Rafa Maciel

Archery Policy Document: Microsoft Word - Paris 2024 Olympics Selection Policy (FINAL).docx (archerygb.org) Key Points: Qualification for Olympic Games Selection event was based on performance across the 2023 GB National Tour. The top performing athletes from the tour will be invited to take part in the selection process. Selection Shoot 1 - To take place in early March 2024 with up to 12 athletes taking part. The top 6 performing athletes will progress to Stage 2. Selection Shoot 2 - To take place in late March 2024. The top 4 athletes will progress to Stage 3. The top 4 athletes will also be nominated to World Cup 1 in Shanghai. Selection Shoot 3 - Final stage in selection process to take place in April 2024. Additional Factors: Any athlete winning a medal at 2023 international events - World Cup, World Championships or European Games, will be awarded bonus points. In order to be considered for selection shoot, each athlete will be required to achieve minimum score of 640 for men and 610 for women. By the end of Selection Shoot 2, athletes will be required to achieve enhanced minimum qualification standards of 655 for men and 635 for women. Quota Allocation: In the event that a team quota is not achieved, the individual quota won at European Games will be awarded to the athlete who has the highest world ranking (taking into account only outdoor performances) If an individual quota is won at the 2024 continental championship or final qualification tournament and no team quota is won, then the athlete who wins the quota will be nominated.

In between collating results from various events, I have been taking a look at the selection policies across various sports for athletes hoping to make it to Paris on Team GB, and for the benefit of those who may be interested, but have better things to do with their time, I thought I would try to gather them all here in a single thread.

released their final selection policy for Paris earlier this month. In line with the approach used for both Rio and Tokyo, the squad will be capped at a maximum of 30 athletes. Key Points: Selections will primarily be based on results from 2024 British Swimming Championships which are taking place in London Aquatics Centre in early April. In order to guarantee selection, the champion in each individual event is required to achieve the nomination time in the final. The first four finishers in the relevant events will be selected if their collective time is within the required nomination standard for the relay. GB Swimming Performance Director has complete discretion to add athletes to the squad. If not already selected for inclusion in a relay, the silver medalist in each individual event will be considered for selection - if there are places available - where they have achieved the relevant nomination time in the final of their event. Most of the above is pretty uncontroversial, although why they would look to put an arbitrary cap on the size of the squad is beyond me. Where I think GB Swimming have gone mad is in the creation of their own qualifying standards: Female Male OQT BQT Event OQT BQT 24.70 24.65 50 Freestyle 21.96 21.88 53.61 53.55 100 Freestyle 48.34 48.06 1:57.26 1:56.85 200 Freestyle 1:46.26 1:45.96 4:07.90 4:04.98 400 Freestyle 3:46.78 3:45.43 8:26.71 8:25.84 800 Freestyle 7:51.65 7:47.80 16:09.09 16:01.95 1500 Freestyle 15:00.99 14:54.29 59.99 59.89 100 Backstroke 53.74 53.68 2:10.39 2:08.91 200 Backstroke 1:57.50 1:57.28 1:06.79 1:06.31 100 Breaststroke 59.49 59.45 2:23.91 2:23.04 200 Breaststroke 2:09.68 2:08.95 57.92 57.17 100 Butterfly 51.67 51.56 2:08.43 2:07.96 200 Butterfly 1:55.78 1:54.97 2:11.47 2:10.62 200 Individual Medley 1:57.94 1:57.49 4:38.53 4:37.84 400 Individual Medley 4:12.50 4:11.90 OQT = Olympic Qualifying Time BQT = British Qualifying Time There are some events where GB are strong - the men's 200 Freestyle - where I can understand the rationale for having more stringent qualifying standards, but there are plenty of events where these standards will simply ensure that there is no British representation in the event. As an example, GB didn't qualify anyone for the women's 1500m Freestyle event for Tokyo. Our national champion in 2023 was Amelie Blocksidge who is, by all accounts, GB's great hope for the longer distance freestyle events. At 14 years old, she set a PB time of 16:19.67 to take the title. Whilst that is not going to win her a medal at international level, it is within 5 seconds of the official Olympic Consideration Time and it is not difficult to believe that she would be able to bring her time down next year to be within the OCT - indeed she could even bring her time under the OQT - but in order to qualify under GB standards, she would have to find 18 seconds which is much less likely. Under these British standards, we would lose out current qualifiers in the women's 400 freestyle, 100 butterfly and in the men's 800 freestyle. In addition, we would be reduced to 1 participant in the men's 50 freestyle. Given British Swimming endured the embarrassment of having to change their World Championship selection policy halfway through the trials, you would have thought that they would have adopted a more cautious approach but instead, they seem to have doubled down.

