Rafa Maciel

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.

Squad announced for next week's MTB World Championships: Men's Elite: Tom Pidcock Charlie Aldridge Cameron Orr Men's Under 23: Joseph Blackmore Max Greensill Elite Women: Evie Richards Annie Last Isla Short Women's Under-23: Ella Maclean-Howell With an eye towards Los Angeles, it will be interesting to see what Alridge and the under-23 guys can achieve. For the women the bench seems a little bit thinner - all three of our elite riders are over 27 so whilst not impossible that Richards or Short could still be competing in 2028, we're probably going to be relying on Maclean-Howell to secure GB spot in LA and even then, we may need her to move into the elite rank at the start of the 2026 season.

The Australian track bike from Paris cost around $100,000 so their budget would seem to be pretty healthy in the grand scheme of things

Another disappointing result for GB's women's team as they lose their opener in the world cup pre qualifier 53-47 to . Given Argentina are ranked 10 places lower than us it's a match that we would have expected to win.

New Projection - Men's Triathlon Typical qualification window runs for 2 year period with athletes able to count their top 12 results with a maximum of 6 events counting from the first year and a maximum of 8 events from the second year. This projection is based on the athletes 6 best results from May '23 - May '24 (period 1) and, for those who have competed, the results since then (period 2). Australia and New Zealand emerge as early winners, picking up an additional quota whilst Spain drops back to just 2 spots. From perspective, although they are not yet in a position to take a 3rd quota on the men's side, it does look like some of our younger athletes are beginning to move up to the World Cup and WTCS level events. On an adjusted basis, Max Stapley would be sitting 35th in the Olympic ranking with Barclay Izzard at 51st and Hugo Milner at 58th. Next Event: A couple of World Cup events will be held early in September before the WTCS returns with events in Weihai (27-Sep) and the WTCS Finals in Andalucia (17-Oct)

Time for first simulation for 2028 - Track Cycling Typical qualification for track cycling runs for 2 years and comprises 1 World Championship, 2 Continental Championship and top 4 results from Nations Cup (max 2 per year). This simulation is based on the results from 2024 Nations Cup and the 2024 Continental Championships: Team GB and would be the only nations taking a full squad. Next Update - UCI Track World Championships 16-Oct.

Cam Norrie has withdrawn from US Open Cameron Norrie: British number two withdraws from US Open - BBC Sport With Andy Murray having retired, Dan Evans' ranking falling off a cliff edge and Norrie struggling with injury, GB men's tennis isn't looking to be in the best of health right now. On the upside, Jack Draper through to the Quarter Finals in Cincinatti.

Looks like the Bellos got a walkover through to the final 16. Next up later this evening is 7th seed Cottafava / Nicolai.

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.

Bello Brothers have completed their pool matches and have shown pretty form in their 3 matches. Opening against Herrera / Gavira, they were unlucky to come out on the wrong side of a 21-23 / 26-24 / 17-15 result. They bounced back today with wins over Marchetto / Windisch (21-10 / 21-12) and Schnetzer / Kindl (21-15 / 21-16) They currently top the pool although v match is still to finish.

So I know we're all still basking in the glow of Paris but it's never too early to start thinking about the next games. We probably wont have the qualification pathways for LA until late 2025 or early 2026 but in the intervening period, I am going to be using live events to model the quotas.

One of the many disappointments of the Paris qualifying window was the Bello brother's missing out on a spot in the beach volleyball. They'd been showing some good form and were increasingly able to hold their own with some of the best teams in the world. Hopefully we'll see them in LA in '28 and the first step on that journey is this week's European championships where they are seeded 18th and have been drawn against: Herrera / Gavira 15th Seed (World Ranking 17) Marchetto / Windisch No.2 Seed (World Ranking 75) Schnetzer / Kindl (World Ranking N/A - scratch pairing) Looks like the top 3 in the group qualify for the knock out rounds.

Get the feeling that Sport Climbing is going to see a big uptick in interest over the rest of the year and it will be interesting to see if we can continue to develop new talent ahead of LA '28 With that in mind, the Youth world Championships will be kicking off in China at the end of the month and there's a good number of Brits taking part: Junior Males: Jack Macdougall (Lead & Boulder) Rhys Conlon (Lead & Boulder) James Jenkins (Lead & Boulder) Youth Males: Sam Hammond (Lead & Boulder) Tom Steele (Lead) Harveer Seikham (Lead & Boulder) Tom Bouwknegt) (Lead) Kishan Fillingham (Speed) Junior Females: Hannah Kerr (Lead) Emma Edwards (Boulder) Isabella Edgington (Boulder) Saveena Fillingham (Speed) Youth Females: Fae MacDougall (Lead & Boulder) Connie Bridgens (Lead & Boulder) Lucy Garlick (Lead & Boulder) Seren Wills (Lead) Imogen Lilley (Lead & Boulder) Isabella Rinaldi (Lead 7 boulder) We've also got the European championships to look forward to in early September. Hopefully by then, GB Climbing will have sorted their comms strategy out - they have an Olympic champion and yet haven't posted anything on Twitter (I refuse to call it X) and or included it on their website.

With the track and field action being all but over, we can start to turn our attention to next year's World Champs. Looking at the results, I think 21 athletes secured the WA qualifying standard this week: Men's Events: 100m: Louie Hinchliffe (9.97) 400m: Matthew Hudson-Smith (43.44) / Charlie Dobson (44.48) 800m: Max Burgin (1:43.50) 1500m: Josh Kerr (3:27.79) / Neil Gourley (3:30.88) Women's Events: 100m: Daryll Neita (10.92) 200m: Dina Asher Smith (22.22) / Daryll Neita 22.23 400m: Amber Anning (49.29) / Laviai Nielsen (50.69) / Victoria Ohuruogu (50.59) 800m: Keely Hodgkinson (1:56.72) / Jemma Reekie (1:58.01) / Phoebe Gill (1:58.47) 1500m: Georgia Bell (3:52.61) / Laura Muir (3:53.37) / Revee Walcott-Nolan (3:58.08) 3000m SC: Elizabeth Bird (9:04.35) 100m Hurdles: Cindy Sember (12.72) 400m Hurdles: Lina Nielsen (54.65) Heptathlon: Katarina Johnson-Thompson (6844)

Huge amount of credit for that gold belongs to . Kaarle McCulloch came in after Tokyo and completely revamped the women's sprint squad.

Nothing we've seen in the last couple of seasons would have suggested that kind of result from the GB men was likely - they've been battling for 4th and 5th for most of the qualifying period. I had them down as the weak link in the squad and wasn't expecting them to come back with any medals across the 3 sprint events, but clearly the team are in good form, and it definitely looks like GB Cycling have done the business again with the new bike design.