Post Games Analysis | How do you analyse your country's performance at Tokyo 2020?

[Nickyc707 382]

3 hours ago, gubchandrolai said:

1.  Difficult to rate, but ... 8/10.

 

Would have given 7 or even 6.5, if we didn't have the magic in the penultimate day. The games started with a silver and ended with a gold, so only good vibes will stay now, but the few days in the middle have been very depressing. 

 

2. Suprises : The Men's HOCKEY BRONZE! I can't understate how crucial that was for the future of the sport in India. Now the required investment will come, there will be rise in interest about it and I think we can get a world class team in a few years. Upwards from now.

Although we were hoping to reach Semi and in the process making a slight upset (if you call it that) against a better team (on paper and recent result wise). We finished second in the group and did beat the strong countries of recent times. So a nice effort.

 

Lovlina's Bronze in Boxing is a bit surprising but not much since she was favourite to reach QF, and then we were rooting for her to beat atleast one of the seeds. Good that she avoided Turkey and China both. A lot of credit to her and very important for Boxing in India, after the loss in interest due to lack of results and also absurd scoring system.

 

Sindhu on paper wasn't a medal favourite, given the run she was in, but we always knew she performs on big occasions. So, a very minor surprise.

 

And, FINALLY, Neeraj Gold. Honestly I wished if he can get atleast a medal, so that we will have the first Athletics medal of independent India and one without a controversy (GB claims Norman Pritchard's 1900 Paris medals as theirs, although IOC gives them to us). Sad that Milkha Singh just passed away and couldn't watch this historic moment.

Surely, I thought Gold is not in the cards, as there was certain someone named Vetter competing, but what a result and what a disaster for Vetter. 

 

Heartbreaks : Well, a lot, which could have made this Olympics one of the worst, in terms of not sustaining the momentum (and also, funding). 

 

Shooting Team. Well, they performed their absolute best in the WCs and one of the top nations in terms of medals (if not the TOP). We didn't get anything in Mixed Team Pistol after winning 5 golds and a Silver in the last 6 WCs (also second team won some bronzes and a silver I think). Now there is a lot of in-fighting coming up to the surface. Well, I hope they recover. 

 

Amit Panghal - He just ran after winning the first round. Really pathetic performance as a world no 1.

 

Vinesh - Don't know what went wrong with her.

 

Mary - Didn't expect a medal honestly but was hoping against hope. Really a tough, controversial, and heartbreaking loss to take. But salute legend, for what you have done!

 

Both Hearbreaks and Surprise:

 

Women's Hockey Team: Well, the way they reached SF beating Australia was superb. First time in Olympic Semi and then lost two close matches (especially the bronze one). Heartbroken but proud.

 

Aditi Ashok (Golf): Absolutely devastated the way she lost her medal. She had no right to be there among the medals for three straight days with a world ranking of 200, and weak tee shots. But she did unbelievable, heartbreaking how the ball didn't went in, in the penultimate hole in the last day, which cost her the medal. Didn't sleep the night to watch golf from 3am and was absolutely depressed till late afternoon before Bajrang's medal and then Neeraj's magic. Anyway, Hats off Aditi.

 

3. We had three targets I guess.

 

First double digit medal haul - which we didn't manage to achieve because our heavy favourites choked (apologies for the unkind word) at the big stage.

 

Better London Tally - Happened. This is our best ever Olympics.

 

Win a Gold Atleast - After all the disappointments, we got an unexpected gold from the out last participation in the Games!

 

4. I see Hockey will now have greater fundings. Wrestling and Badminton will continue to have support, being the most consistent sports for us in the recent games. Bhavani Devi and Aditi Ashok made Fencing and Golf a bit popular in the Games, though not sure if they will be funded much.

 

Athletics, Boxing, Weightlifting can have increased fundings. Although a lot will depend on what IWF and IOC do with the latter.

 

I fear we spent so much on Shooting in recent years and the debacle of Rio and Tokyo might catalyse a fund reduction! 

 

GB does not claim the Pritchard medals as being British. I don't know where you got that idea from. 

[gubchandrolai 17]

11 minutes ago, Nickyc707 said:

GB does not claim the Pritchard medals as being British. I don't know where you got that idea from. 

There is this clash between IAAF and IOC about which NOC to award Pritchard's medals. 

 

If GB wouldn't have claimed do you think there had been this duel? 

 

Although I didn't mean it in a rude or offensive sense since I won't have a problem if in future they are listed under GB's medal tally.

