Those Facebook memories struck again.
This time, it was Sunday when I happened to be on the laptop and took a quick break from work and the memory popped up. It was four years ago that day (December 18) that I received the e-mail from the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee that I had been granted credentials for the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics.
What a ride that turned out to be.
That e-mail came a scant 10 months after I had returned from PyeongChang, South Korea and the 2018 Winter Olympics. On a whim, wanting to see how a Summer Olympics experience would differ from the two Winter Olympics that I had been to, I had applied for credentials for the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo. I was excited to get the chance to see something different, to see the Olympics without having to don a winter coat at any point.
The next year proved to be much the same type of processes that I had gone leading up to the 2014 Sochi Winter Games and the aforementioned PyeongChang Games four years later. There was the necessary paperwork getting filled out, lodging being secured with a deposit put down on a hotel room in Tokyo and general preparedness. Things were looking good as 2019 turned in to 2020 and the year of my first Summer Olympics dawned.
Of course, we all know how 2020 turned out.
Like millions of others, my life came to a grinding halt thanks to the pandemic. At first there was optimism that the Olympics would go on as planned, but as it got to the end of March, organizers realized that there was no way that the pandemic would be cleared up by August and the decision was made to postpone the Olympics by one year, the first time that had ever happened. A few weeks later, I was laid off from the newspaper as the business struggled to get through COVID. With no sports going on, it was a logical decision and one that I completely understood.
While I anticipated that I would get my job back, my concerns about the Olympics were many. I had no idea whether it would be possible to move such a massive event. Would all the money that I had paid for hotels and other related amenities carry over? We were assured by Tokyo 2020 organizers that we would have the lodging that we booked and any money and reservations that we made would be honored.
Of course, I also saw trips to Florida with local baseball teams and New York City and Atlanta for Survivor events go by the wayside, as did a trip to Ireland with the UNH Marching Band to perform on St. Patrick's Day. But the Olympics were the big one.
As it turned out, you are able to move a massive event like the Olympics. Kudos to the Tokyo 2020 people and the International Olympic Committee for doing the seemingly impossible in moving the Summer Olympics ahead one year. However, even that one year wasn't enough to get ahead of the pandemic, as the amount of paperwork and medical testing that had to be done prior to leaving for Tokyo added a lot more fun to the experience.
That being said, I got to experience a pretty unique event, an Olympics with almost no spectators in a pandemic world. I traveled halfway around the world to be part of an historic event. And seven months later, I got on a plane and did it all again, this time in China for the Winter Olympics in Beijing. Covering two Olympics all while dealing with a pandemic was an interesting and unique situation and one that I won't soon forget.
As I sit here now, we are anticipating hearing from the USOPC about our credential requests for Paris 2024 at some point in the next month. I'm excited to hear how that process went, though I am still on the fence as to whether Paris is in the offing.
It's amazing how one small memory on Facebook can take you back in time to a world that really doesn't exist anymore. A time when nobody knew what COVID was and Corona was just a Mexican beer.
Tokyo Big Sight, which was the site of the media center for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics in the summer of 2021.
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