Rafa Maciel

Whatever happened to that German rider?

GB are probably heading for a doubling of their representation across the Mountain bike and BMX disciplines but despite this, it could still see them coming away with less medals in these events than they won in Tokyo. Off the top of my head I think GB are defending 3 gold, a silver and a bronze - Pidcock and Schriever have good chance to defend their titles but Worthington has struggled for form since Tokyo. Kye Whyte will be up against a formidable French team on home soil but if he can make the final could have medal chance. Finally, Reilly and/or Brookes will look to figure in the men's freestyle but Jeanjean will look to use home advantage.

I'll be interested to see who GB Cycling are going to announce as the replacement for McCulloch given all she has done for the women's sprint team. It's not beyond the realms of possibility that Finucane can take 3 medals next year if she can carry this form through to next year. On Laura Kenny, they don't expect her to feature at Paris but could be back in the squad by the time the next World Champs comes round.

So compared to Tokyo, have pretty much held on to their form with 6 gold although they are down 2 medals overall. They'll also know that there are another couple of targets on the track that they will be aiming for - including men's pursuit, women's keirin and women's omnium. On the road, I wouldn't be surprised to see GB focusing on the time trial events given the performances of Tarling and Henderson. For both the BMX disciplines and Mountain bike, GB very much in the medal hunt, but it is going to be difficult for them to do much better than they did in Glasgow. Perhaps as expected heading into Paris, there's been a big movement for against their Tokyo results where they only took 2 bronze medals. Like GB, they are perhaps unlikely to be able to do much more across the BMX and mountain bike disciplines, but I would think they would like to get some better results across the track events.

According to the USATF website, the squad for 200m is Lyles, Knighton, Bednarek and Lindsey. So assume that Kerley has been entered as a reserve but won't take to the start line unless one of the other 4 drop out. I think USA have done this in a couple of events.

There would be no reallocation of quotas unless the quota was to be rejected by your NOC - in which case Vas would only be able to enter 1 event. The quotas are awarded to the NOC rather than specific athletes so how the quota is filled is largely an issue to be determined by the NOC. By having the same athlete compete in 2 disciplines, it wouldn't have any impact on the overall size of the field for either event, although it would help cycling to ensure it stayed within the overall number of athletes allocated by IOC. According to the qualification document for Mountain Biking, providing you have earned a quota for mountain biking, there is no restriction on cyclists who are qualified from other disciplines taking part: This same provision applies across all cycling disciplines with the exception of BMX Freestyle, which specifically prohibits cyclists from other disciplines taking part.

I fear that I may have developed an unhealthy obsession with cycling ranking lists over the course of the last 2 weeks, but if the MTB qualification were to end as of the completion of world champs, I think the quotas on the men's side would be: Olympic Ranking Quotas (27): 2x 1 x Continental Quotas (3) Africa: TBC - Won by South Africa but reallocated to America: Asia: TBC - Possibly based on 2022 Asian Champs 2023 World Championship Quotas: All of the quotas from the World Champs are subject to reallocation 2023 Elite Race: & 2023 Under-23 Race: & Reallocation of Host Quota: Would go to next nation in Olympic Ranking: So, if I have got this ride (not guaranteed at this time of night), but Matthieu van der Poel could line up on the MTB start line in Paris by virtue of the performance of the Dutch under 23 squad. As for Sagan, unfortunately the Slovakian team didn't really achieve much at the world champs so they will stay ranked around 30th and about 600 points outside of qualifying position. His best prospect of qualifying was likely to have been through reallocation of quotas in the elite race but it looks like he fell well short of what was required.

Men's Boulder/Lead Quotas: Jakob Schubert Colin Duffy Tomoa Narasaki

I do feel a little bit sorry for Lea Siegl. They had a really strong dressage score and were going fine cross country until a pretty innocuous ditch just 2 fences from home

Hmmm - so if Canter is in 1st place and King is in 3rd, who is 2nd?

Class round by Roz Canter - only rider inside of the optimum time and she'll take a 2 fence cushion into the final day.

