An Olympic Adventure: The Beginning

My Olympic adventure began in autumn of 2010 when my employer Queen Mary sent an email to all staff informing us about a new Olympic volunteer scheme they had. This scheme was in response to a call for help from The London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games  (LOCOG) aimed at businesses based in the East End of London with the goal of getting higher skilled volunteers. Queen Mary’s offer to its staff was for the two-week commitment needed in order to be considered for a volunteer position at the Olympics, given to anyone who was selected. The best part was this was outside of your annual leave entitlement so boiled down to an extra 10 days off work for free! Clearly there was nothing else for me to do than to throw out an application and see what would happen.

The application form was pretty basic and there was a section where you could give examples from your work history as to your key skills and experience and a section to choose the general area you would ideally like to work. On October 9, 2010 I registered my interest in volunteering at the 2012 Olympic Games. Shortly after submitting my application I got an email thanking me for my application and informing me that I may not hear until after the New Year if I was being considered for anything. They weren’t lying. I didn’t hear anything back until they invited me to an interview in March 2011.

The interview was an informal chat with someone asking very open ended questions to justify our skills. I left the interview feeling happy with my performance. Of course at the interview they let us know that we were being considered for a position with the National Olympic/Paralympic Committee (NOC/NPC) that at the time meant very little to me. Later I learned that this was in fact the daddy of all volunteer positions at the Olympics. The NOC Services Team takes care of all of the different delegations (countries and all the different athletes they bring) acting as the main liaison between LOCOG and each delegation.  More specifically this means working as an assistant to the Chef de Mission  (CdM) who is in charge of an entire delegation.

In October of 2011, nearly one full year after registering I found out that I had been selected to be an NOC Assistant with my country assignment still to be confirmed. In January of 2012 I began my training by attending a massive orientation held at Wembley hosted by Sebastian Coe who was instrumental in London’s bid for 2012. This was a flurry of Olympic propaganda that was meant to win over the hearts of the newly recruited. It was rad. After that came a slurry of 5 hour training sessions; twice in February, once in March, two in April, May and June and I finally began three days ago on July 10, 2012.

It wasn’t until May at a training event when I learned that I got Senegal as my country to work with. At first I wasn’t sure about it because of the fact that they speak French and that my French is crap at best. I found the person in charge of the Africa delegations and asked her about this and she assured me that if I was selected for them that they hadn’t requested language support so it wouldn’t be a problem. After these assurances the idea grew on me.

I started to research Senegal and their history at the Summer Olympics. I learned that they have won a total of 1 Summer Olympic medal (Silver) and that was in 1988 for the men’s 400 meter hurdles so we were certainly going to be up and coming. At 2012 the Senegalese men’s football team drew England first round and it looks to be quite an interesting match so things looked good. Anyway, at my final training session which was held at the Olympic Village I got to meet up with another of the 4 NOC Assistants that Senegal has and I learned something pretty interesting. Apparently Ben, who is also a volunteer for Senegal and who is originally from France, lives near to where the Senegalese athletes have been practicing (outside of London) and has spoken with the CdM and other officials from the team. Ben reported that they don’t speak English, at all. I went and found the head of NOC services teams and explained my situation. She immediately apologized and assured me she would resolve the situation and that she would email me that evening to let me know. Before I had got home Barbara had emailed me again apologizing and offering to move me to another team. She said that at the bottom of the email was a list of countries who she was still trying to fill spots for and that I could take my pick and let her know. Result!  The list:

ALB - Europe - Albania


BRN - Asia - Bahrain 


CHN - Asia - China 


CUB - Americas - Cuba 


GHA - Africa - Ghana 


INA - Asia - Indonesia 


KOR - Asia - South Korea 


PAN - Americas - Panama 


PHI - Asia - Philippines 


PRK - Asia - North Korea 


ROU - Europe - Romania 


SRB - Europe - Serbia 


TAN - Africa - Tanzania 


TPE - Asia - Chinese Taipei

Tough choice and I was having trouble deciding so I asked my friends what they thought and here are some of their suggestions;

“North Korea because of what a bizarre and interesting situation it could be. They have sports people defecting from international competitions often, so you might get a drama like that. It would be interesting to actually have the opportunity to speak to some North Koreans.”

“Mate, throw a dart at the list. Or go for the Philippines because out of all those places that’s where I would most like to go on holiday.”

“NK would be really odd, but then again, perhaps there would be more of a wall with a team like that. “

“If you wanted to have a closer relationship with a small team, and potentially a slightly less intense time of it I'd say perhaps Cuba, they seem to have a good range of medal-winning skills in different sports and were just above half way in the last Olympics medals table.”

“Cuba - Pound for pound, arguably the best sporting nation in the world given its size and resources. Just look and the number of sports they are sending athletes for.”

“Choice #1 has to be North Korea….you will cause an international incident after they find out you are using a fake Brit accent and are truly American.”

So after careful consideration and inspection of previous medals won and lists of sports qualified for I decided on Cuba.

From my training I gathered that my role as an NOC Assistant would be changing with every 8-10 hour shift and every 6 out of 7 days worked. I was hoping that Cuba would be a good delegation to do this with. In our training we were told how to sort out logistical issues that could involve contacting relevant companies, departments, officials etc. and solving problems. This could be anything from getting in touch with the telecoms team to fix a broken phone or internet connection to arranging clearance for high level visitors from respective countries to restricted zones so I had a pretty good idea that this was going to be interesting. Having the driver training and being cleared to drive Olympic fleet vehicles is both daunting and exciting. Daunting at the prospect of possibly having to drive really important people around and messing something up, and exciting because I will get to use all of the Olympic Lanes that have been installed all over London.

Dates:

09-10-2010: Registered to be a Games Maker

09-03-2011: Interview for NOC Assistant

18-10-2011: Role confirmed

21-01-2012: Orientation training

04-02-2012: NOC role specific training #1

11-02-2012: NOC role specific training #2

03-03-2012: NOC role specific training #3

02-04-2012: NOC role specific training #4

30-04-2012: Uniform and Accreditation pickup

10-05-2012: NOC role specific training #5 and country assignment announced

12-05-2012: Driver’s training #1

16-06-2012: Driver’s training #2

23-06-2012: Venue Specific training; Olympic Village

25-06-2012: Changed from Senegal to Cuba (viva!)

10-07-2012: First day