Back for another go at blogging
I have two reasons to be excited today. I'm heading to for the , and I'm starting what I hope will become a regular blog.
I'm currently travelling at 30,000 feet somewhere over the east of Canada, and am already discovering that blogging is a great way to kill time during a 10-hour flight.
I should probably confess right at the beginning that this isn't actually my first foray into the world of blogging, although my previous attempt was rather short-lived.
GB's Shelley Rudman is looking to go one better than the skeleton silver she won in Turin four years ago
Keen readers of the Daily Mail might recall that my blogging debut generated rather more publicity than I'd intended. Having been sent to Beijing in 2008 to cover the Olympics I had determined to give readers as honest an insight into life behind the scenes with the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ team as possible.
Well I definitely did that, but I hadn't really bargained for the impact of my revelation that I'd had to miss an outside broadcast because I had been struggling so much to keep dry in the intense heat there. Let's just say that I'd had a few issues keeping my shirt dry!
What I'd thought was just going to be a light-hearted story on a blog ended up with .
People say that there's no such thing as bad publicity. Well I'm still to be convinced that I gained much from the next day's headline "Welcome to the 'Sweat' at Ten". At least the heat won't be a problem in Vancouver!
If nothing else, I suppose, it did provide my colleagues with a week's worth of amusement, and no doubt some will be surprised that I'm returning to the blogging hemisphere for possible further punishment, but I'm made of tougher stuff than that - or at least I think I am! We'll soon find out. (That, by the way, is a hint for you all to be gentle on me for the first few weeks!)
Either way, I'm hoping that I can continue with my initial aim of being as informative as possible, giving you a feel for what's happening behind the scenes, although perhaps without creating quite so much controversy - initially at least anyway.
My job as a sports news correspondent is one of the most unpredictable in the whole of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ. I honestly don't know where I'm going to be from one day to the next, and that's what I love about it.
One minute I can be sitting in the office making routine phone calls, and the next I can be racing across the country trying to get to the location of a major breaking sports story in time for the Six o' Clock News. Cars run on petrol, I run on adrenalin.
My intention is to guide you with me over the next few months on this voyage into the unknown. It's going to be a busy year, with the highlight, of course, being the .
So what about the Winter Olympics in Vancouver? In 'news' terms there's no doubt that there's going to be plenty for me to get my teeth into.
These are the final Olympics before London and there are a number of similarities between the two Games (hopefully snow not being one of them, although I'm sure that you've already read about the problems with the weather being too warm in Vancouver).
Vancouver and London have both been badly hit by the global economic crisis. In fact the . The London organisers won't be looking for bail-outs, but they will be looking for lessons on how to put on an affordable Games.
Elsewhere I expect to be watching the IOC's drug-testing programme with interest. Four years ago in Turin we saw police raids on some of the Austrian competitors. Will the dopers have been scared off by the IOC's get tough approach or will doping scandals once again dominate a Games?
And then of course there's the sport. Hopefully I'll be reporting on some British medal successes. Eight years ago we had as the curling team won gold, four years ago there was . Who will be the British hero this time?
I've posed a few questions here, there are plenty more. It's going to be fascinating (and hopefully a lot of fun) watching them being answered over the next few weeks. As I look out of the aeroplane window I can see some mountains in the distance. Vancouver here I come!
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