Bordone out

Looks like Blom-Hulsman is struggling a bit for - in fact she's retired. Quota is very much up for grabs for Italy now

Michael Jung!

Nah - you've got an experienced rider to come in Bordone. She just needs to have a steady ride and make sure she completes the course.

Looks like fence 18 is the big danger point - already had 3 refusals and a faller there.

The fact that there are only 2 teams competing here is is one of the reasons why I am not a huge fan of some of the continental qualifiers for Oceania - it is generally the least competitive of the continents and invariably just benefits Australia or New Zealand.

Whilst I am very pleased with an unexpected bronze in the time trial for Josh Tarling, part of me is a bit disappointed with the result for Geraint Thomas. Given he elected to focus on this race ahead of the road race, and he was the only one of our ranking riders to take part, I would have liked him to be higher up the rankings to maximise the ranking points in order to secure the full team of 4 for Paris. The silver lining is that Tarling will pretty much double his ranking points and will become the 10th ranked GB rider, slipping in behind Fred Wright. If Tarling has a decent ride in next week's BEMER cyclassic and is selected for the European Championship time trial, he could move ahead of both Hugh Carthy and Max Poole to become GB's 7th ranked rider. Overall, the mens squad will be leaving the World Championships without really adding to their ranking points total. The only saving grace is that their immediate competition for the top 5 position haven't been able to capitalise on the fact that our biggest names were pretty much AWOL this week.

Compared to Tokyo, and miss out on the second quota whilst and gain an extra spot. Technically also drop a quota but they didn't use it in Tokyo so there is no difference for them.

Absolutely - Netherlands have less than 2 fences in hand over Italy and they still have to get round the Cross Country. Looking at the recent results the dutch team don't chase the cross country time so can easily rack up 20-30 time faults. Theoretically, Andrew Heffernan should be the weakest link in the Dutch team - he's ranked 121 in the world - but he has had some solid results this year and is very much the team leader this weekend. He will be their pathfinder for tomorrow's cross country and should be able to put in a solid round although would expect him to be outside of the optimum time. If he puts in a good round, it will give the rest of the team a boost of confidence. Janneke Boonzaaijer had a good result in both Strzegom and Baborowko this year - but again on neither occasion was she within the optimum time. Also worth pointing out that this pairing were eliminated during the cross country at the Tokyo Olympics. Sanne de Jong will be the 3rd rider for Netherlands and is perhaps, the weakest link of the team having been eliminated in the last Europeans and picking up 48 cross country penalties at the worlds last year although she does have a 5th place finish from Strzegom event in June. Finally, Merel Blom-Hulsman is the 4th line rider for the team but can't see any recent results for this pairing.

Just catching up on the results from the Junior Time Trial earlier today and realised that Ben Wiggins, son of most successful Olympian Sir Bradley Wiggins, won silver. Wonder if we'll be seeing him at a future Olympics.

Personally think that Italy have the more balanced team - all of them are capable of scoring low to mid 30s. Bit surprised that Bordone scored so poorly - 7 points less than she managed at the Worlds (I appreciate that this is a different dressage test so direct comparisons aren't possible) For Netherlands and Belgium, their team performance is really build around 1 rider - Heffernan for and Donckers for . Still think that Italy are marginal favourites for the second quota behind Belgium but ahead of Netherlands.

I assume both of these quotas will ultimately be reallocated - possibly to the benefit of and ?

With Majdalani/Bosco being ranked 5th in the world, you've got to assume they are going to be there in the mix for a quota. I don't know enough about current form of the fleet to be confident enough to make my own predictions which is why I went looking for other opinions

Nacra 17 potential quotas: "Almost a Lock" Ruggero Tita / Caterina Banti "Should Qualify" John Gimson / Anna Burnet Sinem Kurtbay / Akseli Keskinen Paul Kohlhoff / Alica Stuhlemmer "Likely to Qualify" Micah Wilkinson / Erica Dawson Laila van der Meer / Bjarne Bouwer Emil Jarudd / Hanna Jonsson Fighting it out for the remaining 2 quotas, they have 9 nations including , , , and Source: Nacra17.org » 2023 World Sailing Championship