Friday marks the official start of the 2024 Paris Olympics with live coverage of the opening ceremonies beginning at 12:30 p.m. on NBC. For those who don’t take days off to watch sports, the replay will air at 6:30 p.m. But, of course, the Olympics actually start before the opening ceremonies.
In fact, you can, as you’re reading this, tune in to coverage of rugby sevens or soccer, as those tournaments involve more teams and take longer than the allotted two weeks to play. By Thursday, you can add archery and handball to your schedule. Over the next 19 days, you can watch thousands of athletes (including nine current or former Bulldog athletes) from around the globe compete in 39 different sports.
If you’re anything like me, which, hopefully, you are not, your TV diet will consist of nothing but the Olympics until Aug. 11. But whether you’re a longtime obscure-sports-lover or just looking to dip your toes in the beautiful madness that is the Summer Olympics, it always helps to have a guide to ensure the best possible viewing experience. I’ll do my best.
Subscribe to Peacock
Peacock, NBC’s streaming service, normally only exists as the home of The Office reruns (for which I will forever gladly pay $7.99 per month,) but for the Olympics, it’s a mandatory accessory. Just be sure to cancel Aug. 12. Peacock promises to offer wall-to-wall coverage of every event and every medal, and by wall-to-wall I mean “quad-box multiview,” though you may want to buy a bigger TV to really enjoy it. Peacock is also offering Gold Zone coverage, which takes viewers on a tour of the best action from all sports, as it’s happening, NFL Red Zone-style, beginning July 27.
Try something new
Like football? Let me introduce you to rugby sevens, the compact, easily digestible version of everyone else’s American football. No helmets, no pads, no confusing penalties, arbitrary rules or interminable replay reviews, just two teams of seven banging into each other and throwing backward passes for 14 minutes at a time.
Ever been stranded behind enemy lines during some pre-modern conflict? Like meeting new animals? Then you’ll love the modern pentathlon, which involves fencing, running-and-shooting (like winter’s biathlon, only without skis,) swimming, horse jumping and more fencing. This is also the last time the modern pentathlon will feature horse jumping, due to increasing animal cruelty concerns, although it doesn’t sound like much fun for the human either. Competitors must complete a show-jumping course on a horse they’ve never before ridden and were only introduced to 20 minutes before the event. I’m no cowboy or 18th century soldier, but that sounds dangerous and inconvenient.
Do not try this at home
Other than the pageantry (matching outfits; national anthems; Olympic athletes cruising down the river Seine on boats for the opening ceremonies,) my favorite thing about the Olympics is the sheer force of will it takes for these athletes to train and compete in sports many of us have never heard of. Why play baseball when you can spend the best years of your life throwing a 16-pound ball attached to a steel wire?
Want to challenge your neighbor to a 100-yard dash? Sounds fun, though you may want to stop at 50 just to be safe. Want to set up your own steeplechase course in the backyard? Go for it, my son already has. But please do not attempt to recreate anything else you’re seeing on TV. Think Simone Biles looks cool jumping 20 feet in the air and doing multiple flips? She does, but you’ll break your neck. Stealing a horse and taking it jumping? Illegal. Running 3,000 kilometers with occasional breaks for shooting a pistol? Probably not illegal (this is Mississippi) but check with your local range just to be sure. Heck, the act of climbing up a 32-foot diving platform is in itself sheer lunacy, especially if you can’t use the ladder to get back down.
All this to say, it’s best to leave the competing to the professionals, er, amateurs. So, fire up your streaming device of choice, set it to Peacock and enjoy the best two-and-a-half weeks of the quadrennial. Once it’s over, you can binge The Office before your subscription expires.
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