Start Preparing for 2028

Right after the Olympics last year, I wondered what the LA28 schedule might look like since so much will be different than Olympics past, and those changes will directly impact other sports.  Monday marked three years to go until the Opening Ceremony, and the LA28 organizers celebrated the occasion by releasing the competition schedule for the Games.  It didn't have specific events.  Those will come later.  All it had was days and approximate times for each sport.  Which answered some of those questions while raising a lot more.

One of the most noticeable things is that a record number of sports will begin before the Opening Ceremony.  This is nothing new.  There are always soccer games ahead of time, and rugby also started early in Paris.  In LA, though, it'll be a total of seven sports that get underway on Wednesday (Day -2 on the calendar).  All of them are team sports.

Interestingly, basketball is one of the sports that will start before the Opening Ceremony.  It's the first time since 1952 that basketball will start early, which makes sense.  Because basketball doesn't need the extra two days.  It looks like they're using the same schedule as Paris with four games a day, yet they extended it to give them two days off between the semis and final (as well as, it looks like, potentially three days between the quarter and semi!).  The gold-medal winning team will play six games across 18 days.  That's a lot of time between games!  (By contrast, the entire men's hockey tournament in Milan will take place across just 12 days...with the semifinalists playing either six or seven games.)

Water polo also starts early and is condensed.  Instead of running the entire duration of the Olympics, both tournaments end during the middle weekend.  I'm assuming that's because they want them done before swimming starts.  This isn't really an issue since the water polo tournament used to only be a week.  It'll be odd to not have the men's water polo gold medal game be one of the final events on the last day, though.  (Water polo is also sharing a venue with artistic swimming, so I suspect that's the real reason for the shorter tournaments.)

We already knew that track & field and swimming were being flipped since they're using SoFi Stadium (aka "2028 Stadium") for swimming.  What we didn't know was that the swimming competition will literally end the Olympics.  The final session of swimming is scheduled for 3 p.m. Pacific on the final Sunday (which was obviously an NBC request so that they could have something live all day on that final day).  The Closing Ceremony starts at 6:00 Pacific!  We'll essentially go right from those medley relays to the Closing Ceremony!

It looks like the swimming move affected the diving schedule, too.  The synchronized diving events are normally during the first week, followed by the individual events in the second week.  While it won't be official until the full event schedule is released, it appears that's been flipped.  Individual diving is first.  So, the men's platform final won't be the last diving event of the LA Games.

I like what they're doing with the two sports taking place in Oklahoma City.  They won't overlap at all.  Once slalom canoeing ends, softball will start.  There's actually competition in slalom canoeing on the day of the Opening Ceremony, which isn't too big a deal since they wouldn't be able to attend anyway.  And softball concludes the day before the Closing Ceremony, so they can easily get to LA for it should they choose.

During the All*Star Break, we found out some very interesting information about the baseball tournament, which will be played at Dodger Stadium.  First, Rob Manfred suggested that the 2028 All*Star Game could be in San Francisco.  He also indicated that they could extend the All*Star Break (the All*Star Game will be on July 11, the day before the first events in LA).  Both of those are indications that MLB players could participate.  So is the fact that they made it a short, six-day tournament that's over on July 20.  I still don't expect MLB to suspend the season for the Olympics (although, the Dodgers and Angels will obviously go on road trips), so I'm curious to see how it'd work.  But it sure looks like they're gonna try to figure something out (which I'm sure will be a topic during the next CBA negotiations).

They're also trying to figure out a way for NFL players to play in the flag football tournament.  Which still doesn't make any sense to me, but that's beside the point.  They've set it up so that it won't conflict with training camps.  The flag football gold medal games are scheduled for July 21 & 22.  So, players could conceivably go right from the Olympics to training camp.  (Since flag football and lacrosse will share a venue, the lacrosse tournaments will be in the second week of the Games.)

A mixed team event was added in gymnastics.  It looks like that will be at the end of the competition.  The gymnastics schedule is otherwise identical to previous Games, with an additional medal set to be awarded after the individual apparatus finals.  That clearly has to be the mixed team competition.  Then, they have one day to flip the Staples Center before it becomes the venue for the boxing finals.

Another sport where I was curious about the schedule was road cycling.  The early Olympics already meant the Tour de France will have to be moved much earlier than usual.  My concern was about when they'd set the road cycling events so that they get enough of a break after the Tour de France.  The time trial is in the middle of the first week and the road races are on the middle weekend, so they should get adequate rest while still not having road and track cycling conflict with each other.

While we won't know how many medals will be awarded each day until the detailed event-by-event schedule comes out, we do know that Saturday and Sunday of the middle weekend will be the busiest days of the Games.  In Paris, they had medal events in swimming, track & field and gymnastics on both of those days for the first time since 1988.  It'll happen again in LA.  And it's a good bet that'll be the case moving forward.

There will also be plenty of action on the final weekend.  Medal events in 23 different sports on Saturday, including one of the marathons (which are keeping their traditional place at the end despite track & field and swimming flipping weeks).  One of the surprising things about swimming being one of the seven sports in action on the final day of the Games is that it means the Closing Ceremony won't take place across two venues like the Opening Ceremony.  I wonder why they came to that decision.  (Is it simply because NBC wanted swimming finals to close the competition?)

LA's time zone was destined to make for a unique final day no matter what.  Whenever the Olympics are anywhere else, everything is done by the early afternoon the latest.  The Closing Ceremony in Paris started at 3:00 Eastern.  Because LA is on the West Coast, though, NBC can have live event coverage all day.  The marathon is at 10:15 Eastern.  That rolls right into the volleyball match at 1:00 Eastern.  Then the basketball game's at 3:45 Eastern, with the last session of swimming starting at 6:00 Eastern before the Closing Ceremony at 9:00 Eastern.  A vastly different final day than what we're used to!

Of course, that works the other way, too.  When the Olympics are in Asia or Europe, stuff starts early in the morning.  In the three Asian Olympics, events would start in the evening and go all night!  The earliest anything in LA will start is 7:00 am Pacific.  Which means the morning cable coverage will be almost entirely tape-delayed stuff from the night before.  Again, a vastly different experience!

But we already knew an Olympics in the U.S. would look and feel entirely different.  Now that we have an initial schedule, it's starting to become real.  The LA28 Olympics will be here before we know it.  Time to start planning your trips.