Team GB Debrief

[TeamGB 157]

I am currently away on holiday so I missed the last few days of action.

 

Obviously I want to congratulate the club on being the most active community on Totallympics, and I think its really nice we all have different areas of expertise that we can bring forward. 

 

Just briefly on GB’s performance it was very strong in terms of medals, but a bit frustrating on the gold count. But thats just the nature of sport and I’m sure those tight margins will swing the other way in LA. Not really sure that any of the sports need to do any soul searching in the way that Rowing did after Tokyo. 

 

Looking forward to LA, I’m hopeful that this could be our biggest overseas team ever, given the inclusion of many team sports. From my reckoning we have the ability to qualify both genders for Baseball/softball, cricket, hockey, flag football, football (mens team rumours dependent), lacrosse and rugby sevens.  

 

In terms of ideas for the club heading to LA, I would recommend looking at what some of the other nations had been doing for Paris before it is all removed, for some inspiration. It might be nice to have a designated GB qualification tracker table or a calendar of upcoming GB qualification events.

 

And finally, with the Paralympics not too far away, I hope we can have some kind of forum to discuss events, although likely not as large, given the strength of Para Sports in the UK

[KingKunta 11]

I’ll be more than happy to get in on the para discussions. Couldn’t justify booking it off work as already had the whole of the Olympics off but I’ll be watching on my days off! 

[mpjmcevoy 362]

10 hours ago, Mkbw50 said:

There is talk of counting the Natives as its own thing, even Joe Biden said they should be allowed to. They were at the World Games in Birmingham, AL in 2022 (yes there were two Birmingham 2022s), and Ireland had to give up their spot for them

 

I actually have played with some women's baseball players. I kinda think that women's baseball and women's softball would have been better because I doubt the MLB will allow its players to be released (in fact I'm not even sure NBP/KBO will)

Now, lets be fair, Ireland OFFERED to give up their spot for them. There's a history of camaraderie between the Irish and some native American peoples going back nearly 200 years, and the Irish set up were keen that the history of Lacrosse be respected. It bought the Irish team a lot of good will to be fair, and helped the international lacrosse authorities out of a bit of a hole.

 

In terms of LA28, I'm hoping that the Iroquois get the 'host' place, while the USA National team is allowed to attempt qualify as USA2 (they will do so at a cantor, as will Canada) One team from Europe, One team from Asia, two teams from Americas, One host, and a final qualifier that includes Africa and Australasia - That would result in USA1, USA2 (but very distinct teams), CAN, GBR, JPN and probably one of ITA, RSA or AUS

 

given the small fields, the best thing for lacrosse is to get eyes on a qualification process - the IOC Qualification series made mistakes but it actually worked pretty well as a primer on Sports Climbing, Skateboard and BMX freestyle - something similar for the final qualifiers of these team sports would be good for eyeballs, good for keeping teams in the hunt for the Games, and allow the feds to iron out problems ahead of LA 28 (the RWC final qualification tournament already uses this kind of system pretty effectively, and the European Games ran the final rugby qualifiers very well)

 

Baseball has a decision to make, because the MLB attitude stinks - The NBA see the value in Olympics, the NHL has come round to it, and even  the damn NFL are likely to try and be more open, to sell their game. They got first mover advantage on their main niche rival, cricket, and they've squandered it - repeatedly. I don't expect, for all its flaws, cricket will - it is too good a chance to bring Olympic value to India, and cricket value outside the powerful ICC nations. So Baseball - possibly staring down the barrel of the next two Games in cricket mad countries, needs to pull its finger out and actively push itself out there for this.

 

FWIW I think 6 spots is simply too few for a sensible Olympic tournament. I think 8 is the bare minimum you can really justify, with 12 a better number for everything but football. But 8 is justifiable, and doable. I think the more successful sports should follow footballs lead, though, and consider holding the events 'around the country' to ease the load on the host city proper - even if the final medal matches go to LA. 

[mpjmcevoy 362]

On 8/13/2024 at 4:23 PM, Nickyc707 said:

Baseball/softball is safe for Brisbane but outside of Australia, Japan and North America most hosts don't seem interested in including it in the Olympic programme so that will potentially be vulnerable in 2036. If the best players turn up cricket may have the chance to embed itself if you're correct about India. Mind you my own hunch is that Istanbul will finally succeed with its atrempts to host the Games. We shall see!

 

Ultimately squash may have the best chance of survival of the new sports as it is relatively cheap to put on with portable courts available to locate on any site the host chooses. Sorry Egypt but watch out for the coming Chinese domination of the sport. 

Squash rather fills up the 'gap' to give a full set of raquet sports - Squash (and racketball), badminton, table tennis, tennis (incl Padel) feels like a pretty good balance, and the 'glass cube' invention for Squash completely nullifies the historic arguments about watching it - with the right kind of TV friendly ball, it begins to look like a madly addictive computer game, Pong on metaphorical steroids!

 

Take your point on Baseball in Brisbane. The thing is the Olympics is the platform where you sell your sport to the world, you show its world relevance - THAT's how you eventually make it stick - Cricket has the EVERY continent advantage - Windies and CAN (NAm), GBR, IRL and NED (EU), RSA, ZIM, NAM and KEN (Afr), AUS and NZL (and pos PNG) (Oce), IND, PAK, SRI, BAN, AFG and UAE (Asi), which it shares to an extent with Hockey and Sevens, and obviously, obviously football.

