ExpandThere is nothing quite like the joy of a completely unexpected last minute quota.
You spend so much time analysing whether a given athlete will or won't make it and then just out of nowhere a quota you didn't even know was on the cards. Qualifying a full squad in the canoe slalom has to be strangest story of this qualification cycle for us. Especially in the context of most of our comparable sports size wise like mondern pentathlon, triathlon, judo have struggled this olympic cycle.
What do we think the delay is with the road cycling announcement, we're basically the only ones left in the field yet to announce our team. Megan Armitage did just have covid so maybe that is what it is although I had wondered given Lara Gillespie and Alice Sharpe were selected for the madison and that we rejected a tt spot that they could be indications that Mia Griffin would get the nod for the road race but the race is just about hilly enough to justify picking Armitage. Obviously Lara Gillespie is our best rider but she can't do everything.
Also who the we think the second men's rider is. Eddie wasn't exactly in great form at tour of austria I guess he should be in better form in a few weeks with the vuelta on the horizon. Sammy well at least he got himself a top 5 and his leadout has been hopeless even if he himself hasn't had the legs either. Darren Rafferty hasn't raced since nationals. Is there a case for Ryan Mullen if all we are realistically asking our second rider to do is help control the early breakaway for 200km. The only other thing any of them in their current form could realistically do to assist Ben Healy is get in the early break but how much value is there in that given that the point of getting in the break when you have a contender is so you don't have to chase but we only have two riders so if one of them is in the break there is no one there to chase with anyway.
Anyway hopefully Ben gets his stage win this week, he deserves one but either way he absolutely has the legs to contend at the Olympics.
More so than most races, even the Worlds, the Olympics pushes a;lliances - no team is big enough to actually control the race - GBR came the closest in 2012, and might have pulled it off if they could have got one more team to work with them, but they were all too afraid of Cav. Most of the race, especially for the small teams, will be about reacting, and picking wheels, and trying not to use up matches. The Parcours is quite punchy, might favour an Ardennes rider, and ben Healy certainly fits that category - he has not been QUITE on last years form, but he's still riding well, and is due a good day.
I do have a hunch that while the favourite is probably going to be MvdP (he won't be tired out from the Tour, nor split over two disciplines like pidcock), a key wheel to watch will be Aliphillipe - he's bound to play the home heroics at some point, and he might be the guy to follow for the break of the day - and in the Olympics - the break of the day always has a shot. Obviously a lot depends on Pogacar's form post Tour as he obviously excells at these hilly classic style courses - the inclusion of cobbles on some of those hills favours MvdP, I think, though.
ExpandIt’ll be all about timing for the women’s. Hopefully Adeleke will be in the individual final but she’ll be the only one so women’s team should include Mawdsley for the heats
My instinct is that mixed heat is Mawdsley and Becker. Adeleke replaces Becker if they make it
womens heat is Becker, Mawdsley, Healy and Cadden/McGrory. Adeleke comes in for the final if they make it
I wouldn't quibble with that. Decent chance they make the Mixed final without Adeleke - with only 16 teams, and some teams not putting out their top guns, has to be possible - if they make it, Adeleke gives them a three and a half second upgrade, right out the gat, which hopefully puts them somewhere in the mix.
women's 4 x 4 is more a case of, it's great to be here, enjoy the experience - though if the somehow wangle a final without Adeleke (tall order) - a Healy, Adeleke, Becker, Maudsley line up is not awful by any stretch, and would embarrass nobody.
In truth, I have a sneaky feeling the GBR women's 4 might do something - I think their depth is underestimated.
ExpandWould i be right in thinking one or two of those wont get a run in Paris?
Possibly, though in my mind it speaks more to resting Adeleke and Mawdsley as much as possible - or even not running Adeleke at all.
