Rafa Maciel

A really strong 3:48 for GB to top the qualifying in Men's Team Pursuit - it feels like it has been a long time since the team have been able to dip below 3:50. Will be interesting to see if they can follow it up with a strong performance against New Zealand in the next round.

Yeah, I noticed the team had changed since the euros but had still expected them to be closer to making the medal matches

So Great Britain will take on France in Round 1 in a repeat of the Bronze medal match up from this year's European Championships. The inclusion of Katie Archibald has certainly given Team GB a bit of extra pace but with only 0.3 between the two teams, this could go either way. Biggest surprise for me was the relatively poor performance of the German team.

According to the qualification documentation, the qualification period runs from 9th July 2022 to 14th April 2024 so technically the ranking has begun although as with all systems based on rankings, the position 2 years out is largely meaningless and is indicative only.

Really disappointing that Team GB are sending a relatively small team to these championships - particularly the fact they are only sending 2 male judokas and unfortunately, they've been handed some pretty poor draws. Men's 60Kg - Samuel Hall should be able to come through his first round but would then be up against world number 1 Yang Yung Wei Men's 81Kg - Lachlan Moorhead hasn't had great consistency this year so I think he will struggle against the world number 17 Eljan Hajiyev. If he does make it through, he would be up against world number 2 Matthias Casse of Belgium. Women's 52Kg - Although seeded, Chelsie Giles will have tough opening bout against Liu Liping of China. Women's 57Kg - Acelya Toprak hasn't made the most of the opportunities she's had in the cycle to the point that she's not the highest placed Team GB athlete in the qualification ranking and now has Nekoda Smythe Davis back and performing well. Toprak has been drawn against Germany's Pauline Starke who is ranked 14th in the world. Come through that and she would be against world number 4 Sarah Leonie Cysique of France. Women's 63Kg - First appearance of world number 1 Lucy Renshall in this qualification cycle. She had shoulder surgery over the summer so it will be interesting to see how she has rehabilitated. Her first match up is against either Cristina Cabana Perez of Spain or Amina Belkadi of Algeria. Women's 70Kg - Kelly Pollard Petersen is seeded 8 and has a first-round bye. She will take on either world number 17 Gulnoza Matniyazova of Uzbekistan or USA's Chantal Wright. Katie-Jemima Yeats-Brown could face world number 2 Sanne Van Djike if she can safely navigate the first round. Women's 78Kg - Would like to see both Natalie Powell and Emma Reid make good progress in the draw. Powell has Morocco's Hafsa Yatim in the round of 32 whilst Reid is up against Ma Zhenzhao of China.

The Netherlands are currently ranked 11th and about 2,000 shy of a place in top 8. I expect them to make some progress at World Championships and then continue that progress in 2023.

Current quota projection based on Sept '22 month-end rankings: With the World Championships taking place next week, I'd expect to see some movement in quotas but at this very, very early stage in the qualification cycle, a couple of things are worth highlighting: projected to gain a couple of extra riders on the women's side, fielding 2 riders in both the Individual Sprint and the Keirin despite the fact that they are just outside the qualification criteria for the Team Sprint event. projected to gain a spot in the Men's Team Pursuit is not currently projected to secure any quotas on the track. I've been running these projections for the last few months and across the board China has dropped back in the rankings to the point that they're not even all that close to securing a qualifying position. I assume this is due to the fact that they haven't been fully engaged on the international circuit due to Covid so I expect this to change as we go through the 2023 season. are finally projected to close the only real gap in the track team with a spot in the Women's Team Sprint. This would be the first time since London 2012 that Team GB have competed in the event. This also has the added advantage of securing an additional individual spot in the Women's Keirin and Individual Sprint events. projected to secure 4 additional quotas on the track with 2 riders in both the Women's Individual Sprint and Keirin events. currently look like they could be heading towards a bigger squad than they fielded for their home games with quotas gained in both the Men's and Women's Team Sprits. This would mean they would have 2 individual berths in the Individual Sprint and Keirin events. They are also projected to take a berth in the Men's Madison.

With the 2022 World Cup season completed I've run a quick projection for BMX Racing qualification based on current world rankings. Men 3 Riders: 2 Riders: 1 Rider: Compared to Tokyo 2020, the Netherlands be down 2 riders whilst USA and Ecuador would be down 1. Colombia, Australia, Germany and Great Britain would gain 1 rider. Women 3 Riders: 2 Riders: 1 Rider: Compared to Tokyo 2020, Russia would lose their 2 riders whilst USA, Australia, New Zealand and France would lose 1 rider. Japan would qualify by right rather than having to rely on the host nation allocation. As with the Men's event, Colombia and Great Britain would both gain an additional berth in the event whilst Switzerland would be the big gainers, picking up additional 2 riders. 6 other places will be allocated via continental/world championships in '23 and '24

Ahead of next week's World Championship, and for those interested, I have updated my tracker projecting current ranking qualification status to show results of all events up to 30th September (including Junior World Champs) Individually, were the biggest gainers over the course of the last month, with the latest projection showing them picking up 5 additional quotas with both and gaining 3. and were the biggest losers, dropping 4 and 3 quotas respectively. In both cases, the drop in quotas was predominantly due to their men dropping back in the overall rankings. As a result of their men falling back, both and are no longer projected to qualify for the team event. They are replaced by and With the World Champs and the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam taking place next month, we could potentially see some big changes in the rankings in the next few weeks.