[Nickyc707 382]

2 minutes ago, gubchandrolai said:

There is this clash between IAAF and IOC about which NOC to award Pritchard's medals. 

 

If GB wouldn't have claimed do you think there had been this duel? 

 

Although I didn't mean it in a rude or offensive sense since I will have no problem if in future they are listed under GB's medal tally.

I suggest you contact the British Olympic Committee who will confirm that they make no claim on these medals and do not include them in their medal tallies. 

[gubchandrolai 17]

1 minute ago, Nickyc707 said:

I suggest you contact the British Olympic Committee who will confirm that they make no claim on these medals and do not include them in their medal tallies. 

Why would I take that trouble though? It's not a serious issue for me 

[Cobi 981]

Awful. The worst Games of this century.

[intoronto 5,674]

1. Rate the performance on a scale of 1-10

 

8-9. Not perfect, but close too it. Room for growth.

 

2. What were the surprises and  heartbreaks ?

Surprises - I think all of the medals Canada won were more or less expected (or were a medal contender), the women's soccer team winning gold was a mild surprise for me. Non-medalist surprises: The emergence of 14 year old Summer McIntosh, which bodes well for the next quad (three years). Heartbreaks: Melissa Bishop going out in round 1 of the 800m, the women's basketball and rugby teams, which were medal contenders failed to get out of the group stage. The women's foil team also failing to medal was a heartbreak for me, I thought they would bring home Canada's first fencing medal.  Rose MacLeannan coming from a really bad injury 9 weeks before the games to finish fourth was hard to take, as was the women's diving 10m platform, same injury and less than a point for a medal (at least it saved Mexico from finishing fourth in all synchro events )

 

3. Was your country's goal achieved?

There was no goal set, but having the highest amount of medals in one games (excluding LA84 which was boycotted) + equaling the most gold in one edition (again excluding LA84) has to be considered as achieving (and perhaps exceeding) any goal that would have been set. 

 

4. Which are the sports that will be invested more in future? 

-Rowing/Swimming/Athletics need more funding to get more results. 

-Cycling (especially track) looks like its on the upswing.

-I fear wrestling will lose most if not all of its funding for the next 3 years.

[rafalgorka 1,575]

1. Rate the performance on a scale of 1-10

 

7-8/10.

Poland had got 10-11 medals in previous XXI century games, I expected that we will have slightly more here (12 maybe) and we finally got 14 so it's even more than I thought.

4 golds are also really ok. Couldn't expect more. All of them in athletics.

It started very slowly for us. After first week (day 7) we had only 1 silver medal in rowing. But then athletics came and on day 8 we got this surprising gold in 4x400 mixed relay, a brand new and not very prestigious event, I know, but looks like our coaches and athletes concentrated on it and other teams didn't, and you just have to take your chances! Firstly I haven't admired this medal so much (as this event is sth new) but when I saw the results of our W 4x400 (silver) and M 4x400 (5th) I began to cherish it, our 400m runners were really strong here. And it also helped when I saw how happy Team GB was with their gold in mixed relay in swimming.

The mood exploded on days 11 and 12 when we got 4 medals on each days and our athletics team really delivered. Tokyo Games which were so far quite a disaster for us, suddenly became a success.

And what fun it is that we got so many medals not in one or two not very popular sports but - in ATHLETICS!!!, which is the core of the games.

 

2. What were the surprises and  heartbreaks ?

The biggest surprise was our athletics team. I mean, we knew that our biggest medal chances were here, but still... Nobody expected 9 medals, including 4 golds. And the biggest surprise of the whole athletics team was Dawid Tomala in 50km race walk, literally nobody thought he would win this thing, I think, besides himself.

The biggest fun for me was Patryk Dobek bronze in 800m, this is a really classic individual running event, and coming to Tokyo we didn't have a running medal since 1980, so that was a lot of fun - and my sister was an 800m runner, so me and my family really cares about this event. Funny thing is that Dobek switched from 400m hurdles into 800m just this year and it turned out to be a very smart decision - looks like he may achieve much more in 800 than he did in 400h and his coach told him after the amazing results in 400h final: "You see? I told you! You just escaped from a guilotine :-))". That's good that we found our "national specialty" in hammer throw but this running medal means a lot more to me, even if it's just bronze.

The biggest heartbreak was obviously our men's volleyball team. We lost in QFs in 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016 olympics. We won world championships twice lately and I really hoped that with Wilfredo Leon in our team we will pass this QFs barrier. But no, it happened again, in a very disappointing circumstances. So we need to wait for another 4 years... But at least we lost to the eventual olympic champions France and the whole volleyball tournament was very entertaining, so we will live with that.

