Rafa Maciel

The World Athletics Road to Paris site is now live: Road To | World Athletics

This has been bugging me all night and I think I have finally figured out why there were adjustments made to and ranking totals and why the UCI needed to make a second release of the rankings. Their previously published data did not include the points from Under 23 races - specifically any U23 Class 2 Stage Events. Only 2 races were impacted - the Watersley Womens Challenge and the Tour De L'Avenir Femmes - and both took place in early-mid September. Anna Shackley picked up 27 points in Tour De L'Avenir whilst Dominika Wlodarczyk picked up points in the Watersley Challenge. Other nations impacted by this include Germany and Italy. Now I might be able to get some sleep without having ranking lists running through my mind.

To muddy the waters still further, Olympics.com are going with the original rankings list which had ahead of on the women's side. Road cycling at París 2024: Quota distribution for next Olympic Games decided following publication of UCI World Ranking by Nations (olympics.com)

Oh come on!! I come back from dinner to discover UCI have published a new set of rankings It really shouldn't be that difficult for them to keep a running total of the points. From what I can see, seem to have been awarded an additional 27 points which was enough to take them ahead of - unfortunately the links to the historic rankings aren't working so I can't see which rider has had the additional points awarded. None of the ranking riders for GB were in action this week so I assume this difference is down to the same issue that saw Dominika Wlodarczyk gain 36 points without racing. Hopefully UCI will be pretty quick to issue something official to clarify who has won what, but worst-case scenario, we may have to wait until 17th November before the picture becomes clear

Yeah - isn't there a rule that if you are entered into an event you have to start that event in order to be allowed to start in another event? I seem to recall there used to be a lot of track athletes who were down to double up and would line up for their first event but then pull up after the first couple of laps.

Exactly - I think Italy took advantage of the rule in Tokyo with Ganna competing in both time trial and team pursuit. Obviously it only really works if you have qualified track athletes in one of the endurance events - can't see many track sprinters fancying the prospect of 158km road race though. It wouldn't surprise me if GB did something similar in Paris - whilst I think Tarling is a cert for the time trial, I could see him being subbed out of the road race in favour of one of the team pursuiters (although selectors might not want to jeopardise potential track medals)

In theory you could - but if you've only earned 1 quota for road cycling, then you are stuck. But under the terms of the qualification document, any athlete who is entered into another cycling discipline would be eligible to be entered into the road cycling events - so if you had track cyclists qualified, then you could sub one in.

I did - and there is nothing there from the last week. Her score moved to 359 in the wk/bg 26-Sep off the back of European champs, but I don't think she has raced since then. Initially thought it was due to sanctions which may have dropped off at the start of new ranking season, but I checked Pidcock's ranking and his sanctions are still there, so I am at a loss as to how to explain the difference in ranking points.

I am going to admit - I was not expecting to add close to 20% to their total in the final week of racing but I am a bit confused because Dominika Wlodarczyk went from 359 points to 395 without seeming to have raced.

I think it is just a classic case of financial mismanagement where the organisation is run by people who may understand the sport, but do not have the necessary skills and experience in budget control, project management, contract negotiation and strategic planning. Ed Warner penned a good article on the issue earlier in the year: UK Athletics' demise is a scandalous situation - Ed Warner (cityam.com) Going through UK Athletics financial statements, a big part of their failure has to be their handling of broadcasting rights. They are showing no income coming in from broadcasting rights in 2022 whereas in 2021, that accounted for over 1mln GBP and in the years before that, they were raking in around 3mln GBP a year from broadcasting. Likewise, the ticket sales have plummeted through the floor - just 300,000 in 2022 compared to 1.3mln in 2020 and 3mln in 2019.

UK Athletics' death spiral continues: Stephen Maguire: UK Athletics technical director leaves with immediate effect - BBC Sport Depending on which source you take, Maguire leaving was either by mutual agreement or as seems more likely, he was sacked after he challenged Jack Buckner on the chronic mismanagement of the federation's finances as he prepared for the final run in to Paris and the announcement of the 23/24 athlete funding settlement which is due in early November. I had a feeling that the strong World Championship results were papering over the cracks in the management of the sport in the UK, but hadn't expected the s**t to hit the fan in this way as soon as this. Interestingly, we're already seeing some of the big-name athletes speaking out against the move - something we didn't see when there were complaints around the selection policy going into Budapest. If the top British athletes collectively express no confidence in the management of UK Athletics, it would be difficult to see how Buckner would be able to hold on to his position.

