Rafa Maciel

Wonder why Stubley has been classed as ENG when everyone else is GBR

9th place finish for Bello brothers in Xiamen Challenger . They pick up another 450 ranking points and move up to 25th in the world - I think that's the highest I've seen them but I've only been tracking them over the last 18 months or so. They're still a couple of thousand points short of a quota spot so I think it will be difficult, but not impossible, for them to get direct qualification. Later this week, they will be back in for the Elite 16 event in Brasilia and the good news is that they have direct entry this time so no need to go through qualifying. That will guarantee them another 460 points. They've got a tough pool - to be expected at this level - and have been drawn against Evandro/Arthur, Bryl/Losiak and a qualifier.

State of play with 2 more international regattas before Paris. Men's Sweep Crews: Men's Eight - Followed up their win in Varese with relatively comfortable win at the European Champs. The early season signs are positive that GB should have the measure of Romania and Germany but we've yet to see what the Australian crew can do given this is apparently their top crew for Paris. Will be interesting to see which nations get the final two tickets at the last chance regatta - assume one will be USA and the second will be fought out between Canada and Italy. Men's Four - Beaten twice by a fast-finishing Italian crew at Varese, they steadied the ship/boat in Szeged winning with clear water. The French crew were a bit closer than I would have expected in the heat you don't win anything in the heats so no need to do more than you need to qualify for the finals. Don't think there is any reason to read too much into the defeat in Varese, but this is another class where we really need to see the crews from USA, New Zealand and Australia. Men's Pair - Wynne Griffith and George finally made it to the top step of the medal podium by taking the European title although the Romanians were closely them down pretty quickly in the final stages of the final. They'll take a lot of confidence from the fact that's back-to-back defeats of the Swiss world champions. Women's Sweep Crews: Women's Eight - It's good to see that the selectors are giving the women's eight a decent shot at medaling in Paris. In both Varese and Szeged, the Brits put themselves in a good position but ultimately came unstuck in the second half of the race with Romania able to go from half a length down to half a length up in the space of less than 500m. It's difficult to know the extent to which GB Rowing were prioritising the European champs this year and where they are in their training schedule, but given that that most of the Romanian crew had doubled up in other events, it's a bit disappointing that the Brits weren't able to respond when the Romanians rowed through. Women's Four - In 2022 the women's four were the in-form boat, winning both the World and European Championships. A crew change last year seemed to knock the balance of the crew out of sync and they went from the top of the podium to struggling to medal. They lost their European title to Romania and World title to Netherlands. Going into 2024, the crew have been shuffled again, and the early signs are that the balance has been restored. A win in Varese was followed up this week with the regaining of the European title with the crew able to hold off the fast-finishing Romanians. Women's Pair - Probably the weakest British crew across the 6 sweep boats but worth bearing in mind this is a new crew for this season. Edwards & Brew finished 4th in Varese but struggled with the conditions in Szeged where they finished in 5th. Hopefully they can build their season so that they can be competitive when they get to Paris. Lightweight Crews Women's Lightweight Sculls - I will admit I did a double take when I saw that GB had lost to Greece in the heats. I hadn't realised that it was a scratch crew put together when Emily Craig had to withdraw with an injury. Let's hope the withdrawal was precautionary as Craig & Grant are the closest we have to nailed on certainty for a gold in Paris. Men's Sculling Crews Men's Quadruple Sculls - One of our most frustrating crews who can't seem to find the consistency that would bring them to the podium in Paris. They put if a strong performance in Varese finishing behind the Dutch world champions. unfortunately they couldn't replicate that in Szeged where they finished in 4th place - behind the Italian and Swiss crews that they had beaten just a couple of weeks earlier. Men's Double Sculls - The first of our unqualified crews. The pairing of Collins & Devereaux haven't been able to show the kind of form that would suggest they will be able to get one of the last 2 spots in Paris. In Varese, they won the B final whilst in the European champs, they were 9th overall. On the form we've seen so far this year, Greece, Belgium and Australia have all shown that they can beat the Brits. Men's Single Sculls - It looks like George Bourne has been given the challenge of securing the quota for the event at the last chance regatta next month. He looked good in Varese where he finished 4th behind World Champion Zeidler, World Silver medalist Van Dorp and Italy's Murmolo. He struggled a bit in Szeged. Although he won his heat, he had to put in a mighty sprint in the semi-final and had nothing left when it came to the final and finished in 6th place some 20 seconds behind Zeidler. If he's going to book a spot in Paris, he will need a top-2 finish in the last chance regatta. Women's Sculling Crews Women's Quadruple Sculls - It all went a bit wrong for the crew in Varese where they finished off the podium in 4th. Whatever changes they made in the last couple of weeks seems to have paid off. Although the Ukrainians led for three quarters of the race, the Brits were able to row through and ended up with a comfortable win. Hopefully we see them go head-to-head against the Dutch in Lucerne Women's Double Sculls - A new pairing for 2024 - Hodgkins-Byrne & Wilde opened their season at the Europeans where they won the B-final to finish 7th overall. They are going to need to find a bit of speed if they are going to qualify for Paris at the last chance regatta. Women's Single Sculls - We didn't field an entry in Varese World Cup or at the Europeans so not sure whether that means that we are not going to go after the quota at the last chance regatta. Overall, I would say that we are in a pretty good place with good medal prospects in 6-8 of the events - but then I'd probably have said the same thing going into Tokyo. I'm probably not as confident when it comes to our prospects for the final qualifying regatta but will reserve judgement until the entry lists are published.

