The Podium

Watch something long enough and certain trends start to appear. Commentators Todd Richards, Todd Harris and Trond Nystad’s unique abilities are to get you closer to the action despite being 1000s of miles away from Beijing. With that experience, we turn to each to figure out why their respective countries excel at the Winter Olympics. Follow The Podium now on Amazon Music to get automatic download...

Listen to a special Winter Olympics episode of the TODAY podcast. Hear all the history-making moments, athlete interviews, and inspiring stories every morning on the TODAY podcast — your daily destination for news on the go. Follow and listen to TODAY now: https://link.chtbl.com/olympics_today Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and us...

Stratton Mountain School is a small prep institution in southern Vermont, one that seems to excel at readying its students for a very successful field trip every 4 years to the Winter Olympic Games. We talk to some of the SMS alumni currently competing in Beijing about their experience at the school. Louie Vito, Ben Ogden and Julia Kern show the camaraderie that exists between its incredibly decor...

The Slopestyle course that hosts the ski and snowboard events is turning heads because of its innovative features and ancient looks. Unmistakably, its inspiration is the nearby Great Wall of China. We catch up with Dirk Scheumann of Schneestern, the lead designer and course builder to understand his design philosophies and the cold realities on the ground in Zhangjiakou. Follow The Podium now on A...

Team USA consists of a record 224 Athletes for these winter games. They‘ve made it to the games on chartered flights and wear the same uniform, but each also has their own journey to the games. Amongst the crowd, connect with stories from the members of team USA. From loss to levity, see how the experience of the Opening ceremony means different things to Chris Lillis, David Wise, Red Gerard, Ryan...

NASCAR Cup Series champion Joey Logano and 10,000m Speed Skating Gold Medalist Ted-Jan Bloemen explain how oval racing's truths carry over from the speedway to the ice. Speed, risk and constant improvement turn out to be the fuel behind both racers. Join Lauren Shehadi for Season 3 of The Podium from NBC Sports. Remember, starting February 4th, The Podium will speed up to a daily release schedule...

As sports fans stateside fall asleep on February 20th, 2018, the US is embarking on a historic run of performances. By the time they turn down the lights next, their medal count will have shot up by nine. Seven of those new medals are hanging around women's necks. American alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin and hockey player Kendall Coyne Schofield take us through that momentous day in Pyeongchang and...

Recent Winter Games have seen less-than-abundant natural snow. But that hasn't changed the forecast for incredible performances. So what does a winter athlete's life look like with a lot less winter? American aerial skiers Ashley Caldwell and Justin Schoenefeld join host Lauren Shehadi to share how their journey to the games involves more days in the pool than on snow.  Listen to Season 3 of The P...

Big Air Skiing will make its Olympic debut in 2022. Everything about the format, venue and competitors point to an event high in airtime and consequences. Medals can be won in mere seconds, but below the scary stunts lie life lessons about patience and personal growth. Olympic medalist Nick Goepper is joined by sit skiers Josh Dueck and Jay Rawe to explore why they fell in love with big jumps, no...

Biathlon is a fan-filled, high-drama and celebrity-making sport, just not in the US. And yet Amercian biathletes are etching their way into the competitive landscape abroad with every rifle shot and ski stroke.    Lowell Bailey, director of high performance at US Biathlon and current competitor Clare Egan take contrast their stateside and European realities and give us insight into the last winter...

In the mid 2010s Curling, both Hardline Curling and American Olympic medalist curler John Shuster were facing a huge challenge from the powers governing this centuries-old sport. Hardline had come up with a controversial and revolutionary sweeping pad and Shuster has been dropped by USA Curling.  Their next moves would have lasting impacts on the game you'll see in February. Both join host Lauren...

Only 1.8% of US ski area users are Black, leaving minority skiers and snowboarders with little representation at the top levels of the sport.  Andre Horton, the first able-bodies black skier on the US Ski Team and Brian Rice, the first black snowboarder to be sponsored by a major US ski resort, join host Lauren Shehadi to discuss the experience of being a rarity in the lift line, the vibrant and s...