If I were guessing, I'd say there's a genuine outside medal shout in the mixed, especially if other nations don't send out their best - in that scenario, if Ireland somehow get to the final with Adeleke, she could slot back in for a major go. There's no realistic chance of a medal in the Women's, so I can imagine Adeleke could skip that altogether, and Mawdsley could skip the heat and hope they sneak in eighth, come back in for the final. Adeleke's coach could try and pull her out of all relay action, we'll have to wait and see - but fundamentally, i suspect almost all of them will get at least a heat at some point.
I see the Pole immediately below Sophie Becker has got a reallocation, so that pretty much confirms Sophie is in.
Expand3 GB athletes refused the invite so it’s pretty much a done deal. I think only Barr will miss out now
I don't think the athletes did the refusing, but thats' academic - given GBR stance, always thought McCann was in. Barr, we wait and see, but specialism will hurt him here.
McGing go in!
And Wiffen confirms no 400m, but going for the 10k!
ExpandYeah, Miller-Uibi makes it (with 2 scores from 2022 in it bizarrely)
Femke out will mean Klaver as only Dutch as their 3rd is De Witte (behind Sophie)
Van den Brocke (BEL) could choose 400m hurdles
So Moraa, Shawnie (injured) and Femke is three already, yeah?
as for Jodie
Megan Keith doesn't want to run it, Judd is injured (epilepsy),they almost certainly won't send Nutaal or Fry on rankings, so that's 3
Then Hussan is probably noting doing it
So one more?
Edited by mpjmcevoyExpandAdd 5 for athletics
Nicola Tuthill - hammer
Kate O’Connor - heptathlon
Cathal Doyle - 1,500m
Luke McCann - 1,500m
Eric Favors - shot out
Sophie Becker (3) and Tom Barr (2) hoping for pull outs. Jodie McCanne has 5 ahead of her in the 5,000m too
Moraa is almost a certainty. Obviously US pull outs are no good to her, but Femke might be (is the 4th dutch ahead of her?) Was Shawnie in the list?
ExpandThey’ve only included the times. They update the rankings on Wednesday and Brand of Switzerland earned enough points to overtake Tom. That’ll be confirmed on Wednesday
I would suspect there's bound to be 1 pull out - there's about 5 in the 400 metre already
ExpandTuthill is safe. Barr didn’t improve at all and is on the bubble
Becker improves her score but not her position and 4/5 below her could massively improve their score this weekend. I think she’ll miss out
At least Barr and Becker have the consolation of the relays slots - at least they've got a ferry ticket.
ExpandTuthill is safe. Barr didn’t improve at all and is on the bubble
Becker improves her score but not her position and 4/5 below her could massively improve their score this weekend. I think she’ll miss out
Calmers reinstatement knocks Barr down one spot -I think he might just be the last spot now, pending other bad news from abroad...but, crossing fingers, there's usually a quota or two in each track event become available from pullouts whathaveyou
ExpandI think she is exactly where she needs to be. She set a PB and ran the world silver medalist close and pushed her to a sub 48 sec. I think she's going to be on the podium in Paris but it could go either way. So exciting though!
I think a lot of people may be sleeping on just what an astonishing 400 that was - never before has a European's legitimately seen anything like that (I will not pretend Koch and Kratch are legit). World class 400 runners like Klaver simply left in the wake of top 2. And I don't think Rhashidat ran her perfect race; she was a little conservative opening, and then lost a smidge of form under pressure for the last 30 - and still ran that astonishing time v an absolutely world class runner smashing her own pb/nr. Pity Syd and Bol are swerving the 400 flat, but it's still gonna be an astonishing race.
ExpandProbably the other thing worth noting as well is that, other than awaiting confirmation that McIlroy, Lowry, Maguire and Meadow are our four golfers and will be taking their places, I don't think there are any remaining genuine medal prospects who have yet to confirm a qualification quota. There are places on medal potential teams, boats, horses and bikes to be confirmed but the actual qualification places have already been achieved. So we can probably start to get a better view of where our medal potential is now.
