Reporting live from the French Alps to Bejing, this is François Quairel!

Wow, it's been a while since I last posted. This blog seems to be taking on a bit of a sporty theme... first Le Tour de France, and now Les Jeux Olympiques !

As you know, François is a journalist at Alpes 1, the local radio station in Gap. And he's crazy about his job and the profession of journalism as a whole. Crazy enough to get up many mornings at the crack of dawn to do the a.m. news broadcasts at the radio. And even crazy enough to wake up at 3:15 a.m. to go cover a special news story. Yes, 3:15. In. The. Morning.

"Why??!" you ask?

Well, there is a French swimmer called Alain Bernard who comes from Châteauvieux, a little village of 450 people close to Gap. At least 150 of those villagers are just as crazy as François, because they chose to get up in the middle of the night to watch Alain Bernard swim in the Men's 100m freestyle event. Which, with the time difference between here and China, took place at 4:45 a.m. French time. It must have been a very festive atmosphere there in la salle des fêtes (the community centre) with a big-screen TV set up and champagne bottles at the ready. Alain Bernard's parents and relatives were there, along with the village mayor and other folks. The swimmers started the race and the atmosphere was tense. Everybody clenched their fists and cheered on their hometown boy. And then somebody stepped on a cable and the TV image went blank. Zip. Zero. Rien.

(Note: that "somebody" is not me! I was, of course, home fast asleep during all this. My retelling of the story is thanks to FQ and the news report he filed.)

Can you imagine the panic? The disappointment? The desperation?

Luckily somebody had brought a radio, so they tuned it in just in time to hear that Alain Bernard had won the gold metal. Champagne all around!

Anyway, it sounds like it was all very exciting and FQ's report for the AFP (Associated French Press) was sent straight to Bejing. He has since received congratulations on his reporting from the AFP, their team of reporters in Bejing, and (most exciting of all!) François was on national TV as part of a news report on the whole hullabaloo. Whee!

To read the report FQ filed for the AFP (en français, bien sûr), click here.

To see the video on the LCI website (basically, the equivalent of French CNN), click here! And keep your eye out for the cute French reporter in the red shirt! (Dave and Ange, are you loving the Stanford plug?)