Tokyo 2020 unveils details of the Olympic competition schedule

The Tokyo Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games has announced today the event line-up for each session of the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020. Get ready for a summer full of triathlon at its best, with the Elite Men vying for Olympic glory on Monday, July 27 at 6.30 am, and the Women following up on Tuesday, July 28 also at 6.30am. The Mixed Relay competition will take place on “Super Saturday”, August 2, at 7.30 am.

The action-packed programme will feature a record 33 sports and 339 events and will run from 24 July until 9 August 2020. Preliminary events will kick off with softball and women’s football on 22 July 2020, two days before the Opening Ceremony. Rowing and archery events will be held on the day of the Opening Ceremony. The first medal event—women’s 10m air rifle—will be held with the session starting at 8:30 JST on 25 July, the day after the Opening Ceremony. Medal events in 6 sports—archery, cycling (road race), fencing, judo, taekwondo, weightlifting—will also be held, with medals being awarded in a total of 11 events that day.

The Aomi and Ariake zones will be hotspots for urban sports and are likely to resonate with a vibrant atmosphere, highlighting the innovations in the sports programme aimed at making Tokyo 2020 “More Youth, More Urban, More Women”. Men’s and women’s 3x3 basketball will start on 25 July, the first day of the Games. Skateboarding street events will be held on 26 and 27 July. BMX freestyle park events will follow on 1 and 2 August with skateboarding park featuring on 5 and 6 August and sport climbing on 4 to 7 August.

“Super Saturday” and “Golden Sunday”, 1 and 2 August, are expected to attract huge stadium audiences and TV viewers around the world, with a large number of medal events scheduled to be held. A total of 21 medal events will be held on “Super Saturday”, including events featuring for the first time in the Olympic Games, such as the judo mixed team event, the triathlon mixed relay and the shooting trap mixed team event, all of which will help make Tokyo 2020 the most gender-balanced Olympic Games in history. This day will also see the men’s football quarter-finals, which will be staged at four different venues.

This sporting extravaganza will be followed by 26 medal events on “Golden Sunday”, including the women’s marathon, the men’s athletics 100m final, men’s and women’s gymnastics events, and the men’s tennis singles final. “Golden Sunday” will also feature the final day of fencing events, including the men’s team foil final, and the closing day of swimming events, with five finals scheduled. Overall it will be an action-packed two days.

From 2 August, the second half of the Games will see 171 medal events, including the newly-added karate and sport climbing, wrestling and other team events’ semi-finals and finals such as team table tennis. Athletics events will kick off on 31 July at the new Olympic Stadium, the main venue of the Tokyo 2020 Games. Athletics finals will feature in almost all sessions, offering multiple opportunities for fans to experience gold-medal action. During the evening session of 6 August, the outcome of the decathlon and heptathlon events will be decided in the same session for the first time in the Olympics. The 4 x 100m relay for men and women will take place on the evening of 7 August.

Saturday, 8 August, the day before the Closing Ceremony, will constitute another “Super Saturday”, featuring no fewer than 30 event finals, the largest number on a single day during the Games. They will include the men’s basketball final, the men’s football final and the baseball final. The finals of many women’s events will also be held, including the team free routine in artistic swimming and individual allround rhythmic gymnastics, all key attractions of the Games. The final day of the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, Sunday 9 August, will commence with the men’s marathon. On that closing day, the streets of Tokyo are expected to be lined with crowds as the Games build to their climax. The last medal event will be the men’s water polo final.

Tokyo 2020 took a holistic approach when compiling the schedule, taking into account the technical rules and regulations of the various international federations, gender balance, athletes’ experience & wellbeing, the popularity of individual sports in Japan, global TV audiences and operational considerations.