I perhaps should explain a little more as I know there are a lot of users who are big fans of the Pro Cycling Stats data. The reason I say it is wrong on the women's side is because the PCS bases its ranking on the performance of the top 8 riders per nationality: Whilst this is correct for the men's rankings, for the women's rankings, the UCI only counts the points of the top 5 riders per country: So basically, PCS is consistently reporting higher ranking totals for each nation than we will see when using the official UCI rankings. Often that doesn't make a huge amount of difference, but in this instance it is giving misleading impression of where France will finish.

Interestingly, someone seems to have updated the Wikipedia page for road cycling qualification even though UCI haven't officially released the final rankings. Unfortunately, they seem to have used the Pro Cycling Stats data which is incorrect for the women's rankings. France will not finish ahead of Switzerland.

They should be close to getting a quota - Katie Boulter will be the most likely candidate but she will probably need to get into low-40s to be confident of qualifying. In Tokyo the last combined ranking was 54 so if the window closed today, they would be right on the edge of qualifying. Boulter is currently ranked about 50 and other than ITF level events, she isn't really defending a lot of points until the grass season which comes after the qualifying window closes. This should give her more opportunity to compete on the main tour next year and with guaranteed entry for Aus Open and French Open, there's a decent chance she can make more progress before the qualifying period closes.

Unlikely - France were about 900 points short of 5 place in the rankings on the women's side so will only qualify team of 3. The men on the other hand should finish in 5th and get the full team of 4.

Sunday October 15th 2023 becomes a dark day for Scottish sport - they were beaten by England 8-3 at mixed curling world champs. Can't think there will have been many occasions when England have come out on top against Scotland in curling.

Injury permitting, I'm 90% certain that Skupski won't be paired with Salisbury - he will instead opt to go with Dan Evans. They have been the preferred GB doubles pair for Davis Cup this year, have performed pretty well together and seem to get on really well both on and off the court. Salisbury will likely have the choice of Norrie, Murray or Draper as his partner and I think there's a good chance he would opt to go with Murray in a repeat of their pairing from Tokyo where they had a decent run to the quarter-finals and were pretty close to getting through to the medal matches. Not sure if that would change your medal prediction.

This is quite possibly the boldest prediction I've seen so far - I think Grant and Craig are unbeaten since Tokyo whilst the Irish pair finished 7th at the worlds.

The number of people playing the lottery always fluctuates depending on the level of the jackpot but lottery sales in 22/23 were the second highest on record at about 8.2bln. The figures for 23 are trending lower but that is primarily because there haven't been many big Euromillion rollovers to help drive sales. Nevertheless, the actual money going to "good causes" (of which UK Sport is a beneficiary) has remained fairly steady. The National Lottery Distribution Fund annual report was published in July and showed that the NLDF had 1.83bln of income in 22/23 - the same as in 21/22 and 20/21. In January the license changes to Allwyn and I fully expect that they will make changes to how the lottery is run but given the commitments they made in order to gain the license and the comments that have been made since, I'd be surprised if there was a significant drop off in terms of lottery support for UK Sport.

Josh Tarling scores another time trial victory by taking the Chronos des Nations title and beating Remco Evenepoel by 13 seconds.

Whilst disappointing, I don't think Gadirova's injury will fundamentally shift the needle for British Gymnastics going into Paris. They will still be set a target of 3-5 medals across the artistic, rhythmic and trampoline disciplines. Within artistic, even without Gadirova, they will have realistic medal chances with the men's team, Whitlock on pommel, Jarman on vault, Tulloch on rings and even an outside chance at an all-around medal from Joe Fraser. Obviously a lot depends on how the winter goes, but GB Gymnastics will be thinking they are in a good place going into Paris. In terms of funding, I'm not sure what you've based the assertion that lottery funding is rapidly falling. Financial support from UK Sport for the Paris Olympic cycle amounts to 241mln which is a significant increase on the 221mln awarded going into Tokyo. In addition to the funding of the national federations, there is around an additional 60mln of funding which is given directly to athletes. Looking at gymnastics specifically, they have received 13.3mln going into Paris - up from 13.2mln ahead of Tokyo. Assuming that the GB team does fall short of their target, whilst they would expect a funding cut, it is unlikely to be major and I'd still expect it to be in the region of 12.5-13mln. One of the biggest factors counting against major funding cuts is the need to address and implement the findings of the Whyte review.

I'd be surprised if Stapley was able to get himself into the top 30 to earn a quota place for GB - he is only counting 3 events from the first qualification period so he is starting from a pretty low base. That being said, I do think he could have a chance of being selected for the team if GB are able to get 3 quota places for the men's event so that he could act as a domestique. He has no illusions that he is going to be challenging for a podium finish and instead knows that if selected, his role would be to protect and support Yee - a role he's shown that he is willing to do having taken that role in the WTCS final last month. I don't see either Brownlee or Izzard being willing to "sacrifice" their own chances of a top 20 finish in favour of Yee's chances to get a medal.

