Men's Handball Qualification to Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympic Games

Olympian1010 · March 27, 2021

2 minutes ago, Vektor said:

I also find it funny how most of the time the people who are in favor of the current system are from outside of Europe. It's easy to support these continental quotas when your teams aren't missing because of them most of the time.

Conversely the only people complaining about continental representation are Europeans most of time

I do understand and sympathize with those whose teams miss out on the Olympic Games. It sucks for the athletes and it sucks for those who want to see that country play. It’s just unfortunate that there’s limited quota places at the Olympics. I still stand by continental representation, but I do understand where you come from, and you do present an interesting argument.

mrv86 · March 27, 2021

41 minutes ago, Vektor said:

The Olympics should first and foremost be about the celebration of the best athletes in the world, and it's just not fair for many top athletes to miss the event because Africa needed to be part of every team competition

In that case, then throw out the Italians and Israelis from this year's softball and baseball tournaments and let's throw out one of the European teams in U23 football, since none of them has won an Olympic title in almost 30 years.

Vektor · March 27, 2021

3 minutes ago, mrv86 said:

In that case, then throw out the Italians and Israelis from this year's softball and baseball tournaments and let's throw out one of the European teams in U23 football, since none of them has won an Olympic title in almost 30 years.

Sure, I wouldn't be against to have "world qualifiers" for those events instead of continental qualifiers.

Fly_like_a_don · March 28, 2021

Had Hungary qualified this discussion wouldn't have arisen.

Anyhow continental representation is a must for all team sports only then those nations will get funding and development and improve later on. Team sport cannot be 1 continent domination like that. All continents deserve a place. I consider this an absolutely ridiculous thought or maybe not just throwing frustration that your team didn't qualify and giving an example of some other team ex: Croatia to support the meaningless argument (Had Hungary qualified but not Croatia I'm sure Hungarian users wouldn't tell this

Vektor · March 28, 2021

57 minutes ago, Fly_like_a_don said:

Had Hungary qualified this discussion wouldn't have arisen.

Anyhow continental representation is a must for all team sports only then those nations will get funding and development and improve later on. Team sport cannot be 1 continent domination like that. All continents deserve a place. I consider this an absolutely ridiculous thought or maybe not just throwing frustration that your team didn't qualify and giving an example of some other team ex: Croatia to support the meaningless argument (Had Hungary qualified but not Croatia I'm sure Hungarian users wouldn't tell this

Eh, I would complain about this no matter what, as I have been for decades now. If anything, we got more than lucky how the team qualifications went for us this time, I don't feel that much frustration about us not qualifying in men's handball. Croatia not being at the Games is much more infuriating, as is Denmark missing in women's handball. As is South Africa getting two team quotas in water polo literally by default.

Federer91 · March 28, 2021

We have a saying here: "It's harder to get to the Olympics, than to compete at the Olympics." And you can say that to individual sports as well.

It's a very thin line on how to find the perfect balance of strength and presence. As a fan, i wouldn't want my team/athlete to go to the OG and compete yet again with only the same European teams/athletes that we always play. I'm much more interested in the rare times we play against a non-European country, because it's a luxury for us.

That being said, many qualification systems have been preposterous for years and screwing great teams, outside the representation criteria. Continental qualifiers should remain, but they should never, NEVER be after the World qualifier. (prime example volleyball, every single cycle..) They should always be the first ones and then let the best of the rest have a fair shot at a quota.

Also, one thing that i never see being mentioned is the damn team host quota. With only 12 teams it's completely unnecessary to give a free pass everywhere, just because you are the host. Given that the OG are hosted only by big countries, it's an almost given that they would qualify teams either way. It won't make or break the interest, if they don't have a place in every single sport, in every gender.

16 teams would be the best option for enough representation and more strong teams not getting screwed, but we all know, that is the IOC nightmare. They would prefer to have 50 sports with 10 people, not named athletics and swimming.

hckošice · March 28, 2021

Just now, Federer91 said:

Also, one thing that i never see being mentioned is the damn team host quota. With only 12 teams it's completely unnecessary to give a free pass everywhere, just because you are the host.

THIS !!!

Now suddenly :CHN is giving citizenship here and there to almost every North American with closer or distant chinese origin, and after the games the level and interest will return back to the division II-III level. and all this in expense of another top division team with much bigger interest of the sport because of host quota and noble mission to bring sport and popularize it to the larger chinese public.

yeah, my ass

JoshMartini007 · March 28, 2021

I know team sports claim to have minimum requirements, but the only sport I've seen to have done this is field hockey (Greece in 2004 and Brazil in 2016). Even handball let Australia compete in 2000.

I guess we'll see how low their requirements are once a nation like Qatar hosts (especially on the women's side).

Vektor · March 28, 2021

I kanda want us to win the SOG bidding for once just to see what they would do with us in the team events as we are nowhere near ready to compete in those outside of handball and water polo. Okay, basketball and men's football would probably be fine, even if we would lose all the matches, but the rest... yikes. :lol: Like, women's football would be embarrassing for us, just a few months ago we had a 0-8 against Sweden.