Rafa Maciel

Last up - the new sports for LA. For the most part these awards are unlikely to be game changing for them so hopefully the already have established programs in place.

On top of the established sports, all of the development sports saw an uplift in their funding although I am struggling to see why wrestling warranted an extra £130k

Funding for LA has been confirmed by UK Sport. With the exception of athletics and canoeing, pretty much every sport has seen their funding increase - with some unusual decisions. Greatest investment to date will power success and inspire impact on journey to LA 2028 | UK Sport

Expecting to have funding announcement for individual sports from UK Sport this week. The Times already reporting that UK Athletics has had a £2mln cut with significant changes to salaries and bonuses paid to athlete coaches.

Not to be for the GB Women as they go down to a 1-0 defeat by

GB's women's water polo team are hoping to end the year on a high in the World Cup Division 2 event in Turkey. Having eased passed yesterday 29-4, they have just beaten hosts 14-8 to secure their place in the quarter-finals. On the men's side, they'll be taking to the pool later in the week. They've be drawn in Group B against and

Winner takes it all situation for GB women's ice hockey team later today. After dispatching 3-2 on Thursday they racked up a 3-0 win over yesterday to maintain unbeaten record in the group. This afternoon they will face off against at 16:00 - whoever wins will top the group and will proceed to the final qualification tournament in February.

To be fair, I think both Giles and Renshall have been ranked #1 within the last year and the current ranking for most of the squad is depressed by the fact that a lot of them haven't competed in the second half of the year. Overall, pretty much everyone on the list is competitive at the Continental Open level. At the Grand Prix level, most of the women in the podium and podium potential group would be in the mix for either a medal or extended podium. Both Giles and Renshall were pretty consistent in the run up to Paris when it came to the Grand Slam events. Nobody on the men's side covered themselves in glory this year and unfortunately nobody performed anywhere near their best when it mattered at the Olympics. I'd guess that the big benefit of being in the WCPP is access to the central support and training facilities at the National Training Centre.

Ahead of the 2025 season kicking off, GB Judo have announced some changes to their performance squad Going into 2024, the Olympic World Class Performance Program was: Olympic Podium: Chelsie Giles (-52Kg): World Ranking 8 Nekoda Smythe-Davis (-57Kg): World Ranking 35 Lucy Renshall (-63Kg): World Ranking 14 Jemima Yeats-Brown (-70Kg): World Ranking 19 Olympic Podium Potential: Kelly Peterson-Pollard (-70Kg): World Ranking 18 Emma Reid (-78Kg): World Ranking 14 Natalie Powell (-78Kg): World Ranking 38 Stuart McWatt (-90Kg): World Ranking 110 Lachlan Moorhead (-81Kg): World Ranking 35 Eric Ham (-73Kg): World Ranking 95 Jamal Petgrave (-90Kg): World Ranking 54 Rhys Thompson (-100Kg): World Ranking 38 Samuel Hall (-66Kg): World Ranking 72 Amy Platten (-48Kg): World Ranking 174 Shelley Ludford (-78Kg): World Ranking 103 Ollie Barratt (-100Kg): World Ranking 95 Charlie Young (-66Kg): World Ranking 69 Harry Lovell-Hewitt (-100Kg): World Ranking 82 Wesley Greenidge (+100Kg): World Ranking 87 Max Gregory (-100Kg): World Ranking 187 Michael Fryer (-66Kg): World Ranking 66 Olympic Programme: Sian Bobrowska (-52Kg): World Ranking 188 Caitlin Barber (-48Kg): World Ranking 167 Isobel Kitchen (-66Kg): World ranking 212 Lewis Fryer Summer Shaw (-48Kg): World Ranking 106 - Seems to be a lot of buzz about her and she's been flagged as 'one to watch.' Could/should definitely be in contention for the TB Squad for LA. Charlotte Jenman (-52Kg): World Ranking 282 Since the Olympics, 2 of the squad have annoucned their retirement from the sport: Stuart McWatt's retirement was confirmed at the beginning of last month. Unfortunately, a series of injuries meant he was never really able to realise his full potential. Natalie Powell's retirement was announced in October. Holding the honour of being the first British female judoka to be ranked world number 1, Powell was on Team GB at both Rio and Tokyo. New additions to the WCPP: Ben Levy (-73Kg): World Ranking 331 Ethan Nairne (-73Kg): World Ranking 138 Lola Hodson ( Chloe Link (-57Kg): World Ranking 168 Eryk Neumann (-81Kg): World Ranking 443 Charlotte Jenman - she's been announced as new addition but she was already on the sqaud according to the announcement made in Jan-24. Charlie Ayre (-60Kg) World Ranking 187 If the normal schedule applies, then British Judo should confirm the funding level for the team at some point next month.

