There are less than 150 days until Opening Ceremony of the Summer Olympics. Here's what you need to know.

Believe it or not, we're now less than 150 days away from the start of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

And as the International Olympic Committee and local organizers continue to work through the various COVID-19 countermeasures that will be needed to safely stage the Games, thousands of athletes are focused on the first step toward winning gold: Olympic qualification.

The pandemic has led to a patchwork qualifying system that varies largely by sport. For Team USA, this means that 79 athletes in 14 sports have already booked their tickets to Tokyo, in one way or another. In other sports, like men's and women's basketball, the United States has already qualified a team but has yet to select the specific athletes who will comprise it.

Sports like baseball and softball illustrate some of these qualifying discrepancies. The U.S. baseball team will compete at a qualifying event in Arizona in late March and book its ticket to Tokyo with a win. The U.S. softball team, meanwhile, has not just qualified. It has also selected the 15 members of its Olympic roster.

For many individual athletes, Olympic qualification will be determined by their world ranking at a specific date, or by their performance at a specialized qualifying event. The most high-profile U.S. trials will come in mid to late June, including swimming (beginning June 13 in Omaha, Nebraska), track and field (beginning June 18 in Eugene, Oregon) and gymnastics (beginning June 24, in St. Louis, Missouri).

In the meantime, here are the big Olympic storylines you might have missed in recent weeks. 

-- Tom Schad, Paste BN Sports