The fifth in one reporter's series about the personal memories he retains from the seven summer Olympic Games he has broadcast from.
Keith Quinn reveals his unusual personal strategies to cope with the 40 degree heat over eight long days in the open-air swimming complex.
I tell you the first week of the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games was a nightmare to live through. No, it wasn't because we had a lousy hotel, or the traffic was too tough, or there were horror boycotts to contend with.
No, this time it was because it was so damn hot!!
Honestly, for a poor little Caucasian white boy like me the
temperatures scorched and sizzled, especially I recall, in the
first week.
By the second week either I had forgotten about it or I had somehow
gotten used to it!
They told me that at the Barcelona swimming pool where I was calling races for TVNZ the temperatures soared to over 40 degrees Celsius.
I can believe it. Being outdoors was one thing; being cooked was another.
You see, the planners for the Games had always wanted the swimming pool to be open to the bright light of day. And you couldn't really argue with that.
They wanted the divers to be shown on worldwide TV bouncing up into the sky and silhouetted again the bustling skyline of one of Europe's keenest party cities.
Broadcasters can't complain
But, we broadcasters were not concerned with tourists. The TV bosses of all countries said, in sharp terms, what about us workers sitting all day on the concrete seating doing commentaries with no cover at all from the blazing Catalan skies?
Complaining changed nothing of course, because in this world all commentators pretty soon work out that no one gives a tinker's cuss what their working conditions are like. So we sat, sizzled, sautéed and in the sun, for eight long days at the Olympic Pool.
Mind you, being a somewhat resourceful fellow I worked out a way to cope. I took to getting up earlier than anyone else.
I would ride on the early bus for the morning swim sessions. I would get to the pool before most of the other hoards of writers and reporters.
That therefore gave me the chance to pinch as many bottles of ice-cold water as I could hump in my bags into the commentary area. Not that they stayed ice-cold but, hey, I had 'em.
Then between the morning session of heats and finals, when there was a break of three hours I would take the media bus back to the village where we lived. It was a 45 minute journey as I recall.
Coping strategies
Back at 'home' I would strip down to my undies (stay with me folks!) and try to cool off. All I could do was sit on the side of the small bath in our flat (there was no shower to have only an Olympian water shortage in the brand new apartments)
Being sufficiently cooled I would then rinse tomorrow morning's shirt, put a new one on and venture back to the bus. Needless to say I was soaked again with perspiration before I made it to the pool.
The saga than continued. In the media room I would return to being a crafty, devious person once more.
Stacking up as many water bottles as I could I would venture back to the scorching hot commentary box.
When racing began I would go into a swap ritual of switching the two hats which I had acquired for use each day.
An array of hats
First, the wide-brimmed hat I would put on to keep the dry searing heat off my lily-white ears and thinning hairline.
But that hat was useless for wearing while a commentary of a race was on. The headphones would only pull down the sides of the brim and cover my ears.
When they did that I couldn't hear the producers call me from the studio. Very important to hear their 'cue' to start all races.
Plus, I did prefer to look like Joe Cool instead of looking like a countryboy hick with the brim pulled down like Bozo the clown!
Thus, just before each race I would pull a baseball cap out of my carry bag. I would fill it to the top from one of my water bottles and then, all at once, throw the water and cap back into place on my head.
That cooled me down for the race call. The headphones also fitted nicely.
Any wetness of hair, head or shirt would be dry within a few minutes. I did not care what the hat and water ritual looked like.
I must have looked a right plonker to others but I wanted to survive these Games, right?
One day a photographer saw me make the hat switch and he took my photo.
I spied him a couple of days later and asked "What did the photo look like, the one that you took of me?" He replied in a heavy South American accent, "Hey, you are one crazy kiwi, you are front page news in my newspaper yesterday in Bolivia!"
Honestly it is strange what one remembers looking back but Barcelona was all about surviving from the killer heat wave!
Part Two Friday