All eyes on Badminton next week to see if Townend can complete the Grand Slam.

Last couple of events before the end of the month. 30-Apr: Ibero-American Meeting Huelva 2024 - Think this is the first big European athletics meet of the season and there's a handful of Brits in action. Amelia Campbell is due to compete in the Shot Put. Current season's best is 18.03 from an indoor competition in January. She'll be targeting the UKA standard of 18.67m but that would require a significant PB. Bekah Walton is due to open her season when she competes in the javelin - possibly the weakest event in GB athletics. She set a PB of 59.76 in June last year so she'll be looking to get over 60m for the first time. She's added 2m to her PB in each of the last 2 seasons - if she can keep that trend going in 2024, she would be able to hit the UKA standard of 61.50. In the men's 5000m, Charles Wheeler and Zakariya Mahamed will be competing. Wheeler has a PB of 13:20.17 from earlier this year and will need to drop a further 15 seconds if he wants to hit the OQS. Mahamed's PB is 13:47.43 so it would need a big drop to be contending for a spot in Paris. Seamus Derbyshire was initially down to compete in the 400m Hurdles but he no longer appears on the start lists. 30-Apr: The Stanford v Cal Big Meet - No entry list yet but possible that Anna Purchase may be in action

The men's European champs finished yesterday with the men's team event with looking to regain the title they last won in 2022. Ultimately, they came up just short, losing out to Ukraine by 0.333. There were a lot of positives to take away - the team put together 18 clean performances and Joe Fraser, who had a pretty disastrous qualifying, put in solid performances on pommel, P-Bars and horizontal bar. There is however an element of what could have been - I'm not sure why Jarman was put up on rings given it's probably his weakest apparatus. In the end, he scored 12.866 and I do think that had we used Fraser or Hall, they could have scored over 13 and put us into the gold medal position. The GB team score was 255.429 - so looking forward to Paris, they might need to find another 3-4 points to be challenging the podium. Max Whitlock being back in the team probably gains about 1 point on pommel and if Fraser is used on rings instead of Jarman, that could be another 0.5-1.0 points. Beyond that, it begins to get more difficult to see where more points can be gained.