Enkhtuvshin Damdindorj announced as Besana's replacement as horizontal bar specialist.

Gotcha - was confused because I hadn't built this into my tracker for 1st period but see that the 2022 continental champs were all held outside of the qualifying window.

I haven't checked the coding in the file for a while because I have been working on artistic gymnastics tracker - so there may be a few mistakes. Also would say that we've had 2023 continental championships for Africa, Pan-America and Oceania which will slightly skew the results for a few weeks.

I was under the impression that the points for Continental Champs are awarded at Grand Prix level and were treated as any other tournament - the score can be discarded if it is not one of your top 5 results across the period. Sorry for my confusion - but my understanding was that the ranking was comprised of your top 5 results in each period and, for those who competed, the score from the Masters. The Masters is a non-discardable event so even if it is your worst result in the period, the points are included in your total.

So the Continental champs are non-discard scores during the second period?

Looks like Tom Pidcock's road season may now be complete whilst he focuses on mountain bike qualification for Paris. Assuming he has recovered from his infected backside, he is on the entry list for this weekend's world cup event at Snowshoe.

No apology required - in my mind I had thought Backstedt's background was on the track. The reason I believe that Backstedt will struggle to make the road team is that outside of this week's European Championships, she hasn't achieved that much on the roads this year - and that is a key criteria in the GB selection policy. That being said, the policy is sufficiently vague that she could well be selected but ultimately, I think Paris will come round too early for her. On the question of Henderson, I don't make a comparison against Backstedt - I simply think that she will be selected for both road race and the time trial, and that she could sneak a medal. She was 4th at the worlds and 2nd at the Europeans so she has shown good form this year.

Mountain biking? Has she even taken part in a mountain biking race this year? Backstedt may struggle to make the GB road squad - Anna Henderson will double up (and may feature for minor medal), Pfeiffer Georgi and Anna Shackley almost certain to be selected for road race Lizzie Deignan and Claire Steels likely to fight it out for last spot.

The first selection meeting for GB Triathlon is scheduled for 24th October when I expect Yee and Potter to be formally confirmed. GTB may also be confirmed under Criteria 2 but given she is recovering from injury, the selectors may decide to hold off naming her to the squad. Before yesterday, I would have assumed that Coldwell would get the nod given her stronger performance over the Olympic distance but it looks like it will come down to a 1-race shoot out in2024 to decide the third spot. On the men's side, I'm not unduly concerned about Yee's performance yesterday. He is never going to be leading them out of the water and is happy to sit in the pack 20-25 seconds down. Where he came unstuck yesterday I think, was down to poor positioning during the swim - it looked pretty brutal going round some of the markers during the swim and it wouldn't surprise me if he took a knock on the second lap. One of Yee's strengths has been to bounce back after disappointing results and I think that yesterday was the 1st Olympic distance event that he has lost this year after victories in Cagliari and Paris. I really don't know what to make of Brownlee. He was injured over the summer so perhaps he wasn't fully fit, but he put in a truly dismal performance in Paris yet 10 days later he came second in the London leg of the Triathlon Super League. Yesterday he put in a great swim and cycle only to have a complete collapse in the run. The fact that Brownlee is still able to pull out decent performances over shorter distances within smaller fields should likely still make him favourite for the relay selection. Izzard's recent form has been fairly decent recently so yesterday was really disappointing. I'd like to say that he was hanging back to try to help Yee close the gap, but it was actually Max Stapely that was willing to act as the domestique. Both Stapely and Izzard are scheduled to take part in the Rome world cup event in a couple of weeks - all has a feeling of deja vu from 2021 with Tom Bishop trying to secure that 3rd GBR quota

