Without golf this weekend, NBC Sports is getting creative for the 4th of July and providing a whole bunch of programming for the niche sports fan. In addition to airing the first two stages of the Tour de France for the first time, NBC will bring the FIVB World Beach Volleyball Championships and a motorcross event. Here’s NBC’s press release.
TWO-TIME OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALISTS MISTY MAY-TREANOR AND KERRI WALSH HEADLINE THE FIVB BEACH VOLLEYBALL WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS THIS WEEKEND ON NBC
AMA Motocross Live on Saturday on NBC
NEW YORK – June 29, 2011 – NBC Sports will present three hours of taped coverage of the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships from Rome, Italy this weekend. Coverage begins on Saturday from 3:30 – 5 p.m. ET and continues Sunday from 4:30 – 6 p.m. ET on NBC, while Universal Sports will re-air the NBC Sports broadcast each day at 6 p.m. ET. The event features the top 48 men’s and women’s teams from 34 countries.
Saturday will feature the women’s semifinals with the finals on Sunday. Top competitors include two-time Olympic gold medalists and three-time world champions Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh, Chen Xue and Xi Zhang of China, Larissa Franca and Juliana Felisberta Silva, and Hana Klapalova and Lenka Hajeckova of Brazil.
Saturday’s coverage also includes former Brazilian teammates and 2004 Olympic gold medalists Emanuel Rego and Ricardo Santos who now compete from opposite sides of the net. Rego is now paired with Alison Cerutti while Santos now teams with Marcio Araujo.
Commentary will be provided by Chris Marlow and Kevin Wong.
AMA MOTOCROSS, SATURDAY, 5 PM ET
NBC Sports presents live coverage of the RedBud National from Buchanan, Mich., airing Saturday 5-6 p.m. ET. With five rounds of action already completed, RedBud marks the halfway point on the 12-stop tour of the 2011 AMA Pro Motocross Championship.
The series features the world’s fastest outdoor motocross racers, racing on the roughest, toughest tracks in the world. Motocross is the original extreme action sport, and the AMA Motocross Championship showcases pure motocross. The 12-round series began at Hangtown in May and ends at Pala Raceway in September, and includes stops at premier motocross racing facilities across the country. RedBud is amongst one of the most renowned tracks in American Motocross because of its vast layout filled with spectacular jumps and challenging obstacles. While each track is unique, each race is run under the same format: two 30-minute-plus-two lap races per class with scores from each race combined to determine the overall winner.
Jason Weigandt, Jeff Emig, Jamie Bestwick and Tiffany Simons will call the action.
There you have it.