Putting aside the disappointment of the Achampong announcement to finish the review of the men's championships: Men's Floor Final: Floor has been a strong apparatus for GB in the past, and this year was no different with both Jake Jarman and Luke Whitehouse making the individual final although it has always surprised me a little that Jarman hasn't been able to make much of an impact on floor given how good he is at tumbling - he even has a move named after him. Unfortunately, Jarman got his alignment slightly wrong on his first tumble which ultimately meant that he went out of the area with both feet for a hefty deduction. In the end he came away with 13.966 but without the mistake, it would have been 14.366. Luke Whitehouse was looking to defend his title from 2023 and was the last gymnast to compete. He put is an assured performance to come out on top with a score of 14.866 ahead of Artem Dolgopyat on 14.833 - the same 1-2 as last year. Men's Rings Final: Courtney Tulloch was the only British representative in the final - given his skill on this apparatus I would have expected Hepworth to be in the final but as I said above, I am not sure whether he was carrying an injury during this competition because he didn't hit his routines in the way that we've come to expect. In the final, Tulloch matched his qualifying score of 14.700 which left him in 6th place. Men's Vault Final: Jake Jarman is current world champion on vault, so it was no surprise that he qualified for the final. I was a little surprised that he was joined by Luke Whitehouse and not Hepworth. Whitehouse was the first to compete, but he made an error on the landing of his first vault which took him out of contention for the podium. His second vault was much cleaner and he finished with an average of 13.683. Artur Davtyan had 2 solid vaults and set a target of 14.850. Jarman responded with a 15.000 first vault with a 0.100 deduction for stepping out of the area. His second vault scored 14.766 to give him an average of 14.883 and secured him his second European vault title. Men's P-Bars Final: James Hall qualified in 8th place and put in a solid performance in the final to score 14.366 and finished in 5th place.

2024 American Cup We're probably not going to be seeing the vast majority of these divers in Paris, but there are a few who could be in the mix for their nation. (Based on the fact that they secured quota for their nation - these have been marked with ) Men's 3m Springboard Final 1.) Jordan Houlden - 481.15 2.) Ross Haslam - 450.30 () 3.) Alexis Jandard - 433.65 ----------------------------------- 4.) Luke Sitz - 431.60 5.) Victor Povzner - 404.80 6.) Mohamed Farouk - 402.75 () 7.) Kang Minhyuk - 387.35 8.) Tazman Abramowicz - 374.35 9.) Woo Seongho - 350.30 10.) Hudson Skinner - 350.15 11.) Quentin Henninger - 339.50 12.) Gwendal Bisch - 333.85 () Men's 10m Platform Final: 1.) Joshua Hedberg - 479.85 2.) Robbie Lee - 411.60 3.) Carson Tyler - 406.80 -------------------------------------- 4.) Samuel Fricker - 393.35 () 5.) Kang Minhyuk - 386.70 6.) Ben Cutmore - 373.45 7.) Carlos Alberto Martinez Vargas - 353.80 8.) Jonah Mercieca - 350.50 Women's 3m Springboard Final: 1.) Alison Gibson - 324.90 2.) Kristen Hayden - 312.65 3.) Georgia Sheehan - 297.95 () -------------------------------------- 4.) Amelie-Laura Jasmin - 297.30 5.) Alysha Koloi - 281.10 6.) Kwon Halim - 272.40 7.) Maha Amer - 268.95 () 8.) Juliette Landi - 262.20 9.) Amy Rollinson - 249.25 10.) Nais Gillet - 238.35 11.) Aimee Wilson - 207.30 12.) Jacqueline Chen - 190.90 Women's 10m Platform Final: 1.) Ellie Cole - 344.00 2.) Robyn Birch - 304.55 3.) Laura Hingston - 296.75 ----------------------------------- 4.) Karen Yamasaki - 292.90 5.) Jordan Skilken - 292.70 6.) Eloise Belanger - 291.60 7.) Else Praasterink - 288.30 () 8.) Julianne Boisvert - 265.80 9.) Emily Hallifax - 257.30 10.) Sophia McAfee - 247.70 11.) Kim Nahyun - 243.30 Men's 3m Synchro: 1.) Andrew Capobianco / Quentin Henninger - 387.81 2.) Kang Minhyuk / Woo Seongho - 370.11 3.) Jules Bouyer / Alexis Jandard - 356.97 -------------------------------------------------------------- 4.) Tazman Abramowicz / Victor Povzner - 347.91 5.) Vyacheslav Kachanov / Igor Myalin - 309.57 Men's 10m Synchro: 1.) Ben Cutmore / Euan Mccabe - 346.41 2.) Gary Hunt / Lois Szymczak - 320.07 3.) Aidan Wang / Luca Fassi - 313.98 Women's 3m Synchro 1.) Deshame Bent-Ashmeil / Amy Rollinson - 276.30 2.) Carolina Sculti / Anne Fowler - 264.78 3.) Kim Nahyun / Kwon Halim - 255.57 ------------------------------------------------------ 4.) Nais Gillet / Juliette Landi - 253.23 5.) Jacqueline Chen / Barbara Chen - 218.61 Women's 10m Synchro: 1.) Ellie Cole / Ruby Drogemuller - 277.56 2.) Emily Hallifax / Jade Gillet - 247.68 3.) Emilie Moore / Kaylee Bishop - 242.10

