Flashes of Panic

My guilty conscience about breezing by the lengthy lines for entering the Olympic Green made me think about previous major meets and how I passed security there (insofar as there was security; my two World Championships before Osaka were Seville and Edmonton in ‘99 and ‘01, both before September 11 spurred a proliferation of security theater).

I realized that even in Osaka, the security lines for media were entirely separate from those for most spectators (although I could wait in the spectator lines if I was so inclined.) And by “separate” I mean “in another location entirely.” The fact that the event was confined to one stadium made this easier, of course, but when one stood in a short media security line, one wasn’t doing so under the glare of hundreds of spectators standing in lines an order of magnitude (or two) longer.

The sprawling size of the Olympic Green (supposedly the “common domain” is about three times the size of New York’s Central Park) makes this impractical. However, I’ve heard that media staying in official media hotels go through security at their hotel, before boarding the shuttle bus. The bus then drops them inside the security perimeter, saving them both the lines and the glares.

But also, it’s worth noting that the line we go through is signed for credentialed staff plus “the elderly, the disabled, the little…” or something like that. So using that line may come with some small loss of face I’m unaware of.

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