BATON ROUGE – While it’s only been three years since the last summer Olympics in Tokyo, when the Opening Ceremonies begin on Friday for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris it will seem like a return to the true full-blown Olympic Games that a couple of generations have watched grow to gigantic proportions.
For one thing, spectator seats will be full again after an Olympics in which spectators were very limited due to the pandemic. Friday’s opening ceremony, which features an athlete boat parade down the Seine River, will be packed with people from all over the globe. This will be the first Olympic Games Opening Ceremony held outside a traditional stadium.
There seems to be a renewed interest in the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad and for a lot of reasons. First of all, it may be almost impossible not to know the Games are taking place. Unlike the days of Jim McKay and ABC Sports coverage, when everyone didn’t know the majority of results until the three-hour prime time broadcast came on, you can watch your favorite athlete and favorite events pretty much all day and night on streaming properties and several networks of NBC.
Plus, it is always that time when everyone gathers around the television or the computer and roots hard for the athletes of the United States. But if you are an LSU fan, you are also rooting for the Tigers, as present and past athletes represent countries all over the world. The count is 20 countries which will have Tigers taking part in these Games.
LSU has won a total of 45 Olympic medals since Glenn “Slats” Hardin won a silver in the 400 hurdles in the 1932 games in Los Angeles. He came back in the infamous 1936 Games in Berlin and won a gold in the same event.
Those 45 Olympic medals have been captured by 34 student-athlete spanning 14 Summer Olympic Games.
Among these, women’s basketball All-Americans Sylvia Fowles (4) and Seimone Augustus (3), track stars Richard Thompson (3), Glenn Hardin (2), Derrick Brew (2), and Vernon Norwood (2) are multiple medal winners.
Along with basketball (men’s and women’s) and track, medalists have come from five other sports – volleyball, wrestling, baseball, soccer and tennis.
In the Tokyo Olympics, present or former LSU athletes won six gold medals, two silver and three bronze. Four of those medal winners are back in 2024 – former track and field stars Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake, Mondo Duplantis and Vernon Norwood and former LSU basketball player Duop Reath.
This Olympics, LSU has athletes in basketball, beach volleyball, gymnastics, swimming, diving, tennis and track and field. Also the Tigers have a coach working the games as men’s basketball associate head coach David Patrick is an assistant on the Australian squad.
And Olympics action for LSU athletes will start quickly on Saturday, July 27, when Reath and his Australian team will be in action for its first group action against Spain in a contest that will tip at just after 4 a.m. CT (11 a.m. in Paris).
Also starting on the opening Saturday will be one of the more anticipated events early in the games not only because of a strong rooting interest for LSU fans, but also because the open-air venue for beach volleyball has been built right in front of the famed Eifel Tower.
Two of LSU’s most prominent former beach volleyball stars, Kristen Nuss and Taryn Kloth, will be in action against a Canadian duo in Pool B beginning at 3 p.m. CT on July 27.
LSU’s 2024 team national championship in gymnastics will be represented by Aleah Finnegan. Her all-around score of 51.366 in the world championships last October made her the first active gymnast in school history to become an Olympian and the first ever female gymnast from the Philippines to do so.
Several swimmers and divers will be in action in heats and possibly finals as action goes along Saturday and tennis will also be starting with first round matches as well at Roland Garros, site of the annual clay court French Open grand slam event. Neal Skupski, who played for the men’s tennis team at LSU, will represent Great Britain in the event.
With the Olympics in Paris, this will be a two-plus week period where sleep may be interrupted if you want to see things like swimming and track and field early heats that will take place in the early morning Baton Rouge time which is late morning and early afternoon in France with the seven-hour time difference between Paris and the Central time zone.
But there will be more hours of Olympic coverage in the United States than ever before with NBC televising at least nine hours of daytime coverage on most days along with a newly-formatted evening prime time show.
In a Summer Games first, Peacock will stream every sport and event, including all 329 medal events, and will feature full-event replays; all NBC programming; curated video clips; virtual channels; original programming; and more.
Also, USA Network, E! CNBC, and GOLF Channel will present live action and programming throughout the Olympics, featuring qualifying and medal rounds.
USA Network will be the primary home for U.S. team sports and longform content such as swimming heats, track and field, soccer, basketball and 3×3 basketball, beach volleyball, rugby, cycling, volleyball, water polo, and more. CNBC will feature boxing, cycling, rugby, skateboarding, and more.
