CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) — Washington Post columnist Barry Svrluga became once reporting from his first Wintry climate Olympics when Lindsey Vonn left her sanatorium mattress after a rupture and returned to compete days afterward the 2006 Turin Video games.
He is serve in Italy two a long time afterward the Milan Cortina Video games and became once there all all over again to write down about it when Vonn ended up serve in the sanatorium following one more rupture. Even though he’s dropping his job.
The Post launched two days earlier than the Olympics opened final week that it became once putting off its sports part whereas shedding a third of its team. Svrluga acknowledged the newspaper in the initiating planned to send 14 team members to these Video games.
With air tickets and lodging already paid for, Svrluga is considered one of 4 of the paper’s journalists who determined to indifferent attain: He is in Cortina, Rick Maese is in Bormio, and Les Wood worker and national staffer Robert Samuels are in Milan.
“They will take away our part,” Svrluga acknowledged, “however in a formulation, they may be able to’t take away our spirit.”
Of the four, Svrluga and Wood worker are being laid off. They came to their final project anyway.
“I wished to be occupied,” acknowledged Svrluga, who is at his 12th Video games. “I fancy overlaying the Olympics. … I had Lindsey injured in Sestriere after which had her gold (Vancouver, 2010) and I’ve had every person of her Olympic races, whether they were successes or not. Identical with (Mikaela) Shiffrin.”
The important Olympics that Svrluga labored at became once the 2004 Athens Summer season Video games and he became once straight struck by the formulation colleagues on the paper collaborated at this kind of considerable tournament.
“It felt like a team sport for us and that benefited the part and the paper,” Svrluga acknowledged. “What we’re attempting to carry out here is remind other folks — readers and resolution makers — that these are just a few dedicated these who were doing things for the true reasons.”
Wood worker, the Post’s Olympics creator, is at his eighth Video games. He’s been overlaying figure skating, speedskating and hockey.
“The Post sports department repeatedly had this kind of pleasant reference to its readers. I felt I needed to discontinue to shriek the memoir of this Olympics for them,” Wood worker acknowledged. “It’s what I’d need as a reader. If here’s the tip for Post sports, let’s give our most steady readers our handiest.”
Shiffrin relied on Svrluga with some private news
Svrluga gave his readers — and the wider snowboarding community — cause for dwell even earlier than he got to Cortina.
An intensive pre-Video games interview with Shiffrin and her mother and coach, Eileen, became into a lot bigger than an Olympic preview memoir when they printed to Svrluga why Eileen became once absent in the initiating up of this World Cup season: She had been diagnosed with cancer and faced six weeks of therapies.
“This became once a in actuality private train,” Svrluga acknowledged. “I’m thankful for them that they relied on me with the easy process. It’s their memoir to shriek.”
Employees reductions are ‘tragic for readers’
Modifications across the replace have resulted in fewer American reporters attending events just like the Olympics.
“That’s tragic for readers,” Svrluga acknowledged, noting how the further dwelling in the reporters’ interview areas on the affect strains are “good for logistics and sad for the replace.”
About a of the these who Svrluga has reported on on the Olympics have reached out to him after notice unfold relating to the cuts on the Post. It’s took utter serve in Washington, too, he acknowledged.
“Folks which have won World Series, these who believe groups. I’ve been there 22 years, so you affect relationships over time, even with other folks you fight with a tiny bit or you write one thing they don’t like. It’s indifferent a human aspect to it,” Svrluga acknowledged. “So I’ve heard from extra other folks than I’m able to count.”
But, Svrluga added, “You don’t want to be the memoir. You should mask the memoir.”
The Post’s executive editor, Matt Murray, known as the layoffs painful however obligatory.
“You most certainly can argue maybe we’re on this attach because we didn’t adapt or gaze what is coming next,” Svrluga acknowledged. “It’s obvious other folks win their news in diverse techniques now. I’m ‘ragged school’ in one regard. … I am hoping that the these who are in their 20s and early 30s, like after I first went to the Olympics, are determining no topic’s next. I would fancy for it to incorporate written storytelling, because that’s what I fancy to carry out.”
A final memoir and ‘the crimson wine will float’
Placing off the Post sports part became once a energetic blow since the department has hosted many neatly-identified bylines by device of the years, alongside with the likes of John Feinstein, Michael Wilbon, Shirley Povich, Sally Jenkins and Tony Kornheiser.
Svrluga’s final column from these Video games will ticket his final memoir for the Post. Within the intervening time, he’s going to strive to have the benefit of the Olympics — and being in Italy — bigger than he most steadily does whereas on project.
“The crimson wine,” he acknowledged, “will float.”
___
AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-iciness-olympics
