Matt Iseman is one of the hosts on Gold Zone, the “whip-around” live program on Peacock covering the Paris Summer Olympics. NBC said Gold Zone “will present viewers with the best and most compelling moments happening at any time.”
Iseman, a host on American Ninja Warrior, pairs with Jac Collinsworth on the Olympics show, the duo handling a four-hour morning shift. Scott Hanson and Andrew Siciliano are hosts as well. Iseman previously covered the Olympics in Beijing in 2022, which had empty venues due to the pandemic, and Tokyo in 2020, which had even more empty venues.
While he’ll be working on Gold Zone from the NBC Sports facility in Connecticut, Iseman is psyched for fans to be at the Olympic venues in Paris, cheering on the athletes. “We’re excited for this to be the first real post-pandemic Olympics where the fans are going to be there, the families are going to be there,“ he said. “I think the performances are going to be more electric.”
He spoke with B+C about Gold Zone, what he’s most looking forward to in Paris, and if the Olympics ever might feature a Ninja Warrior-esque event. An edited transcript follows.
B+C: Describe the concept of a whip-around show.
Matt Iseman: If anyone’s watched football on Sunday and seen the RedZone channel, essentially we’re just going to go to the biggest events, we’re going to go where the best action is. There are 396 medal events being contested over the 17 days and sometimes there'll be up to 40 events going on.
If it's Simone Biles on vault, we're going there. If it's Noah Lyles running the 100-meter semis, we’re going there. We’re trying to find where’s the biggest action, where’s the most stakes going on, and take you to that action.
NBC has seen how people are more in charge of their viewing now. So they’re saying, alright, we're going to air every event through Peacock, through USA, through all the parallel networks — everything will be going live somewhere. But I think the easiest choice will be, I can't track the schedule, I don't know what’s going on, let me just go to Gold Zone and know that they’re going to be taking me to the best stuff going on at any time.
B+C: You're paired up with Jac Collinsworth [son of Cris Collinsworth, Sunday Night Football analyst]. Do you have any history with Jac?
MI: None. But I’ve watched him a ton. I've seen the stuff he's been doing around Sunday Night Football with NBC and I love his personality. He’s done play-by-play for Notre Dame. He's obviously grown up in the sports world.
One thing that I bring is a lot of enthusiasm, and I think Jac brings that as well. We just met on a Zoom call a couple of days ago and I felt like we clicked immediately.
B+C: Of the different Olympics you've covered, do you have one memory that stands out in your mind?
MI: At the Tokyo Olympics, we had Laurie Hernandez, who was part of the Rio gold medal team [2016] and a teammate of Simone Biles, and she was our gymnast expert. I’ve done a ton of stuff with Laura already on Ninja Junior, and just adore her. We’re sitting there and we're watching Simone on the vault and in the air, and Lori just slaps the table and was like, something’s wrong. You don't do a jump like that. There’s something wrong. And that was when Simone realized she had the twisties. [The twisties sees a gymnast lose their sense of where their body is in space.]
Laurie immediately got on the phone with [former Olympian gymnast] Aly Raisman and they started talking like, could it be the twisties? No way. This is crazy!
It was insane to be there at what was the biggest story in the Olympics for the U.S., and see how Simone, the greatest to ever do it, you realize she’s human. And I thought it was really great to be there with an expert like Laurie, who was her teammate.
B+C: We’ve got breakdancing, or breaking, in the Paris Olympics. Can you see a day when some Ninja Warrior-esque competition enters the Olympics?
MI: For 2028 in L.A., the modern pentathlon is being modified and one of the categories they’re going to have is obstacle course. It's supposedly going to be a Ninja Warrior-type obstacle course that will be a part of the modern pentathlon, which I think would be the baby step.
I would love to see it in there. The show just got picked up for season 17, which is incredible. And what we’ve seen is, it has become a sport. There are kids who grow up not playing football or baseball or soccer, but they are Ninja Warriors and it's reflected in the skill of these young athletes.
It’s continuing to grow and it’s doing it around the world. So it’s not too far off before Ninja becomes an Olympic sport.
I would love it!