MAG European Championships Rimini Men's Team Final: 1.) - 255.762 2.) - 255.429 3.) - 252.560 --------------------- 4.) - 248.029 5.) - 247.725 6.) - 246.628 7.) - 246.394 8.) - 245.359

Better results in round 6 of world cup.....but not much better. Shriever failed to take advantage of the fact that Pajon didn't make it to the final. She was in contention through the first turn and before fading to the back and ultimately rolling through the finish line 30 seconds after the rest of the field. In the end finishing 8th, she nets 25 points more than but that was more than offset by the fact that Emily Hutt again failed to make the final of the under-23 whilst Colombia's Fayad Mercado finished 3rd. Overall, Colombia will extend their lead again - probably by around 50-60 points. For the men, Kye Whyte made the final - he was well placed for a podium finish until Marquart went down in front of him, and he had to adjust his line to avoid him. He did at least keep going and finished 5th place. The rest of the Brits didn't make it out of the quarter finals. Niek Kimmann won and Kamren Larsen finished 3rd so I expect both Netherlands and USA to overtake GB when the next ranking list comes out. Rough calculation is that GB will be around 200-250 points behind USA. There is just the World Champs and Europeans left to count in the qualifying window and a gap of 250 points can be reeled in if the team have a strong Worlds in a couple of weeks. If they can go into the Europeans less than 200 points behind USA, then I think GB should be able to do enough to regain a top 5 place but it is going to be close.

BMX Racing World Cup - Round 6 Tulsa Men's Elite: 1.) Niek Kimmann 2.) Izaac Kennedy 3.) Kamren Larsen Women's Elite: 1.) Saya Sakakibara 2.) Alise Willoughby 3.) Sienna Pal

Just correcting this - looks like Hall was promoted to the team when Whitlock withdrew and Whitehouse became the British individual athlete.

