Athletics at the Summer Olympic Games 2020

[Monzanator 4,535]

3 minutes ago, JoshMartini007 said:

To be fair, in artistic gymnastics there is a lot of overlap between the events. Even outside the Olympics FIG is barely welcoming towards specialists.

 

Yeah, I still remember the uproar when Leszek Blanik couldn't qualify for Athens 2004 despite being the reigning WCh silver medallist in the vault No love for apparatus speciallists in gymnastics whatsoever.

[dcro 10,210]

Luo is finally passé.

[heywoodu 15,184]

5 minutes ago, dcro said:

Luo is finally passé.

Being in the front alone for one and a half hour and still keeping up for a bit now. Surely that raises some eyebrows!

[thiago_simoes 1,423]

11 minutes ago, heywoodu said:

I can get the point, but feel way worse about the men's junior event in football taking up even way more quotas. Even though I know I guess the event is important for the Olympics, unfortunately. Hard to believe since I barely know any actual sports fan who actually watches it after the opening ceremony, but general audience usually doesn't consist of actual sports fans, so yeah  

I wonder how important, exactly. I remember that in 2012 absolutely no one I know cared about the final match against Mexico. I even went to a restaurant with a group of friends at the time, not to watch the match but instead to talk about life. No one there cared about the match in the least, despite the fact that there was a TV there showing the match. But in 2016 everybody went crazy about it because the Olympics were in Brazil. This year, most people don't care about it again.

 

 

12 minutes ago, JoshMartini007 said:

To be fair, in artistic gymnastics there is a lot of overlap between the events. Even outside the Olympics FIG is barely welcoming towards specialists.

 

Exactly. This means that 98 gymnasts is a low number, because most of them are all-arounders who happen to compete at the Olympics and have a chance to fight for medals in individual events, while a number of great true specialists are kept at home thanks to the insanely low number of gymnasts allowed to qualify. FIG has become more and more welcoming towards specialists: now up to 3 per apparatus can qualify through the world championships and 1 per apparatus at the World Cup Series. In the past they only allowed 1 per apparatus to qualify, and only if this person was the World Champion at the event the year before the Olympics. Crazy.

Besides, 60 people fighting for only 3 medals is a little too much. Especially in an event with such a low number of people generally interested on it, except, of course, for the people in this forum.

[heywoodu 15,184]

Just now, thiago_simoes said:

I wonder how important, exactly.

Me too, but I think that's the argument I've seen on here mostly. It's easily the most ridiculous thing in the entire Olympics to have a junior tournament, and a senior men's tournament would be useless, but I doubt they'll ever accept to have only women's football at the Olympics (which would be great)  

[Monzanator 4,535]

1 minute ago, thiago_simoes said:

I wonder how important, exactly. I remember that in 2012 absolutely no one I know cared about the final match against Mexico. I even went to a restaurant with a group of friends at the time, not to watch the match but instead to talk about life. No one there cared about the match in the least, despite the fact that there was a TV there showing the match. But in 2016 everybody went crazy about it because the Olympics were in Brazil. This year, most people don't care about it again.

 

 

Exactly. This means that 98 gymnasts is a low number, because most of them are all-arounders who happen to compete at the Olympics and have a chance to fight for medals in individual events, while a number of great true specialists are kept at home thanks to the insanely low number of gymnasts allowed to qualify. FIG has become more and more welcoming towards specialists: now up to 3 per apparatus can qualify through the world championships and 1 per apparatus at the World Cup Series. In the past they only allowed 1 per apparatus to qualify, and only if this person was the World Champion at the event the year before the Olympics. Crazy.

Besides, 60 people fighting for only 3 medals is a little too much. Especially in an event with such a low number of people generally interested on it, except, of course, for the people in this forum.

But the key is, those people come from influential regions of the world - China, Russia, Australia and most of the Latin America. USA is the only athletics powerhouse that has zero presence in race walking over the years.

[Makedonas 2,165]

No surprise Papamichail is at the very bottom. Not that he was going to be close to a medal anyways, but he had to do a 10 day quarantine because someone near him on the plane tested positive so he was unable to properly train for this the last two weeks.

[heywoodu 15,184]

Villanueva closing in on a pace for 5+ hours.

[Monzanator 4,535]

Just now, heywoodu said:

Me too, but I think that's the argument I've seen on here mostly. It's easily the most ridiculous thing in the entire Olympics to have a junior tournament, and a senior men's tournament would be useless, but I doubt they'll ever accept to have only women's football at the Olympics (which would be great)  

The men's senior tournament was basically for communist bloc and Asia for years (because IOC was still following the amateur rules and pro players from Western Europe or South America were ineligible to compete). That's why Poland won the 1972 gold medal with a squad consisting of 90% of players that finished third at the World Cup two years later. Back in 1972 teams like Sudan or Burma managed to qualify, later other scrubs like Guatemala or Cuba. Brazil had some future stars as they fielded junior teams alright but those players weren't quite up to the standard aged 19-20 yet.

[heywoodu 15,184]

Diniz is not the master of picking a drink, is he?