I think there are probably 30 events that we can consider ourselves to have at least some chance of winning a medal in. Some are bigger hopes than others of course. Probably a medal return rate of around 20% from those would be the aim for the team in Paris i.e. six medals.
10 boxing (because any of them might have a chance with a kind draw)
5 rowing
4 athletics
3 equestrian
2 swimming
2 golf
2 cycling
1 gymnastics
1 rugby
maybe 1 taekwondo at a push
Can we pull 6+ medals out of that, and hopefully at least one gold somewhere in all that?
I think there are enough gold medal shouts there to pick off one, or even, god help me, two - McCleneghan, Wiffen and one of the Rowing teams look like the best bets, while you can't rule out entirely a second in rowng, a couple of the boxers, McIlroy or one of the showjumpers. We're not such a big country to turn our nose up at minor medals though - you bring home an Olympic bronze, you're still a national hero in Ireland!
ExpandSo it's a full house on the women's side, thanks to Daina Moorhouse. Fantastic effort all round. Nine boxers qualified now, would be great to get at least one more from Walsh and McDonagh to get it into double figures, but either way it's been a successful weekend.
Our overall qualification total is closing in hard now on the record 117 that competed in Tokyo, and there's still six weeks worth of qualifications to come.
Also worth noting that Ireland are one of only three countries to qualify in all six weights on the women's side. The other two are China, who have just a slight population advantage over us, and Australia who have a much easier qualification path via the Pacific Games.
Walsh picks up the tenth quota. Though, frankly, god knows how.
ExpandWell she’ll still Irish, but if she goes pro she’ll have no appeal. She had 2 chances to qualify for the Olympics and failed. That’s more than most get
"she'll still Irish".
So's Graham Norton. He's not our problem either.
i'm odd on this stuff; on the one hand I despise racism in Irish sport, have done since I hero-worshipped Paul McGrath. I don't care where the hell you come from if you pull on that jersey legitimately, you're one of ours, whether by birth, birthright, heritage or later choice. Whether you're Rhasidate Adeleke, Ciara Mageaan, Ben Healy/Dan Martin (cycling) or Bundie Aki, you're ours and we'll circle the damn wagons around ye if needed.
But if you're Ben Healy (rugby), Kyran Bracken, Bethany Firth or Amy Broadhurst, I wish you well (well, not Kyran Bracken, the gobshite - can you see the scars of past thumpings>!) but you're not our problem...
Even if, weirdly, I actually would cheer for you with my GBR hat on (which for Firth I do, and for Broadhurst I might have done)!
And then to cap off the oddness, the only golf I care about is the Ryder Cup, and I couldn't care less about the B&I Lions.
ExpandInterest in the men's side thinning out now. A one in four box off for Walsh and McDonagh is the only other still involved.
It's all over for Amy Broadhurst as well, which in truth is no harm from our point of view. If Grainne Walsh qualifies her selection will be very much vindicated now. Broadhurst has missed her olympic opportunity and probably significantly damaged her potential appeal as a pro boxer by switching nations. Who will pay to watch her box as a pro now...a question for another forum I suppose.
To be fair, Ireland only brought 4 men, already having three Qs, and 2 of those 4 are still in the game
As for Amy, wish her well with my GBR hat on, but she's no longer Ireland's problem
ExpandA real shame for Sanita, her and the Olympics never went well together for whatever reason.
There's always one in every sport, world class but just couldn't pull it together at that one moment. Paula Radcliffe springs to mind, arguably Eamonn Coughlan - both clearly utterly world class, both never got Olympic reward. Perhaps you could currently add Novak Djokovic to that group, although he has a bronze or two i think. Sanita, sadly, now joins that admittedly illustrious company.
ExpandReally not wanting to go too far down a rabbit hole here because this is not at all what this thread is about, but we are definitely not "underfunded compared to most countries". That is manifestly untrue.
