Ni hao (hello) from Beijing

Mary Beth Vorwerk met up with Today Show's Meredith Viera on Sunday in Beijing. The Today Show's co-anchor was filming a piece on U.S. shotgun medalist Corey Cogdell. (Photo contributed)

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Monday, Aug. 18

Ni hao everyone! Sorry I haven’t been better about keeping in touch, but things have been crazy here. I only have a few minutes, so I wanted to send a quick update. I thought you would all like to see the photo of the Today Show’s Meredith Viera and me in our athlete dorms at the Olympic Village yesterday. She did a segment with one of our shotgun team medalists, Corey Cogdell. The segment aired on the Today Show (NBC) Wednesday morning! I was with them for about an hour last night while Corey showed Meredith around the Athlete Village and she (Meredith) is the nicest person ever! She is so friendly and genuine! She speaks to everyone and is so excited about everything. She hugged me twice and kissed me on the cheek when she was leaving. It was pretty funny!

Oh yeah, and I also got my picture taken with Evander Holyfield, who was very nice, and talked to him for a few minutes last night at the Club Bud party. One of my athletes took the photo on his camera, so I will have to send that later once he e-mails it to me. I said hi to Tiki Barber the other day at the NBC compound, and I also met Bela Karolyi the other night at NBC.

So, I have had a lot of fun meeting all of these great people, but the best thing about the Olympics, so far, is that my incredible shooting team won six medals! It really doesn’t get much better than this! I can honestly say this has been the most amazing experience of my entire life! Athens was incredible, but witnessing six of my friends win Olympic medals here in Beijing is probably the coolest thing I have ever seen and the best part of it was that I got to be with them right after they won the medal until about three hours later doing all of the media stuff.

Even though shooting is over, I am still swamped with media requests and busy as ever. I am putting in about 15-hour days, but it’s totally worth it. Things will hopefully start to slow down for me a little bit in the next couple of days. I am going to the men’s BB game tonight, so that should be fun! Gotta run, going to do interviews with Matt and Katy Emmons with Time Magazine and NBC now.

Tuesday, Aug. 19

Hello again! I thought I would send another update from Beijing since I have a few minutes right now to sit down and e-mail. I spent most of the day yesterday doing media interviews with Matt and Katy Emmons. For those of you who don’t know, Matt (one of our rifle shooters) is a gold medalist from Athens and won the silver here on Sunday. His wife, Katy, shoots for the Czech Republic and she won the gold and silver here in Beijing last week. They have become quite the huge news story here and have been all over the media (you can Google them to learn more or check out nbcolympics.com). We did several interviews with them yesterday including Time Magazine, NBC, nbc-olympics.com, Sports Illustrated and my favorite one of all… “Yang Lan One on One,” a talk show that is the equivalent of Oprah here in China. It was a fantastic interview and will be seen on her show by 5.7 million people in China! She has already interviewed Kobe Bryant, Michael Phelps and several others and they really wanted Matt and Katy, so it was a big deal. They came to pick us up in two black Audi luxury cars, so that’s when I really knew it was big time! Yang Lan was awesome and the interview was fantastic! She talked to them for about 45 minutes and you could tell she had really done her research because she knew things that I didn’t even know about! Katy and Matt did a great job and everyone here loves them! It was really cool to be a part of it.

After the Matt and Katy media tour yesterday, I went to the women’s field hockey game with some of my athletes, then went to the men’s basketball game (USA vs. Germany) and enjoyed watching Kobe Bryant, Dwayne Wade, Carlos Boozer, LeBron James, Jason Kidd, etc. from the third row of the arena! Corey and Jeff (the two shooters I went with) and I were joking about how we could practically smell the sweat on the players from where we were sitting. It is so nice to have the credential that I have here because it is basically equivalent to an athlete credential, so I can get anywhere they are! The access I have here is amazing, so I am very fortunate.

This morning I went to the athlete village to pick up one of our gold medalists, Glenn Eller (shotgun – double trap) and then we went back to the NBC studio to do a few interviews with nbcolympics. com and Access Hollywood online. As we were getting out of the car and walking towards security, I spotted Carl Lewis, so Glenn whipped out his gold medal and we all got our picture taken with him. I talked to him for a few minutes and he talked to Glenn about his medal and everything, so that was really cool. As my family knows all too well, I had a small obsession with Carl Lewis back in the ‘90s, so that pretty much made my entire year to be able to talk to him and get a picture taken with him!

I am back working at the media office at Beijing Normal University (BNU) where I am staying, and I was asked to help at the men’s basketball practice at 3 p.m. (it’s open to the media from 3 to 3:30 p.m.), so that should be pretty cool! Tonight I am going to watch gymnastics with the members of my team who are staying in Beijing through the closing ceremony. Tomorrow I have a few more media interviews with Glenn, so things aren’t really slowing down as much as I thought, which is good because the more media we can get while my athletes are still here, the better!

I will write more when I can! I am sure I will have some interesting stories from helping out with the media sessions at the men’s basketball practice the next few days!

Editor’s note: Mary Beth Vorwerk, a 1997 Princeton High School graduate, is in Beijing, China for the 2008 Olympic Games as the media and public relations manager for USA Shooting.

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