500 days to go? Why not?

 Yesterday, Monday, Sept. 21, marked a milestone in the Olympic journey, both in the larger sense and in a much more personal sense.

Obviously, I've written in this space countless times about my Olympic travels in Russia in 2014, Korea in 2018 and the plans to be in Tokyo next summer when the postponed Olympics take place.

But the milestone that passed yesterday was for the Beijing Olympics, coming in 2022. Now, that may seem like a ways away and indeed, yesterday marked 500 days until the start of the next Winter Olympics, which take place in February of 2022. But 500 days, in the grand scheme of things, is not that far away. It's less than two years from now and about six months after the Tokyo 2020 rescheduled Olympics are scheduled to take place.

The Beijing 2022 team was all over social media on Monday promoting the 500 days countdown and in China there was a big celebration near the Great Wall, which will likely provide the backdrop for a lot of NBC's extensive Olympic coverage in 2022. And rightfully so, it is an impressive piece of history.

And while the celebration was alive on the other side of the world, I was in my office in Meredith getting ready to send stories and photos to the editor for inclusion in this week's papers. When that was all done, I reached a little bit of a milestone of my own. I filled out the paperwork officially applying for credentials to what I am hoping will be my fourth Olympics.

The process of applying for Olympic media credentials is obviously not a short one, as a lot of planning goes into things. When I first applied to cover the Sochi Winter Olympics of 2014, it was actually 2012. If I remember correctly, it was late in the summer when I applied and then I got a call from a writer from Buffalo asking about my plans for covering the games, etc. In late October, I got the email confirming that I had gotten credentials to cover my first Olympics. I remember it well, I had just finished covering a football game at Kennett and because the cell service is so bad at the school, I was in the Burger King parking lot in North Conway checking my e-mail after the game.

For the PyeongChang Games in 2018, I applied at approximately the same time of the year, but didn't have to do an interview and again found out later in the fall that I had been approved. The Tokyo Olympics were on a different timeline because of the fact that they are happening in the summer, but it was still more than a year and a half before the scheduled 2020 Olympics that the process began.

The Beijing process seems to be a bit behind where the Sochi and PyeongChang processes were, but I am guessing that is completely because of the Tokyo situation, which has sent a lot of people scrambling to figure things out. The Olympics haven't been this close together since the early-1990s, when the Winter and Summer Games were held in the same year (1992, Albertville and Barcelona were the last time they were held in the same year). So, all the work that is going into getting ready for Tokyo would normally have been done by now and the focus could solely be on Beijing. However, with Tokyo delayed a year, there is work to be done for both, right now.

The e-mail announcing that the credentialing process was something I was expecting to arrive, though I was hoping it wasn't something that slipped through the cracks while I was laid off during the summer. The USOPC, which handles the credentialing of US media, told us that we would know if we were approved by early next year, meaning we'd have a year to plan it all out. While that may seem like a lot of time, it's definitely 3-4 months shorter than the last three Olympic processes.

Additionally, Tokyo is just about six months before Beijing, meaning if I end up going to both places, the time to come up with the money will be pretty short.

But, that's a problem for another day. The milestone has passed, both in China and right here at home. Looking forward to a possible fourth Olympics obviously may be a stretch considering I haven't made it to my third yet, but the power of positive thinking has to be put to work here.