengthy. It pays off, although, if you see eight completely different athletes talking to interviewers all around the world in actual time. With COVID, there might be no spectators however the athletes nonetheless educated as arduous as ever and I’m excited to look at them notice their desires.
Working in PR at all times has me fascinated by who is an efficient interview. Some athletes do it nicely and a few do not. Once I labored at USA Swimming, I used to assist practice athletes in easy methods to communicate with the media. Most have been new to doing them.
My favourite is Mikaela Shiffrin. She was 18 and had simply received the slalom in 2014. She did each single interview with out giving anybody the identical line. A Swiss reporter requested her if this was one of the best day of her life, and he or she stated, “I am positive there was a day once I was youthful that somebody gave me a brownie, and that was one of the best day ever. However that is positively high 5.”
These are the moments that make this job enjoyable.
It is not at all times glamorous. I spend lots of time saying: “No, I’m sorry you possibly can’t communicate with them; No, you possibly can’t go there. No, you possibly can’t have 30 extra seconds.”
Saying no is draining. Tensions are excessive as a result of journalists are beneath strain. One yelled at me as soon as as she was upset an athlete from her nation who had simply received gold needed to cease for different interviews earlier than attending to her. However due to the superb neighborhood round me, I feel extra in regards to the constructive moments.
I can not think about a greater option to have a good time my fortieth.
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