Rafa Maciel

So with 2 groups completed, assuming that Italy continue their strong start to the process and secure qualification by right as one of the top 2 in group C, it looks like Group C is the favourite to secure the final wildcard for next year's finals. Assuming Italy and Japan take the top two positions, if Canada finish 3rd, I think they would secure the wildcard.

Some really good performances by the men in the individual epee. After mediocre performance in the pool stage, 3 of the 4 have managed to progress to round of 32 and all overcoming significantly higher ranked opponents. They may well fall at the final hurdle to miss out on the main draw, but I think they will be pretty pleased with how the competition has gone for them. Looks like 2 of the guys have managed to get into the main draw

Megan Keith - European Under 23 champion - slashes over half a minute off her 5,000m PB to run 14:57. Assuming she stays injury free over the next few months, can easily see her getting herself a place on the Eurostar for Paris next year.

Nice touch from Crousser going and thanking each of the volunteer officials in the shot put.

Jeanette Kwakye on BBC coverage saying Zharnel Hughes is the man to beat in Budapest Talk about being over-hyped off the back of 1 good result.

Great crowds at London diamond league and conditions looking pretty good - could see a decent number of OQT today.

Part of me is kind of glad that Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix didn't have a stellar performance here. Had she got to the final then the pressure on her to perform in Paris from the UK media would have been immense. I'd much rather see her making steady progression increasing her scores and her consistency as we head into the Olympics. Toulson will be going to Paris - if only as part of the 10m synchro team, but she's going to have a real fight with Eden Cheng for that second individual spot behind Spendolini-Sirieix. My only concern going into Doha next year is how early it is in the season. The guys were stoked getting the early qualifications done because it meant that they could have an uninterrupted training block through Jan-Feb next year but for some athletes, were going to need them to step up and secure those additional qualifying spots in Doha. If the squad can keep this kind of form up going into Paris though, we could be looking at our largest haul of diving medals at an Olympics for a very long time.

I certainly think that the commonwealth has moved beyond the notion of empire. Although personally I've never been aware of the benefit of membership of the Commonwealth - there's no commonwealth free trade agreement and the UK govt doesn't prioritise commonwealth nations for overseas aid - the commonwealth continues to grow having welcomed Rwanda, Togo and Gabon. As for Charles III's position as head of the commonwealth, whilst many believe the head of the commonwealth is a hereditary title, it is important to remember that it was a decision of the heads of the various member nations that resulted in him being confirmed in that position so I don't see the optics as an issue.

I totally agree - IF and it is a big if, the games end up back in UK in 2026, it will be spread across multiple cities - although I'd probably disagree with your allocation of events, but that is largely irrelevant. But if it comes down to it and the choice is either to cancel the games or to stage them in the UK, then the powers that be will want to do everything they can to make sure that the first games under Charles III go ahead. Longer term, I think there would be a lot of push back to any attempt to fully wind up the commonwealth games, but equally I think the games in their current format are definitely on life support. However, the commonwealth games federation have been aware of the challenges for a long time and have shown they are willing to adapt and realistically, we may well get to a point where the games only comprises of swimming and athletics events. With regards to the European Games, how can anyone take it seriously when it can't attract the support of the major sporting federations who it seems, would prefer to be part of the European Championships? I am sorry, but when you're reduced to including ski jumping in your schedule, you know you've got major issues with your credibility.

Great result for Julia Caron to take out Chan Wai Ling to make it through to the main draw of the women's individual epee. Caron qualified in 73rd from the preliminary round so it's a pretty solid result for her.

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.