LA's Olympic Schedule

Last week, the full event schedule for the 2028 Olympics was released.  We already knew some of the details (for example, track & field and swimming swapping weeks), but now we know the specific dates for all 351 events.  Some of which answered pressing questions.  Some of which raised more.  And some of which definitely came as a surprise.

One thing that didn't come as a surprise was the announcement that the Closing Ceremony will be held entirely within the LA Coliseum.  The original plan when LA first got the 2028 Olympics was that both the Opening and Closing Ceremonies would be split between the Coliseum and SoFi Stadium.  But that was before swimming was moved to SoFi, necessitating the schedule switch with track & field.  The last swimming events will literally be the final events of the Games (the swimming session ends at 7:30 ET on that final Sunday and the Closing Ceremony starts at 9:00 ET).  So, it would've been logistically impossible to do the dual-stadium Closing Ceremony.  They simply confirmed it.

Flipping track & field and swimming on the Olympic program was obviously done for logistical reasons, but I agree with some of the comments that were made by the LA Organizing Committee about the benefits of the change.  Specifically, it'll be a different experience for the swimmers, who often have to miss the Opening Ceremony because they're competing right off the bat.  Now they'll get to walk in the Opening Ceremony and still have plenty of time before their event.  Likewise, on the opposite end, the track & field athletes will get their competition out of the way and be able to enjoy the rest of the Olympics once they're done.  Which isn't always the case for them when they don't compete until the end.

Perhaps the most noticeable change to the track & field schedule (besides the obvious one) involves the women's 100 meters.  The women's 100 final is set for the first full day of the Olympics--Saturday, July 15.  The whole idea is to start the Games with a bang by featuring one of the marquee events.  However, that means all four rounds of the women's 100 are scheduled for the same day--the preliminary and first rounds in the morning, the semifinals and final about 90 minutes apart during the evening session.  Granted, the most any of the finalists will have to run is three rounds, but it's still unusual to say the least to have the entire event take place on one day.

With two and a half years until the Olympics, the female sprinters are being given plenty of notice to adjust their training regiments.  And the 100 is perhaps the only event where you can do it all in one day (at World Indoors, they do all three rounds of the 60 in the same day).  Still, it's a lot to ask.  Especially since the men won't have to do it.  (The first two rounds of the men's 100 are on Saturday, with the semifinals and final on Sunday.)  The women claim not to have a problem with, but how much of that is the truth and how much is toeing the company line?

Other than NBC wanting a marquee event on the opening night of the Games, there is one other reason I can think of.  The mixed 4x100 relay makes its Olympic debut in LA and they needed to squeeze that in between the individual 100s & 200s and men's & women's 4x100 relays that are always at the end.  The mixed 4x100 is on Day 3, so the women will get a day off before it and the men won't.  The first round of the men's 200 is then on Day 4, while the women's 200 doesn't start until Day 5.  So, their schedule will certainly be more spread out then the men after that busy first day.

There was one other thing people were really looking forward to potentially seeing in the track & field competition at the LA Olympics.  Sydney McLaughlin (who lives in LA) having the chance to do a 400-400 hurdles double.  You would think that they'd arrange the schedule to make it possible.  Instead, they've made it so that it effectively isn't.  The first round of the 400 hurdles and semifinals of the 400 are on the same day (in different sessions), while the semifinals of the 400 hurdles are in the same session as the 400 final.  Just stupid scheduling!

The first gold medal of the Games will be awarded in the women's triathlon, the first time since 2000 that it'll be the opening medal event.  That's just the start of a day featuring the most women's finals in Olympic history.  In addition to the triathlon and 100, other women's finals scheduled for the first full day of Olympic competition include rugby, individual epee fencing, 10 meter air rifle shooting, the shot put, and more.

Two weeks later, on what they're calling "Super Saturday," there will be 26 finals in 23 different sports.  Team sports traditionally reach their climax on the final weekend, and it'll be no different in LA.  That Saturday includes the gold medal matchups in softball, women's basketball, men's beach volleyball, men's cricket, women's soccer, women's field hockey, men's and women's lacrosse, and men's volleyball, as well as a bunch of bronze medal games in sports that conclude on the final day of the Olympics.  So, yeah, it'll be busy.

I figured that swimming being moved to the second week would result in the schedule being adjusted for all the other pool sports, but it didn't happen in the way I thought.  Water polo and artistic swimming are being held at the same venue, so, instead of water polo stretching the entire duration of the Games like it normally does, it's actually starting two days before the Opening Ceremony and ending on the middle Sunday.  Then artistic swimming moves in and starts on Tuesday.

A very interesting adjustment was also made to the diving schedule.  Instead of starting with the four synchronized events and ending with the individual competition, that's reversed.  The four individual events are at the beginning, then, after a couple days off, the synchronized events are all at the end.  I wonder what the impetus for that decision was.  Men's individual platform was the final diving event for as long as I can remember.  (Also, if this will be the Olympic diving schedule moving forward, they can easily fill that gap with the mixed team event.  Just saying!)

As for the swimming competition, that's seen all kinds of adjustments because they added the 50s in the backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly.  They'd already extended the swimming schedule to nine days starting with the Paris Games, which allowed them to spread out the events a little more for those attempting doubles.  They still changed it up in a pretty major way, though, which I'm sure was likely to accommodate NBC.  The women's 800 freestyle (aka Katie Ledecky's best event) was moved to the final day and will literally be the last individual event of the entire Olympics.

Two of the sports the organizers added to the program for the LA Games were baseball and flag football.  The hope is that MLB and NFL players will participate.  While that's by no means a guarantee, they've set it up to improve the chances of it happening.  The entire baseball competition lasts just a week and is over by July 19.  Assuming the 2028 All*Star Game is on July 11, they could theoretically just extend the All*Star Break an extra week (I don't see that happening, or MLB players participating in the Olympics, but that's a topic for another post).  Likewise, flag football will be done on Friday, July 21...before NFL training camps open in the last week of July.

Baseball's just one of the sports that will begin competition before the Opening Ceremony.  Soccer always does, and rugby has since its debut in 2016, as well.  They're also starting basketball two days early for reasons I still don't quite understand.  Cricket, handball and field hockey also start before the Opening Ceremony, while there will be canoe slalom competition on the day of the Opening Ceremony itself.  Canoe slalom, of course, is taking place in Oklahoma City along with softball, though (I guess that means Jessica Fox won't be Australia's flag bearer again).

In tennis, they're evidently taking the mixed doubles format that debuted at this year's US Open and using it at the LA Olympics.  Because the tennis schedule starts with just the first two rounds of mixed doubles on the first day, then the semifinals and bronze/gold medal matches the following day.  When the initial list of events came out, it just said "Mixed Event TBA," so I'm glad they opted for traditional mixed doubles rather than some sort of team format.  I just wish it wasn't the new format from the US Open.  (John McEnroe may like it, but I don't.)

It's crazy to think about how fast LA28 is approaching.  Before we know it, it'll be here.  Releasing the schedule always makes it feel a little more real.  Yes, it's still two and a half years.  There's a whole Winter Olympics in Italy before it.  But LA28 seems like it's just around the corner.  Especially now that there's a schedule.  Start planning for July 2028.