Rafa Maciel

But remember folks, the quality of the competition has gone down because there were no Russians allowed to compete

Didn't Dina Asher Smith get the 200m qualifying standard at Monaco last night as well?

Not sure Laura Muir's new coaching set up (or lack thereof) is working for her this season. Although she has had some great results, she hasn't looked as sharp as she did heading into Eugene last year.

Gotta feel a little sorry for Hailu though. She's only been credited with a Season's Best according to the official results - even though they didn't have a previous personal best recorded for her

Kyle Kothari managed some pretty decent rip entries although he did look a bit ragged in some of his jumps. I guess we all assume that the Chinese divers are going to up their level in the final, but it could be an interesting final.

So finish diving qualification with: Men's 3m springboard synchro Women's 3m springboard synchro Women's 10m platform synchro 1x Men's individual 3m springboard 2x Men's individual 10m platform 1x Women's individual 3m springboard 1x Women's individual 10m platform This is a pretty good haul although I would suggest that we probably would have expected to qualify in the men's 10m platform synchro and for Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix to have taken a second quota for women's platform (but this doesn't really matter given Eden Cheng's performance at EG) Compared to the 2019 World Champs - the corresponding qualification competition for Tokyo - GB secured exactly the same individual quotas, held on to their men's 3m synchro, gained both of the women's synchro events but lost their men's 10m platform quota.

Having watched the match back, there was a point just after she had received the time violation when she definitely appeared to react to something that was said from within the crowd behind Toth. Just after the comment was made, the camera cut to the referee who could be seen shrugging her shoulders. After she defaulted the match you could also see her gesturing to the crowd. Although also seeing suggestions that Zhang's supporters were being abusive towards Toth. Although it is difficult to hear the entire discussion that were going on, overall I don't think that the situation was handled well by either the match umpire or the referee. The line judge initially indicated that the ball was in before changing the call to out. Normally in those circumstances, the umpire would take a bit of time making the call and would engage with the player to show why they were calling the ball in or out. The umpire did none of that- she went straight to the line, said it was out and returned to the chair. She didn't even look at it from different angle - if anything she was already indicating that it was out before she had got to the mark. When the referee came on court, she didn't do anything to defuse the situation - it's never a great look when you use the line "that's not my job." It really didn't look like the referee was willing to engage with Zhang and she spent a lot of the time talking with the umpire and having her back to Zhang. For Toth's part, she really didn't need to erase the mark. The fact that she went out of her way to remove it was just unnecessary. It would have been different if she had been in the area and had scuffed it or whatever, but she strode out to it from the baseline and made a point of erasing it. Other than that, it wasn't a great look for her to be celebrating a victory when she could see her opponent was clearly distressed - she could have waited until Zhang had left the court but that comes from her lack of experience. I think Toth is going to get a lot of flack over this and perhaps not all of it is deserved.

The Indian federation are really desperate to have those shooting events back on the schedule

The '22 Commonwealth games were pretty well attended across all the sports and from what I heard from people who attended, the ticket prices weren't ridiculously expensive which helped drive up numbers. The games federation know that they have a problem finding hosts - primarily because of the costs. This will be the 2nd games in a row where the original host has had to withdraw because of financial mismanagement. As a result they have cut back on the number of mandatory sport to just athletics and swimming in the hope that it would encourage more cities to express interest. Victoria chose to ignore this and packed the schedule with pretty much everything they could think of.

Russia and Belarus to be readmitted to gymnastics from January '24: FIG to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete as neutrals (insidethegames.biz) From qualification timeline I think this means they wont be in artistic gymnastics team event but could qualify individual gymnasts through the world cup series and/or 2024 European qualifier. They should be back in time to attempt qualification in rhythmic gymnastics for both team and individual through the 2024 European champs. For trampoline, their route to qualification will be the '24 European continental qualifier as they may have missed too many events in the 23/24 World Cup Series to make much of an impact. So theoretically I think this means they could qualify 6 individuals in artistic, 8 in rhythmic and 2 in trampoline but they'd pretty much need to run the board at every European champs in 2024 for that to happen.

Not a great look for Amarissa Toth: Tennis star is accused of 'a new low for sportsmanship' after her 'disgusting' acts on the court led to her opponent having a panic attack | Daily Mail Online

I wouldn't be unduly concerned - in the previous qualification cycles, there have always been at lest 10 quotas available after the first world and continental qualifiers. There's a good chance that the majority of the continental quotas won't end up being awarded because the continental champion will already have qualified here at Fukuoka and if Wikipedia is to be believed at Tokyo, there were only meant to be 136 quotas but 147 were awarded.

The more you read about this, the more evident it becomes that the Victorian model was doomed to failure. I hadn't realised that little if any of the events were going to take place in Melbourne using the existing facilities. Instead they had chosen 5 provincial hubs which required substantial investment in new facilities and infrastructure. Some sources are suggesting that despite warnings over the additional costs associated with this model, the provincial hub approach was used as a way to secure votes during the 2022 election. The Commonwealth Games Federation have been aware that the biggest challenge to finding a host has been the cost and to counter this they took the decision to strip the core sports back to bare minimum - athletics and swimming - but again the Victorian government chose to ignore this. Not only did they maintain the full list of sports staged in Birmingham (with exception of judo, rhythmic gymnastics and wrestling), they added golf, rowing, coastal rowing, shooting, BMX and mountain biking. The initial estimate for hosting the games was in the region of GBP 1.3bln - that's getting on for double the costs associated with Birmingham. Surely alarm bells should have been ringing as soon as they generated that estimate. For the latest cost estimates to be 3 times that original budget is mind blowing - no competent program manager would allow the budget to spiral so far out of control and would suggest significant mismanagement/interference in the process.

