COMMUNITY COMMENTARY:

Editor’s Note: Michael Villani is a contributing writer to the Daily Pilot and as the venue announcer for indoor volleyball in Beijing for the 2008 Olympic Games he will file occasional columns.

It’s incredible that four years has gone by so fast. And it’s even more incredible that I’m going to work my second Summer Olympics as the venue announcer for indoor volleyball in Beijing.

I’m well into my direct 12-hour flight from Los Angeles on Air China, reminiscing on how this almost didn’t happen. It started toward the end of competition in Athens when a number of us English announcers made contact with the Chinese observers in our respective venues, pitching our services for the summer games in ’08.

The standard answer from these officials: “We‘ve got 1.3 billion people in our country. We are going to train them to announce in English and French.” The two other languages, along with the host country, are used in the protocol for all Olympic announcements. We were all a bit discouraged but vowed not to give up on our quest.

At first, no one had any information. Two years ago Tim Hughes from Salt Lake e-mailed us all and said he had heard from his boxing contacts that things weren’t going so well in the training process and there were rumblings that Beijing Olympic officials were going “outside” to hire “foreign experts” for each venue.

He had an e-mail address and a contact named Chang Shan, who was fielding applications. We all saw this as our chink in the armor and started chipping away.

I fired off my résumé with a cover letter to Mr. Chang Shan. To my surprise, I received an e-mail back in a couple of days, thanking me for my interest and requesting more information. My second letter related my years in the announcing business and sports broadcasting jobs.

Shan wrote back that the material had been received, they were all impressed with my work and I was under consideration. She ended that e-mail writing, “By the way I’m a GIRL!!”

I immediately called Tim and said, “did you know Chang Shan was a she?” He had no idea. We called all our colleagues and e-mailed our humblest apologies and “hoped in no way we had offended her.” She assured us we hadn’t. This was two years ago.

Well, here I am on my way, after kissing my wife, Patti, goodbye, for a monthlong adventure as the finest athletes compete and the eyes of the world watch Beijing and all of its glory. It is going to be exhilarating, and I will relay the growing excitement to you as I report from the games.

MICHAEL VILLANI is an actor/voice over artist in Los Angeles and a longtime Newport Beach resident.