Irish sport, historically, has been skewed heavily towards non-Olympic sport - notable GAA, horse racing, golf, rugby, snooker and in the North motorcycles. In olympic terms we were good boxers, and we occasionally pulled a good runner. Facilities and talent pools for anything else was pretty limited. And with a small population, we weren't getting any benefits from numbers.
Recently, we've started to produce decent rowers, particularly at lightweight, plus talented one offs in non traditional sport, the stand out of which is of course Rhys McCleneghan. Rhasidat is lightly different as there has been a flurry of good female sprinters, one of which you'd have hoped would have turned up trumps - we saw Gina Akpe-Moses, Molly Scott, ciara Neville and Patience Jumbo Gula come through, plus we now have Sarah Healy and Sonia O'Sullivan's daughter at middle distance.
But we still don't have a single Indoor velodrome, hardly any world class pools, and a limited gymnastics infrastructure, and we share the Home Nations tendency to spread ourselves thin, having a crack at everything.
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By JoshMartini007 · Posted
I hope it was a typo and they mean mixed doubles. Unless they bring back ranking points (they should regardless) I imagine the team event will be sparsely attended. I just hope players declining to participate won't spread to the singles/doubles events. -
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mixed Team 10m Air Pistol Gold: China 2 (Ma Qianke & Zhang Yifan) Silver: China 1 (Yao Qianxun & Hu Kai) Bronze: India 1 (Inder Singh Suruchi & Saurabh Chaudhary) Full Results & Rankings https://www.issf-sports.org/competitions/3268/results -
Also this from a journalist friend who asked the IOC about whether the mixed tennis event would be mixed doubles or a mixed team event. Simple answer - they don't know yet. The ITF are still to decide -
By MatiReimundo · Posted
The tennis would likely be the United Cup format. 1 singles mens match, 1 singles womens and the mixed, best of three. Which if this is the case, it would be impossible to make players compete in a team event, singles and doubles in only one week (and especially coming from the grass to hard). Due to this is very likely that tennis could go for 2 complete weeks, which if that happen we will see a lot of players not playing the olympics, which is not good. 2 weeks without playing for the points and money of the professional tour is impossible except for the top 10-20. The only good is that in the LA dates there are no big tournaments, only 250, and the olympics could be a preparation for the US/Canada month ending in the US open so players will not have the excuse of the surface like last year. -
To point out a mistake in the document. They say Artistic Swimming is back to being a women only sport. That is not true, men are still allowed to compete
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LIIGA Playoffs Semifinals Pairings (Best-of-7 Series) Lukko Rauma (1) vs SaiPa Lappeenranta (5) Ilves Tampere (2) vs KalPa Kuopio (3)
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LIIGA Playoffs Quarterfinals Results (Best-of-7 Series) Lukko Rauma (1) b. Sport Vaasa (11) 4-0 (6-2; 4-1; 5-1; 3-1) Ilves Tampere (2) b. Tappara Tampere (9) 4-0 (4-0; 2-1; 3-2; 6-1) KalPa Kuopio (3) b. Ässät Pori (7) 4-3 (1-2 OT; 3-1; 4-1; 2-1 OT; 0-2; 0-5; 3-2) SaiPa Lappeenranta (5) b. HIFK Helsinki (4) 4-0 (4-1; 2-1 OT; 2-0; 6-2)
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Elite League Playoffs The Finals (Best-of-7 Series) Game #3: Storhamar Ishockey b. Stavanger Oilers 6-3 (2-3, 3-0, 1-0) Storhamar lead series 3-0 and could clinch the tile with a win later Tonight Game #4 is scheduled for Thursday, April 10th @ 7 p.m. local time in Stavanger
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Posted
The silver is silly, it's blooming golf ffs!
But the other 4 are civilised calls (though personally I'd rather they named Rhys for silver because of 'jinx' rules)
That said, I also think they've left a medal or two out in the field (I cannot see 10 boxers coming back with nothing) - it may also be a games of quite frustrating fourth places esp in equestrian, athletics etc
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