At Beijing Winter Games, now just a year away, figure skating will be a morning and evening affair (as you read here last March)

Silver medalist Yuzuru Hanyu (left) and gold medalist Nathan Chen at the 2019 Wor;ld Championships. (Getty Images)

Under usual circumstances, the day marking one year to go until the next Olympics directs a substantial amount of attention toward the upcoming Games.

But there is nothing usual about the current circumstances of a world turned inside out by the Covid-19 pandemic. So the next Olympics is not the 2022 Winter Games in China, where competition begins with curling Feb. 2, 2022, which is one year from today (the Opening Ceremony is a year from Friday). 

Next up is the postponed 2020 Tokyo Summer Games. Beijing 2022 seems much further off than it is. If not for Tokyo siphoning attention , by now China would be facing a relentless drumbeat of criticism for its genocidal treatment of the country’s Uighur population.

Until the Winter Games were moved to the middle year of the Olympic quadrennium after 1992, both winter and summer Games were in the same year.  The Tokyo postponement means this is the first time since 1992 that winter and summer Olympics have been so close together on the calendar.

With the Olympic world’s attention focused on how (and whether?) the Tokyo 2020/21 Summer Games will take place this July and August, it was easy to forget the Beijing Games are now also on the relatively near horizon.

With that realization slapping me in the face, it was time to follow up on my exclusive story from last March about the figure skating schedule for the 2022 Winter Games.

And the latest iteration of that schedule, released in late November and subject to tweaks, confirms what my story had revealed:  for the benefit of broadcasters in different parts of the world, events will start in both the morning and evening in China.

The team event, men’s singles and free dance will begin in the morning, which means the bulk of each of those broadcasts will fall into prime time in North America.  The rhythm dance, all of pairs and all of women’s singles will start in the evening, falling into prime time in China, Japan and South Korea and in the afternoon in Russia.

Beijing is 13 hours ahead of New York, 16 hours ahead of Los Angeles, five hours ahead of Moscow and one hour behind Tokyo.

The morning starts unsurprisingly are for the events NBC – by far the biggest sugar daddy of the International Olympic Committee - thinks will attract the most interest in the United States, because U.S. skaters are medal contenders in the team event, men’s singles and dance.

In a sport where women’s singles traditionally had been the big draw for U.S. audiences, the near utter recent dominance of Russian skaters and the near certainty the U.S. will win no women’s medal for the fourth straight Olympians means NBC likely will focus its spotlight elsewhere.

And it will almost certainly be brightest on the expected battle between Japan’s Yuzuru Hanyu, the two-time reigning Olympic champion, and the United States’ Nathan Chen, the two-time reigning world champion.

Some details:

• The men’s short program is scheduled to run from 9:15 a.m-1:30 p.m. in Beijing, which is 8:15 p.m.-12:30 a.m. in New York and 10:15 a.m.-2:30 p.m. in Tokyo..  The men’s free skate will run from 9:30 a.m.-1:40 p.m. in Beijing, which is 8:30 p.m.-12:40 a.m. in New York and 10:30 a.m.-2:40 p.m. in Tokyo.

• The ice dance free is to start at 10 a.m. in Beijing (9 p.m. in New York.)

• The first two sessions of the team event are to start at 9:30 a.m. in Beijing, the third (and final) team session at 10:30 a.m.  The rhythm dance is to start at 7 p.m. local time, and both phases of women’s singles at 6 p.m.

• Pairs, which has been the first “individual” figure skating event at every Winter Olympics beginning with 1980, now will the final competitive event.  Russian and Chinese pairs are dominant, so the evening start times for both short (6:30) and free (7) are good for audiences in China and Russia (afternoon.)  Making pairs the last discipline to compete will heighten the drama for China, since it is the only place Chinese figure skaters will be favored to win a medal.

The ice dancers undoubtedly won’t be thrilled about having an evening and then a morning start for their discipline, even with a day off between them.

Beijing 2022 photo

But anyone who still thinks the Olympics are about what is best for athletes is, alas, sadly mistaken.  They are about what is best for the International Olympic Committee’s broadcast partners, which is why swimming finals this summer in Tokyo are to be in the morning, as they were in the 2008 Beijing Summer Games.  As Michael Phelps was becoming the greatest swimmer in history, his sport became NBC’s go-to event.

Despite the decreasing overall U.S. interest in figure skating over the years since the Tonya-Nancy spike (1994 to about 2002) and the competitive retirement of Michelle Kwan (in 2006), NBC still has looked at figure skating as a prime Winter Olympic attraction for its entertaining amalgam of athleticism, artistry, soap opera and judging controversy.

NBC paid $963 million for the rights to the 2018 Winter Games in South Korea and approximately $1 billion for rights to the Beijing Games.  That gave NBC the leverage to ask for – and receive – favorable schedules, beginning with morning starts for every figure skating session at the 2018 Winter Games in South Korea.  Ten of the 11 competition days began at 10 a.m. in Gangneung, and the other at 10:30.

The Beijing Games will mark the end of an intense seven months for NBC, with two Olympics and a Super Bowl.  The football game is scheduled Feb. 6, two days after the Opening Ceremony.  It is the first time the Super Bowl will take place during an Olympics. The game will end just about the same time as the morning start of the figure skating team event’s finale.