Twelve years later, Amber Walbeck remembers the experience as if it were yesterday.
The stadium in London fell silent as a crowd of over 50,000 people held their breath, not wanting to disrupt the 100m race that was about to begin.
As the gunshot fired, the runners sprinted down the track. The race was done in seconds and cheers filled the arena with the photographers’ lights flashing everywhere.
In the midst of this thunderous applause and excitement was Walbeck, assigned with ensuring the venue infrastructure ran smoothly before, during and after the games.
The project to deliver the stadium started a year out before the 2012 London Olympic Games even started. The process included transitioning the venue from the phenomenal opening ceremony, to athletic events, and ultimately to the closing ceremony.
The transition between opening ceremony to athletics was fast and included reinstalling thousands of seats, installing a new pitch that was covered by the opening ceremony stage, and hundreds of other tasks to prep the stadium for competition.
“We became really bonded as a team, and I love that venue,” Walbeck said. “We put so much into it. It was a long journey to deliver the stadium for London 2012.”
Walbeck’s first brush with the Olympics was the Salt Lake Winter Olympic Games in 2002 where she was hired as a contractor out of her architectural firm MHTN Architects starting in 2000.
During the Salt Lake Olympic Games, Walbeck was primarily responsible for setting up the then-E-Center (now Maverik Center) for hockey games. After the Games, she got a call in 2006 from a friend to work on the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver to work on the ice venues infrastructure, design, and delivery.
After the Rio 2016 Games, she became an advisor for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and has since worked on every Olympics in a variety of roles.
“In 2002, I was thinking ‘I can go have an adventure, or I can be doing the same job until I turn 50,’” Walbeck said. “I decided I was gonna have this one adventure. Then I never moved back home. I've just lived all over the world since then.”
Walbeck works as the head of infrastructure for the IOC, where she supports organizing committees with venue design, delivery, and look of the Games, including signage design and delivery. She supported the venues and infrastructure, “Look of the Games,” and signage teams deliver the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics..
Other managers of popular sporting events, like FIFA for example, tend to multiple stadiums that all share the same sport. Walbeck, on the other hand, has to keep track of dozens of sports that all have different field of play requirements.
Not only that, but each venue can vary in different signage, restroom, ticketing, and food and beverage needs, as well as changing sports throughout the Games.
“The logistics and the sheer volume and coordination that happens in Olympic Games is unprecedented for any event in the world,” Walbeck said. “Sometimes I think fans just walk up to a venue and assume it’s a standard operation, but there's so much that goes into it: so many different stakeholders, transport systems, ticketing, volunteers, etc. All of it is quite complex and is why it takes so long to plan.”
In venues and infrastructure earlier in her career, Walbeck not only designed the stadiums with her team, they also built, delivered, and maintained them throughout the Games. She now advises and supports the organizing committees when issues or questions arise.
She also guides the host city planners in making direction-guiding signs that reach a universal audience visiting for the Games. Every guiding piece of wayfinding information has to be consistent across languages and every station. Language use includes the placing of pictograms to help guide those not native to the home country's language or English.
“It becomes pretty technical,” Walbeck said.
Even the Olympic banners and logos applied to each venue go through Walbeck and the brand team at the IOC.
Initially in her event industry career, Walbeck used to be one of the only women in a leadership position covering venues. That has gradually changed throughout her tenure.
“I used to be the only girl at the table, especially in this industry of venue design and delivery,” Walbeck said, reflecting on her initial work in London on mostly male-led construction and delivery coordination committees. “It took a couple of meetings when they started to realize ‘Oh, wait, she actually is in charge. She's the one that knows what she's talking about.’ I had to win them over a little bit.”
Walbeck has since seen many women join her field, especially after Rio 2016, and loves mentoring the next generation.
“It's good to pass down your knowledge,” she said. “I used to be that young person just starting out in the games world trying to learn everything I could. It's fun to teach and pass along the lessons I’ve learned.”
Traveling the world has given her a number of connections both in and out of the sports environment. As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Walbeck tries to attend church whenever she can and meets expatriate members in other nations working in consulates and embassies.
“We laugh a lot [in the sports world] because you can go to any country and run into people that you know,” Walbeck said. “Having the Olympic experience, it bonds people and we can pick up like it was just yesterday. I find that incredible.”
As the Paris Olympics end, the preparations for the upcoming Winter and Summer Games are already starting. After a four-week vacation and a subsequent team debrief, Walbeck will be back in meetings to support the planning of stadiums, signage, and the look of the Milan, Los Angeles, and Brisbane games. She wouldn’t have it any other way.