4. Which are the sports that will be invested more in future?
Current / Upcoming sports
Performance rating. A 4 to 5.
It wasn't all bad, but it was below expectations. Particularly in the last couple of days, canoe sprint and track cycling especially were a big disappointment.
And nope, the goal was not achieved.
Biggest surprise was silver for race walker Jonathan Hilbert. I guess gold for Alexander Zverev in tennis was a surprise as well. The medal itself not so much, but that it was the gold medal.
Biggest heartbreak was decathletes Niklas Kaul's injury in high jump. I'm still not really over it and I'm sure he would have won a medal. Biggest disappointments were Oliver Zeidler in rowing and Johannes Vetter in javelin.
I'm a big heptathlon and decathlon fan in athletics. So a medal in either of this would be fantastic, but realistically only Niklas Kaul has a chance, as Carolin Schäfer has problems after her Corona vaccination. If my avatar (Gesa Krause in the steeplechase) medals, it would be great as well.
Fighting sports: Germany might very well win no medals in those sports.
I guess it is possible. But Horne in Karate is a big medal contender, we won several medals at the last Wrestling World Championships and have chances at least in Judo and Taekwondo as well. I just don't think that out of all of these chances we won't win anything.
I didn't forget Karate, I counted it with Boxing etc. I just didn't mention it.
Golf has only two events and basically everything is possible. So I wanted to combine it with some other sports. Tennis and Table Tennis seemed to fit, because all of them are sports involving balls but no team sports.
Maybe Japanese people simply don't want vacciness? Vaccinated people also can get covid and even finish in hospital
Without starting a discussion about vaccination. The point of vaccinating is not to stop people getting the virus, which is impossible, but to stop or at least highly reduce the more serious/dangerous illnesses. If we reach the point, where the virus is really nothing more but a cold, we have won.
This has been bugging me for a while. I don't understand why the number of athletes has not been reduced in any significant way. In my opinion, it would be very important to guarantee that the athletes who will attend the games will be monitored 100% of the time. Can they monitor ten thousand people? I'm not so sure. Some athletes will find a way to get out no matter what. Just remember what Lochte did in Rio. Some, if not most, will find a way to have sex. Ten thousand people is A LOT to deal with. Why not make compromises?
The only compromise other than not having to many people in the Olympic village at the same time that even seems remotely possible for me is having some of the events take place in a different country. Otherwise it's all or nothing. You can't simply say to a number of athletes that they have to stay home even though they were already qualified.
All of these athletes are going to be monitored and tested regularly, so the odds of them bringing COVID to Japan or taking it home to their own country is minimal.
I think the much more important point in this regard is that Biontech wants do donate vaccine to the IOC to vaccinate all athletes.
This really is my smallest worry and I'm very optimistic the athletes will be safe. What concerns me more is the general situation in Japan regarding vaccination.
Elections due in Japan this autumn as well. Would you like to be the Government getting the blame for an event the majority wanted cancelled causing deaths and harm? The main opposition have called for the games to postponed or cancelled.
The Japanese government is doing a terrible job anyway. For such a rich country it's unexcusable that the vaccination rate is still so low. It's not the Olympics that cause death and harm and Japan. It's that the Japanese have barely vaccinated their people.
Maybe they should stop discuss the Olympics and start giving the vaccination to the doctors.
Athletes who don't have enough results aren't listed at all, but that could change with only one more event. In the multi events, you only need two completed events to count for the rankings, and since the European Championships 2018 count, Vetter only needs one more result in Heptathlon and will be listed in the rankings again.
That is some true optimism, I like it! You could work for Gracenote.
I predicted 2 medals in swimming (between Van Rouwendaal, Weertman and Kamminga) and 2 in athletics (between Hassan, Visser and Bol). I already considered those optimistic. Hassan feels especially unpredictable. Of course I hope she can repeat her Doha 2019 dominance, would be amazing for her.
Also a small nitpick, Bol will only run 400 m hurdles and 4x400 m in Tokyo, at least that was her position after the indoor season. And I'm not sure if Vetter is qualified, because she DNFed the Doha 2019 heptathlon. I think Götzis in May is her last shot.
Even though these meetings won't be listed here on the first page, you might be interested.
April is supposed to be the decisive months for German swimmers. There are four meetings in April, which are FINA approved qualification meetings. And after these four meetings, the German swimming team will be completed. Or at least this is the plan.
Hopefully Bo Kanda Lita Baehre (German Pole Vaulter). He finished 4th at the WC in Doha but far behind the top three. Today he cleared 5,81 metres in Leverkusen. This probably wouldn't be good enough for a medal, but he still has a year to go.
World Athletics has changed the qualification for the relays. World relays 2021 now count as a qualification event. Top 8 will qualify. If there are teams in the top 8 both at the World Championships and the World Relays, the final places will be distributed by fastet times: https://www.atleticalive.it/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/standard-tokyo-2021.pdf
Well, I predict a cancellation as there's no vaccin for Covid-19 in a few months. In The Netherlands people told the vaccins are only ready in autumn 2021, so I fear the Games will be cancelled.
This is definitely possible, but not anytime soon. Let's talk about this again next year in Spring. I don't think the games will be cancelled sooner than that.
I'm sure that 90% of olympic sport international federations would sacrifice whatever calendar they have planned for 2021 in order to have their olympic event contested. Too many of them have total dependence on olympic-related revenue.
Exactly this. For almost all of these federations, the Olympics are by far the most important event. Many of them are in the eyes of the public basically inexistant for the rest of the time and it's their one chance to get into the limelight for four years. Even the big ones like Athletics would probably sacrifice their World Championships for the Olympics.
The only exceptions to this rule might be men's football, men's basketball, men's golf and tennis. And for golf or tennis wouldn't be much change, because they basically have the same sports calendar year after year. And men's football already made a big change by postponing the European Championships, which will lead to the delayment of other events anyway (even the women's European Championships, so that they aren't overshadowed by the men).
Either in September or October 2020 or in summer 2021. Of course all depending on the situation. But even if the situation gets a lot better in spring (which I don't believe) it would be highly irresponsible to have a big event with 10.000 athletes and probably a similar or even bigger number of coaches and officials all in the same place. Even without spectators this would be madness. I don't even think having the Games take place in October is all that likely.
Generelly speaking, I think that's a sensible idea. But it's not like Marathon and Race Walking are the only endurance diciplines at the Olympics. What about Cycling, Triathlon, Eventing or even some Athletics disciplines in the Stadium?
In my opinion, it's a much odder decision, that they ran only 5km because of the hot weather and yet kept the normal distance in swimming and Cycling. Isn't this rather unfair for the best runners?
Thiem
Johnson Thompson
Schafer
Posted
Performance rating. A 4 to 5.
It wasn't all bad, but it was below expectations. Particularly in the last couple of days, canoe sprint and track cycling especially were a big disappointment.
And nope, the goal was not achieved.
Biggest surprise was silver for race walker Jonathan Hilbert. I guess gold for Alexander Zverev in tennis was a surprise as well. The medal itself not so much, but that it was the gold medal.
Biggest heartbreak was decathletes Niklas Kaul's injury in high jump. I'm still not really over it and I'm sure he would have won a medal. Biggest disappointments were Oliver Zeidler in rowing and Johannes Vetter in javelin.
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