RIO 2016: Swimmers could have their worlds spun upside down with the release of a proposed midnight finish for swimming finals at the Rio Olympic Games, while athletics finals will return to the morning for the first time since Seoul 1988.
Accustomed to crack of dawn training sessions, swimmers could be swimming their Olympic finals at 10pm local time. The slated schedule would see sessions finish after midnight, with swimmers returning to the pool for heats at 10:30am the following morning. That would mean Australian fans could tune into finals at the leisurely time of 11am.
"It's a matter that the AOC will now take up with the international swimming body FINA and with the IOC," AOC President John Coates said.
"It's just an unreasonable demand on the athletes to be competing at that time of night."
But the International Olympic Committee has a second scenario, where finals would be swam at a more traditional 7:30pm session.
The pressure for a later start is believed to stem from US TV network NBC, who paid $4.4 billion for the Olympic TV rights through to Tokyo 2020.
Their preferred timeslot would beam the Games into New York at 9pm and Los Angeles at 6pm.
The networks last used their pull at the Beijing Olympic Games to send the swimming finals to the morning China time, with heats switched to the evening.
Meanwhile some athletics finals will be pushed to the morning for the first time since Seoul 1988 after a decision by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) Council.
The move to push 13 out of 47 athletics finals into the morning was made to maximise international coverage. The targeted events include all five road events (walks and marathons) and four male and four female track and field events (two track and two field events per gender).
"Staging finals in the morning was done at the request of the Rio Local Organising Committee and the Olympic Broadcasting Service, supported by the International Olympic Committee (IOC)," IAAF Competitions Director Paul Hardy said.
"Having finals in the morning will also ensure that we receive maximum visibility for athletics at the Olympics across all time zones."
The women’s 10,000m will be the first morning final inside the João Havelange Stadium, but the remaining events destined for a morning final are not yet known. The IAAF promised a full detailed competition programme will be "released shortly."
Taya Conomos
olympics.com.au
@AUSOlympicTeam
