Colin Jost Joins NBC’s Olympic Coverage as Surfing Reporter

Colin Jost is riding the wave of SNLers-turned-Olympics commentators.

NBC Sports announced on Wednesday that the “Weekend Update” co-anchor will serve as a reporter for the 2024 Summer Olympics’ surfing competition.

The event, which will be held in Teahupo’o, Tahiti, marks only the second time in the history of the Olympics that surfing has been on the official docket. It made its debut at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo (which were actually held in the summer of 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic).

Jost, whom NBC notes is an “avid surfer,” will report live from Teahupo’o for the coverage. Olympic Surfing kicks off on Saturday, July 27 at 12:15 a.m. ET—a time slot Jost is certainly comfortable with—but the writer/comedian will be on site earlier to interview athletes and report on the conditions in the lead-up to the official competition. Pro surfers Joe Turpel and Mike Parsons will handle play-by-play and analysis, respectively.

“I’m honored to get to watch the best surfers in the world compete on one of the heaviest waves imaginable, and to help showcase the rich history of surfing in Tahiti,” Jost said in a statement. “And my Writers’ Guild health insurance is excited to see what the coral reef does to my back.”

Jost and NBC doubled down on the humor on their Instagram accounts, sharing a fake photo of the SNLer surfing. “As you can tell from this in-no-way-doctored photo, I can’t wait to get to Tahiti to cover the 2024 Olympic surfing competition and maybe even get seriously injured trying to surf,” Jost wrote.

While the Tahiti competition is nearly 10,000 miles away from the Paris epicenter of the 2024 Olympics, Jost is now officially part of the ever-growing list of NBC late-night personalities covering the Games.

Jimmy Fallon signed on to co-host the closing ceremony earlier this year after NBC Sports’ Mike Tirico invited him while guesting on The Tonight Show. Meanwhile, The Roots—Fallon’s house band—debuted a reimagined Olympic theme song to coincide with the Olympic Trials.

SNL long-timer Kenan Thompson will also co-host a highlights show with Kevin Hart on Peacock and SNL alum Leslie Jones, who has covered the Games before for NBC, will be serving as the network’s “chief super fan commentator.”

On Tuesday, Bowen Yang—yet another Saturday Night Live star—announced the launch of Two Guys, Five Rings: Matt, Bowen & The Olympics, a podcast he’ll co-host with his Las Culturistas podcast partner Matt Rogers throughout the Summer Games.

Jost joined SNL as a staff writer in 2005 and served as co-head writer from 2012 to 2015, then again from 2017 to 2022. In 2014, he began co-anchoring “Weekend Update” with Cecily Strong following Seth Meyers‘ departure from the series. In September of that year, Michael Che replaced Strong; Jost and Che have worked alongside each other (and occasionally swapped jokes) for nearly a decade now.

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