The Podium

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 required for a finals day, transitioning from first timer to team leader and scheduling in 5 minute increments.

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 medal match loss and women’s 200m breaststroke medalist Annie Lazor keeps the man who gave her such a speedy name at the forefront of her mind. Listen to The Podium daily during the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games for new insight into the stories you know and the ones you’ll be happy to discover.

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. Listen to The Podium daily during the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games for new insight into the stories you know and the ones you’ll be happy to discover.

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 Nathaniel Coleman tell us how to get a hold of any problem. Listen to The Podium daily during the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games for new insight into the stories you know and the ones you’ll be happy to discover.

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 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games for new insight into the stories you know and the ones you’ll be happy to discover.

Two countries with strong hockey ties look to begin new legacies of success in the summer sport by leveraging their history and history-making into participation and support back home. We’re joined by Elizabeth Murphy, who is not only part of the first Irish women’s field hockey team at the Olympics, her squad is the first female Olympic team of any kind for the Emerald Isle! Canadian field hockey has been overshadowed by its icy cousin in domestic sports culture, but gained momentum in hot conditions and the game’s multicultural appeal are nothing to shake a stick at. Listen to The Podium daily during the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games for new insight into the stories you know and the ones you’ll be happy to discover.

The 2020 Tokyo Olympics are alive with beeps, from vending machines to the backing up of athlete transport shuttles. Most of us don’t think twice about the virtual birdsong of digital chirps around us. But for some athletes, that’s the sound of their most ambitious dreams coming true. Hear from Connor Fields, the defending Gold medalist in Men’s BMX racing, about how reading the beeps of a start gate is key to outpacing the competition. History-making Anastasija Zolotic explains how she connected the circuits to an electrifying win in Taekwondo. Listen to The Podium daily during the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games for new insight into the stories you know and the ones you’ll be happy to discover.

We’re sharing an episode of the new TODAY podcast – live from Tokyo! Join Savannah Guthrie & Hoda Kotb each morning for all the insider news, history making moments, and great interviews from the Olympics. You can LISTEN to us anywhere you go! On your commute or on the run, you’ll get your daily dose of news, every morning. Follow and listen to TODAY wherever you get your podcasts. Listen NOW to TODAY

While participants at these Olympics are well-versed in guidelines, mother nature follows no such plans. As tropical storm Nepartak threatened to strengthen into a Typhoon and make landfall on July 27th, organizers and athletes began treating the weather as more than small talk.We connected with surfers to see how a disruptive force for other events gave their final day of competition a boost. Katie Zaferes also joins The Podium to explain how managing temperature earned her an Olympic medal.Listen to The Podium daily during the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games for new insight into the stories you know and the ones you’ll be happy to discover.

After failing to win a medal on the opening day of the Summer Olympics for the first time since 1972, the United States has secured its first podiums in Tokyo, unleashing a flurry of hardware for Team USA. Connect with Jay Litherland and Emma Weyant, the U.S. athletes who helped uncork the medal count, to hear how good victory tastes! Listen to The Podium daily during the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games for new insight into the stories you know and the ones you’ll be happy to discover.