World class facilities for a World Class venue! The new Kitzbuehel press centre
By Neil McQuoid
The closer you get to your arrival in Kitzbuehel for The Race, the greater the excitement builds. The ground is snow covered and the mountains are looking fantastic. Whether arriving by road, rail or by air, the view is incredible. This year the new Kitzcongress Wirtschaftskammer that hosts the Media Centre, is a new clean cut and impressive building. The new press centre has allowed cutting edge technology to be developed and more journalists to cover the greatest show on snow live from the picturesque Austrian town of Kitzbuehel.
Kitzbuehel and the Hahnenkamm has its own unique atmosphere. The lure of the race course and the extraordinary feats that the racers produce year on year, means that the media appeal increases each year. While the alpine nations are heavily represented in the media ranks, even the smaller countries, some with no racers competing also arrive to cover this great event. So over the last six months the new media centre has been built to house more journalists to describe the races to the global audience; more photographers to capture the moments and allow more audio, video and TV clips to be produced.
On arrival in the new centre, one can feel the exciting aura generated by the new centre. The openness and attention to detail has been welcomed by the early arrivals in the centre. According to the new head of press for the Hahnenkamm, Wolfgang Leitner, the new centre has allowed the capacity of seats in the centre to be enlarged from 150 to comfortably over 800. In past years, journalists have been tightly packed in and this created tension with every journalist wanting a seat. The new and relaxed atmosphere that the new building has created means that each journalist has more space. With 600 square meters of space in the main room and three further rooms each with another 100 square meters, the new centre is rightly described as “A modern meeting place for the Kitzbuehel economy!”
But how many journalists are expected to turn up? While accreditations are still being received, such is the appeal of the event, the final number will only be known on Sunday! It is known that early requests for accreditation have come from over 40 countries already!
The new building, completely new from the ground up, took five and a half months to build. It has allowed Austria Telekom, partners with the Kitzbuehel Ski Club and Rolex in providing free internet access for the visiting journalists of all variations, to implement their most up to date fibre optic cabling and wifi options. Following the training runs and races, the race is on for all the media to show the world what the racers have done, who has won and get the interviews and images up online and available for the world to see. With the images and text going all around the world, the Rolex sponsored communications centre is an important hub of the event.
Such is the thirst of the public for information on their favourite winter sports stars, the speed of delivery of the information is sent out via two separate networks. The capacity hungry television and video mediums will be sent out on one network and the pictures and text will go out on a separate line; this allowing both groups to run at optimum levels. With video, audio, text and pictures being sent off at 50megabyte a second, speed is of the essence for the information junkies awaiting the news!
It is not just a new building and improved working conditions that the working media will benefit from but as the saying goes, “A happy worker is a fed worker,” gone is the diet of yesteryear, Wurstl and Goulash soup and in has come more fruit and healthy options! The smiles on the early arrivals have been very noticeable! An alert mind that comes from a healthy body means that this year’s coverage should be the best ever!
Kitzbuehel is coming alive and the improved information and communications has allowed the Jury to cancel the first training run for the Downhill in the knowledge that Wednesday and Thursday will provide great conditions for the two training runs before the racing starts on Friday with the Super G. This has also allowed the racers to have a further day of rest before tackling the Hahnenkamm. Wednesday will also see the large Christian Schmid designed ice sculpture of the late Toni Sailor being unveiled at the start. Ten metres high and created out of 250 cubic metres of snow, the sculpture will sit overlooking the start and Mausefalle, important parts of a race that Toni Sailor helped to develop!
The arrivals are now growing from a trickle to a stream; old friendships are being reacquainted. Yet all the handshaking and greeting is taking place under the watchful gaze of the Hahnenkamm: Over the next five days, new heroes will be created and the exploits of the stars will be reported on and sent around the world by word, video, audio, image and online!
Welcome to the 70th running of The Hahnenkamm in Kitzbuehel!
This article also appears on www.hahnenkammnews.com