Team Mouat remain undefeated at the European Curling championships having notched up wins against Switzerland, Norway, Netherlands and against an English team skipped by Moaut's brother. They should be able to extend that to 5 wins later today when they take on . Their first big challenge will come tomorrow when they take on . Team Morrison continues to frustrate with 2 wins and 3 losses to sit equal 5th overall. So far they've only managed to beat and but have lost to , and . They should be able to notch up a couple of wins in their matches as they'll face and before they finish up against and . Realistically, the best they can hope for is to finish with 5-4 record.

Doesn't that decision sit with World Athletics rather than the IOC?

After gold for the women in Pyeongchang, the guys follow it up with bronze for Matt Weston and silver for Marcus Wyatt. All-in-all, a pretty good day's work for the GB Skeleton team.

Tem GB's strong start to the winter sport season continues with Amelia Coltman taking gold in the opening race of the Skeleton World Cup in Pyeongchang with team-mate Freya Tarbit missing out on the podium by 0.02 seconds.

A bit late, but the GB women's team had a couple of matches in their qualifying campaign for the 2025 Women's EuroBasket tournament. They recorded a fairly comfortable win against 75-62 before suffering a frustrating defeat against . In an extremely tight game GB led by a point after the 1st quarter. They extended their lead to 5 points at half time and although they were pegged back, they went into the final quarter with a 2 point lead. Unfortunately, they lost the final quarter and ultimately fell to a 63-60 defeat. GB currently sit 2nd in their qualification group so they aren't automatically guaranteed to qualify for the next stage however they are one of the strongest 2nd placed teams and their last 2 group matches in February next year, are against teams that they have comfortably beaten already.

Unfortunately, it came too late for Paris, but the Bello brothers won the Elite 16 event in Rio this weekend. I could be wrong, but I think that is there first tournament win at the Elite16 level and with it, they have broken into the world's top 20. This should set them up to have a great start to 2025 gaining them direct entry to the Elite 16 level events without having to go through qualifying.

Hong Kong was also meant to have Osaka and Raducanu. Both pulled out, but Osaka still showed up to do some fan events.

It was a great atmosphere for the match - particularly when Yuan managed to up her level in the second set. The crowd favourite all week has been Fernandez so I was a bit surprised that so many of the crowd didn't come back after the first match - although they could have just been stuck in the queue for the bar. Should be a good final tomorrow.

IFSC Boulder World Cup - Prague Men's Qualification: 1.) Sorato Anraku (4T5z) 2.) Sam Avezou (4T5z) 3.) Toby Roberts (4T4z) 4.) Ritsu Kayotani (3T5z) 5.) Tomoa Narasaki (3T5z) 6.) Adam Ondra (4T4z) 7.) Jongwon Chon (4T4z) 8.) Nicolai Uznik (3T4z) 9.) Max Milne (4T4z) 10.) Adam Shahar (3T4z) 11.) Meichi Narasaki (3T4z) 12.) Max Kleesattel (3T5z) 13.) Mejdi Schalck (3T4z) 14.) Nicolo Sartirana (3T4z) 15.) Dohyun Lee (3T3z) 16.) Ram Levin (3T4z) 17.) Anze Peharc (3T3z) 18.) Manuel Cornu (2T5z) 19.) Yuji Fujiwaki (2T5z) 20.) Samuel Richard (3T3z)

Olympic athletes back in action this weekend at the Boulder World Cup event in Prague. On the men's side, Olympic Champion Toby Roberts qualified for the semifinal in 3rd place. He topped 4 of the 5 boulders - including 2 flash runs - but failed to score on the final route. Max Milne had the same result - 4 tops with 2 flashes - but he needed more attempts overall so qualifies in 9th place but is safely through to the semifinal. Dayan Akhtar was also competing and achieved 47th place finish with 1 top/2zones. For the women's competition, Erin McNiece's great form continues as she was the top qualifier - topping all 5 boulder routes including 3 in flash efforts. Lucy Garlick finished in 43rd place with 1 top.

