One of the first stops U.S. Olympians make when they arrive in Paris is the Team USA Welcome Experience, located about a 30-minute drive from the heart of Paris. Run by the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, for Olympians, it’s like Christmas. Every athlete is fitted for their opening- and closing-ceremonies attire and receives a duffel bag stuffed with shirts, shorts, pants, and everything else they might need in the Olympic Village.
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00:00I'm Alice Park and I've just landed in France for the Paris 2024 Olympics.
00:06I decided to make like an Olympian and headed straight for the Team USA Welcome Experience.
00:11It's located about 30 minutes outside of Paris and it's where all the athletes will come to be
00:16outfitted for their opening and closing ceremony uniforms. They'll also receive all the gear that
00:21they're going to wear in the Olympic Village. Not only will they be outfitted from head to toe,
00:26but a team of tailors is standing by to take their measurements and make sure everything
00:31fits perfectly. Let's take a look inside and see why everyone says this experience is like
00:37Christmas in July. So we've got mostly jacket, shirts and the jeans for the opening ceremony
00:45and for the closing we are attaching the patches onto all the closing jackets. For a few special
00:52alterations we are going to have to like shorten sleeves and stuff like that on the closing,
00:57but not anything major. The most common one at the moment is the closing jeans as well. I mean
01:04we've got so many different alterations across the board, so for example we can have someone
01:09that depending as well like on our sizing we could have something as simple as like a shortened
01:14sleeve, but then on the other hand we can have something where we're sizing it down to make it
01:18fit them perfectly, which you know is a slightly bigger job. We kind of do a variety of things,
01:24whatever we need to do in order to make them look good we'll make it work. Our team consists of 22
01:29tailors. We currently have a group of six that are doing the fittings, but while they're doing that
01:34the rest of the team is in here and they're all doing all the alterations. In terms of timing we
01:40can work, we can have a nice slim you know slow day depending on our volume and how quick we're
01:45working through, but a lot of towards the end of the week we will work like late, you know early
01:50into the morning, late into the night, whatever we need to do to get it done. We kind of have a nice
01:56little organization in this room so we like to make it so that it's as effective as possible
02:01for everyone so that we're working as quickly as possible. And everything will be ready by
02:06opening on Friday? Of course, it has to be.