The Olympics are the world’s most overwhelming sporting event to follow. Unlike March Madness or the World Cup, there are dozens of different sports, countless rules to familiarize yourself with and the possibility of being fully entranced by an event you can’t quite remember if you’ve ever seen before.
This summer in Paris they’ll hand out medals in 329 events across 39 sports. You can’t watch all of them—though the brave among us will try—so this road map is a solid starting point. Here’s a daily viewing guide to check out some of the top competitors and biggest moments, with a taste of the niche and novel. The athletes everyone will be talking about and the sports that will give you fun facts to impress your friends. A plan to make the most of these 19 days that you can never totally plan for.
Day –2, July 24
As is customary, the Olympics will begin with a fun trip through the negative integers portion of your calendar, as a handful of team sports start play before the opening ceremony. Men’s soccer—featuring under-23 squads with up to three overage players—kicks off on Day –2, and the U.S. will face the hosts at the famed Marseille Stadium, aka Stade Vélodrome.
Day –1, July 25
Since being introduced in 2016, rugby sevens has become a Games staple. It’s fast-paced, with matches played in frantic seven-minute halves, and it happens over just six competition days, so catch some action while you can. Preliminary rounds in archery and handball also begin, as well as group play in women’s soccer, with France, ranked No. 3 in the world, taking on Colombia.
Must Watch
USWNT vs. Zambia
The U.S. women’s national team will look much different than the squad that captured the bronze in Tokyo three years ago. That roster had an average age of 30.8, but after the retirement of many pillars, including Carli Lloyd, Julie Ertz, Megan Rapinoe and Sam Mewis, we’ll see a more youthful group led by a new coach, former Chelsea manager Emma Hayes.
Eager to end a gold medal drought that dates back to London 2012, the team will lean on the leadership of 24-year-old defender Naomi Girma and captain Lindsey Horan. Up top, a deep forward pool headlined by Mallory Swanson, Sophia Smith and Trinity Rodman—all playing in their first Olympics—will be tasked with remedying the U.S.’s recent scoring woes. —Clare Brennan
Day 0, July 26
The official start of these Olympics will be one of a kind. Rather than walking around a stadium, athlete delegations will parade through the heart of Paris in boats along the winding Seine. The opening ceremony will still feature colorful team outfits, the waving of flags and traditional fanfare, such as the cauldron lighting, all in front of more than 200,000 fans. Peyton Manning and Kelly Clarkson will join Mike Tirico in the NBC booth to regale viewers with facts about faraway nations.
Day 1, July 27
Turn your early attention to the pool, where the Games start off with a bang thanks to a battle of legends in the women’s 400-meter freestyle event. Australia’s Ariarne Titmus will once again go head-to-head with the U.S.’s Katie Ledecky. Titmus won this race at the Tokyo Games and at
the 2023 world championships last July, where she set a world record. The 27-year-old Ledecky will be all over the pool deck and your screens during the first week, as she looks to add to her seven gold and 10 total Olympic medals. The first competition in primetime features another pair of signature swimming events: the men’s and women’s 4X100-meter freestyle relays.
Bonus: Day 1 will also see medals handed out in seven other sports: diving, fencing, judo, rugby sevens, shooting, skateboarding and the cycling road race.
Day 2, July 28
You might think fencing isn’t your forte, but give it a try on the second day of action, which includes medal bouts for men’s épée and women’s foil, where the U.S.’s Lee Kiefer will attempt to defend her Tokyo gold. In the men’s sabre, Olympic newcomer Colin Heathcock is a frontrunner. The 18-year-old previously competed for Germany before joining Team USA.
Bonus: Badminton? Beach volleyball? Indoor volleyball? Table tennis? Take your pick of sports with nets. At the Eiffel Tower Stadium, the U.S. women’s beach volleyball pair of Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes enter as top medal contenders after their 2023 world title.
Day 3, July 29
Team USA’s women’s water polo squad is a dynasty, having won three straight Olympic golds plus a slew of world championships over that time span. Captain Maggie Steffens set the Olympic career goal-scoring record in Tokyo and is back for more. The team’s second game in three days will be a rematch of the Tokyo gold medal match against Spain, and the U.S will have the financial backing of a new sponsor: 65-year-old rapper Flavor Flav, who stepped in to help the team after seeing Steffens’s call for support in an Instagram post. In the men’s gymnastics team final, China and Japan are the favorites, but the U.S. hopes to win its first medal since 2008 after earning bronze at the ’23 worlds.