E! will feature coverage of track & field, gymnastics, canoeing, diving, equestrian, artistic swimming, breaking, fencing, water polo, and more. And, of course, Golf Channel will feature the play in the men’s and women’s golf medal competition.
How far has Olympic television coverage come? In 1960 at the Rome Games, CBS broadcast for the first time in the United States the summer games and the coverage totaled out at 20 hours. All of the footage was taped and flown back to the United States for airing on a delayed basis.
This expanded coverage will allow LSU fans to see their favorite present and former athletes live in many cases and events will also be available to watch when it is good for you on Peacock.
Here’s a complete look at the LSU stars, the countries they represent and the sports they will be taking part in:
Men’s Basketball
David Patrick (Assistant Coach) – Australia
Duop Reath – Australia
Tremont Water – Puerto Rico
Beach Volleyball
Taryn Kloth – United States
Kristen Nuss – United States
Gymnastics
Aleah Finnegan – Philippines
Swimming
Pavel Alovatki — Moldova
Brooks Curry – United States
Jere Hribar – Croatia
Jovan Kekic – Bosnia & Herzegovina
Sabrina Lyn — Jamaica
Maggie MacNeil – Canada
Diving
Juan Celaya-Hernandez – Mexico
Adrian Abadi Garcia – Spain
Chiara Pellacani – Italy
Lizzie (Cui) Roussel – New Zealand
Helle Tuxen – Norway
Tennis
Neal Skupski – Great Britain
Track & Field
Thelma Davies — Liberia
Mondo Duplantis — Sweden
Tima Godbless — Nigeria
Natoya Goule — Jamaica
JuVaughn Harrison – United States
Aleia Hobbs – United States
Shakeem McKay – Trinidad & Tobago
Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake – Great Britain
Vernon Norwood – United States
Favour Ofili — Nigeria
Godson Oghenebrume – Nigeria
Ella Onojuvwevwo — Nigeria
Sha’Carri Richardson – United States
Claudio Romero – Chile
Here is the full list of Olympic Medal Winners by Sport and Year for LSU Athletes In the Summer Games:
Baseball
Kurt Ainsworth – USA – Gold (2000)
Ben McDonald – USA – Gold (1988)
Warren Morris – USA – Bronze (1996)
Jason Williams – USA – Bronze (1996)
Basketball
Seimone Augustus – USA – Gold (2008, 2012, 2016)
Dick Davies – USA – Gold (1964)
Sylvia Fowles – USA – Gold (2008, 2012, 2016, 2020^)
Shaquille O’Neal – USA — Gold (1996)
Duop Reath – Australia – Bronze (2020^)
Soccer
Allysha Chapman – Canada – Bronze (2016); Gold (2020^)
Swimming
Brooks Curry – USA – Gold (2020^)
Tennis
Michael Venus — New Zealand – Bronze (2020^)
Track & Field
Ade Alleyne-Forte — Trinidad & Tobago – Bronze (2012)
Derrick Brew – USA – Gold (2004); Bronze (2004)
Michael Cherry — USA – Gold (2020^)
Nadia Davy – Jamaica – Bronze (2004)
Fitzroy Dunkley – Jamaica – Silver (2016)
Mondo Duplantis – Sweden – Gold (2020^)
Sheila Echols – USA – Gold (1988)
Glenroy Gilbert – USA – Gold (1996)
Glenn “Slats” Hardin – USA – Silver (1932); Gold (1936)
Samantha Henry-Robinson – Jamaica – (2012)
Aleia Hobbs – USA – Silver – (2020^)
Pam Jiles – USA – Silver (1976) *
Esther Jones – USA – Gold (1992)
Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake — Great Britain – Silver (2020^)
John Moffitt – USA – Silver (2004)
Vernon Norwood – USA – Gold (2020^); Bronze (2020^)
Ronetta Smith – Jamaica – Bronze (2004)
Richard Thompson – Trinidad & Tobago – Silver (2008); Gold (2008) *** Bronze (2008)
Kelly Willie – USA – Gold (2004)
Volleyball
Rose Magers – USA – Silver (1984)
Wrestling
Joe Atiyeh – Syria – Silver (1984) **
Kevin Jackson – USA – Gold (1992)
* Won medal prior to attending/running at LSU
** first medalists in his country’s history.
*** originally awarded a silver medal; in 2017, gold medal team DQ’ed and T&T advanced.
^ games held in July-August 2021 due to COVID-19 pandemic