2016 Rio Olympics will feature 8 morning track and field finals

One minor downside of this is that you are less likely to see ultra-fast times. There's a decent amount of evidence that, because of circadian variations in hormone levels and wakefulness, athletic performance in an endurance event peaks in the late evening—the 8pm start time of the 800m final in 2012 surely helped nudge Rudisha's time a bit faster. Some people even suggest that the difference could up to a few percent, but no research has been done on world-caliber elites. The Olympics are not usually a place for fast times, but do expect performances to be slightly inferior across the board.

Fun fact: Because of the circadian cycle, West coast NFL teams have a statistically significant advantage over East coast NFL teams on Monday Night Football.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9381059

Northern Star wrote:

One minor downside of this is that you are less likely to see ultra-fast times. There's a decent amount of evidence that, because of circadian variations in hormone levels and wakefulness, athletic performance in an endurance event peaks in the late evening—the 8pm start time of the 800m final in 2012 surely helped nudge Rudisha's time a bit faster. Some people even suggest that the difference could up to a few percent, but no research has been done on world-caliber elites. The Olympics are not usually a place for fast times, but do expect performances to be slightly inferior across the board.

Fun fact: Because of the circadian cycle, West coast NFL teams have a statistically significant advantage over East coast NFL teams on Monday Night Football.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9381059

Everyone in the finals will be so doped up none of this sh!t is going to matter.

A few things:

1) I went to a lot of morning sessions in 1996. (Now I had to be there for some because my job involved being there). One reason to go is that you often got to see more action and the ticket prices were a lot cheaper.

2) As for the circadian rhythm argument, Beijing had swimming finals in the morning (Beijing time) and it did not seem to hurt the times.

The circadian rhythm argument may affect some athletes negatively but it may boost performances for others. I've been an early riser my whole life and have always run my best in morning or early afternoon races and have had some pretty awful performances in races that started after 9:00 in the evening.

It wouldn't surprise me that swimmers would excel in morning finals. The vast majority of Olympic level swimmers have been getting up at 4:00 am most mornings for practice since they were 10-12 years old

LetsRun.com wrote:

European tv viewers can see a few things live without staying up ridiculously late and Asian viewers can see something live in prime time.

And American viewers can watch it in the evening on NBC tape delay.

On the plus side: those finals are more likely to get live TV coverage in the US and not get all chopped up & tape-delayed. IIRC, the 10ks have been shown live in the last 3 Olympics because they were in the afternoon or morning in the USA and NBC didn't think they were important enough to embargo until prime time.

who are you kidding? They won't be shown live. The CBC is the only network that cares about live encourage. The coverage south of the border here is EMBARRASSINGLY bad!!!

2) As for the circadian rhythm argument, Beijing had swimming finals in the morning (Beijing time) and it did not seem to hurt the times.

Maybe not the winners' times, but many swimmers complained about those morning finals and performed worse than expected.