[POLL] Are you satisfied with your Olympic Contingent for Summer Olympic Games Paris 2024?

[Josh 11,107]

  On 6/23/2024 at 4:01 PM, vinipereira said:

Brazil qualified the smallest number of teams (5) since the 80s, and the only realistic chance of medals with them is in Volleyball. Team sports usually dominate brazilian TV programming, so perhaps they'll focus more on other sports this time (although I wouldn't be surprised if they show men's football even without Brazil). Overall, I'm satisfied with individual sports, but I think we did very poorly with teams qualification.

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Which other team sports might you have qualified in?

[vinipereira 3,421]

  On 6/23/2024 at 8:14 PM, Josh said:

Which other team sports might you have qualified in?

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Brazil was 1 victory away from qualifying in M Football, M Handball, W Basketball. We only qualified where the quota was almost a guarantee (M/W Volleyball, W Football, W Handball, W Rugby Sevens). There's still M Basketball but no chance.

[CCB 565]

1. What were the top 3 close qualification misses (team/individual) which you regret ?

4x100 athletics, Botswana ran a faster time today, very very disappointed our boys will not be in Paris; no 6th Games for Churandy Martina

 

No second beachvolleyballteam because of the ridiculous standards of the Dutch Olympic Federation, however we won the Nations Cup

 

Men's waterpolo team, who screwed their chances in one single match against Romania at the European Championships

 

2. Given an opportunity to add sports (not exceeding 5 sports and/or 20 events) with an athlete cap of 280 in total, what all would you chose?

 

Beach handball

 

3. If you had the opportunity to make 3 changes(3 events/3 sports) to schedule at Paris '24 what would you do?

 

Points race, 1.000 time trial and elimination race single medal events in track cycling instead of breaking, skateboarding and BMX freestyle

[Josh 11,107]

  On 6/23/2024 at 8:25 PM, vinipereira said:

Brazil was 1 victory away from qualifying in M Football, M Handball, W Basketball. We only qualified where the quota was almost a guarantee (M/W Volleyball, W Football, W Handball, W Rugby Sevens). There's still M Basketball but no chance.

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I can feel your pain. As far as team sports go, Canada just barely missed out on qualifying in men’s rugby sevens and women’s volleyball. There was also lots of luck involved with qualifications that I’d thought were guaranteed (at least at that point), women’s basketball team had to rely on Spain defeating Hungary (they were down 20 or so at one point), and our men’s volleyball team had to rely on Bulgaria. I’m not going to include our women’s 3x3 team, as they lost to Australia and Spain (fellow medal contenders) in their first two chances at the Olympics. Most of the other qualifications were as expected, of course our men’s basketball team FINALLY qualifying was one or the rarities (although with their talent it shouldn’t be). Basically, what I’m saying is that even in team sports which we did qualify in, it’s been disappointing. 
 

Edit: More luck was required with our women’s waterpolo team, we had to rely on South Africa declining their quota 

Edited June 23, 2024 by Josh

[PatyOlympic 43]

Absolutely not, this must be the smallest South Korean contingent since like LA 1984?

[Jinzha 702]

  On 6/23/2024 at 8:34 PM, CCB said:

1. What were the top 3 close qualification misses (team/individual) which you regret ?

4x100 athletics, Botswana ran a faster time today, very very disappointed our boys will not be in Paris; no 6th Games for Churandy Martina

 

No second beachvolleyballteam because of the ridiculous standards of the Dutch Olympic Federation, however we won the Nations Cup

 

Men's waterpolo team, who screwed their chances in one single match against Romania at the European Championships

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I didn't even realise the men's waterpolo team had a chance at all. I wish we had more presence of the men in team sports, like handball, volleyball and waterpolo.

 

To add to the qualification misses: the women's football team and men's archery team were the two I would name in addition to 4x100m.

 

Also the 4x400m mens team. It wasn't even a close miss, just a really disappointing one.

