Rafa Maciel

The team was supposed to be selected at the beginning of October and announced at the end of November but not sure that they stuck to their own schedule.

Day 1 draw for Grand Slam Champions Series Final has been released. Neither of the in action - Aaliyah Powell or Lauren Williams - have a great draw in the -67Kg event as they have been drawn against the number 1 and number 2 seeds in the quarterfinals (assuming they make it through their opening fight). Aaliyah Powell is drawn against Ozoda Sobirjonova in the round of 16. They fought in the quarterfinals of the OQT earlier in the week and Powell came through in a tight match so every chance that she could repeat that tomorrow. If successful, Powell would then be against top seed Jie Song. Song is currently ranked 11th in the Olympic qualifier list and Powell is in pretty good form so she'll have every reason to think she could win that fight. If she gets through to the semi-finals, Powell would face either 4th seed Hyo rim Hong or 5th seed Ruth Gbagbi who face each other in the quarterfinals (this will be a repeat of the OQT Quarterfinal which was won by Hong). Hong Lauren Williams will fight Lilliia Khuzina in the round of 16. They fought in the semifinals of the OQT and Khuzina overwhelmed Williams. The hope is that having had a couple of days off, Williams might be a bit fresher when they fight in the morning. If she can prevail, then she would face 2nd seed Cecilia Castro Burgos. The Spaniard lost in the first round of the OQT so not sure what her form is like.

OQT Grand Slam Champions Series Final Qualifiers - Day 2 (X) indicates the athlete's current Olympic Ranking List. Women's 57Kg 1 Yu-jin Kim (29) 2 Chaima Toumi (18) 3 Tian rui Zhan 4 Tatiana Minina 5 Megawati Maheswari(87) 6 Yirao Sang (346) 7 Gahyeon Kim(51) 8 Margarita Blizniakova Women's +67Kg 1 Polina Khan 2 Fatima-Ezzahra Aboufaras(19) 3 Lei Xu (10) 4 Seungju Oh(153) 5 Sujuan Zhang(124) 6 Anna Pekonnkina 7 Wenzhe Mu(80) 8 Zeqi Zhou (13) Men's 58Kg 1 Gashim Magomedov (23) 2 Huichan Yang(45) 3 Abolfazl Zandi (15) 4 Barbod Jabbari Asyabi(334) 5 Luiz Aquino(90) 6 Georgii Gurtsiev 7 Junsong Yu 8 Alireza Hosseinpour (66) Men's 80Kg 1 Jasurbek Jaysunov (16) 2 Maksim Khramtcov 3 Shukhrat Salaev(15) 4 Mirhashem Hosseini(23) 5 Nedzad Husic(12) 6 Abolfazl Abbasi Pouya 7 Amir Mohammad Bakhshi(58) 8 Vladislav Budin -18 Qualifiers - 14 Qualifiers - 9 Qualifiers - 7 Qualifiers - 3 Qualifiers - 2 Qualifiers - 1 qualifier

The athletes I've flagged as missing out were in the qualifying tournament and were seeded to make the quarter finals but lost out in the early rounds. That being said, looking at the entry criteria for the GS Series Final, some of them could still be in the Final if they are a pre-registered athlete.

