A day after the NBC announcing teams for swimming and diving at the Paris Olympics were revealed, NBC made known its announcing teams for the U.S. Olympic trials.
For swimming, Dan Hicks and Jason Knapp will be on play-by-play announcing, while 1984 Los Angeles Olympic gold medalist Rowdy Gaines and two-time 2012 London Olympic medalist Elizabeth Beisel will be slotted as analysts. All four commentators are also on the announcing team for swimming at the Paris Games.
Gaines was in the booth at for Wave II 2021 U.S Olympic trials, while Beisel was an analyst for the Wave I edition of the meet. Hicks was not on the broadcast time for 2021 trials because he was covering the U.S. Open for NBC (golf). This year, he will also be on U.S. Open coverage from June 13 to 16, but he will do swimming coverage starting June 18. The U.S. Olympic swimming trials will be held in Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana from June 15 to 24.
Melissa Stark serve as a sideline reporter at swimming trials. She also is NBC’s sideline reporter for Sunday Night Football, and will have the same role for swimming at the Paris Olympics.
Ted Robinson will be doing play-by-play at the U.S. Olympic trials for diving, which will run from June 17 to 24 in Knoxville, Tennessee. Joining him as analysts will be three-time U.S. diving Olympians Cynthia Potter and Laura Wilkinson, while Andrea Joyce will be a sideline reporter. Robinson, Potter, Wilkinson, and Joyce are the four-member broadcast crew for the Paris Olympics as well.
Uggh, absolutely cannot stand Rowdy and that Dan Hicks character…annoying AF!
Rowdy is ridiculous. Screaming, stumbling, bumbling, fumbling… Compared difference between breaststroke and freestyle to difference between throwing discus and high jump. Seriously?
Rowdy is not good commentator at all. We need someone insightful and composed, please.
hey, what happened to
https://swimswam.com/rowdy-gaines-adds-fuel-to-the-aussie-us-rivarly-fire-we-hate-them/
The comment section seeing no mention of AVD in this press release
I’m AVD’s nephew, and I can’t tell you how upsetting the above comment is. So there!
Looks like they removed the previous article on the announcers and replaced it with this one, which no longer mentions the prelims… presumably because of the comments?
Oh, nevermind. This is trials rather than the Olympics.
I think you’re mixing up the Olympic announcers and the Olympic Trials announcers.
What about prelims? Please don’t say it’s AVD.
What happened to Phelps?
I thought he was being groomed to be an NBC commentator. He wasn’t half-bad in 2021.
I assume he’s really just being brought around occasionally as a professional analyst. It’s also a bit of a marketing ploy when you say the greatest Olympian of all time is guest-commentating any event.
There’s also a chance that he just didn’t want to do it. He has no obligation to as he’s not an actual commentator, so it’s really just whether he wants to do it.