2010 U.S. Olympic Media Summit - Lights, Camera, Ice

Tony Benshoof is at home inside a semi-circle table inside a Chicago hotel with a pack of scribes on the other side asking what it's like to be the Guinness Book of World Records' fastest luger ever.

At this point in the day, the 34-year-old Benshoof has already been interviewed dozens of times, with most of the questions having already been asked-dozens of times. But Benshoof is still going strong.

Being one of the top lugers in the world doesn't necessarily make one a celebrity. While tending the bar at Carpenter's Steak House at home in Hugo, Minn., few of the patrons even know why he's gone so often each winter.

But not today.

Welcome to the 2009 U.S. Olympic Team Media Summit, where hundreds of journalists know your name-or are at least learning it-and they all want your story to go with it.

"This will be my third Olympics so I've been through the rigmarole before, so I know what to expect," Benshoof said. "But it's fun, I don't know how else to say it. I enjoy it."

It's evident that he means it. Benshoof arrived for an eight-minute TV interview just after 9 a.m. on Thursday with a smile, some wit, and no shortage of stories to tell.

Seven hours later-after quick-fire interviews and photo shoots with the biggest national media outlets all morning-Benshoof sits back at his "round" table and reminisces with the hometown reporters from the Minneapolis Star Tribune and St. Paul Pioneer Press as if they were old friends.

Sure, the questions might be the same ones he's heard maybe 100 times already today, but that's OK, because today Benshoof is the star in a sport that is seeking all of the media attention it can get.

"I can only speak for myself, but it's a great opportunity to talk to people about the sport," Benshoof says. "And with the Olympics coming up, it's exciting. It's been well organized and lots of different types of media outlets (are here), from local to national, and it's been cool."

About 300 journalists are gathered in the massive Palmer House Hilton hotel in downtown Chicago for the summit. About 80 Team USA hopefuls for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics and Paralympics are the center of attention, all day, wherever they go. Some have joined the event via satellite. Some of the speedskaters broke from their Olympic Trials in Marquette, Mich., to do interviews.

The USOC has hosted a media summit before every Olympics since 1988, when the Summer Games were held in Seoul. Many of the biggest media outlets use the summit to do the interviews and take the photos that will run during the Olympics.

At the 2010 Media Summit, the USOC has credentialed more lifestyle journalists than ever, with reporters from People, Men's Journal and Wired interviewing the athletes alongside the sportswriters from the nation's daily newspapers. On Friday morning, snowboarder Louie Vito answered more questions about his upcoming Dancing With the Stars debut than about his Olympic aspirations.

Three-time Olympic long track speedskater Catherine Raney summed up her two days here in one word: busy. After a full second day on Thursday, Raney booked an early flight back that evening so she could get back to training.

"My day is very busy," she said before heading back home to Utah. "And they have it planned down to like every minute for us."

For three days, starting at 9 a.m., the athletes are ushered around a series of ballrooms to press conferences, broadcast salons and roundtable interview sessions, among personal obligations as well. Many athletes were seen walking around with their equipment, from snowboards to luge helmets, as they bounced in and out of different interviews and photo shoots.

"It's confusing sometimes," Raney said. "It's nice that they have somebody with you to direct you because one room you are doing an interview with somebody from NBC and the next minute you are taking pictures at Getty Images, and then you are doing a local affiliate for your hometown station, and then you are talking with someone from an Internet newspaper. You are just pretty much all over the place all the time."

On Thursday morning, hopefuls for the U.S. women's hockey team took the stage in the main ballroom for the second press conference of the day. This isn't some stuffy room in the bowels of an old stadium though.

The athletes sit on a stage in front of up to 100 reporters. Behind them is a customized set with Team USA's Vancouver 2010 logo plastered throughout. Beyond that are three massive projectors beaming videos action photos as the athletes take the stage.

At least one of the players left impressed.

Hilary Knight, the youngest member of the women's hockey team roster at 20, isn't used to this kind of attention. It hasn't just been nonstop for her today. It's been a hectic couple of weeks to say the least. The women's hockey team met in Blaine, Minn., outside of Minneapolis last month for an intense training camp and then the team was pared down from 41 players to 23. The final 21-player roster will be announced in December.

She and the other players were then whisked away to a series of media events, including photo shoots and autograph sessions at the Minnesota State Fair. There, young girls waited in hour-long lines for the players' autographs. Then they traveled to Vancouver to actually play their sport and soon were Chicago bound for this event.

Hours after that morning news conference, she was still talking to the media. And she loved it.

She barely had time to hug her dad and a longtime family friend who lives in Chicago before she was off her next interview.

"This is so cool,'' Knight said. "People actually want to talk to me.''

With so many reporters gathered to talk to athletes who are seldom covered, it's only natural that most athletes go through some media training before arriving. Most of the individual national governing bodies require their athletes to attend an annual training session.

USA Luge, for example, works with media training expert Mark Allen of Maverick Entertainment each year to help instill confidence in the athletes so they can represent themselves in the most positive light.

"They say a lot of stuff that you should say or that you shouldn't say just to kind of protect yourself and protect your image and your identity and not letting someone manipulate you in an interview or something like that," said Erin Hamlin, who in 2009 broke Germany's 16-year hold (a stretch of 99 races) on the world championship title.

Sitting on a stage just big enough for her chair and a microphone, surrounded by journalists, Hamlin didn't seem to have any problems at all.

"It's great because it kind of gives you practice," she said. "Myself included, we aren't great at public speaking, and I used to be the super shy girl who wouldn't even want to call someone. That's another thing that definitely I'm thankful for, for being an athlete, is kind of opening me up a little bit."

"It's great," she added. "The media and exposure is the lifeline of all sports. I mean, if we didn't have spectators, we didn't have fans.''

 Story courtesy Red Line Editorial, Inc. Chrös McDougall is a freelance contributor for teamusa.org. This story was not subject to the approval of the United States Olympic Committee or any National Governing Bodies.