And another heartbrake was our "swimming afair" which happened even before the games with some athletes who have to come back home from Japan and not participate because our swimming federation couldn't handle the entry system in their sport...

 

3. Was your country's goal achieved?

I think it was achieved in total medals count (everybody wanted more than 10-11) and in gold medals count.

Athletics achieved much more than expected.

But all the other sports underperformed really (besides canoe sprint - 2 medals in W K2 500m and W K4 500m are really good, and maybe rowing - 1 medal in W quadruple sculls, I thought we may get another one in men's events).

The bitter-sweet problem here is this dissonance. We are so happy about our athletics team but we are very worried about all the other sports. 9 medals in athletics (4 golds) and 5 medals in other sports (no gold). I wonder what can be done to change it.

 

4. Which are the sports that will be invested more in future? 

It is really hard to say. Our economic situation in the coming years is really uncertain, I really don't ecpect anything good.

But for now I don't think there is a problem with investing not enough in professional olympic sports. The biggest problem how to spend the money correctly.

When athletics performed so well, I think they will get more money - the same happened with ski jumping before. So there is a chance they will have more medals in future, although repeating Tokyo achievements will be extremely difficult.

I think that volleyball is always popular here, so despite they lost in Tokyo, there still will be money and a lot of interest for them.

I would like to see more investments in handball - a rapid decline of our men's team during last 5 years - from 4th place in Rio to getting out in a very early phase of qualification for Tokyo, is the biggest concern for me during this olympiad.

And I want to see some changes and investments in our swimming federation. This Tokyo "entry system disaster" should really show to everyone how pathetic this federation is and I hope new people show up and change it for better. I would love to see our swimmers being more competitive but with 4 individual finals in Tokyo (W 50 free, M 200 back, M 200 fly, M 100 fly) I can't really complain.

 

Anyway, those were really good olympics and I enjoyed them very much. I was afraid how it's gonna be because of the pandemics and the lack of spectators, but it turned out to be very entertaining. And EurosportPlayer was a great thing, I watched everything I wanted, sometimes 2 or 3 things simultanously, that was really great time. Waiting for Beijing and Paris now.

[Makedonas 2,165]

1. Rate the performance on a scale of 1-10

I would say 7/10. Although we didn't win as many medals as we'd like, it wasn't a total disaster and we had a lot of young athletes come very close to winning medals which makes us very optimistic for Paris 2024.

 

2. What were the surprises and  heartbreaks ?

SURPRISES:

1-Men's water polo team winning silver was definitely a surprise. They were always the type of team that had an outside chance to reach the podium but for various reasons never did so. This time they played really great and had several big wins, including with big margins (+9 against USA and +6 against Montenegro), also beat Hungary twice.

2-Stefanos Ntouskos winning gold in the men's single sculls. I was pretty confident for the past few months that he would win a medal and said it many times on this website, but I did not think it would be gold. He totally dominated his semifinal and final races.

3-The amount of young athletes we had who did so well. There are too many to list but we had some young athletes finish 4th to 9th in many different sports despite not winning medals, so as I said it makes me very confident that 2024 will be good for us and that those who got 5th, 7th place etc will turn those into medals in Paris. Of course also both of our gold medalists were young too, and our men's water polo team was also much younger than the other two medalists.

4-Having five top 8 finishes in athletics. We hadn't done anywhere near that well in athletics since 2004.

5-Seeing so many people in Greece care about our athletes. In Beijing, London and Rio people weren't as interested as they are now. I think social media helped a lot to promote our athletes and get people interested from the younger generations, and also our national TV made a show where they aired special episodes about each athlete/team over the last few months so I think that helped to build interest as well. People got to know our athletes better and learn about them and their life stories.

 

HEARTBREAKS:

1-Our artistic swimming team not being able to compete. I don't think there were any other teams in any sports that had to withdraw completely due to positive covid tests, just individual athletes (I could be wrong). Our girls qualified in the team event for the first time ever (besides 2004) and didn't even get the chance to compete because three of the girls tested positive for covid. They weren't going to a win a medal but they would've finished in 8th place probably and it is unlikely that these girls will ever get the chance to go back to the Olympics.

2-Petrounias getting bronze was a bit sad because we thought he would get silver in the absolute worst case scenario. Also our other gold medalists from Rio got close to the podium but didn't make it (4th, 6th and 6th places).

