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Olympic taekwondo 2016 live stream: Time, TV schedule and how to watch Thursday’s matches online

The men’s 68kg and women’s 57kg gold medals will be handed out Thursday in Rio.

Aug 18, 2016, 11:00 AM UTC

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It’s another full day of taekwondo at the 2016 Olympics as the men’s 68kg and women’s 57kg weight classes fight for medals. Competition begins at 8 a.m. ET with the Round of 16 and continues throughout Thursday until the gold medal matches at night.

With lots of changes to rules and procedures over the years, the Olympics have tried hard to made the sport’s scoring as fair and accurate as possible. Fighters now wear special helmets and vests that electronically record various hits, removing some human element from deciding who wins matches, after judging controversies in previous Olympics led to complaints.

At men’s 68kg, the favorite is Turkey’s Servet Tazegul. He’s a two-time Olympic medalist (bronze in 2008, gold in 2012) and won the gold medal in the featherweight class at the 2015 World Championships. In the Round of 16, Tazegul will face Cuba’s Ignacio Morales. Another contender will be Russia’s Aleksey Denisenko, who won bronze at the 2012 Olympics and silver at the 2015 World Championships. He takes on Venezuela’s Edgar Contreras in his Round of 16 match.

Great Britain’s Jade Jones will be looking to defend her Olympic gold medal in the women’s 57kg competition. She’s coming off a disappointing finish at the 2015 World Championships, where she lost a controversial quarterfinal in which the electronic scoring system crashed during the match. Now she’ll look to get back to the top starting with a Round of 16 match against Morocco’s Naima Bakkal.

For Americans, this is the rare pair of competitions where you won’t have the opportunity to watch anyone from your country. Team USA has four athletes in Rio competing in taekwondo, but none of them are in these weight classes so it’ll be a quiet day for the U.S.