Bonus: Canoe and kayak slalom are entertaining to watch, as athletes contend with man-made whitewater rapids and maneuver their boats around buoys. In Paris, the kayak cross event—which features four kayakers on the course simultaneously—will make its Olympic debut a few days later. The U.S.’s Evy Leibfarth, 20, is set to compete in all three events.
Day 4, July 30
The stage is set for the women’s gymnastics team final. The U.S.—which has medaled in seven straight Games, with golds in 1996, 2012 and ’16—is headlined by Simone Biles, 27, who returns to the Olympic stage after Tokyo, where she battled the twisties but still earned a silver (in the team event) and a bronze (in balance beam).
Bonus: If you think those table tennis games in your basement are intense, check out the mixed doubles medal matches—they’ll put your game to shame.
Day 5, July 31
Looking to watch athletes compete in three different sports and finish in a single day? We humbly suggest the triathlon. More than 50 competitors are slated to swim 1,500 meters in the Seine, cycle 40 kilometers, riding along the Champs-Élysées, and run 10 kilometers through the heart of Paris. The women’s event, contested over the same course, will take place the day after the men’s.
Must Watch
Surfing
Although France has plenty of beaches, the surfing competition will take place on the other side of the globe, at the iconic Teahupo’o, located in the crystal blue South Pacific waters off the coast of Tahiti in French Polynesia—a 9,800-mile trek from the Olympic Village. Day 5 is the scheduled medal day, but there is a 10-day window built in so organizers can plan around optimal weather and wave conditions. The U.S. stars who competed in the sport’s debut in Tokyo—gold medal winner Carissa Moore, 2023 World Surf League champ Caroline Marks and Hawai’i native John John Florence—all return. Other headliners in the field of 48 include 14-year-old Siqi Yang, China’s first Olympic surfer; Brazil’s Filipe Toledo, the ’23 WSL title winner; and France’s Johanne Defay, the only European woman currently competing on the pro tour.
Day 6, Aug. 1
The U.S. looks to keep its streak alive in the women’s all-around individual gymnastics final, where it has won five straight golds: Carly Patterson (Athens), Nastia Liukin (Beijing), Gabby Douglas (London), Biles (Rio) and Suni Lee (Tokyo).
Day 7, Aug. 2
Trampoline gymnastics is a one-day event, so clear your Friday plans if you don’t want to miss it. Men and women will perform mesmerizing routines that consist of 10 skills—all sorts of flips, twists and somersaults—while bouncing 25 feet in the air. China’s Zhu Xueying looks to defend her gold, while Great Britain’s Bryony Page is a two-time medalist.
Bonus: The finals for men’s and women’s BMX racing feature a pack of eight riders speeding over jumps and around steep, high-banking turns.
Day 8, Aug. 3
Tennis will be a spectacle throughout the Olympics, with the event taking place on the famed clay at Roland Garros, home of the French Open. That will add a unique twist to the event, akin to when the London Olympics played on the grass at Wimbledon. While play begins on the first day of the Games, Saturday’s slate features the women’s singles gold medal match, the men’s doubles gold and the men’s singles bronze. After welcoming her first child in April, Tokyo gold medalist Belinda Bencic of Switzerland won’t defend in Paris, but Poland’s Iga Świątek, the current world No. 1, and the U.S.’s Coco Gauff have qualified.
Bonus: The men’s and women’s eight rowing finals have a rich Olympic history, as seen in the 2023 movie The Boys in the Boat.
Day 9, Aug. 4
Organizers added an extra day at the pool to the schedule for Paris, which means there are now two competition days featuring the Big Three sports, namely swimming, track and field and gymnastics. This is the second day of an Olympics version of the sports equinox, and it happens to feature the fan-favorite men’s 100-meter final. American Noah Lyles won gold at the 2023 world championships.
Bonus: The final round of the men’s golf tournament will be played, featuring top names like 2024 Masters champ Scottie Scheffler.
Day 10, Aug. 5
It may surprise you to learn that field hockey is one of the oldest Olympic team sports, dating back to 1908 for men (1980 for women). It was not part of the program at Paris 1924, but has been included in every Games since. Day 10 features the four women’s quarterfinals matches. After missing the cut in Tokyo, the U.S. women qualified for Paris with a roster that featured 16 Pennsylvania natives—each of whom would be making their Olympic debut.
