LORNA CAMPBELL

The Venue Media Manager for the Olympic Tennis Centre led a team of six paid staff and 65 volunteers from a round the world. She has also worked at Wimbledon and in rugby and golf, and currently works for Hill+ Know lt on Strategies as a regional director of sports. I was hired to ensure the media (written press, photographers and broadcast) had the best possible working environment with access to all they needed to do their jobs effectively. It wasn’t always easy in a venue that spanned across 10 match courts and six practice courts, with limited signage and even less budget to rectify any of the issues that arose. I took a sabbatical from my day job to add tomy Olympic experience and I feel very privileged tohave been part of the Games. Despite all the challenges it taught me a lot and was a great contrast from London 2012, which can only be a good thing as I now begin work on the Winter Olympics in Korea. The first day or two in Rio was quite unsettling, everything is alien, and when I arrived sixweeks ahead of the Games there was a lot of work to be done, so I was literally stepping into a building site. But the transformation in that time was amazing, teams the venue worked so hard to do as much as was possible and within time budget constraints mucked and we all in and gotthrough each day to make it as good a Games as possible. I found the Brazilians friendly, to be very though many of the staff I worked venue with were not locals and only a handful of my 65 volunteers were from had Brazil. Most made the trip from It took overseas. a fewweeks for my and body to adjust brain again to things like flushing toilets, kettles, decent food on real plates, proper cutlery, tap water you can drink, normal clothes, my job, my friends, my apartment, Singapore! 24/7 chaos, four hours To go from night sleep a for four weeks takes switching some off from. But I havea lot of wonderful memories and experiences to take from Rio, and I have no regrets in making the decision togo.