I wouldn't expect anything different given it has only been a day since the announcement but whatever the government is saying now doesn't preclude the possibility that they will support the games being staged in the UK again if an alternative cannot be accommodated elsewhere. There is still a halo effect from the relative success of Birmingham - it was brought in on pretty much on budget, was well attended and the home nations performed strongly, and it has been estimated to have generated GBP 800m to the economy of the Midlands - so it is no surprise that there is still strong support for hosting the games in UK. We've already had politicians tweeting support including West Midlands mayor Andy Street encouraging UK regions to consider stepping in. The only thing that would potentially count against a UK region stepping in at the moment is the suboptimal optics of bidding for big sporting events during a cost-of-living crisis but if no other solution is seen to be viable, it is eminently possible that the games will be back in the UK in 2026.

Given this would be the first games under Charles III (both as UK Sovereign and Head of the Commonwealth) I think they will be doing everything humanly possible to ensure that the games are not cancelled. Given the time constraints, that basically means looking for hosts who won't need major infrastructure developments so the most obvious solution is to scale back on some of the events and to look at previous hosts. Wouldn't surprise me if it was to be back in to be honest.

tennis player Mikael Ymer has been banned for 18 months due to whereabouts failure after losing his appeal to CAS. As current world number 51, he would have strong likelihood of getting Paris quota. Mikael Ymer says 'conscience is clear' after ban for anti-doping violation - BBC Sport

I just don't think that the BOA are going to come under any pressure. At least in terms of sport, there is no real groundswell of anti-Russian sentiment within the public or mainstream media and the public actually enjoy the Olympics so it's unlikely that there will be pressure on those fronts. From a political perspective, given that next year is a general election year this isn't going to be a priority for any of the parties because it is unlikely that it would be a vote winner. I could be proved wrong, but at the moment, I don't see any circumstances that result in GB have sporting boycott.

There is just no evidence that would boycott. Whilst the government may be vocal in their opposition to Russia taking part, the decision on participation will ultimately come down to the BOA. The only thing that could happen would be a diplomatic boycott - as happened with Beijing - but even this is unlikely given the importance of UK-France relations.

Why would they qualify in cycling BMX? They are in a qualifying spot for 1 place on the road for men and 2 for women but they're unlikely to make the top 10 ranking that they would need to get a spot in BMX.

The irony for me is that from perspective, I was only expecting the single quota here in this event but assumed it would come from Spendolini Sirieix as opposed to Toulson. Disappointing result for Spendolini Sirieix but perhaps will prove blessing in disguise - had she performed well here and medaled, the pressure on her come Paris would have been phenomenal.

And then she knocks it out the park in round 4 an 8 point cushion for a place in the final

Taking these in order: 1.) The British women are focusing on the World Triathlon Championship Series and Flora Duffy is nursing injury and has been off the circuit for a while (Patellar Tendinopothy) For Switzerland, they had Nicola Spirig in the past but think she's retired. Nevertheless, they are still likely to qualify 2 women to Paris although unlikely they will challenge for the podium. 2.) Blummenfelt took time away from Olympic distance events after Tokyo and stepped up to the Ironman. He came back to the Olympic distance in May of this year. As for the British men - Yee was 3rd and remains a strong favourite to challenge the podium in Paris. Others have asked about the wider British team earlier in the thread but basically Brownlee is trying to hang on to Paris. As we won the relay quota last year we're guaranteed 2 quotas for the men - which is the same as we achieved in Tokyo 3.) Would raise a couple of caveats about reading too much into the performances this weekend. This event was a sprint series so multiple races over shorter distances. Not everyone likes or is suited to the format (which may also help explain some of the absences highlighted). In terms of the relay, France and GBR didn't contest the event (GB were there but with a B squad) so again, there's nothing to suggest that the result in Hamburg give any indications of what we can expect in Paris.

It's difficult to be a breakout star in the long distance events because of the dominance of the African nations and so I think the measure of success for these guys probably pivots to an emphasis on being the best in Europe. But nature of GB athletics funding means that in all likelihood, if they can't show that they can be competitive at a global level, they probably won't be funded and then we end up losing them from the sport.

Isn't there something in the qualification document about additional quotas being allocated until the total number of spots available are filled? If that's the case, I'd assume that if a continental champion also qualifies through the world champs, then potentially a quota will be available for reallocation.

I've got to say it is very weird watching the athletes after they finish their routines and are sitting on the couch waiting for their results. Am so used to seeing ice skaters or gymnasts sitting waiting for their scores and they're all smiles and making those annoying heart shapes with their hands - because they know whether they've performed their routines well or not. But here the swimmers have absolutely no idea what their score is going to be. Some of them have had two thirds of their difficulty score removed and they're left sitting on the couch going "WTF?" Although on the other hand I can't help but laugh at the look on the coaches faces as they sit down to console their athlete and realise they've hit a wet patch on the couch.