tweeting<\/a> on his X account, @MileHighRoach, a picture from his perch at the Super Bowl with the words, \u201cperpetual, eternal, everlasting, ceaseless, endless, infinite, unending, interminable, boundless, continuous MAY THIS INCREDIBLE RIDE NEVER END! Thank you @NFL for 18 times here, in this seat, for the greatest single-day sports event in the world\u201d to then tweeting a picture inside Milano\u2019s Santagiulia Hockey Arena with the words, \u201cWow! Thanks to the magic of air travel, time zones and lie-flat seats, I\u2019m here!! My first assignment \u2013 USA v CAN Let\u2019s go! Preliminary Round seems like an understatement for this clash. Viva Italia!\u201d<\/p>\nHow\u2019d he do it?<\/p>\n
\u201cIn hindsight, I don\u2019t know why I didn\u2019t poke around at NBC, because I\u2019m guessing they probably had some sort of flight that went directly from San Francisco,\u201d Roach said, laughing, after announcing two hockey games Wednesday at the Milano Santagiulia arena, including a late-night contest between Sweden and host Italy.<\/p>\n
That was a reference to clearly Mike Tirico, the play-by-play legend for the Super Bowl who is also the host of the Olympics on NBC, having a private jet lined up to get him to Italy for his duties here.<\/p>\n
Roach, however, boarded a red-eye flight from San Francisco to Newark five hours after the Super Bowl, then connected there and landed in Milan at 7 a.m. Tuesday. Hours later, he was rinkside announcing the United States\u2019 5-0 win over Canada in a women\u2019s preliminary game.<\/p>\n
\u201cThankfully, I had some lay down seats and I got good sleep,\u201d Roach said with his deep voice but behind very red eyes. \u201cSo I made it to Canada-U.S., and that was pretty good way to burst out of the box.\u201d<\/p>\n
Roach swore, amazingly, that he wasn\u2019t tired as he left the arena around midnight Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do this a lot through the year, traveling around, but I\u2019ll admit this one I was worried about,\u201d he said. \u201cSuper Bowl Sunday was one of the most stressful days because first, it\u2019s Super Bowl Sunday, but I didn\u2019t just have the opportunity to wake up and go, \u2018Okay, I\u2019m gonna announce the Super Bowl today. Get ready, get my suit.\u2019 I had to figure out what I\u2019m packing in my bag to go to Italy, what I\u2019m checking in a box to ship back home to Colorado. And I\u2019m doing all that at six o\u2019clock in the morning before the Super Bowl. So it was the most stressful Super Bowl day that I had, and I was kind of thinking, \u2018Why did I put myself into all of this? What\u2019s it gonna be like?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cBut once I landed yesterday, I felt great. I could have announced a game at noon. Luckily I had \u2019til 8, but I could have done it much earlier.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, doing an Olympic hockey game is not like doing an Avalanche game.<\/p>\n
Next to him alongside the rink is another P.A. announcer who is essentially translating Roach in Italian. And there\u2019s a cadence and rhythm to it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was kind of crazy,\u201d Roach said. \u201cThese other guys have been here for four or five or six days, and done some games already, and done that ping pong, back and forth. It\u2019s tricky because I\u2019m saying a position and a number, then stop, and then I\u2019m saying a name that went with the old position and number, and then I say a new position and number, and stop. But I\u2019ve done it before, so I kind of had it back in my head how it worked.\u201d<\/p>\n
Roach considers himself the luckiest guy in the world to witness and embed himself into the coolest sporting gigs in the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cI called my wife yesterday and I said, \u2018You know, for as crabby as I was on Super Bowl Sunday when I talked to you before the game, I feel great now, and I\u2019m very glad I did this,\u2019\u201d Roach said. \u201cI\u2019m so lucky. I get offered all of these cool things. And other than doing a good job when I get there, there\u2019s nothing I do that makes me deserve any of these more than anyone else. So I just try to do a good job and hope I get asked back.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MILAN \u2013 Alan Roach\u2019s giant, baritone voice is easily recognizable to any sports fanatic. It echoes off the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":455173,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5116],"tags":[193,192,144,5277,5,54125,5046,4814,1812,4,2602,18710,17256,54279],"class_list":{"0":"post-455172","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-colorado-avalanche","8":"tag-avalanche","9":"tag-colorado","10":"tag-colorado-avalanche","11":"tag-coloradoavalanche","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-mens-olympic-ice-hockey","14":"tag-minnesota-vikings","15":"tag-new-england-patriots","16":"tag-nfl","17":"tag-nhl","18":"tag-olympics","19":"tag-san-francisco-49ers","20":"tag-seattle-seahawks","21":"tag-womens-olympic-ice-hockey"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116055501968347450","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=455172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/455173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}