NBC Reporters Live the Games
Almost as many journalists as athletes at the Winter Games.
I ran into NBC’s Chief Medical Editor Nancy Snyderman and NBC’s Weekend Nightly News anchor and Today Show host Lester Holt this week. They have been in Vancouver, British Columbia, for three weeks now.
“It’s crazy,” Snyderman said about their busy schedule.
The day I saw them began at 2 a.m. for each as they had to appear on the Today Show on East Coast Time. Vancouver is three hours behind the New York Today Show broadcast. They also both had to work all day on other reports for the Nightly News and other NBC shows.
This is the second Olympic games for Snyderman.
“This is like being invited to the big party,” Snyderman said. “And even if you don’t have a story on every single day, you know you’re part of an extraordinary experience.”
For Holt, who has been covering the Olympics since Salt Lake City, Utah, hosted the winter games in 2002, this is his fifth time around.
“I enjoy covering the Olympics. I love the fact that the stars of the show are people we don’t think about until every two or four years,” Holt said. “They’re not like Hollywood stars, they’re not authors, they are just young people who excel at a sport.”
Holt then said something that I had experienced already in talking to the athletes here.
“They’re real people,” he said.
Snyderman agreed.
“There’s a story behind every single athlete,” she said. “What’s fun for Lester and me, is that we’re hard news people, so we come and do sports—great stories—and look at athletes who represent everything that’s great about all these countries.”
Snyderman’s favorite moment here at the Olympics is when she took to the ice to learn first-hand about a particular sport.
“Well, I’ve become a Canadian curler,” she said, with a huge grin. From a health perspective, curling has not had any bad news. That’s why it’s “hip,” she says.
One of Holt’s favorite memories so far occurred at the opening ceremonies.
“I was actually touched by the Canadian patriotism,” Holt said.
Snyderman has been to Canada many times, and has never seen Canadians so pleased.
“I’ve never seen Canadians busting with pride like I have now,” she said.
Both Lester Holt and Nancy Snyderman say it is an extraordinary experience to be at the Olympic games. I agree with them on that one, too!
PHOTO: Journalists (from left) Nancy Snyderman, Daniel Wetter, and Lester Holt at the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. (Photo Courtesy Daniel Wetter)
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