So in an entirely predictable turn of events, Emma Raducanu falls at the first hurdle in New York. Great players like Serena Williams were able to go into a Grand Slam without having played warm up events, but Raducanu isn't at that kind of level. Since coming back from injury, she has basically relied on getting wildcards to compete - she's refused to drop down to ITF events and worse, she's refused to try to qualify for events.

Women's Team Pursuit: 1.) (Cat Ferguson / Imogen Wolff / Erin Boothman / Carys Lloyd) 2.) (Elina Cabot / Melanie Dupin / Leane Tabu / Violette Demay) 3.) (Linda Sanarini / Arianna Giordani / Irma Siri / Asia Sgaravato) Men's Team Pursuit: 1.) (Davide Stella / Ares Costa / Christian Fantini / Alessio Magagnotti) 2.) (Ellande Larronde / Lucas Menanteau / Leo Busson / Camille Charret) 3.) (Sam Fisher / William Salter / Henry Hobbs / Fin Tarling) Women's Team Sprint: 1.) (Lu Minying / Luo Shuyan / Shi Yi) 2.) (Riley Faulkner / Jodie Blackwood / Caitlin Kelly) 3.) (Siria Trevisan / Matilde Cenci / Chantal Pegolo) Men's Team Sprint: 1.) (Krystof Friedl / Jan Porizek / David Peterka) 2.) (Li Ruyi / Feng Yusheng / Sun Haoran) 3.) (Jung Jaeho / Choi Taeho / Jeong Suckwoo) Women's Scratch: 1.) Nicole Duncan 2.) Valentina Ferreyra Beltramo 3.) Chantal Pegolo Men's Scratch: 1.) Lucas Menanteau 2.) Heimo Fugger 3.) Nejc Peterlin Women's Individual Sprint: 1.) Stefany Lorena Cuadrado Florez 2.) Georgette Rand 3.) Luo Shuyan Men's Keirin: 1.) Fabio Del Medico 2.) Kanata Takahashi 2.) Daniyar Shayakhmetov Women's Elimination Race: 1.) Messane Brautigam 2.) Gabriela Kaczmarczyk 3.) Anita Baima Men's Points Race: 1.) Nicolas Aernouts 2.) Lucca Marques Ferreira Silva 3.) Fin Tarling Women's Omnium: 1.) Cat Ferguson 2.) Nicole Duncan 3.) Adelina Sakun Men's Individual Pursuit: 1.) Henry Hobbs 2.) William Holmes 3.) Alessio Magagnotti

men's 3x3 finish their pool games with 1 win and 1 loss. They suffered a bit of a collapse against to go down 21-14 before sneaking out a 21-20 win against . May be enough to see them progress to the quarter-finals if can defeat in the final pool game.

women scrape a win against 77-72. They had a complete implosion of form in the final quarter but somehow managed to hold on.

More basketball action this week with the men's 3x3 team (we actually have a team now) competing in the 3x3 Europe Cup in Vienna this week. They've got a tough group - they will take on Olympic silver medalists and Olympic 4th placed - but it will be interesting to see how they measure up against the more established teams.

2024 Junior Track Cycling World Champs get underway in tomorrow. squad playing to their endurance strengths but the sprint side looks disappointing. Men's Endurance: Sam Fisher Henry Hobbs William Salter Fin Tarling The squad took bronze in the men's team pursuit at the European champs last month behind Italy and Germany. Salter would also take Gold in the men's omnium with Fisher taking bronze in the points race. Women's Endurance: Erin Boothman Cat Ferguson Carys Lloyd Imogen Wolff This team took Silver in the women's team pursuit at the Europeans behind Germany. Carys Lloyd went on to take Gold in the Omnium before teaming up with Ferguson to take Gold in the Madison. Erin Boothman also took Bronze in the Elimination Race. Men's Sprint: Oliver Pettifer - Pettifer reached the quarter-finals at last month's European Champs and won Gold in the Keirin. Surprising there's no room on the team for Archie Gill or Adam Murray though. Women's Sprint: Georgette Rand - Rand topped qualifying at the Europeans and went on to win Gold in the individual sprint before going on to do the double with Gold in the Keirin. (She actually completed treble by adding 500m time trial) It would have been good to see Sarah Johnson also on the team - she reached the quarter-finals of the individual sprint before finishing 7th in the Keirin.