Decoding those tags! (AKA Accreditation!)

Another blog from Sochi worth having a look. Turns out I wasn’t supposed to blog a picture of my accreditation, so for Rio you can still view the card from Sochi!

Here is the original blog from Sochi

You’ve all seen them when watching athletes on TV, those big plastic cards hanging around their necks, ubiquitous in the Games environment. But what do these cards do really?

So here is the scoop – and you might want to look at the picture – not my face, but all these numbers and symbols on the card. They all mean something, and pretty much every area of the games has a symbol. If it’s on your card, then you can go there. If not – well, trying to argue with a Russian security person might not be your best option…

I have a lot of symbols because typically a NPC president (more jargon – NPC stands for “National Paralympic Committee”) has access to a lot of places. And now everything is bar codes so let’s start to the left of the bar code (which gets scanned repeatedly so a big computer somewhere always knows where I am…).

OLP is Olympic Park, DIN is the villages dining halls, T-2 means I have a car allocated to me (I actually share it with the team since I really don’t need a car all the time!).

ALL means I can get into every venue. Athletes can only get into their own sport venue. PLV means I can get in the Paralympic Village (double security to get in there) PFH means I can get in the “Paralympic Family Hotel” – that’s the more secured hotel for dignitaries, IBC & MPC are the media centres. It’s safe around here – no kidding!

The coloured strip means something as well! Blue means I can get to the field of play, and these other numbers are all different areas as well. But the most important one (not really but it’s the nicest…) is the coveted #6 which is the VIP lounges at the venues. There is always plenty of good food there. #6 and dieting would probably not be fully compatible.

So now you know!