3) And I'll be very bold here and mention women's artistic gymnastics, a discipline in which Brazil has never won a medal before. Yes, it might not make sense now, but I hope it will make sense on August 2.
I was looking for this. For some reason, I thought I had placed my bets on our volleyball teams and in artistic gymnastics, but I went the safest route with surfing and skateboarding, and a bold prediction in artistic gymnastics. I would never have thought, though, that it would have been a gold medal.
I think for our Belgian neighbours and friends there are a lot more 'safe' gold medal picks: Evenpoel and Van Aert in the men's road race and time trial, Thiam in the heptathlon (athletics), Derwael at uneven bars (gymnastics) and the men's hockeyteam.
Definitely not a safe medal, in my opinion. She's been showing signs of inconsistency and there's also big pressure from Fan Yilin and Sunisa Lee, so all it takes is a Russian having a good day and poof, no medal for Belgium.
3) And I'll be very bold here and mention women's artistic gymnastics, a discipline in which Brazil has never won a medal before. Yes, it might not make sense now, but I hope it will make sense on August 2.
Brazil will send its biggest team ever to an edition of the Olympics not staged in Brazil. But literally the only sports I care are artistic gymnastics and rhythmic gymnastics, so I'm kind of disappointed that our women's team failed to qualify. Still, 12 gymnasts is a very good number and I can't complain much.
Most surprising qualifiers: men's handball team. This is weird because they were supposed to qualify easily at the Pan Am Games, but they failed to qualify after Chile played a great match. It was highly improbable for Brazil to even have another chance of qualifying, but after a combination of results from continental qualifiers around the world, Brazil was allowed to play the Olympic qualifier and they managed to qualify in the end.
Most disappointing non-qualifier: women's basketball team. They should have qualified easily, but failed miserably. Actually, Brazil didn't qualify in basketball in any way, and this might be the first time in a long, long time we won't send a basketball team to the Olympics. Such a shame.
Tumbling would not be a new sport or even a new discipline at the Olympics. It would merely be another event in trampoline. It's FIG's fault it's not part of the Olympics.
Rhythmic gymnastics: out with the groups, in with mixed duets. Of course this would have been tough as this event has merely been shown as a gala event with no real competition so far.
Trampoline: out with individual trampoline, in with a "trampoline all-around" with tumbling, individual trampoline and double mini trampoline being competed by the same person. Once again, this is not a real event, but it would have been a lot more exciting than the current format, especially because individual trampoline is very boring, in my opinion.
Artistic swimming: out with duets, in with mixed duets.
Football: out with the traditional association football on field, in with beach soccer.
Wrestling: out with the old mat event, in with beach wrestling. I hate this sport anyway, so any change would be welcome.
Swimming: out with the 1500 m events, in with team 5 km open water, but with the format used a few years ago where swimmers would basically race against the clock. I liked it a lot, but I'm probably the only person in the world who wants it at the Olympics.
I once rooted for judoka Rafaela Silva to be our flagbearer, but she was caught for doping and I promised I would never root for anyone again.
However, I'll break my promise here. I believe football player Formiga should be our flagbearer. She's 43 and she will take part at her seventh Olympics. She deserves to be honored.
Who is the most underrated and overrated Olympic Medallist in your country?
The most underrated medalist from Brazil is probably Maicon Siqueira (taekwondo). No one expected him to win a medal, and then he did win a medal but unfortunately it was on the very same day that Brazil won gold in football. Then in 2019 he won a medal at the World Championships and media mostly ignored it because 4 other athletes won medals at the Worlds, and he was just "another one". Ouch.
The most overrated medalist has to be Diego Hypólito (artistic gymnastics). He's always invited to TV shows and when he opens his mouth, I cringe. He's one of those conservative gay people; he's almost ashamed to be gay, and he speaks about God and family values all the time so he can gain support from conservative people. Ironically, he ran as a councilor and failed to gather enough votes, what is a huge, huge shame for an Olympic medalist as well-known as he is. Still, most people use him as an example for never giving up. He was the favorite for the gold medal on floor in 2008, then a favorite for a medal of any color in 2012, but her failed on both occasions. In 2016 he won a medal and people now love him because of this. I really dislike his personality, though, and he's very unpleasant to me.
The four-member team format could shake things up, but, honestly, I doubt it.
in men's artistic.
However, I'm not completely sold on the Japanese team. I don't trust any of them. Tanigawa, in special, is very unpredictable and if he screws up like he did a number of times in the past, Japan will not win a medal. However, provided they hit, they should score well enough to guarantee a medal. Ukraine always seems to have trouble in team finals and Great Britain chose Whitlock for their team, and he can only contribute in one apparatus, so I'm not too confident these countries could challenge for the podium. Chinese Taipei, Brazil, USA and Switzerland can score well, but they will need a major upset from the big names to even come close to the scores from the three teams I mentioned.
in women's artistic gymnastics.
The US is the clear favorite here, thanks to Simone Biles, of course. The other girls are very good, but without Simone, they would be perfectly beatable. Don't let the unrealistic scores at US Nationals fool anyone: once Biles retires, the US team will not be nearly as dominant as they have been. For this year, however, they will still win gold. Russia has a couple of talented girls, but they usually receive higher scores than they deserve, so combine talent and bias and you have a favorite for the second place.
