Mock This

As the days leading to the opening ceremony dwindle down, our training has picked up and our skills as flash quote reporters are visibly increasing. Our ONS managers have put us through multiple rounds of mock mixed-zones and press conferences in preparation for us.

Nothing about the "mock" is relaxed though. Our experienced managers understand the fact that anything can happen when interacting with athletes, and have created various different scenarios for us to run through. One such situation included an upset athlete who wouldn't stop to talk to us, leading to a couple of reporters learning to quickly adapt to the situation. With one athlete unwilling to stop and talk, those reporters raced back to the other side of the mixed zone to pick a new athlete to take quotes from. These exercises were performed with deadlines. If you weren't able to complete the task in the time required, you understood the resulting consequences.

Everyone took to these exercises with full effort as many of us could be seen sprinting from mixed zones to offices and back. We completed around four exercises in total, and we received criticisms and suggestions after each mock event. Our performances improved each time, as we familiarized ourselves with the process more and more. As the day drew to a close, we all were exhausted from the intensity that was applied, but we were extremely grateful for the invaluable experience.

Our managers might not be real athletes, but not for a second did we question how realistic and how quite possibly our real Olympic experiences could mimic what we had just done. Hats off to our brilliant managers who had set up this wonderful experience, and I hope our confidence in our abilities to perform have risen.