The first medal of the Paris 2024 Olympics will be awarded just one day after the opening ceremony concludes on Friday.
The 10-meter air rifle mixed team shooting competition is the first medal event at the Olympics. After a preliminary round early Saturday, the gold medal match is scheduled for 5 a.m. ET Saturday morning. It will be available to watch on CNBC and Peacock.
The event is one of 16 that will award medals on Saturday, which is the first full day of Olympic competition. Others include fencing, rugby, skateboarding, diving and cycling. There are also several major swimming events on Saturday.
What is mixed team air rifle shooting?
The 10m air rifle mixed team event is back after making its debut at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
The concept is similar to the 10m air rifle, where shooters will aim at fixed targets with a rifle. Mixed teams of two people will take turns shooting at the targets and decimal zones will be added in the final round, with the shooters who hit the closest shots to the centre of the target winning.
China’s Horan Yang and Qian Yang won gold in Tokyo with a score of 17. The U.S. team of Lucas Kozeniesky and Mary Carolynn Tucker won the silver medal, and Russian athletes Sergey Kamenskiy and Yulia Karimova finished third. Tucker has returned and will be joined by Ivan Roe, Rylan William Kissell and Sagen Maddalena in the four-person U.S. delegation.
Which swimming medals will be awarded on Saturday?
Four medal-winning swimming events will be contested on Saturday afternoon, starting with the men’s and women’s 400-meter freestyle finals. It will be the first time we’ve seen American swimming star Katie Ledecky in action. Ledecky, competing in her fourth Games this summer, has already won 10 medals in her career.
Those finals are scheduled to begin at 2:42 p.m. ET on NBC.
About an hour later, the men’s and women’s 4×100-meter relay finals will take place to conclude the pool competition for the day. This should be the first time we’ll see seven-time gold medalist Caleb Dressel compete for Team USA at the Paris Olympics.