Hello All-

A couple things to report on this week. First off, I had a great time down in LA doing commentary for WCSN last weekend! I heard from several people that said that they enjoyed my insights, which was great to hear. It was fun but also pretty difficult- more so that I imagined. First of all, you have to be almost out of control, over the top, comically animated to come across as just moderately fired up over the air. Something about not seeing our facial expressions or hand gestures or something. Steve Porino told me about that before going in, but after listening to my calls of a few racers, I sounded pretty laid back when in reality, I was very excited. It was also tough watching my teammates hit the nets. Marco went down twice and Steven hit the nets once. Unless I saw them on TV from the top before I went at a race, usually I have talked to them in the finish and have eaten lunch with them before I ever see it on video. It was also difficult, and certainly added to my “laid back” sound, to avoid swearing when you see something like that. I would usually say, “oh s#!t, what the hell happened there Marco…” if I saw it live hanging out with the boys, but I wasn’t sure that would fly on the air.

We were doing the show “almost live”. Early in the morning west coast time, but not at 2 A.M. or whenever we would have had to be awake to call it actually live. I avoided knowing any results so I could call it with that live feel (to be honest I just wasn’t good enough to pretend to not know the results). Porino avoids knowing the results as well, whenever he can. Also, we were in a very small padded sound booth and we were not always sure where the feed we were watching was going to take us. Switched over to footage of elk wandering the plains of Kvitfjell… go with it! Guy crashing into the nets… no radio to call and see what is going on in the booth, just a hold and a break for us and on to the next guy.

So with all that in mind, it was extra difficult watching the Lanzinger crash. I watched it just once, during our live call, in full speed. It was enough for me to see that he had injured himself very badly. I refused to watch it when they slowed it down on replay. Our producer came on during the hold with an update on his condition for us (which wasn’t much at the time) but as I followed it over the next two days I was just shocked at the aftermath. I just can’t believe such a thing can happen in 2008, at a World Cup event. I don’t know the full story and the details but from what I have gathered it sounds like there was some serious delay in getting treatment for him that could have been avoided. Even a week later, I still can’t really believe it.

Change of subject- I had a quick knee surgery on Wednesday. Just a scope, so minimally invasive and not too much work- just cleaning up some meniscus and a few things here and there. Should be good to go in a week or two. From what my doctor tells me, “everything went great”, so I don’t see too much more couch time in my future.

–My best wishes and strong recovery for Lanzinger–

This entry was posted on Monday, March 10th, 2008 at 9:42 am and is filed under scottmacartney. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.