Let there be Cake!

So today was the first day with spectators on hill and it got busy!
Oddly enough there wasn't much happening with medical but a ton of things went wrong with the event staff planning. We were on hill, fed watered and ready to go at 6:30am. Did I mention how much I hate mornings? Well this was painful!

Anyway, we have 8000 people getting geared to come up a mountain path which is quite aggressive! The issue was most people didn't know that there was a chair life option to get up to the bleachers. Also, there were some people dropped off by buses half way up the bottom of the path, so they had no idea that they could take a chair, and in some cases, that they couldn't get tickets at the top. Sucked to do the hike for nothing!

The Swiss were completely nuts about this event by the way! Some guy did the hike in ski boots. Now that's dedication. Also they had the biggest cow bells ever seen.

More cowbell!

I had one poor gentleman get up to where I was standing and he looks like he was in a LOT of distress. Then his wife told me he was a heart patient and they were sent up the hill because the gates at the bottom were too busy. Uh NO! I told him he wasn't going to continue up the hill and that the chair was a much better option, and that there was a 1000 person line at the top waiting to get in, which was true! Security was slowing things down but it has to be done.


The doctor had one gentleman come in that had his vision go blurry in one of his eyes. That, coupled with him having heart troubles and several bypass surgeries prompted a few panicked moments from Michelle our doctor. She was fearing a stroke so was looking for weakness of the muscles in the face, any altered breathing or heart rate. Then he took off his glasses and noticed that he was missing a lens. WHEW! Crisis averted, but really funny after the fact!


The event went off smoothly with only a couple of racers falling on course during the run. Unfortunately the Canadians didn't do that well and I was disappointed when Robbie Dixon fell as he was having a good run.

At the end of the day we had a long debrief about all the logistics that went wrong. The event staff coordinator is going to get an ear full but they were understaffed so we did what we could to help. During the debriefing we had cake as it was Annie's birthday (our crew supervisor and lead Doc). We all chipped in and surprised her and it was so tasty! It was one of those perfect cakes. Nice and moist and not too sweet with the icing. Now your all craving cake, Muhahahahahahah!


Tomorrow is the mens super combined which is a downhill race in the morning and a super G in the afternoon so its going to be a long day! Getting to the hill for 6 this time. Arg!