3-Panagiotis Gionis in table tennis losing 3-4 in the third round after leading 3-1 10-4 and having 8 match points in total (because he had another 2 in the last set). He is 41 and in his fifth Olympics, was trying to make it to the fourth round for the first time ever. I don't think he will ever get another chance like that.

4-Not winning any medals in sailing or tennis. I won't go into details but I was hoping we would win at least 1 medal in each. Sailing is a sport we traditionally do well in and tennis is one of our new sports where we recently started to become good.

5-We were poor in the fighting sports despite having a few medal hopes in some of them. Between fencing, judo, taekwondo and wrestling we had 2 wins and 8 losses. The 2-3 athletes we thought had chances to win medals all lost from the first round.

 

3. Was your country's goal achieved?

I don't think we had a real goal so it's tough to say. I think repeating the success of Rio (6 medals with 3 gold) was probably what our goal should have been, and we did not achieve that (we got 4 medals and 2 gold).

 

4. Which are the sports that will be invested more in future? 

-Rowing: We won our first ever gold medal in the sport, and although our rowing team was very small this year compared to previous Games (we only had 4 rowers), all of our rowers are young and did extremely well for their ages. We also did very well last month at the World U23 Championships and I think we will do well at the upcoming World Junior Championships this year, so the sport should get more funding because we have a lot of potential there.

-Swimming: Despite not winning any medals, we were close in a couple of events and set some national records as well. In the age category competitions over the past few years we are winning some medals which we rarely used to do in the past, so Greek swimming is definitely on the rise.

-Shooting: We didn't win any medals this time and only qualified two shooters, but like swimming we recently started to do well in the age category competitions so it is another sport on the rise in our country.

-Weightlifting: We used to be a powerful country in weightlifting. In Atlanta we had 2-3-0 in weightlifting and in Sydney we had 2-2-1. In Athens we just won one bronze and after that everything started to go downhill in the sport (there was also a doping scandal right before Beijing which obviously played a role). Then in London, Rio and Tokyo each time we only had 1 weightlifter when in the past we usually sent very big teams. People in Greece are starting to notice this decline in Greek weightlifting, and we were in danger of not qualifying anyone for the first time since 1964 until our guy (Theodoros Iakovidis) replaced a Colombian weightlifter who had a doping ban. Iakovidis went viral in Greece after his competition where he got 11th, crying on national television about not having any funding. Now he became famous in Greece and went from having a few thousand followers to 220k+ on Instagram. Because of this, a lot of people became interested in him and want to help. We had people who won Olympic medals in the past face similar problems but nobody cared so it's interesting that Iakovidis of all people was the one to capture the public's attention.

[LDOG 2,418]

Bad if we compare to last 20 years, good if I compare to my expectations.

 

At least our people still seem to be able to pull off their best performances despite the limited resources and inefficent sports administration. 

[phelps 7,704]

1. Rate the performance on a scale of 1-10

 

Athletics...10+

Weightlifting...9.5

Taekwondo, Sailing, Track Cycling, Rowing, Karate, Gymnastics, Archery...6

Swimming 4.5

most of the remaining sports...3

Shooting, Fencing...1

 

2. What were the surprises and  heartbreaks ?

Surprises - Athletics above all, obviously...

Palmisano was our only true gold medal candidate (and a not locked one), Tamberi was also a minor medal candidate with a bit of optimism...

but the others...who would have ever thought about Jacobs and the men's 4*100m relay? me, not...

Rowing, too...I mean, I expected the women's lightweight double to fight for bronze at best, but they were just amazing, gifting me of one of the most intense feelings of all the games...

Heartbreaks - Frank Chamizo and Manuel Lombardo are maybe the 2 most painful flops of the Games for me, personally...but frankly we had so many disappointing performances (especially in shooting and fencing) that I can't count them...

 

3. Was your country's goal achieved?

definitely, yes...

we expected our usual 30 medals, 8 golds performance...but we come home with a record-breaking total of 40 medals and we're also back to double digit gold total, which is quite surprising if we look at how many expected medals we missed in our supposed main sports...

 

4. Which are the sports that will be invested more in future? 

as usual, our funding is connected to the number of people practicing the sport...so, there's no way to move from the "Football, than the rest" scheme, with swimming, athletics, volleyball, basketball and tennis getting the most money out of our resources left by football...

unfortunately, those disciplines that should get more attention and more money to become more competitive in the next future will be the sports that get the least money, despite their results...