 

Baseball doesn't. It is loved fiercely where it is loved (Japan and the Americas, with a niche following in Australia and non cricketing Europe)- and it is a fabulous game, really - but the outreach is dreadfully poor.

[mpjmcevoy 362]

59 minutes ago, TeamGB said:

I am currently away on holiday so I missed the last few days of action.

 

Obviously I want to congratulate the club on being the most active community on Totallympics, and I think its really nice we all have different areas of expertise that we can bring forward. 

 

Just briefly on GB’s performance it was very strong in terms of medals, but a bit frustrating on the gold count. But thats just the nature of sport and I’m sure those tight margins will swing the other way in LA. Not really sure that any of the sports need to do any soul searching in the way that Rowing did after Tokyo. 

 

Looking forward to LA, I’m hopeful that this could be our biggest overseas team ever, given the inclusion of many team sports. From my reckoning we have the ability to qualify both genders for Baseball/softball, cricket, hockey, flag football, football (mens team rumours dependent), lacrosse and rugby sevens.  

 

In terms of ideas for the club heading to LA, I would recommend looking at what some of the other nations had been doing for Paris before it is all removed, for some inspiration. It might be nice to have a designated GB qualification tracker table or a calendar of upcoming GB qualification events.

 

And finally, with the Paralympics not too far away, I hope we can have some kind of forum to discuss events, although likely not as large, given the strength of Para Sports in the UK

it's very interesting that, but for the Ujah screw up the last three Olympics, with very different gold totals would all have hit exactly 65 medals (and London hit 67) - one can get disappointed about the gold total - I am - but I think the US are right on one thing, total medals is a better measure of overall sporting health, if not of Olympic glory, and a consistent total suggests some sort of systemic stability. Throw in the enormous number of 4th and 5ths..

 

That said, I don't want TOO much stability, and look forward to the real review digging into the failings.

[Olympicsnell 298]

2 hours ago, KingKunta said:

I’ll be more than happy to get in on the para discussions. Couldn’t justify booking it off work as already had the whole of the Olympics off but I’ll be watching on my days off! 

Yeah i am lucky enough to have the school holidays off so think i am off for the first week of the para's, think im back at work second week....what channel has it this year? 

[KingKunta 11]

Just now, Olympicsnell said:

Yeah i am lucky enough to have the school holidays off so think i am off for the first week of the para's, think im back at work second week....what channel has it this year? 

Channel 4 have full rights!

[Nickyc707 376]

On 8/13/2024 at 5:10 PM, cjsavory said:

Ahmedabad would be brutally hot in July/August, as would a couple of the other cities rumoured to be bidding (Seoul, Cairo, Doha). To be honest, Istanbul wouldn't be all that pleasant either. Going to be interesting to see how much they start to take things like that into account when selecting host cities - don't really want another 2022 World Cup situation, where you end up having to move the Games much later in the year. 

 

Of course with my British hat on, I'm looking at 2036 host selection through the lens of which option would best facilitate another London (or Manchester/Birmingham) bid in the 2040s! London 2048 obviously makes the most sense, but if they take the Games back to Asia in 2036, then maybe South America in 2040, it could happen in 2044...

Istanbul sits at a latitude of 41° N which coincidentally is the same as Rome (1960) and Barcelona (1992). It's also a fair bit further north of the equator than LA which is located at 34° N so I don't think the heat problems would be insurmountable given modern technology.

[Nickyc707 376]

On 8/13/2024 at 11:05 AM, Olympicsnell said:

Olympics: British Olympic chiefs target men's football side at LA 2028 - BBC Sport

A positive little post games noise, but i've heard this one before, we can but hope

Can't help but think it's an exercise in futility. I just don't see what he or even FIFA could do to reassure the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish FAs that their future is secure. Some kind of agreement signed in the blood of the signatories perhaps but I doubt even that would be acceptable. The politics of nationalism would also likely be at play.

[Nickyc707 376]

On 8/13/2024 at 3:59 PM, mpjmcevoy said:

I've been trying to work out which big hitters we (GBR we) may (or may not) be about to lose to a well earned retirement before LA 28. Thoughts, additions, welcome..

 

Bryony Page - intends to join the circus (And I am here for that, friends!)

Tom Daley - announced retirement, some vague mutterings he might be persuaded to one more go for LA (I kinda hope not)

Jack Laugher - hinted at retirement on health grounds

Andy Murray - rode into the sunset on a horse with no hip. Several of the tennis team will probably not be around

Jimmy Guy - adamant he's gonna keep going, excellent

Ben Proud - hinted he may have one more Games in him, which was a pleasant surprise

Page says she still loves competing so I don't think it's certain that she won't be back for LA after a spell outside the sport. Daley has officially retired but he does live in California now and he does have a second son who might want to see dad compete at the Olympics so they may be a slim chance he'll be back for one final go.

 

Jade Jones and Helen Glover are a couple of others who won't be back. I'm also wondering if we've seen the last of Emily Campbell as she's now in her thirties.