[Makedonas 2,200]

  On 6/23/2024 at 8:05 PM, Cinnamon Bun said:

There were some good moments though during this period though. We qualified more athletes than Tokyo in skateboarding, sport climbing and shooting, and still boast really strong teams in swimming, diving and cycling. And even though we didn't qualify, our surfers, women's water polo team and the Bello brothers in beach volleyball put up a good showing and set us up for qualification in those events for LA. I'd also say qualifying a full team in archery was a surprising success given the form of the men's team up until last month's Euros. Overall, even though this qualification cycle has been a bit disappointing it gives us a lot to build on for LA where we can hopefully impress and reach the 400 athlete mark (especially considering all the new sports are favourable to us). 

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With all due respect I think this is extremely optimistic. It is extremely unlikely (98% I'd say) that you will qualify for LA in women's water polo...

[Cinnamon Bun 905]

  On 6/23/2024 at 9:18 PM, Makedonas said:

With all due respect I think this is extremely optimistic. It is extremely unlikely (98% I'd say) that you will qualify for LA in women's water polo...

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I think you're doing us a disservice here. What we achieved in the space of less than a year is incredible, and with another 3 and a half years to build the team and with it looking likely Water Polo will receive record funding we've got a decent chance at getting a quota. I'm not saying it's gonna be easy or that we're definitely gonna qualify, our best shot is to nab the last quota, but giving us a 2% chance is extremely wrong and dismissive. 30-40% chance is a more realistic percentage. 

[Makedonas 2,200]

1. What were the top 3 close qualification misses (team/individual) which you regret ?

 

Definitely Maria Prevolaraki in women's wrestling 53kg. She won multiple World Championships medals in her career, but never an Olympic medal despite qualifying 3x. This would've been her 4th and final Olympics. She was 1 win away from the Olympic quota I believe 4 times throughout this qualifying cycle and lost each time. I guess the women's artistic swimming team is another one, they were always going to be 50/50 but they qualified in Tokyo which was our first time in the team event since 2004, and multiple girls tested positive for Covid so they never got the chance to compete. The third one I'll say Despina Georgiadou who is ranked 4 in women's sabre fencing but can't go because Greece already has another qualified individual and didn't qualify in the team, or if that doesn't count then I'll say our archer Evangelia Psarra who qualified 6 times in a row and this was her first time missing and also the first time since 1996 that Greece won't be represented in archery.

 

I'm hoping our men's basketball team won't also fall into this category, as well as a bunch of our athletes in athletics who are very borderline via ranking and it will come down to the wire...

 

Also it's our first time since 1956 not qualifying in weightlifting, but that was unfortunately quite expected due to the quota/event reduction. Lastly, we had 4 good young athletes in Tokyo who I thought would maybe be able to win medals in Paris but for various reasons they are no longer competing or are competing for other countries. They are Vasileia Karachaliou (sailing), Giorgos Pilidis (wrestling), and the Kyridou sisters (rowing). Okay, that was definitely more than just "top 3" 

 

 

I'm not going to answer the other questions because my reply would be too long , but I'm overall quite happy that most of the events I care about will be during the first week or at night during the second week, as I will be on holidays during the second week and plan on being at the beach during the daytime 

 

Also I see the other two Greek members voted "Yes, quite satisfied" but I voted "Not exactly, but it's fine" 

[Makedonas 2,200]

  On 6/23/2024 at 9:28 PM, Cinnamon Bun said:

I think you're doing us a disservice here. What we achieved in the space of less than a year is incredible, and with another 3 and a half years to build the team and with it looking likely Water Polo will receive record funding we've got a decent chance at getting a quota. I'm not saying it's gonna be easy or that we're definitely gonna qualify, our best shot is to nab the last quota, but giving us a 2% chance is extremely wrong and dismissive. 30-40% chance is a more realistic percentage. 

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The 'Big 6' European teams or 'Big 5' since Russia aren't competing, are still far ahead of you.

 

At the European Championships, you lost by 19 against the Netherlands and 16 against Hungary. At the World Championships, you lost by 12 against Italy. You also lost by 15 against Canada who you might be competing for a quota with.

 

Lose one of these games by 5 goals or less and then you can start talking about qualification. I don't mean to be rude but I've followed water polo for many, many years and trust me it is not as easy to qualify as you think, even with no Russia or African team accepting quota...