Now, the bronze medal will be very interesting. China relies too much on one event: balance beam. If their gymnasts fail, other teams might sneak in. The question is which countries would be able to do it. To be honest, I don't see any country with a particularly good team. Great Britain picked a team with two great gymnasts and two solid, but not particularly talented girls. Italy lost all of its steam. France has MDJDS, but nothing else. Japan will probably be over scored because of home advantage, but they don't have a good team. Germany is a mere shadow of their former selves. Canada is struggling with a limited number of gymnasts to choose from. Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands are completely out of the picture and in my opinion will not even qualify for the final.
Equestrian events are open, not mixed. There are no gender-assigned places as with the mixed team events.
Interesting! I never thought about it.
This makes aerobic gymnastics the only sport I know of that covers all of these categories.
1) There are gender-specific events: individual male and individual female;
2) There's a mixed pair event;
3) Trios, groups, dance and step events are open to any gender.
There was a mixed synchro trampoline event at the early World Championships ins the 1960s, but it has long been discontinued.
I'm guilty of only slightly caring about volleyball and football because it's what TV networks show in Brazil and what I've grown up watching. Basketball and handball are those "alternative" sports, and all the others are virtually nonexistent in the country.
Among the sports that are usually not shown on TV in Brazil, Rugby sevens is the most interesting to me, but of course it's still far from being a successful professional sport in Brazil. I've never even watched a baseball or field hockey match in my life. Even at the Olympics, TV networks usually will not show water polo matches, despite the fact that it was a somewhat popular sport in Brazil around 50 or 60 years ago.
I think that Raffelli wil not be a Tokyo, Italy should complete with Baldassarri and Alex
What's the point? She's way ahead of either of them. I'd say Raffaeli and Baldassarri are the top contenders. What happened to Agiugiuculese? She's not on her best days. Neither is Baldassarri, to be honest.
Well, this is my favorite sport along with artistic gymnastics, but I'm always terrible at predictions, LOL. I forgot about mentioning how I think individuals will perform.
So, the clear favorite is Dina Averina. The second Russian will be either Arina Averina or Lala Kramarenko. Arina has always been inconsistent, but Lala is still very young. Both are very talented and we'll have to wait until the very last second to know who will be chosen. However, I bet on Arina. The prospect of identical twins competing at the Olympics might be too much for Viner-Usmanova to pass up.
Now, if history repeats itself, we'll have a surprising medalist on the podium. It's been like this in recent years: Zhukova in 2008, Charkashina in 2012 and Rizatdinova in 2016. While Ashram is the one everybody expects to succeed, she has a large crowd threatening her at the moment: Kaleyn, Harnasko and Raffaelli could "steal" this medal from Ashram.
If we're stretching things here, Salos, Zeng, Kaleyn and Nikolchenko are the ones I expect to see in the top 10. Vedeneeva could also place in the top 10 if she has a fantastic day in qualifications.
Russia and Japan for sure. The third spot could be a total surprise, such as Uzbekistan, but I doubt it. I'd say Bulgaria, but Italy and Israel could take its place. Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Belarus would be the dark horses. Unless China has major upgrades, I believe they have no chance of getting a medal.
It's hard to predict anything else at this point because we still need to know which nations will qualify.
Europe: I don't think Spain will qualify. Turkey is more likely to qualify, but Germany, Finland or Estonia could also pull of a miraculous qualification. Of course, Ukraine might get the European quota, what means the WCh quota would be reallocated.
Americas: Mexico is the clear favorite here. US and Canada are its nearest rivals. Brazil has suffered with major problems and, now, I'd say we have no chance at all of qualifying.
Oceania: It's either Australia or New Zealand, but Australia has the edge. Still, either nation will be the weakest of the bunch.
Africa: I'm not sure if Egypt's qualification will be uphold because apparently two gymnasts from the group tested positive for doping. I don't think any other nation from Africa follows the minimum requirements for qualification, so we shall see what FIG will do.
Asia: Uzbekistan is the favorite for qualification. It's leaps and bounds ahead of the remaining countries available for a quota. South Korea and Kazakhstan are the only other nations which would be interested in the quota, but they are considerably behind Uzbekistan. Maybe Thailand would be interested too, who knows?
I fully respect your opinion (taste is absolutely personal), but I don't agree...
the action might not be always fast and furious (actually, in the speed event it's fast and furious), but there's always a lot of tension, strategy, strenght, technique involved in any single move that makes this sport very likeable...at least for me...
Yes, the point is that it all comes down to personal taste. I just can't enjoy it no matter what. It's either over too fast or slow and boring.
This sport almost makes me like Parkour for kind of fitting in the middle: it's not over too fast, but it's also not so slow that I would be bored watching.
I'm surprised with how much you guys seem to like sports climbing. For me, it's the worst sport in the current Olympic program. I could even pick breakdancing over sports climbing, to be honest.
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in men's artistic.
Ashram is the one everybody expects to succeed, she has a large crowd threatening her at the moment: 
Kaleyn, 
Harnasko and 
Raffaelli could "steal" this medal from Ashram. 
Nikolchenko are the ones I expect to see in the top 10. 
Vedeneeva could also place in the top 10 if she has a fantastic day in qualifications.
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I was looking for this. For some reason, I thought I had placed my bets on our volleyball teams and in artistic gymnastics, but I went the safest route with surfing and skateboarding, and a bold prediction in artistic gymnastics. I would never have thought, though, that it would have been a gold medal.
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