Bit of a shocker from Coward-Holley in the second round of qualifying to score just 20 to end the day on 45/50. Not impossible for him to get back into the top 8 but he's going to need to shoot close to perfect score in the next 3 rounds. Nathan Hales - unlucky to miss quota spot in the Euros - has been pretty solid to score 47/50 but that places him about 30th in the ranking even though he is only 2 shots off a qualifying position. Best chance of quota spot sits with Aaron Heading who has got 2 clear rounds to share the top of the rankings with 5 other shooters. Will be interesting to see what the next couple of days brings. On the women's side, I don't think we'll be securing a second quota for the Trap here. Lucy Hall is 2 shots of the pace with 47/50 to sit in equal 6th. Has a good chance to make the final if she can keep her level up but as she's already secured a quota spot she isn't in the mix for qualification this time. Sitting in the mid 30s, we've got Georgina Roberts with 44/50. She's probably 3 shots shy of where she would need to be to have good chance to make final but perhaps not beyond the realms of possibility if she can shoot well tomorrow. I had high hopes for Kirsty Hegarty to do well enough to secure that second quota spot for Team GB but the wheels pretty much fell off her challenge in the first round where she scored 22 and followed it up with a 20 in round 2. She won't challenge for qualification spot this time around but hopefully can seize one of the opportunities next year.

You are right that many of the boats were unlucky - none more so than the Lightweight Double who missed the bronze by 1/100th of a second - but the reason many regard it as a disaster is as much to do with what was happening off the water as it was to do with the results. It was clearly not a happy, cohesive team going into Tokyo. We had struggled throughout the Olympic cycle, eventually qualified the smallest number of boats for at least 20 years, the head coach unexpectedly quit, there were suggestions of bullying within the team and then there was the whole 'smug' row after the men's four. Unfortunately success in British sport is, in many ways, measured purely in terms of the number of gold medals won, and a silver, a bronze and a hatful of unlucky fourth places isn't much of a return on a 25mln pound investment.

This week’s World Championships definitely represents a big step forward for Team GB compared to the last few years and the disastrous Tokyo regatta. Given our relative strength in the sport, I was surprised to discover that this is the first time since 2016 that GB have won a gold medal at the rowing world championships outside of the para-rowing classes. Using this week to project Olympic qualification, Britain would have qualified in all 11 of the boat categories that they entered – an improvement of 2 compared to the WCs of 2019. The biggest step forward arguably came from Ukraine who would qualify 5 boats – compared to 0 in 2019 – which is no mean feat given everything that is going on in the country. New Zealand and Italy haven’t had a vintage year with New Zealand qualifying in just 4 events compared to 9 previously and Italy dropping from 8 to 4. Good to see Japan making progress post Tokyo. Ryuta Arakawa’s victory in the B-Final would be an Olympic qualifying spot and would possibly be the first time that a non-Chinese boat had qualified through the World Championships route. Still a year to go before the qualification regatta, but I think Team GB will be very happy with their performances this year and if they can get a good winter of injury free training, they could be on track for largest rowing squad since London 2012.

Having been one of the few international federations to allow Russian and Belarussian athletes to compete, the IJF have now elected to ban Russia and Belarus until January 2023.

I was under the impression that the Lightweight Double has already been dropped from the 2028 schedule with it potentially being replaced by coastal rowing.

Ros Canter was the drop score for GBR Team at the end of dressage phase and ends up being the top counter them at the end of show jumping. Never seen that happen before. To make it worse, she misses out on the bronze medal because she went round the cross country course too quickly

Disappointing to see that Team GB are not fielding entries across all of the Olympic events. No Women's 8, Men's Double Sculls or Men's Lightweight Double Sculls. Given the much improved performance of the team since the relative disaster of the Tokyo regatta, I had hoped that we could be pushing towards a full squad for Paris. Hopefully they can get their act together before next years all important qualification regatta.

Have to say the commentary for this event has been pretty poor - Lucinda Green really hasn't been keeping up with what's been happening on course. She has just heaped praise on Andrew Hoy without picking up on the fact that they had 2 refusals/runouts.

They are still showing as under review but they are the only ones on the leaderboard like this. All the other reviews seem to have been resolved. That may suggest that the penalty has been upheld and an appeal has been lodged

France will fail to finish as a team - luckily for them they have automatic host qualification

With the first line riders for the team event all completed, Switzerland lose one of their overnight counters with the elimination of Minder. That will possibly help Team Italy move closer to a qualifying spot in the top 7. France's Astier Nicolas and Canada's Haley Awad likely to become a drop scores for their respective teams. A clear round for Ros Canter means GBR have a good fall back should anything go wrong for their overnight counters.

Whilst I don't disagree with your comments about the logistical challenge of post-Brexit I don't think it has had such a large impact on the volume of European competitors in British competitions. The majority of international competitors in British competitions have, from what I can see, generally come from New Zealand, Australia and America. Part of the reason for this is that many of these international riders are based in UK. From European perspective, pre-Covid, Ireland and Sweden tended to make up the majority of European riders - Germany and to a lesser extent France didn't really take part in British competitions. Arguably, we're still seeing the impact of Covid unwinding as the equestrian calendar gets back to normal - historically you could travel to UK for 10-14 days and be able to compete in 2-3 high quality events but that is more difficult in 2022 as there are bigger gaps in the calendar still.

Why would Brexit make GB Eventing stronger?

So Team GB finish the championships with 2 quota places for Paris. Normally this would viewed as a great achievement and it undoubtedly is, but it's difficult not to be a little frustrated by those 3rd place finishes in the Men's Trap and Skeet events - particularly the Trap where Hales missed out by virtue of his qualification position.

I don't think the music actually changes - only the wording for those who will be singing

Actually Her Majesty was a qualified mechanic so if your car got damaged, she could probably have helped you out. In fact she is probably the only head of state who would have the ability to strip an engine