Looks like there has been a couple of changes made to the entry lists for next week's competition: Men's Vault Specialist: Juancho Miguel Besana has been replaced by Fabian de Luna. Men's Horizontal Bar Specialist: Juancho Miguel Besana has withdrawn and no replacement announced as yet. Women's All-Around Individual: Anya Pilgrim has been replace by Stella Diaz Munez; Caterina Cereghetti has been replaced by Anny Wu; and Christina Zwicker has withdrawn and been replaced by Anastasija Ananjeva. Women's Balance Beam: Chan Cheuk Lam replaced by Hilary Heron.

Most of the focus this week has been on the European Championships, but there have been a few other events taking place on the roads across the globe. Men's Events Tour of Luxembourg 1.) Marc Hirschi 2.) Brandon McNulty 3.) Ben Healy Tour of Binzhou 1.) Lucas Carstensen 2.) Luis Carlos Chia Bermudez 3.) Blake Agnoletto Paris-Chauny 1.) Jasper Philipsen 2.) Jason Tesson 3.) Paul Penhoet Omloop van het Houtland 1.) Gerben Thijssen 2.) Dyland Groenewegen 3.) Cedric Beullens

And Olympic selection for Team GB

Williams bows out in the semifinals with a defeat to top seed Nika Klepac.

Worst possible results for hopes of top 5 finish with Christophe Laporte taking the win in the men's road race - pick up additional 250 ranking points. The only upside is that Valentin Madouas has had a poor Tour of Luxembourg so will drop around 175 points to give France a net gain of around 75 points.

She may well end up competing in both - but she can't get the quota for GB in both. So, because the C1 came before the K1, she becomes the "qualified" athlete in C1 and Spicer would be the "qualified" athlete in K1. At this point, it is only really important in determining which athletes will be able to compete for the Kayak-Cross quotas in Prague next year.

So from quota perspective, I think the "qualified" athletes are C1 - Mallory Franklin K1 - Phoebe Spicer That leaves Kimberley Woods free to take part in the Kayak-Cross qualifier in Prague next year. On the men's side, C1 - Adam Burgess K1 - Joe Clarke Not sure our C1 men do a lot of Kayak-Cross so team for Prague qualifier will probably be led by Jonny Dickson and Chris Bowers

Lauren Williams makes it through to the semi-finals after defeating 4th seed Nikolina Mesic. Mesic was leading in the second round but I think she racked up her 10th gam-jeon so the decision was given to Williams.

With taking the men's quota, I think that means the host quota for trap is reallocated through the Olympic ranking - that could just be lifeline for 's Matthew Coward-Holley.

Lauren Williams comes through her first bout in Belgrade 2-0 against Anastasija Ljubinkovic (8-1 / 9-0) She goes through to Quarterfinal where she is likely to take on Nikolina Mesic who is the 4th seed.

Not used it before but this site seems to be offering results: TPSS 2014 - TaekoPlan Tournament Subscription Site - Now supporting 14 languages and 2 more coming up soon! Also worth pointing out the matches are being streamed on YouTube

Anyone know if there was an issue in Sarrians today? It was due to host the 5th round of the BMX Racing World Cup but I can't see any information or updates on the UCI website.

4th with Pfieffer Georgi and 8th for Anna Henderson will add a further 195 points to the GB total so they will finish the week +330 points. That should be enough to extend their lead over Australia to just shy of 500 points. It's difficult to see Australia being able to close that gap in the remaining 3 weeks of racing.