NBC tries something new for Olympic swimming, gymnastics, track in Paris
With less than 50 days before the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics, NBC has finalized its live preliminary and finals broadcasting crews for three of the main events on the program: swimming, gymnastics and track and field.
The wrinkle for the Paris Games is that there will be two top announcing teams for these sports. For swimming and track and field, one team will call live preliminary heats and a different team will handle the live finals in the afternoon as well as the primetime show. For gymnastics, one announcing team has the live daytime coverage and another will be featured in the primetime window. All coverage will be streamed live on Peacock.
The beauty of the European time zone and broadcasting in the United States, said NBC Olympics president and executive producer Molly Solomon, is that NBC will be live in some capacity from 4 a.m. ET until 6 p.m. ET every competition day.
"We are putting everything on live all day long," Solomon told USA TODAY Sports. "Is it on NBC, is it on one of our NBCUniversal cable networks? And everything is going to be live on Peacock. Really, the consumer can find whatever they’re looking for live during the day."
Here are the NBC broadcast teams for swimming, gymnastics and track and field:
2024 Paris Olympics NBC announcers for swimming
Live finals and primetime: Dan Hicks (play-by-play), Rowdy Gaines (analyst), Elizabeth Beisel (correspondent/analyst), Melissa Stark (reporter)
- Hicks and Gaines are calling their eighth consecutive Summer Olympics together.
- Stark is entering her third season as NBC's "Sunday Night Football" reporter. This is her fourth Olympics assignment.
Live preliminary heats: Jason Knapp (play-by-play), Amy Van Dyken (analyst)
- Heather Olson is the artistic swimming analyst.
- Ted Robinson (play-by-play), Cynthia Potter (analyst), Laura Wilkinson (analyst) and Andrea Joyce (reporter) are on the call for diving.
2024 Paris Olympics NBC announcers for gymnastics
Primetime show: Terry Gannon (play-by-play), Tim Daggett (analyst), Samantha Peszek (analyst), John Roethlisberger (analyst/reporter), Zora Stephenson (reporter)
- Peszek is making her NBC Olympics debut. Gannon called gymnastics for the first time in Tokyo and Daggett, the first men's Olympic team gold-medalist in gymnastics, is on his 10th Olympics assignment covering the sport.
Live daytime: Rich Lerner (play-by-play), Laurie Hernandez (analyst), Justin Spring (analyst), Zora Stephenson (reporter)
- Hernandez won the team all-around gold with the 2016 U.S. women's "Final Five."
2024 Paris Olympics NBC announcers for track and field
Live finals and primetime: Leigh Diffey (play-by-play), Paul Swangard (play-by-play), Ato Boldon (analyst), Sanya Richards-Ross (analyst), Kara Goucher (analyst), Trey Hardee (analyst), Lewis Johnson (reporter)
- Richards-Ross won Olympic gold in the 400 meters (and still holds the American record) at the 2012 London Games and is working her third Games. Goucher, a former distance runner, debuted in Tokyo. Boldon is working his seventh straight Olympics for NBC and was a four-time Olympic sprint medalist representing Trinidad and Tobago. This is Johnson's third consecutive Summer Olympics as a track and field reporter.
Live preliminary heats: Bill Spaulding (play-by-play), Dawn Harper-Nelson (analyst), Shannon Rowbury (analyst), Lewis Johnson (reporter)
- Harper-Nelson is making her NBC Olympics debut.