The road to Beijing

It seems like Tokyo 2020 just ended, even though it was a month ago now. But, while I was in Tokyo, I got an e-mail from the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee asking me to confirm all my details for the Beijing Olympics. I wasn't quite ready to deal with that while dealing with all the Tokyo stuff, so I waited until I got home and had a little time to take care of business.

I did take care of that paperwork a week or so ago, but it just seems like it is so quick on the heels of Tokyo that I am not quite ready for it to be here. Obviously, the postponement of the 2020 Olympics for a year contributed to the short time between the two Olympics for me.

However, this is also a new experience for me in that even if the Olympics had gone off as planned in 2020, there was still a shorter time than between my previous Olympic experiences. After Sochi in 2014, which was my first Olympic experience, there was four years before I was back in the Olympics in PyeongChang. While the Olympics are four years apart, usually the paperwork and all that starts probably about a year and a half out, so even after Sochi, I had more than two years to save money and gear up for a new Olympic experience.

After PyeongChang in 2018, I made the decision to try and get credentials for a Summer Games, just for the experience of seeing the difference between the two Olympics. The Summer Games are much bigger, with many more athletes, many more venues, many more events and many more press members. I wasn't sure that I would get the summer credentials, but they came through and I thought it would be cool to see something new. And it was.

However, the short time period between PyeongChang and Tokyo compacted everything I needed to do, though the postponement pushed everything back. But, that postponement also put the time period between Tokyo and Beijing at about six months, which really means that I was dealing with paperwork, payments and the like for two different Olympics.

Now the Tokyo is officially in the rearview mirror, the focus is on Beijing. They have half of my accommodation money and today, I took the next big step and booked a flight from Boston to Beijing. The flight over is more than 20 hours, mainly due to a six-hour layover in Hong Kong, though the flight back is a few hours shorter.

I know that Beijing will likely have many of the same restrictions that we had in Tokyo. Those restrictions were tough to deal with, though I knew they were necessary all the way around. It will be interesting to see what exactly we have to go through to get to Beijing. But, the pieces are in place, the fourth Olympics experience is right around the corner.

And who knows, Paris 2024?

The information sheet for the hotel I have booked for the Beijing Winter Olympics in February.