NBC Olympics Schedule 2016: Rio Event Guide, Live Stream Info and Sunday Picks
Five events have already handed out medals at Day 2 of the 2016 Olympic Games, but Rio has another 15 more to go as the evening progresses.
Swimming will take the prime-time stage for NBC later in the evening, with the women's 100-meter butterfly, men's 100-meter breaststroke, women's 400-meter freestyle and men's 4x100-meter relay all going down.
Weightlifting, judo, fencing, archery and diving also have events where gold medalists will be crowned. Saturday and Sunday have seen things truly kick off after the weekday action was mostly confined to early-round soccer matches and preliminary soccer events before the opening ceremony.
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With that in mind, let's take a look at when all the most important events are going down and pick winners for each contest.
| Diving | Women's Synchronized 3m Springboard | 3 p.m. | China |
| Archery | Women's Team - Bronze Medal | 3:39 p.m. | TBD |
| Judo | Women's 52kg - Bronze Medal Match A | 3:40 p.m. | TBD |
| Judo | Men's 66kg - Bronze Medal Match A | 3:40 p.m. | TBD |
| Judo | Women's 52kg - Bronze Medal Match B | 3:50 p.m. | TBD |
| Judo | Women's 52kg - Gold Medal | 4 p.m. | TBD |
| Archery | Women's Team - Gold Medal | 4:07 p.m. | TBD |
| Judo | Men's 66kg - Bronze Medal Match B | 4:10 p.m. | TBD |
| Fencing | Men's Individual Foil - Bronze Medal | 4:15 p.m. | TBD |
| Judo | Men's 66kg - Gold Medal | 4:20 p.m. | TBD |
| Fencing | Men's Individual Foil - Gold Medal | 4:45 p.m. | TBD |
| Weightlifting | Men's 56g | 6 p.m. | TBD |
| Swimming | Women's 100m Butterfly | 9:03 p.m. | Sarah Sjostrom (SWE) |
| Swimming | Men's 100m Breaststroke | 9:53 p.m. | Adam Peaty (GBR) |
| Swimming | Women's 400m Freestyle | 10:03 p.m. | Katie Ledecky (USA) |
| Swimming | Men's 4x100 Freestyle Relay | 10:54 p.m. | Australia |
Events are available to stream at NBCOlympics.com.
Swimming Preview
On the surface, swimming is a weird sport to get consistent prime-time billing. The athletes spend most of the splashing around in the water, shrouded from the view of even the most modern camera. Watching a modern swim meet is like trying to watch a hockey puck on a 10-inch, 480p television. Our viewing experience is mostly confined to those little graphics NBC displays over the heads of the swimmers.
Yet time and again it dominates the ratings simply because of the spectacular individual performances.
Michael Phelps. Mark Spitz. Ian Thorpe. Jenny Thompson. The list goes on and on, as some of the most famous Olympians in history made their name in the pool.
That trend should continue Sunday night, as Katie Ledecky looks to continue staking her claim as one of the most accomplished Olympians ever at age 19.
Ledecky, who won 2012 gold in the 800-meter freestyle in London at age 15, is so good. So ridiculously good and brilliant. So ridiculously good and brilliant and marvelous that Saturday night's silver medal in the 4x100 freestyle—an event far from her specialty—felt almost like a black eye to her good name.
Seriously. Go look at Ledecky's Wikipedia page for a second. Notice those colors by her medal count. All gold and one silver. Saturday's second-place finish was Ledecky's first non-gold medal ever.
“I was really honored to be put on that relay and have that experience here,” Ledecky said, per Karen Crouse of the New York Times. “It just made the first swim of the meet a lot more fun than it normally is and I think that bodes well for the rest of the week.”
Ledecky will almost assuredly return to golden form in the 400-meter freestyle. She comes off at a -5,000 favorite in the event, per Odds Shark. That means you have to bet $5,000 to get a return of $100. Floyd Mayweather could come out of retirement and fight a stuffed wrestling dummy and still not get those type of odds.
No one else can even get 10-1 odds of unseating Ledecky.
All three individual events follow a similar pattern. Sweden's Sarah Sjostrom comes off at a -2,000 favorite in the women's 100-meter butterfly. Sjostrom finished in fourth place in the butterfly in London and has been dominant in that style on the world stage ever since. Australia’s Emma McKeon, who had the second-best time in the semifinals, finished almost a second behind Sjostrom.
Great Britain's Adam Peaty isn't quite as heavy of a favorite in the 100-meter breaststroke, but it should come down to a race between him and South African Cameron Van Der Burgh. The pair are the only participants in the race coming in at better than 10-1 odds. Peaty already broke his own world record in the preliminaries and is expected to compete for another all-time mark Sunday.
The most interesting race, though, will be the men's 4x100 relay. France, Australia, the United States and Russia all come in at odds of 6-1 or better. This could wind up being Phelps' best chance to add another gold to his Olympic war chest.
At the very least, though, it should be compelling television. The individual races have such clear-cut favorites that they could be a wash; the relay could be all that holds up Sunday night.
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