I've been a journalist for 17 years and I must say these last days are the biggest adrenalin buzz I've ever got. Working on the Olympics coverage is exhausting but rewarding - the Sydney 2000 site went live on September 10th, after eight weeks of building it, and we've been going 24 hours since then.
Our job here is to get the results up on the website in the fastest time, and to provide live, up-to-the-minute and indepth commentary and analysis. The site is very extensive with lots of different sections - "Latest News", "Medal Table", "Schedules". The "Irish in Action" section keeps track of where and when the Irish are competing, profiles all the athletes on the Irish team and charts their progress, with special commentary and analysis.
My job is to co-ordinate everything, from the initial design of the site and gathering background information on all the athletes to the hour-to-hour news updates and reports coming from the news agency wires. The schedule is hectic. I come in at 6 a.m. and catch up with all that's been happening during the day in Sydney while I've been grabbing a few hours' sleep. We always have to be conscious of the 10-hour time difference. We have five full-time and four freelance journalists here at the moment working 12-hour shifts, and then we have our guest commentators Ian O'Riordan, sports journalist with The Irish Times and authority on athletics, Niall Bruton for track and field events also, and former Olympic swimmer Nick O'Hare for the swimming events.
The goal of the Sydney 2000 site is to provide up-to-the-minute information and results on the Olympics, especially on all the Irish athletes competing. So sometimes we've worked for 24 hours on the trot. We didn't send anyone to Sydney, but we do have access to the Irish Times reporters who are out there. We have been providing live Internet commentary on certain events - only in text though, because the International Olympic Committee has prevented the transmission of live pictures or audio over the web, for commercial reasons.
Sonia O'Sullivan's run in the 5,000-metre final has been our biggest test to date. We were so petrified before the race started. We were so afraid that everything would go wrong. The biggest challenge is keeping up with the information as it happens. Thousands of people are there watching for instant results and analysis. Ian O'Riordan was giving live commentary on the race, lap-by-lap analysis. There was a point in the race when we thought that Sonia wouldn't be able to do it, and then when we saw her break for it we were so excited. It was incredible.
Immediately we sent out SMS messages - text messages to mobile phones - saying "Sonia's got silver". Because we are a multi-publishing platform our main goal is to get the most up-to-date information out there via various different media: Internet, e-mail, WAP, SMS text and then the Irish Times newspaper. All of these services complement each other.
We were very nervous about the Sonia O'Sullivan race. We knew that so many people would be watching the race and we just couldn't be sure that the site could handle the huge traffic expected. There have been problems with some sites and we had no guarantees that the site wouldn't slow down. That would have been a disaster. Since the site went live two weeks ago there have been 540,000 page impressions, with an average of 50,000 people logging on per day. The Nielson Net ratings have placed us 10th in Europe, two ranks above the BBC site and Yahoo! UK, and that is just amazing.
Thank God the office is above a 24-hour shop. Because of the time difference we've been keeping crazy hours, fueled by junk food and take-away pizza. My job is to ensure that everything runs smoothly and so far it has. I haven't been getting much sleep or doing anything else besides work for two weeks now, but we've been beating the official Olympics site in getting the reports up, so it's worth it. We're watching all of the events on television and taking all the news from the wires as it comes in. I know that everybody is very tired and that's when mistakes happen so I have to double-check everything.
We've been receiving lots of e-mails and feedback from lots of people, including some of the athletes out there in Sydney, and that's great. So far we've only received one e-mail complaint, so I'm happy.
When the Olympics are finished we will be reverting back to an 18-hour-a-day coverage of all the big sporting events on Sports Extra. I'm taking two weeks off, though, before I start back into it.
In conversation with Sue Carter