Must Watch
3x3 Basketball
The fast-paced game of 3x3 basketball was a hit when it made its first appearance three years ago in Tokyo, where the U.S. women’s team won gold but the men failed to qualify. So today’s quadrupleheader of medal games offers a chance at redemption for the American men, who won the 2023 Pan Am Games and whose roster includes former NBA and Chinese Basketball Association player Jimmer Fredette; Canyon Barry, son of Hall of Fame forward Rick Barry; former Princeton forward Kareem Maddox; and Florida Southern alum Dylan Travis.
Day 11, Aug. 6
The day’s main event is the star-studded women’s 200-meter final. Sha’Carri Richardson, who won bronze in this race at the 2023 worlds, has a shot at a second individual medal (the 100-meter final is two days earlier). Other contenders to watch include the U.S.’s Gabby Thomas, who won bronze in Tokyo, and two well-known foes from Jamaica, two-time Olympic champ Elaine Thompson-Herah and 200-meter world title holder Shericka Jackson. Medals will also be awarded in the men’s 1,500 meters, women’s 300-meter steeplechase, men’s long jump and women’s hammer throw.
Day 12, Aug. 7
After a successful debut in Tokyo, climbing makes its return. On tap are the semifinals in the men’s lead (where climbers wear harnesses attached to a climbing rope and have six minutes to reach the top of a 15-meter wall) and the first medal events in women’s speed (where competitors race one another to scale a wall at a near-vertical angle). After becoming the world champion in bouldering (where athletes solve “boulder problems,” featuring unknown sequences, on shorter walls without ropes) three years ago, the U.S.’s Natalia Grossman, 23, is one to keep an eye on after her gold medal performance at the Pan Am Games last October.
Day 13, Aug. 8
The marathon swim remains one of the Olympics’ most grueling tests of endurance. The women’s race is today (the men swim the next day). The race is 10 kilometers and takes about two hours. Swimmers are slated to take off at the Pont Alexandre III bridge and swim through the Seine. After a fourth-place finish in the 800-meter freestyle in Tokyo at age 15, the U.S.’s Katie Grimes will swap the pool for this open-water competition.
Bonus: Freestyle wrestler Helen Maroulis, who won gold in Rio and bronze in Tokyo, opens her competition in the 57 kg class. Her 2016 medal was the first in the event by an American woman at the Olympics; she’s now the first female U.S. wrestler to qualify for three Summer Games. It’s an impressive show of longevity for an athlete who thought she had to retire before Tokyo due to concussions and a PTSD diagnosis.
Day 14, Aug. 9
Are you ready for a throw down? Today is the day breaking officially debuts as an Olympic sport. (You may hear it called breakdancing, perhaps derisively from the group that will undoubtedly decry this effort to attract a younger audience as the end of the Olympics as we once knew it.) Of note here: Breakers will improvise their routines to whatever music the DJ plays—unlike, for instance, gymnasts who choose their own tunes.
Day 15, Aug. 10
Two American former medalists have a chance to be in action on the wrestling mat. Kyle Dake won bronze in Tokyo, and his weight class (74 kg) will have gold and bronze medal matches today. Kyle Snyder won gold in Rio and silver in Tokyo in the 97 kg class, which will have preliminary matches all day, with medal bouts on Day 16.
Bonus: The women’s handball finals won’t include the U.S., which hasn’t qualified since ’96. Hop on Norway’s bandwagon; they’ve medaled in four straight Games.
Must Watch
Two decades have passed, the roster and staff have turned over, but one fiery veteran is back in a position similar to the one she held at her first Olympics in 2004, at age 22. Diana Taurasi, 42, will come off the bench in a supporting role. The leading scorer in WNBA history does not have much left to prove, but she hopes to become the first basketball player to win six consecutive gold medals. And this squad gives her a very good chance to do just that. The roster welcomes back several big names, such as two-time WNBA MVP Breanna Stewart and A’ja Wilson, arguably the world’s best player. An infusion of young talent will be a boost. In Tokyo, the team’s average margin of victory was 16 points. Expect a similar performance in Paris. —Emma Baccellieri
Day 16, Aug. 11
A day after the men’s final, the women’s gold medal basketball game is the last event of the Olympics. Team USA has won seven straight golds, dating back to 1996. With the WNBA pausing its season for the tournament, Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve leads a team of superstars that carries a 55-game Olympic winning streak into Paris. If there’s a potential bump in the road en route to the U.S.’s eight-peat (!), it would be a knockout-stage meeting with China, the No. 2 team in the world and the ’22 FIBA World Cup runner-up.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Paris Olympics Day-by-Day Viewers Guide.