OQT Grand Slam Champions Series Final Qualifiers - Day 1 (X) indicates the athlete's current Olympic Ranking List. Women's 49Kg 1 Alisa Angelova 2 Yanying Zhang (318) 3 Xueqin Tan (242) 4 Elif Sude Akgul (131) 5 Xiaoxue Yang (19) 6 Irina Rogozina 7 Ju Zuo (18) 8 Xiaoting Ye Women's 67Kg 1 Hyo rim Hong (18) 2 Lilliia Khuzina 3 Aaliyah Powell 4 Lauren WIlliams (14) 5 Ruth Gbagbi (4) 6 Ozoda Sobirijonova (66) 7 Milena Titoneli (9) 8 Mengyu Zhang (7) Men's 68Kg 1 Yushuai Liang (11) 2 Ilia Danilov 3 Lei Yan (461) 4 Martin Rezaei (15) 5 Abolfazl Yaghoubijouybari 6 Maksim Osin 7 Tae young Kim (36) 8 Chenming Xiao (38) Men's +80Kg 1 Yaoxi Wang (89) 2 Vladislav Larin 3 Arian Salimi (23) 4 Ivan Sapina (3) 5 Pedro Arthur Alves Jesus (155) 6 Rafail Aiukaev 7 Sanghyun Kang (12) 8 Zhaoxiang Song (8) So of the 32 qualifiers on day 1 the national breakdown is: - 11 qualifiers - 7 qualifiers - 3 qualifiers - 2 qualifiers - 1 qualifier I don't pretend to understand how the entry list for the Grand Slam Final/OQT worked but there were some pretty high ranked athletes who didn't make it through: Women's 49Kg Qing Guo (6) Mi-reu Kang (9) Women's 67Kg Cecilia Castro Burgos (10) Feruza Sadikova (12) Men's 68Kg Ho-jun Jin (5) Men's +80Kg Ayoub Bassel (16)

Both Brits bow out in the semi-finals but have done enough to qualify for the Champion Series Final.

Powell's great form continues as she too makes it into the semi-finals after a tight match against 12th seed Ozoda Sobirjonova

Williams through to the semi-finals with arguably her best match so far, taking out 3rd seed Milena Titoneli.

In a repeat of her round of 32 result, Williams progresses to the quarter finals when her opponent picks up her 5th Gam-Jeom. Not sure about Powell yet - she was leading her match when the video feed cut out

Very cagey and low scoring first fight from Powell but she overcomes Castro Burgos to make it to the round of 16. Williams also makes it through - but it was messy and resembled wrestling towards the end. She only won the second round when her opponent picked up her 5th Gam-Jeom. Based on their first bouts, Powell looks to have strongest chance to get through to the Series Final. Now I might try and catch some sleep before the afternoon session.

Yep - both in the -67Kg division

Lauren Williams and Aaliyah Powell having one more roll of the dice as they attempt to qualify for Paris. Both are entered into the Qualifying Tournament for the Grand Slam Champions Series Final. They need to reach the quarter finals in order to progress to the Grand Slam Champions Series Final. Williams is the 6th seed and will face 27th seed Arina Sagayadachnaya in the round of 32. If she comes through that, she will probably face 11th seed Junhong Liu. Powell has been a bit unfortunate with her draw as she is up against 4th seed Cecilia Castro Burgos of in the round of 32.

Nielsen's Gracenote Virtual Medal Table - November 2023 Gracenote have released their updated VMT as at the end of November: NOC Gold Silver Bronze Total Change Since Last Release 37 45 44 126 Down 1 medal overall 35 25 18 78 Up 3 medals in total. 4 additional golds and 5 additional silvers offset by 6 fewer bronze medals 27 15 9 51 Down 2 silver medals. 17 24 25 66 Up 1 overall. Total silver increase to 24 whilst bronze total drops to 25. 16 9 12 37 Down 1 bronze medal. 15 17 18 50 Gain of 1 bronze medal. 15 13 30 58 Gains 2 medals overall. 13 14 22 49 Gains 1 medal overall. 10 13 15 38 Gains 1 medal overall - dropping a silver and picking up 2 bronze. 7 7 9 23 No change. No major movement in the predictions this month.

How does Bulgaria win a medal when they haven't qualified a team?

Now you've got me second guessing whether this is serious or just you being spicy :

Whilst Germany may be favourite to win the women's team sprint, they're are not going to win gold in the team pursuit - and are probably unlikely to make the podium. Their strongest team seems to be Brausse/Klein/Kroger/Sussemilch - that was the team that got them bronze at the Europeans this year and a bronze at the Nations Cup in Cairo - but bronze is the best they have achieved this year and I don't think they have ever finished ahead of GB's or Italy's top teams this season.

