Welcome to Sports Report: Olympics Edition

Welcome to the first edition of our Olympics 2024 Newsletter. Appetizers Before I get into the main topic, John Chelwa And I will be your tour guide on this Paris adventure.

So, you may be wondering, why a separate Olympics newsletter? If you’re over a certain age, you remember when many hotels in Las Vegas offered shrimp cocktails for 99 cents. That was before Las Vegas got its deserved reputation for price gouging. The gold standard, of course, is Louisville during Kentucky Derby week. Note: This is the first of many digressions.

We’ve got a dollar’s worth of cocktail sauce with a few supposed sea creatures just to lure you in to try some more fun stuff: games, shows, and more games. This newsletter will lure you in with a 99-cent shrimp cocktail and bring you great coverage of the 2024 Olympics, with the support of our award-winning staff in Paris and many more journalists here in the U.S. The newsletter will also feature exclusive content, commentary, and surprises that we don’t know about yet. Put all that together, along with a moderate amount of TV viewing on NBC and its various platforms, and you’ll have a fun Olympics to enjoy together.

Before I leave this section, I need to point out that we’re different from Shrimp Cocktail in two ways. First, we’re free. Get your friends to read it and your enemies to sign up…twice. And second, we promise it’s easy on the gut.

2 days left

In Olympic parlance, today is called Day -2 of the Games, and competition kicks off with a few team sports before the Opening Ceremony: soccer (we won’t call it football, and we won’t use words like pitch or equalizer) and rugby sevens, which should pretty much be self-explanatory.

I don’t know if it’s a coincidence or just a random schedule with the honesty of the old Sepp Blatter World Cup draw, but the US will play France in both soccer and rugby. This will be the first time the US men’s soccer team has played since 2008. France is pretty strong and should win easily. But don’t worry. The first two teams in the group are in the quarterfinals, and the other teams in the group are New Zealand and Gambia. So the US men have a chance to make it to the quarterfinals for the first time since 1956. Kevin Baxter I’m in Marseille.

NBC apparently didn’t consider these matches important enough to air on a major network, opting instead to air primetime reruns of “Chicago Med” (“I Think I Know You, But Do I Really?”, premiering May 22), “Chicago Fire” (“All the Dark,” March 27) and “Chicago PD” (May 8).

As an aside, Chicago Med seems to have more patients survive than Grey’s Anatomy, which tends to kill off one of its main patients each week. Just in case you were wondering, I told you there was a side story.

The football game will be broadcast on USA Network, which is about as close as you can get to taking your brother or sister to prom. The game kicks off at noon PDT, and we’ll have full coverage on our Paris Olympics page, which will also feature TV listings, top news and analysis, and a live blog with all the latest Olympic updates. Bookmark our Olympics page now.

The US men’s rugby sevens team actually plays two games, first against France at 7:30am PDT, then against Fiji at 11:30am PDT. This game will also be broadcast (or at least partially broadcast) on the US network. I hear Peacock has it all. Men’s rugby finishes on Saturday, so don’t worry too much about it. In the world rugby rankings, France is 5th, Fiji is 6th, and the US is 9th.

Have you bookmarked that page?

LA 2028 Fast Forward

We’ll let you in on a little secret: The 2028 Olympics will be held in (are you ready?) Los Angeles. Did you know? Sorry. Did you know that not all of the Olympics will be held in Los Angeles or California? In a move that can only be described as an alternate reality of “The Grapes of Wrath,” softball and canoe slalom will be held in Oklahoma City. We’ll let you know when it’s confirmed.

Now, back to the main point of this section: we’ll be updating you on where sports will be held in 2028, almost daily. We’ll start with rugby sevens, which will be held at the Multisport Complex at California State University, Dominguez Hills in Carson. Things are going to be exciting, as the complex will also host track cycling, tennis, field hockey, and — are you ready? — modern pentathlon.

Rugby is played in the main stadium, which seats around 30,000 people, and the Galaxy have mostly (if not entirely) shrugged off mediocrity there in recent years, but this year the club seems on top form and is leading the Western Conference.

Why this host?

So why was I chosen to host this newsletter? It’s a good question. While we think about the answer (minus the five who declined), here’s a little background. I’ve been the bureau chief for 11 Olympics, covering eight and now nine more. I’ve done that for the Times, the Chicago Tribune and the now-defunct company that owned the Times and Tribune. Rumor has it that if you say that name three times in front of a dark bathroom mirror, a terrifying image will conjure up.

So, with these memories and biases in mind, I will be guiding you through the Olympics over the next few weeks. Now, let’s have a quick speed date with me about the Olympics in the 21st century.

Favorite games: (Tied) Sydney (2000) and London (2012)

Games I don’t like: Sochi, Russia (2012)

Best Food: Turin, Italy (2006)

Worst Food: Athens (2004)

Favorite memory: Vancouver, 2010. Walking down the street after Canada won the gold medal in men’s hockey. Pure joy. Spontaneous singing of “O Canada.” Walking up to people and giving them hugs, everyone must have thought it was Hoda Kotb.

Least favorite memory: In Sochi (2012), I was the only one at Olympic security when I arrived at 3am, it took Russian officials two hours to search my bag, and I decided to throw away half my medication because I was told I could only bring two types into Russia.

The strangest games: Rio de Janeiro (2016) had it all: a green diving pool, bullets at an equestrian center, gunfire at a media bus, an explosion near a bike path, a security guard asleep in the security room, and Ryan Lochte and his merry band of friends being escorted out of the country like a scene from the movie Argo.

The strangest games (part 2): In Beijing (2022), Times staff were not allowed to step outside the controlled areas restricted to their hotels, the main media center and the competition venues. Not even a step. Plus, they were forced to endure the nauseating daily COVID throat swabs, the cocktail-making robots and the constant barrages of smears and smears from their colleagues. David Wharton He was severely reprimanded for playing a Steinway in a hotel lobby.

Favorite events: Closing session.

Once the competition begins, we promise to do less of this and more of that.

Must-Read Links

Let’s take a look at some stories you may have missed, but shouldn’t have.

Your TV Guide

How can you watch the Olympics today? Check out Wednesday’s Olympics TV listings.