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≡ THE LA28 T&F SCHEDULE ≡
“It is in the spirit of collaboration between World Athletics, LA28, Olympic Broadcasting Services, IOC and NBC as Host Broadcaster that we have landed on an athletics programme that will start with a bang as our women’s sprinters take centre stage on day one and then the men’s sprinters on day two to maximise and sustain global interest after the Opening Ceremony.”
That’s from World Athletics President Sebastian Coe (GBR) in the federation’s statement after the Wednesday morning release of the LA28 session-by-session schedule, which includes the entire women’s 100 m on 15 July 2028: preliminary and round one in the morning, and the semifinals and finals in the evening session, a schedule never before used in an Olympic Games or World Athletics Championships.
Coe expanded on the all-in-a-day women’s 100 m during a Wednesday morning briefing with reporters, which was impacted by the switch of track & field to the first week of the 2028 Games due to the swimming being moved to SoFi Stadium, which will also be the site of the opening on 14 July:
“In a way, the decision and the opportunity around the rounds of the women’s 100 on the first day was really born of the fact that we’ve gone first week. I actually think, for all sorts of reasons, that it’s a big opportunity for us to go first week, and if my instincts are right – it’s not an exact science, the proof of the pudding is always going to be in the eating – and the L.A. opening ceremony is as good as I think it will be, I think having athletics running straight off the back of that is a good thing for us.
“And we had that discussion in [World Athletics] Council and we sort of played around with it. I wanted to get my head around some of the broadcast numbers in comparison of week one to week two, and I think the Council made a judgement – it’s certainly one I supported – which was let’s do that.
“You’ve then got the added challenge that you can’t eliminate – no athletes can be eliminated – before the opening ceremony, in a competition … so, then we were given the opportunity, which we then took to the women 100-meter runners, ‘Look, you could go first day, you could end up with probably the biggest medal thus far in the Olympic Games being determined on the first night, and it could be you.
“And both our competition teams spent a lot of time speaking to the athletes, speaking to the coaches, and overwhelmingly, they were supportive. And I didn’t honestly know where their judgement would fall.
“And Janet Evans, basically the chair of the athlete’s group at LA28, did exactly the same thing, through her athlete’s council as well. And we sort of cross-indexed that and we’ve gone with it, and the women supported it and the coaches supported it, overwhelmingly. …
“So, I think their view was, look, why would you not want to be starting with that kind of flair, on the back of the first day. So, it was born of logistics, it was also my recognition of how bloody hard it is to pull all this stuff together, and we worked very closely with LA28, we worked closely with the IOC on it, we worked closely with OBS [Olympic Broadcasting Services] and obviously NBC, and we ran a pretty detailed discussion with the athletes that it concerned and that’s where we’ve ended up.
“Personally, I think it’s a good, it’s an innovative thing to do.”
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The World Athletics post emphasized:
“Finals will feature in 17 of the 20 sessions, with the schedule carefully crafted to allow the maximum number of potential doubles – such as the 100m & 200m, 200m & 400m (plus relays), 800m & 1500m, 1500m & 5000m, 5000m & 10,000m, and long jump & triple jump.
“This opens the door for stars such as Noah Lyles, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Melissa Jefferson-Wooden to emulate the heroics of LA 1984 Olympic legend Carl Lewis, while also enabling middle- and long-distance doubles reminiscent of past Olympic greats.”
However, the situation for McLaughlin-Levrone in the women’s 400 m – where she is World Champion – and the 400 m hurdles – where she is Olympic Champion – is hardly conducive to contesting both of those events:
● 15 July-morning: 400 m round 1
● 18 July-morning: 400 m hurdles round 1
● 18 July-evening: 400 m semifinals
● 20 July-evening: 400 m hurdles semifinals and 400 m final
● 22 July-evening: 400 m hurdles final
Coe explained, just slightly apologetically, as regards McLaughlin-Levrone’s unusual situation:
“We have done our very best here to make sure that we can, where possible, accommodate doubles, You know my view about that; I doubled in L.A. [1984], I doubled in Moscow [1980], it was always accommodated.
“If you look at the women’s 4 and the 4 hurdles, yeah, there will be rounds that are on the same day and there is a two-day gap between finals. And if she chooses to do that, there’s probably no one better suited than Sydney to achieve it.
“I don’t know what her plans are and it will be presumptive of me to suggest anything other than that, but, look, we’ve done our very best to accommodate as many doubles as we possibly can. …
“Anybody that puts a program together, it is complicated and it’s not just like lifting one piece of the jigsaw out and saying, ‘oh well, I can put it somewhere else.’ It doesn’t work like that, so this is never going to be a perfect overlay, but I think we’ve done about as well as we possibly can.”
Although Coe, like LA28’s Evans in her briefing on Tuesday, discouraged any changes being made, the obvious option to help McLaughlin-Levrone would be to move the 400 m hurdles semis from the evening of the 20th – in the same session as the 400 m final – to the morning of the same day, which has a weak and thin schedule of five events – including two field event qualifying rounds – vs. eight events in the evening, including the men’s vault final.
LA28 is also going to have to figure out how to house a few dozen athletes near the Coliseum on days where their schedules – like in the women’s 100 m and men’s and women’s shot – have prelims in the morning and finals in the afternoon. The trip to the UCLA Village and then back again will leave little time to relax, even with weekend traffic.
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Coe also spoke about the men’s marathon, which will be on the final day of the Games, on 30 July, explaining that it was a fight to get the medal presentation into the closing ceremony in Paris for 2024, but now:
“It will be the same in L.A., where the [men’s marathon] medals will be presented in the closing ceremony.”
After the track & field competition in the Coliseum closes on 24 July, the half-marathon race walks will be on the 27th, then the women’s marathon on the 29th and the men’s marathon on the 30th.
But these are not shown as finishing in the Coliseum, but only as starting at Venice Beach. So where will these events finish, to give the runners the same feeling of completion as they would get from crossing the line in the Olympic stadium? Coe said in a later statement:
“We would like to see the road events – marathon and race walk – end in the Coliseum. We are in ongoing discussions with LA28 to see if we can make that happen.”
The walks are slated to start at 7:30 a.m. and finish by 11:35 (somewhere), with the marathons starting at 7:15 a.m. and finishing about 10:15 a.m. On 30 July, the closing ceremony will start at 6 p.m. in the Coliseum.
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