Team GB Debrief

[Nickyc707 382]

  On 8/13/2024 at 11:40 PM, mpjmcevoy said:

I think the entire purpose of getting cricket back into the fold is the Subcontinent - it's the one remaining 'black hole' for Olympic sport; all the other continents are very on board with Olympics, but the subcontinent still has a hit or miss relationship with any sport that isn't cricket.

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Very much so and why it's future is potentially much more secure than baseball/softball not to mention the other team sport additions in LA. 

 

The other thing it brings is the opportunity for smaller countries from areas like the Caribbean and southern and eastern Africa to compete in team sports from which they are largely excluded at the moment. Rugby 7s is an example of this with the success of Fiji. I doubt this was a factor in the IOC's collective money driven mind but it will be a beneficial side effect.

[Nickyc707 382]

  On 8/14/2024 at 4:05 PM, 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

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The thing about rowing is that over the years listening to the rowers themselves it really does seem to be just about gold with a belief that every thing else is failure. I don't agree with that view but that appears to be their ethos which is why I think they took Tokyo so hard.

 

As an outsider, while the results were disappointing with just two medals and no golds, it didn't seem like the end of the world to me. They had six fourth place finishes and with rowing's capacity to switch crews between boats it didn't seem like they were that far away from success. Still the review seemed to work for them whether it was needed or not.

 

I'm not sure that our other sports operate in quite the same way so I hope that the reviews will be done with positivity in mind. For example boxing has churned out success for us in every other cycle over the past twenty years but with a high turnover as boxers turn Pro we were bound to have a cycle in which the talent available was weaker at some stage. Add to that the capricious nature of Olympic judging in which every bout in which a GB fighter was involved was a split decision - almost all of which went against us - and the outcome was perhaps inevitable. I don't think GB Boxing is doing anything wrong that won't be corrected by the advent of a more talented group in the coming cycle assuming boxing get's the go ahead for LA in 2025.

[Nickyc707 382]

  On 8/14/2024 at 5:02 PM, mpjmcevoy said:

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.

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Baseball's presence in Japan and Australia is really down to WWII. The US military was present in Oz, particularly the Northern Territory and Queensland after 1941 and some locals picked up on it. Even cricketers like Richie Benaud dabbled in it. With the Games in Queensland it couldn't have worked out much better for the sport's continued presence in the programme in 2032.

 

Cricket also has a presence in South America, principally Guyana but the sport also has a long history in Argentina like rugby union.

 

 

Edited August 15, 2024 by Nickyc707

[Jon 43]

  On 8/14/2024 at 4:05 PM, 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

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Just following on from this do people have any views or thoughts on calendars of events with Team GB involvement? 
 

I think it makes sense to start Road to Milano Cortina 26 and to LA28 threads to track Team GB qualifications to those Games. For Milano Cortina the Ice Hockey Men are in action for Olympic qualifiers later this month, so sooner than you might think! 
 

Should we include results or tournaments of the junior squads in the relevant sports thread? e.g Team GB U18s are currently competing in the European Championship. Should that go in a GB Handball thread, in a generic ‘team sports’ thread, in a generic ‘Junior Squads’ thread, or alternatively just nowhere at all!  

[Timezone 27]

  On 8/13/2024 at 3:23 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. 

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Highly doubt baseball /softball is in Brisbane Olympics its just so minor 

Lawn bowls netball more of a chance. I think Rugby-league 9s is a very likely due to is being biggest sport in Queensland (city which Brisbane is in). 

[Grassmarket 3,626]

  On 8/15/2024 at 7:25 AM, Nickyc707 said:

Baseball's presence in Japan and Australia is really down to WWII. The US military was present in Oz, particularly the Northern Territory and Queensland after 1941 and some locals picked up on it. Even cricketers like Richie Benaud dabbled in it. With the Games in Queensland it couldn't have worked out much better for the sport's continued presence in the programme in 2032.

 

Cricket also has a presence in South America, principally Guyana but the sport also has a long history in Argentina like rugby union.

 

 

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Apparently baseball in Japan was popular as early as the 20s.

[Olympicsnell 300]

How do people see rowing over the next cycle, with the olympic distance being cut to 1500m for L.A.

 

Outside of world cup's etc is this distance competed at? I guess it can go either way for the squad, at what point in the cycle do they start focusing on 1500 and will that mean we might see drop off in world championship performance over the 2000 distance.

 

I kinda have a lot of hope because GB allways seem among the first to adapt to changes in sports, but i also think it could create a more equal playing field (great for the sport, not great for GB golds) romania for example with their sprints would poasibley be even stronger? 

 

Am interested to know what others think

 

 

[Rafa Maciel 1,606]

  On 8/15/2024 at 9:48 PM, Olympicsnell said:

How do people see rowing over the next cycle, with the olympic distance being cut to 1500m for L.A.

 

Outside of world cup's etc is this distance competed at? I guess it can go either way for the squad, at what point in the cycle do they start focusing on 1500 and will that mean we might see drop off in world championship performance over the 2000 distance.

 

I kinda have a lot of hope because GB allways seem among the first to adapt to changes in sports, but i also think it could create a more equal playing field (great for the sport, not great for GB golds) romania for example with their sprints would poasibley be even stronger? 

 

Am interested to know what others think

 

 

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As I understand it, all of the world rowing events will continue to be the full 2,000m distance throughout the Olympic cycle so there will be limited competitive opportunities to hone a new race strategy. That being said, I don't think GB will change their approach too much - they typically try to go hard from 500-1500 but I do think we'll probably see a lot of close races and some surprise podiums come LA'28. 

[Nickyc707 382]

  On 8/15/2024 at 2:19 PM, Timezone said:

Highly doubt baseball /softball is in Brisbane Olympics its just so minor 

Lawn bowls netball more of a chance. I think Rugby-league 9s is a very likely due to is being biggest sport in Queensland (city which Brisbane is in). 

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I'll be very surprised if it isn't as Australia has supported the inclusion of baseball/softball in the Games in the past. They have existing facilities with Brisbane having their own professional team and Oz has a good medal record particularly in softball.

 

I'd love to see both netball - is the men's game developed enough? - and lawn bowls in the programme. Not so sure about RL 9s. Too similar to Rugby 7s I would have thought. There would be scope to include at least two of these sports with flag football and lacrosse likely very vulnerable. In any event we shall see.

 

P.S. For what it is worth the record crowd for a baseball game in Australia is 114,000 at the MCG before the ground capacity was reduced to 100k.

[Timezone 27]

  On 8/16/2024 at 12:07 PM, Nickyc707 said:

I'll be very surprised if it isn't as Australia has supported the inclusion of baseball/softball in the Games in the past. They have existing facilities with Brisbane having their own professional team and Oz has a good medal record particularly in softball.

 

I'd love to see both netball - is the men's game developed enough? - and lawn bowls in the programme. Not so sure about RL 9s. Too similar to Rugby 7s I would have thought. There would be scope to include at least two of these sports with flag football and lacrosse likely very vulnerable. In any event we shall see.

 

P.S. For what it is worth the record crowd for a baseball game in Australia is 114,000 at the MCG before the ground capacity was reduced to 100k.

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Lived in Australia for 20 plus years baseball is minor sport. Rugby league is a cult in Queensland. There is b as basketball and 3x3 basketball, judo and taekwondo, volleyball and beach volleyball so don't think that be issue. Flag football and lacrosse baseball softball will be going in all likelihood.