MAG European Championships Rimini Day 2 & 3 Results: Floor Final: 1.) Luke Whitehouse - 14.866 2.) Artem Dolgopyat - 14.833 3.) Krisztofer Meszaros - 14.600 ------------------------------------------- 4.) Unai Baigorri - 14.233 5.) Leo Saladino - 14.066 6.) Jake Jarman - 13.966 7.) Nicolau Mir - 13.666 8.) Jim Zona - 12.933 Pommel Horse Final: 1.) Rhys McClenaghan - 15.300 2.) Loran De Munck - 14.933 3.) Marios Georgiou - 14.800 ------------------------------------------ 4.) Matteo Giubellini - 14.600 5.) Filip Ude - 14.533 6.) Levan Skhiladze - 14.233 7.) Oleg Verniaiev - 14.200 8.) Ilia Liubimov - 13.133 Rings Final: 1.) Eleftherios Petrounias - 15.000 2.) Nikita Simonov - 14.900 3.) Adem Asil - 14.900 ------------------------------------------- 4.) Artur Avetisyan - 14.800 4.) Vinzenz Hoeck - 14.800 6.) Courtney Tulloch - 14.700 7.) Salvatore Maresca - 14.566 8.) Ibrahim Colak - 14.600 Vault Final: 1.) Jake Jarman - 14.883 (15.000 / 14.766) 2.) Arthur Davtyan - 14.850 (15.100 / 14.600) 3.) Nazar Chepurnyi - 14.749 (14.733 / 14.766) ------------------------------------------------------------ 4.) Igor Radivilov - 14.000 (14.800 / 13.200) 5.) Dominick Cunningham - 13.966 (14.133 / 13.800) 6.) Luke Whitehouse - 13.683 (13.066 / 14.300) 7.) Casimir Schmidt - 13.566 (13.200 / 13.933) 8.) Luca Giubellini - 13.516 (14.366 / 12.666) P-Bars Final: 1.) Illia Kovtun - 15.633 2.) Marios Georgiou - 14.866 3.) Noe Seifert - 14.833 ------------------------------------------ 4.) Cameron-Lie Bernard - 14.500 5.) James Hall - 14.366 6.) Nazar Chepurnyi - 13.866 7.) Mario Macchiati - 13.300 8.) Thierno Diallo - 12.900 Horizontal Bar Final: 1.) Illia Kovtun - 14.600 2.) Robert Tvorogal - 14.566 3.) Marios Georgiou - 14.366 ------------------------------------- 4.) Noe Seifert - 14.266 5.) Alexander Myakinin - 14.100 6.) Tin Srbic - 14.066 7.) Yumin Abbadini - 13.833 8.) Joel Plata - 13.366

MAG European Championships Rimini Day 1 Results: Men's Team Qualifying: 1.) - 253.661 2.) - 251.028 3.) - 249.195 4.) - 249.194 5.) - 249.162 6.) - 246.093 7.) - 246.061 8.) - 245.195 Men's Individual All-Around Final: 1.) Marios Georgiou - 84.265 2.) Oleg Verniaiev - 84.031 3.) Yumin Abbadini - 83.765 ------------------------------------------- 4.) Jake Jarman - 83.431 5.) Krisztofer Meszaros - 83.398 6.) Illia Kovtun - 83.331 7.) Nestor Abad - 82.798 8.) Artem Dolgopyat - 82.432

Quick run down of the results from the European Champs this weekend starting with team qualifying/individual all-around from Wednesday: Jake Jarman: Finished 4th in the individual all-around and was 0.334 shy of the podium. As expected, he had a great vault - 14.933 - which I think was the highest vault score in the AA. He also had a great floor routine scoring 14.533. He made the individual final for both floor and vault. He probably underperformed on the 4 other apparatus - 13.866 for pommel, 13.133 for rings, 13.400 for P-Bars and 13.566 for the horizontal bar. Going into Paris, I'd like to see him hitting 14+ on 4 apparatus. Rings will always be a bit of a struggle, but it would be great to see him consistently hitting over 13.500. Courtney Tulloch: Finished 14th in the individual all-around. He put in good performances on both rings and vault, scoring 14.700 for both and qualifying for the rings final. Other than that, his results were about what we would expect - 13.800 for floor, 12.366 on pommel, 13.700 on P-Bars and 12.566 on horizontal bar. Joe Fraser: Had a nightmare start, falling 3 times on pommel and it didn't get much better as he went through the rest of the apparatus. In the end, he finished 52nd in the all-around as he failed to score over 14.000 on any of the apparatus. His scores were 10.000 for pommel, 13.566 for rings, 13.900 for vault, 12.266 on P-Bars, 13.866 on horizontal bar and 12.500 on floor. Luke Whitehouse: Came in as late replacement for Max Whitlock and had solid qualification competition. His highlight was the floor where he qualified for the individual final in 2nd place with 14.766. He also qualified for the vault final. Harry Hepworth: Not sure what to make of Hepworth - not sure if he is carrying a niggle or was just out of sorts - but he only competed on vault and rings, and his results were not enough to get him into the individual finals. Overall the team qualified in 2nd place behind , scoring 251.028 against Ukraine's 253.661. Also competing this week was as an individual athlete was James Hall, and he lived up to his reputation as Mr. Consistent, scoring 13.800 on floor, 13.900 on pommel, 14.333 on P-Bars and 12.966 on horizontal bar. His P-Bar score was enough to see him qualify for the individual final in 8th place.

