NBC, Rio Organizers Proposing 10 P.M. Start For Swimming Finals at 2016 Olympics

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Photo Courtesy: Brendan Maloney – USA Today Sports

SYDNEY – Television broadcasters appear to be affecting the time schedule for the 2016 Olympics, with news this week that swimming finals at the Games could start at 10 p.m. in Rio de Janeiro to fit with NBC’s plan to air races live to American viewers.

The move harkens back to the 2008 Olympics, where NBC’s influence was a major part of moving swimming finals to the morning in Beijing to allow the network to air all of Michael Phelps’ eight gold medal swims live in the United States – but only to half of the country. In Mountain and Pacific time zones, races were shown in tape delay.

Australian Olympic champion Libby Trickett won’t be competing at the Rio Olympics, but she has stood up for those who might face a late-evening start time, according to the release of a preliminary schedule by the Olympic organizers. In an article published by Fox Sports Australia, Trickett used the words “ridiculous” and “crazy” in describing the 10 p.m. start time that would mean most athletes would not leave the venue until after midnight. The early draft of the schedule indicates that the morning heats would still go off at 10:30 a.m., which would be too early for those who might not leave the swimming facility until 3 a.m. due to media interviews and drug testing.

John Coates, the president of the Australian Olympic Committee, has spoken against the planned start of swimming finals, saying it is “unreasonable.” No other sport at the Olympics appears to be as adversely affected by a schedule change as swimming, which is regularly one of the most-watched sports every four years. The likelihood that Michael Phelps might return to Olympic waters, as well as the presence of superstars Ryan Lochte, Missy Franklin and Katie Ledecky could boost viewership ratings in a society where social media brings instant results to the world.

Shane Tusup, the husband/coach/manager of top Hungarian swimmer Katinka Hosszu, posted a tweet calling for the Hungarian swimming federation to join the stand against the late finals sessions.

The Olympic schedule is expected to be finalized by next spring.

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Scott Dobroski
Scott Dobroski
9 years ago

OK this is nuts! Absolutely not. This would be SOOO sad and detrimental to the athletes if this were to go through. Lame.

Zara B
Zara B
9 years ago

I totally agree with you Scott Dobroski. Atletes to succeed need enough time to recuperate.

Zara B
Zara B
9 years ago

I agree with comment above. Athletes need time to recuperate to have a good chance to succeed.

flutterby
flutterby
9 years ago

Of course this is a crazy idea. And living on the west coast, it doesn’t matter what time the finals are, there still is no chance that we can watch the races live.

Leander
Leander
9 years ago

I certainly agree that scheduling prelims to start at 10:30 AM if finals aren’t going to be done until after midnight is going to affect the performance of those swimmers who are swimming both prelims, semis and finals on multiple days. This is really foolish if that is your criterion for deciding what is the optimal Olympic schedule of events. Unfortunately for the swimmers involved, the primary goal of professional athletics, at least from the perspective of the people who pay the bills and make money off of them, is not maximizing the performance of all athletes. It’s to make as much money as possible off of professional athletes.

This past year, there were all sorts of absurdities in the scheduling of soccer matches during the FIFA world cup. Too bad for the soccer players because the schedule wasn’t set for them. The same thing is true of having NFL teams play on Thursdays after playing on Sundays. None of the NFL players, with the possible exception of kickers, have recovered from Sunday’s game. More will be injured, some significantly, because they aren’t fully recovered. Too bad for them, but a lot of people are still going to watch at least one and maybe three NFL games on Thanksgiving.

I hope they change the schedule. But don’t expect the IOC, FINA or NBC to be swayed by arguments about what is best for the athletes. They don’t care. Perhaps they will care if you can prove to them they will lose money, but that’s going to be a really hard case to make. They probably aren’t going to lose money because of this schedule. After all, the NFL still makes lots of money on its Thursday night games even though there has been a lot of bad football played this year on Thursday nights, likely because the players aren’t fully recovered from Sunday’s game.

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