Judo Policy Document: 2024_GBJudo_PARIS_OLYMPIC_GAMES_SELECTION-PROCEDURE.pdf (britishjudo.org.uk) Key Points: Athletes will be selected where they are the only British athlete to have secured direct qualification by finishing in the top 17 of the Olympic Qualification List. Athletes receiving a continental quota will be selected to the team. Where 2 (or more) athletes would be eligible for direct qualification via the Olympic qualification list, priority will be given to any athlete who would be a top 8 seed in Paris. Where no athlete would be seeded, the performance at 2024 World Championships will determine selection. If the athletes can't be separated under this criteria, the selection panel will review their performances across the qualification window. Additional Factors: As with other selection policy, the document includes reference to "future potential" which will allow the selection panel to select a lower ranked athlete if they believe that they have potential to medal in LA 2028. Realistically, this should be one of the more straightforward selection policies as the quotas will be earned by a specific athlete based on their performance over the last 2 years and their position in the Olympic Qualification List. Unlike nations such as Japan, there are relatively few weight classes where GB look like there is a realistic possibility that they will have 2 athletes who would be eligible for selection - Women's 57Kg, 70Kg and 78Kg. To all intents and purposes, Chelsie Giles (52Kg) has already been selected. Lucy Renshall is also looking pretty secure for selection. In the 78Kg class, at the moment, Nathalie Powell would be likely to get the nod over Emma Reid but there's not a huge amount of clear water between them. Likewise, the selection decision in the 70Kg class is likely to be finely balanced with Katie-Jemima Yeats-Brown being in a qualifying position but having a lower world ranking than Kelly Petersen-Pollard who is currently just outside of the quota places. GB have 3 world class athletes in the 57Kg weight class - Lele Nairne, Acelya Toprak and Nekoda Smythe-Davis - but it is becoming a bit of a mess in terms of selection. We've already seen a successful appeal against non-selection for the European Champs by Smythe-Davis and I don't think the situation is likely to improve any time soon. Until last year, Toprak was the top ranked GB athlete in the class but since then, she has been overshadowed by both Nairne and Smythe-Davis who is returning after her maternity leave. Nairne started the qualification window strongly but since then, Smythe-Davis has gradually closed the gap and currently sits as the only GB athlete in a quota position - but she is just 29 points ahead of Nairne. To complicate the selection further, Smythe-Davis has the lowest world ranking of the 3. On the men's side, we are probably relying on a continental quota which would go to either Moorhead (81Kg) or Petgrave (90Kg). Unfortunately, Sam Hall who is probably one of the stronger prospects on the men's side was injured for much of the 1st qualification period and he has now moved up a weight class to 66Kg so although he has had a couple of good results, he is starting from a very low base. We are coming into a key competition period for GB athletes in the next few weeks with the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam followed by the European Champs and culminating in the Perth Oceania Open. How they perform - particularly the men - could have significant impact on their Olympic ambitions.

I wonder what Athens and London did to p*ss off the IOC to the extent that they didn't get to add any new sports to the schedule when they hosted. 1992 Barcelona: Adds Badminton 1996 Atlanta: Adds Softball, Mountain Biking and Beach Volleyball 2000 Sydney: Add Taekwondo, Triathlon and Trampoline Gymnastics 2004 Athens: 2008 Beijing: Adds BMX Racing and Open Water Swimming 2012 London....Adds no new sports and drops baseball and softball. 2016 Rio: Adds Rugby 7s and Golf 2020 Tokyo: Adds Skateboarding, Surfing, BMX Freestyle, Sport Climbing, 3x3 Basketball & Karate 2024 Paris: Adds Breaking 2028 Los Angeles: Adds Flag Football, Cricket, Softball/Baseball, Squash & Lacrosse

In the process of prepping next update of judo tracker I was looking ahead to the European Championships. I always check the IJF website to see who has entered and who ultimately drops out of GB team as the event gets closer. The Euro champs have almost 400 competitors on the IJF website and I nearly lost my sh*t when I looked at who was supposedly on the GB team. It includes Ian Johns in the -60Kg class and Jason Parsons in the -66KG class. Ignoring the fact that Johns is listed as 44 years old - he is (or at least was) the GB Paralympic head coach whilst Parsons is the England Talent development coach. Whilst this information is obviously wrong, it led me to news of a bit of internal conflict within GB judo after their first stage selection announcement was made at the end of August: Statement: European Judo Championships - British Judo Reading between the lines, I assume that Nekoda Smythe Davis - who had previously been announced as a reserve - has appealed against her omission from the team. Given that NSD is in a qualifying position for GB whilst Toprak is 500 points outside of the last qualifying position, it would seem to be a no-brainer to take your athletes with the best chance of qualifying.