Another countdown

There have been a lot of countdowns regarding the Olympics over the course of the last two years, especially since we had a couple different ones for Tokyo with the postponement. Each one has special meaning in one way or the other. For instance, Milan-Cortina recently celebrated 1,500 days until they host the Winter Olympics, which will be coming in 2026.

Today's countdown is one week until the Opening Ceremonies for Beijing's Winter Olympics. The official ceremony takes place on Friday at the Bird's Nest, the stadium that served as the home for track and field and the ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympics.

The other day, I reached out to the great Bill Hancock, who handles all of the high demand tickets for the United States Olympic and Paralympic Team. For those that may not know, our press credentials get us into most of the events that take place at the Olympics. However, there are some events that are deemed 'high demand' by organizers and for those events, in addition to our credentials we have to have a ticket. The tickets are provided to us for free, but we have to request them through the National Organizing Committee for the country we are from, thus my reaching out to the USOPC and Bill Hancock.

I made a request for a ticket for the Opening Ceremonies. Seeing the Opening Ceremonies has been something I have always wanted to do, but I have just never had the chance in my three previous Olympics. In Sochi, I was at the Moscow airport preparing to board my final flight to Sochi when the Opening Ceremonies were happening. In PyeongChang four years later, I was checking in to my accommodations during the Opening Ceremony. I actually had a ticket for those Opening Ceremonies, but during communicating with Bill at the USOPC, he noted the timing of my arrival would likely mean I would miss out on being able to get to the venue on time. He was right. In Tokyo, I purposely planned my flight for a day ahead of the Opening Ceremonies so I was guaranteed to be in the city if a ticket was available. Of course, COVID forced the three-day quarantine in my room, so I watched them on television.

My flight into Beijing arrives on Thursday morning and the Opening Ceremonies are Friday night, so I made my request to Bill Hancock and he responded in the affirmative, meaning I have a ticket to the Opening Ceremonies, assuming I get to Beijing.

With the flight cancellation, I had to rebook and the only available flight was a day earlier, so instead of leaving on Tuesday, I am leaving on Monday, however my flight from Paris to Beijing is still on Wednesday, meaning I have a long layover in Paris. It's not the ideal situation, but it was what had to be done to make things work.

I am not holding my breath in any way, shape or form that everything goes right over the next few days, though I think with all the things that have gone wrong, it might be time for a thing or two to go right.

The Main Media Center in Beijing is where media spend a good deal of time, since it has everything we need. Photo from beijing2022.cn.