Disappointing results from Tulsa overnight in round 5 of BMX Racing world cup. On the men's side, none of the Brits made it out of the quarter finals. Ross Cullen was best finisher in 18th ahead of Quillan Isidore in 24th and Kye Whyte down in 33rd. From a ranking perspective, expect a big swing in favour of - it probably won't be enough to overtake , but they should have closed the gap to around 150 or so points. will also have closed the gap significantly after Niek Kimmann topped the podium but they were about 1,000 points behind going into this weekend so they still have work to do if they want to get into the top 5. The women's competition was another disappointment - Emily Hutt didn't make it into the Under-23 final and finished in 12th overall. In the women's elite, Bethany Shriever looked great throughout the rounds and was well placed in the final before going off course and finishing 8th. will extend their lead in the rankings by around 200 points. with only 3 more races left before the end of the qualifying window, we're getting close to the stage where we can say that Colombia won't/can't be caught.

BMX Racing World Cup - Round 5 Tulsa Men's Elite: 1.) Niek Kimmann 2.) Izaac Kennedy 3.) Cedric Butti Women's Elite: 1.) Saya Sakakibara 2.) Manon Veenstra 3.) Alise Willoughby

TBF it's not wildly dissimilar to a lot of the other sports - team qualification gets you entry into the individual event with additional individual quotas available for each continent. That's the same approach that is taken in equestrian. Personally, I think the biggest issue with the fencing qualification process is the fact that if a nation qualifies a team, then all 3 team members get to enter the individual event. This limits the breadth of competition given the relatively small size of the field. I'd prefer to see team qualification give 2 quotas for the individual event - as happens with track cycling - and then awarding more individual quotas at the continental competitions.

Looks like O'Dowda has pulled out of the heptathlon in Brescia as she hasn't lined up for the 200m. Probably a wise decision given the results from the first three events meant it was unlikely that she was going to hit the targets she had set herself. Hopefully she will line up in Gotzis next month.

Gives her the OQS - wonder if she will want to double up in Paris.

Pretty shocking set of results from European Champs - GBR won just 2 fights across the 10 athletes we had competing.

Conditions in Brescia seem to be getting worse. O'Dowda manages just 1.74m in the high jump. The OQS drifts further out of reach but she is still in with shout of hitting UKA standard.

Jade O'Dowda's quest to get the OQS in the heptathlon takes a bit of a knock after a 13.87 in the 100m hurdles. She's looks to be in great form but was running into a 2.8m/s headwind. It's difficult to see how she can get the standard now without PBing in a couple of events.

Another meeting tomorrow - LSU Invitational: Decathlete Jack Turner will compete in both the 110m hurdles and the Shot Put. (He's also down to do a leg of 4x400 relay for Arkansas). On the women's side, Desiree Henry goes in the 100m whilst Amber Anning goes in 200m.

Kristjan Archer crashes out of the tournament in the first round and will finish in 11th place. He was the 2nd highest seed in the tournament based on world ranking but wasn't at his best in the pool matches. In stark contrast, Julia Caron was undefeated in her pool and moved into the knockout rounds as the 2nd seed and as such was given a bye to the quarter finals where she defeated Anna Zens of Luxembourg. Later today, she'll be up against Israel's Dar Hect in the semi-finals.