Ten years working in the Olympics
Today, February 3rd 2024, marks my 10th anniversary of working in the Olympic games.
Having worked so many events and for so many years now, it would be easy to pass such a milestone in the midst of the rush to deliver Paris 2024, currently speeding down the road at 174 days to go. But over the past weeks, I had been watching as the last digit of the year turned from 3 to 4 to match the same one as the year I had started - 2014.
Back when 2014 started, I was still working a "traditional," non-event job at the Estaleiro Enseada. Due to a change in my job's assignments, I had recently started to manage a weekly commute between home at Rio de Janeiro and the shipbuilding operations site at São Roque, four hours north across the country by plane in the countryside of the state of Bahia. Whereas Rio had been cozy and familiar, São Roque was the very opposite; a tiny fishing village turning company town with the heavy investments from Enseada and their client Petrobrás.
February 3rd, 2014, the first Monday of that February, marked that big day. I didn't know how much to expect working at an "Olympic-level" project, and frankly no welcoming session could be large enough to explain what would be coming up for the incredible ride of the next two and a half years when I worked in the Games of the XXXI Olympiad, better known as Rio 2016. Just the week before, I had been finishing my job at São Roque, handing over my operations and signing off on my contract with Enseada. Days later, I was back at the state of Rio, facing a façade dressed from head to toe with Olympic colors.
To say that the environment change is drastic is a severe understatement. There are so many striking differences between the Olympics delivery environment and what's internally referred to as the "business as usual" mode of operations. It starts from your very onboarding - the congratulations you get for being aboard to deliver the largest single event on earth, the firing up on all the challenges and how we will overcome them, and the visitation to Olympics-related facilities to really see how this is all, indeed, real. You are left in pure awe after the first few days, and that's a great feeling. And then reality starts settling in again a few weeks later.
You realize that the scope of your work is growing - not something unusual per se, but at this speed it's a little concerning. What is this new project that was handed over to me? Why didn't anyone think about this other thing, and who's going to do it now? Isn't this supposed to be the responsibility of those other guys there? Step by step, question by question, the once clear Olympics picture becomes murkier and suddenly you start to get overwhelmed by the lack of certainty. When that feeling hits, what do you do?
You go forward. You keep working, keep asking and looking for all the missing information that you need to finish your mission, and you deliver what you must.
If you had to summarize it exactly one line, that's more or less how does it feel to work for an Olympic project. And over these ten years and four Games of career, a variation of this has largely dominated the project phase of the job. It's akin to solving a huge puzzle for which you know how the final art should look like, but at the current state there are many holes that need to be filled in by the right pieces, and you have no other choice but to look for. However, unlike a puzzle with a very much immutable end-figure, the Olympic project can - and often does - change. Just see how the Tokyo games changed arguably the only unchangeable thing about the Games; the start date.
And so since those 2014 days, I have embarked in a true carousel of experiences, positions and perspectives on what the games are, how they're delivered and what makes them click elegantly. Rio gave me a birds' eye view on the central planning and operations of the Technology department. Pyeongchang showed me how one of the most important single venues of the games (the Olympic Village) works. Tokyo enabled me to deliver the magic of a venue where a big competition happens. And in France, I climbed a step higher to oversee multiple competition venues by managing a Cluster.
Back in the Olympic delivery, the temperature warms up significantly as we move forward. Soon, people talk about Test Events, a way to taste what's awaiting during Games-time but in a smaller and more controlled scale. The success is variable, some of them work well, others not so much. You keep learning with all of them - lessons, recommendations and successes. And that big date that seemed so far away before is approaching fast.
The last month to the Olympic opening ceremony probably can be described with one word: wild. You do not believe that so many things can help is such a short period of time, and that so many things can change at such a late stage, and yet here we are. New people, new agreements, new requirements. This is also usually the time when people discover that what they promised (or were promised) for delivery does not exactly match their expectations, and you have problems. The Operations Center is saturated with things requiring attention. For a while, you feel as though there are fires everywhere. Those are extinguished over the last days ramping up to the big day.
And then it happens. The day arrives, the hour arrives, and you realize you're finally on TV. A beautiful ceremony starts and, miraculously, this also marks the turning point in your workload. Once venues "turn the key" into full operations, the pressure gets shifted towards the Sports and operational teams, leaving the implementation teams more in the backseat. Your shift routine gradually turns from resolving problems to just monitoring things and the issues melt away. As one more seasoned individual told me during my first Games, you know your operations are going well when you have time to sit down, eat and have a long meal break. This is usually how it becomes after the ceremony, at least for the side of the implementation teams.
And then it all comes back full circle at the Games' end. Time for the nostalgia, rose-colored lenses and - at the end of your mission - even some tears as you finally meet everyone of the project again for offboarding procedures with the HR department. All of that stress you previously faced in those years of project time, the blood, sweat and tears magically disappear and at the end of it all you're left with either one two feelings:
- The feeling of accomplishment, mission complete, and you finally are a free man again and may have the rest of champions. Or:
- The feeling of "ok, we got this one down. When is the next one starting?"
From #2, this is how the passion for the games is born. This is how you keep going back to the same "madness" that you've just escaped from. This is how people go "wow that was crazy. Where's the next?" in the travelling circus of the Olympic Games. And those stories and more will keep filling up more pages in the book of your career.
That is, of course, after you take a long-deserved vacation from one end of event to the other...
Essay originally published February 3rd 2024.
Opinions are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my current or former employers