Rafa Maciel

Cycling Policy Document: Paris_2024_Olympic_Games_Selection_Policy.pdf (britishcycling.org.uk) Key Points: Athletes who are interested in being on the squad need to submit expression of interest. Decisions will be made by selection panel taking into account recommendations of coaches and relevant international performances. Panel can take into account riders "commitment to the team" and co-operation "with planned team training sessions." Panel can give preference to those riders who will be able to double up. The policy is pretty light on detail and objective performance metrics. Instead, it seems to give a lot of power to coaches and a closed-door selection panel. I'd like to assume that more information has been shared with the athletes. That being said, I don't think the selection for cycling squad is going to prove controversial - there will be interesting discussion about the road team but there are a strong group of riders who will likely be selected. The most challenging selection decisions likely to be around the 2nd line riders for men's and women's mountain biking and men's BMX racing where there are at least a couple of contenders.

Apologies - yes there are 8 more to come. I keep forgetting that France don't get automatic host quota.

and secure quotas for Paris 2024.

After Sub-Division 4, there is no change to the top 3. were the best performing team entering the competition - scoring 248.862 to sit in 4th place. had a poor Pommel Horse so finished up in 5th with 248.163.

Yeah - with the exception of Whitlock's pommel, I don't think there is one other routine that they would say was 100% clean. I don't think that GB were helped by being in the first sub-division and it has got me intrigued about how many athletes who compete in the 1st sub-division ultimately make the individual finals. Competition for the team next year is going to be tough - if Whitlock wins the title this week, it's going to be difficult to leave him out of the squad. Jarman and Fraser are virtual shoo-ins so that leaves a handful of gymnasts fighting it out for the last 2 spots. Pommel is probably going to be the final watch this week - completely expect Rhys to qualify for Paris but if he is a little off his game, he could miss out on the quota here to Abu Al Soud.

Prague European Open Results - Day 1 This year's Prague Open has probably had one of the biggest entry lists for a competition of this size. Men's 60Kg 1.) Yam Wolczak 2.) Emiel Jaring 3.) Richard Vergnes & Enzo Jean Men's 66Kg 1.) Sam Hall 2.) Bence Pongracz 3.) Charlie Young & Freddy Waizenegger This is Hall's 2nd tournament win this month at Continental Open level after he also took gold at the Sarajevo Open. Men's 73Kg 1.) Bajsang Bagajev 2.) Reda Seddouki 3.) Oron Giner & Ibai Gracia Garijo Women's 48Kg 1.) Raquel Brito 2.) Mireia Rodriguez Salvador 3.) Amber Gersjes & Tereza Bodnarova Women's 52Kg 1.) Anja Stangar 2.) Lea Metrot 3.) Leonie Gonzalez & Gabriela Conceicao Women's 57Kg 1.) Ophelie Vellozzi 2.) Martha Fawaz 3.) Shannon Van de Meeberg & Lou Lemire Women's 63Kg 1.) Tea Tintor 2.) Laura Vazquez Fernandez 3.) Miriam Boi & Nadiah Krachten

We are probably about 2 hours away from being able to confirm team quota. Depending on how the results go in the next sub-division, we may also be able to confirm .

After Sub-Division 3, remains in the lead whilst take second spot with 254.528 and that is a gain of 2 points on their 2022 score. Unsurprisingly, their team is looking good for a handful of individual finals. move down to 3rd place. None of the other three teams entering the competition in sub-division 3 are going to figure in the race for team final or quota places - Uzbekistan, Romania and Australia are at the bottom of the leaderboard.

After Sub-Division 2, take lead in team event with 258.228. That's 4 points higher than but around 2.5 points lower than they achieved in Liverpool. currently in 3rd with 247.693 - outscoring their 2022 performance by about 5 points - and that should be enough to qualify them to the team final. A great performance from to score 245.461 gives them a good shout at getting into the team final and getting Olympic quota. probably the big loser at the moment - their score of 245.295 is pretty much bang on what they achieved in Liverpool but whilst it was enough for 7th place last year, both Turkey and Ukraine have overtaken them so they may struggle to make the team final and may miss out on Olympic quota.

finish qualifying with a score of 254.193 - 1.400 points higher than their qualifying score in Liverpool. Think it is fair to say Courtney Tulloch was having a bit of an off day - didn't have a great vault and actually didn't compete on a couple of pieces of apparatus that he was down to do. His rings score of 14.3 may not even be enough to see him into the final (14.333 was required in 2022) Harry Hepworth had a great competition and has potentially individual finals on floor and vault and may sneak into rings. Jake Jarman should easily qualify for Individual All-Around with score of 84.031 but can't help feeling his routines were a bit messy. He didn't nail his vault but put in pretty decent P-Bars and Floor routines. He has outside chance of individual final for P-Bar it is unlikely and have a feeling he will also miss out on the vault final. Max Whitlock put in solid performances on 2 apparatus - P-Bars and Horizontal Bar to help team score but unsurprisingly kept his best for last (literally) with Pommel Horse routine scoring 15.266.

Snowshoe World Cup Men's Short Course 1.) Victor Koretzky 2.) Jordan Sarrou 3.) Luca Schwarzbauer Women's Short Course 1.) Evie Richards 2.) Puck Pieterse 3.) Rebecca Henderson

For most of the events, it doesn't make sense for GB either and given this approach didn't work at the trials for Worlds this year, I would have expected them to lower their expectations a little.

Assuming everyone who participated are eligible to compete for GB, then I think that the following archers should be eligible for invitation to participate in Selection Shoot event next year based on their performance in 2023 National Tour: Women: Penny Healey Bryony Pitman Sarah Bettles Thea Rogers Megan Havers Yulia Hinckley Malgorzata Sobieraj Louisa Piper Jaspreet Sagoo Sarah Russell Men: Monty Orton James Woodgate Conor Hall Steve Davies Alex Wise Tom Hall Roger Castillo-Alquezar Michael Judd Anthony Wood

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