It’s time for some medals🥇

Your Olympics essentials.

• What happened yesterday: The opening ceremony! Catch the highlights .
• What’s happening today: Swimming finals start ! Look out for Katie Ledecky in the 400m free. Team USA’s Jagger Eaton and his fellow skateboarders have to wait until Monday for the street competition after rain banged today’s qualifying and final. Follow all the action .
• The latest medal count: Entering Saturday, the medal count is zero still. But today, there are medal events across eight sports.

A word about the opening ceremony.

That was quite a show indeed Paris put on for last night’s opening ceremony .

It was thoughtful and artistic and pretty spectacular, if not a smidge long, like a 3.5 hour movie that could’ve been an hour shorter. The rain didn’t seem to take away from the vibes, for spectators watching on-site or for the athletes on their barges, including U.S. flag bearers LeBron James and Coco Gauff .

It is always really cool seeing a massive superstar like LeBron and a star in her own right like Coco embrace these roles. They both took selfies with so many of their fellow Team USA athletes, and proudly held the flag at the front of the barge in the pouring rain.

I worked from our office at the media center here, but we had teams of journalists both along the Seine River and hanging out with spectators to truly get a feel for what it was like on the ground. My colleagues Tom Schad and Michelle Martinelli have a rundown of all the things NBC’s broadcast didn’t show ; Sandy Hooper joined some Parisians for a party in their apartment ; our photographers braved hours in the rain to bring you these photographs ; Chris Bumbaca offered a biting but very correct take on the broadcast performances of Peyton Manning and Kelly Clarkson. (Yeah, that was … not good.)

But what a way to kick off these Games. Now, time for some medals!

Other opening ceremony highlights.

• What was it like along the opening ceremony route ?
• Here are the top moments from watching it in person.
• How Paris secured its Olympics opening ceremony.

Rafael Nadal, Serena Williams, Carl Lewis and Nadia Comaneci were a part of an epic Olympic torch relay near the end of the ceremony.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: It’s time for some medals🥇