From what I've seen, the curlers are generally pretty happy to compete as Team GB at Olympics - it is the only time when they get any media coverage It doesn't hurt them that for a while, they were the only realistic chance of a winter Olympic medal so the BBC would be fawning over them. A more apt comparison is probably the reaction to the Scottish, Welsh and English rugby 7s teams being forced to merge to compete as Great Britain this year. I know a lot of people think that has essentially killed off the game in the home nations.

Sorry, but the assumption that Scotland are going to allow themselves to be steamrollered by England shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the dynamics of football within the UK - most Scottish players would happily sell their right kidney to beat England. At best, only 3 or 4 Scottish players would be considered for Team GB so most of them don't have an any skin in the game when it comes to Olympic qualification. England will beat Scotland because they are a better team - but Scotland wont go down without a fight and a 2-1 final score wouldn't surprise me so GB's best hope of keeping their Olympic qualification alive probably lies with the Belgians sneaking out a win against Netherlands.

So, whilst Scottish Curling will no doubt be celebrating the men's side, at some point they are going to have to wake up to the fact that there is something that is just not working on the women's side and if they want to be winning a medal in Milan-Cortina, then Rebecca Morrison may not be the skip they need to be putting forward. Morrison had 4 matches where she was scored less than 70% and seemed to consistently be the weakest player on the team. They also elected to rotate their alternate in on a one-on, one-off basis which I don't think any of the main curling nations do when their team is working well together. To be fair, the alternate - Sinclair - played great matches and scored over 90% is all 4 but they still elected to play Aitken when she was scoring in the 70% range. Then there is the issue of Jennifer Dodds. Personally, I think she is one of the strongest curlers within the Scottish squad, but as an outsider, I get the impression that she and Morrison don't get on. Unlike the majority of other teams where the skip and the third are constantly working together to build the end, there seemed to be hardly any interaction between Dodds and Morrison. It is almost as if Morrison has been told by Scottish Curling that Dodds is on the squad and is playing third whether she likes it or not.

Very true - and it has often worked in the favour of / teams.

Great result for in what was an excellent final that could have gone either way. The medal presentation was a bit bizarre though - a very strange rendition of Flower of Scotland where the piper was going so slowly that the crowd singing finished way before she did and ended up having to repeat the last couple of lines.

That's a bit of a shocker. were the strongest team all week - both collectively and individually across the round robin - so for them to go home empty handed is going to sting for a while.

I think I ran the numbers after the world champs and I don't think that GB's position is as bad as the performance director made out at the time. are currently 150 points behind and just over 500 points behind are pretty much guaranteed to take a top 2 finish in the Asian champs so will pick up at least an additional 810 points. will probably put out their strongest team in the Europeans in January and if they don't take top spot, should be able to pick up a top 3 position to get at least 720 points. Personally, I don't see making the medal matches in the Euros but I do expect them to finish within 5-8 - in line with their 2023 performance. When it comes to the Nations Cup, if can be in the medals in both Adelaide and Hong Kong, then they wont need to send their best team to the final event in Milton. recorded a 10th and 7th for the Nations Cups in 2023 whilst had 2 6th place finishes and if the 2023 results are replicated next year, GB would comfortably overtake both Belgium and China. My gut feeling at the moment is that will be able to finish ahead of both and and could end up being ranked either 7th or 8th in the final list. If I had to make a call now, I would say that will miss out on qualification.

There are 4 ranking events left taking place from Jan-Apr next year - Continental Championships (Points factored at 0.75) and three Nations Cups - Adelaide, Hong Kong & Milton (Points factored at 1.0) Teams will count their scores from the continental champs and their 2 best results from the nations cups. So each nations final ranking point total will comprise of: 2x Continental Champs 1x World Champs 2x Best Nations Cup 2023 2x Best Nations Cup 2024

Will be interesting to see what the production is like - the last couple of times they have shown curling, it has been like watching a high school media studies project.