The first medal of the 2024 Paris Olympics will be handed out just hours after the Opening Ceremony wraps up.
The 10 meter air rifle mixed team shooting competition is the first medal event of the Olympics. After a preliminary round early on Saturday, the gold medal match is set for 5 a.m. ET on Saturday morning. It can be seen on CNBC and Peacock.
The event is one of 16 that will award medals on Saturday, which is the first true full day of Olympics competition. Among the others include fencing, rugby, skateboarding, diving and cycling. There are several major swimming events on Saturday, too.
What is Air Rifle Mixed Team Shooting?
The 10 meter air rifle mixed team event is back after it made its debut at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
The concept is just like the 10 meter air rifle, where shooters will take aim at stationary targets with a rifle. The co-ed teams of two will take turns shooting at targets, and decimal zones will be added in the final round, and the shooters who land shots closest to the center of the target win.
China’s Horan Yang and Qian Yang won gold in Tokyo with a score of 17. The American team of Lucas Kozeniesky and Mary Carolynn Tucker won the silver medal, and Russian athletes Sergey Kamenskiy and Yulia Karimova finished in third. Tucker has returned, and will be joined by Ivan Roe, Rylan William Kissell and Sagen Maddalena in the four-person delegation from the United States.
Which swimming medals will be awarded on Saturday?
There are four swimming medal events on Saturday afternoon, starting with the men’s and women’s 400 meter freestyle final. This marks the first time that we’ll see American swimming star Katie Ledecky in action. Ledecky, who is competing in her fourth Games this summer, has won 10 medals already in her career.
Those finals are set to start at 2:42 ET on NBC.
Then about an hour later, the men’s and women’s 4×100 meter relay finals will be held to wrap up competition in the pool for the day. This should be the first time that we’ll get to watch Caleb Dressel, a seven-time gold medalist, compete for Team USA.