Quadruples are the culmination of generations of figure skating and snowboarding progress. Axels or Corks, these maneuvers defy what was thought possible for Olympic athletes. On this episode on The Podium, we explore the dizzying abilities required of modern competitors and the ramifications on artistry and injury. Vincent Zhou was the skater first to land a quad lutz at the games and shares his...

Over the next 8 weeks and right through to the closing ceremony, we’ll bring you deep into the stories and events that have defined the Olympics and those that will shape the Beijing games. But we’ll also give you an intimate look into the unseen details that only the athletes themselves can tell. From curling innovations to big air ski tricks, inclusivity in winter recreation to epic medal runs,...

All good things come to an end. Through delay, innumerable challenges in just putting on the games and the actual sporting competition itself, the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games and all involved have excelled beyond expectation. Now, the world unites to celebrate the end of a shared moment: the last of the first global sporting event in over 18 months. Brittney Reese reflects on a sport-defining career...

The sting of missing out on Olympic glory can be a hurdle to overcome as well as a fuel for future success. Ultimately, delayed gratification may just be the ultimate prize. We speak with the second American woman to win a wrestling gold, Tamyra Mensah Stock, about how previous failures motivate her on and off the mat. Keni Harrison was the favorite coming into US Olympic Track & Field Trials in t...

From using your podium performance to speak for a wider group or simply turning your chopsticks around for a shared platter, gestures big and small are a defining feature of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. Hear from Women’s Shot put Silver-medalist Raven Saunders about how her personal style speaks volumes and explore the Japanese world of social gestures with etiquette expert Ben Sparrow. Listen to...

Running from steeple to steeple in the Irish countryside, over fences and through streams might seem like a task far removed from the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. And yet 2 events, run on 2 or 4 legs, remind us that utility is at the core of the Olympics, and that manufacturing once-natural challenges may seem a little forced, but that finding our force is why we compete in the first place. We speak...

The 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games feature the most sports and events in any modern Olympics. Organizing and participating, notably, in Track and Field and Water Polo, involves mastering a lot of pandemonium. Athletes like Maggie Steffens and Valarie Allman join us from their chaotic fields of play to explain why chaos creates additional challenges for the athletes, but that having a lot going on is par...

Athletes prioritizing their health and wellbeing has been a through line in the 2020 Tokyo Olympic games. And while that may sound like a given considering these are the highest performing physical specimens on earth, the public is being exposed more than ever to the hardships often hidden by the podium steps or outshined by the glimmer of Olympic medals. MyKayla Skinner, Simone Biles' teammate, g...

A few days ago, we referenced our sister podcast, In the Village, hosted by Elizabeth Beisel. Her recent interview with Katie Ledecky was so insightful and fun that we wanted to share it to The Podium audience. So for today’s episode of our show, Katie Ledecky hauls her medal collection to In the Village to catch up with former teammate Elizabeth Beisel. The pair talk about the amount of outfits r...

When you win a medal at the Olympic Games, your names is etched in history and plastered all over the ticker tape. Sometimes, the names of our Olympic champions fit just a little too well and lead us to ask: Is it in the name? Jagger Eaton explains his family’s naming conventions and not so rock’n’roll celebration plans. Tennys Sandgren and Austin Krajicek talk to us while nursing their bronze med...

What just happened and what might happen are the two things an Olympic athlete can’t do much about. Getting past them, as we’ll hear, is a challenge at every level. To explore the mindset of taking the games stroke by stroke, we spoke with Gold medalist Chase Kalisz about staying ready overnight for morning finals and with golfers finishing their final rounds with varying levels of satisfaction. L...

Two sports new to the Olympics in Tokyo are based on imagination. Visualizing and then executing a sequence of movements in precise order and in total control are key to both Sport climbing and Karate’s Kata. We revisit Sakura Kokumai’s explanation of Kata as the first practice takes place on Olympic day 8. Off the tatami and onto a wholly vertical plane, american climbers Kyra Condie and Nathanie...

Time, it’s the measure by which most sports are played. For 3x3 Basketball and Olympic boxing, two sports with more prominent and lengthy versions, the lack of time plays a huge role in making every move more crucial and exciting. We caught up with Team USA’s 3x3 Women’s Basketball team and finals-bound boxers to see what’s it’s like to have no time to lose. Listen to The Podium daily during the 2...