NBC’s Tirico ready to begin busy stretch

More than two months after completing one of the busiest schedules in recent memory for a sports television host, Mike Tirico is recharged and ready to go again.

Tirico will host his fifth Kentucky Derby on Saturday, which begins a stretch that includes the Triple Crown, Indianapolis 500, the U.S. Open and the British Open. Tirico will then begin preparing for the upcoming NFL season as he takes over as the play-by-play voice for “Sunday Night Football.”

“People say you need to rest for the football season. You do that all the time,” Tirico said. “To do the Derby, Preakness, Indy and then go to Brookline and St. Andrew’s, that’s not work. It’s still fun. So I am rested, ready to go and looking forward to a great spring and summer.”

Tirico acknowledges his battery needed recharging after the Beijing Winter Games. Hosting an Olympics is one of the toughest tasks out there, but Tirico’s was more complicated because he also hosted the Super Bowl from Los Angeles and had a stretch where he logged 12,500 air miles in less than a week.

He anchored primetime coverage from Beijing the first five days before flying back to the U.S. He did three days in Los Angeles and anchored the final week from NBC Sports headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut.

That doesn’t even include Tirico hosting the Tokyo Summer Games, calling Notre Dame football and hosting “Football Night in America.”

“I think those two Olympics with the football season in between was a marathon for sure, an ultramarathon in our world,” he said.