Rafa Maciel

Would love to say I am surprised but Samuel Hall no longer appears on the entry list. It's becoming so common to now be a bit of joke - he's been listed as an entry on pretty much every GP and GS only to be withdrawn in the days before competition. Hall hasn't competed at 60Kg since September but his last bout at -66Kg was in March so difficult to put it down to an injury. At the start of the qualification period, you would have Hall down as one of the few men GBR would be targeting for Olympic Qualification but if he's going to make it on the team, he's going to need a stellar 2nd qualification period. GB Judo is another one of our national federations who are abysmal at promoting the sport domestically and providing updates to let fans know what is going on.

Anastasia Polikarpova (Women's -52Kg) is the first of the Russian "neutrals" to be removed from the entry list.

The big set piece event in May for the men's tour is the Giro D'Italia which starts at the weekend so thought it may be interesting to look at the potential impact the race will have on the rankings. Nation Points Defending Adjusted Points 19,608.59 0 19,608.59 12,771.14 560 12,211.14 12,087.89 52 12,035.89 11,098.64 987 10,111.64 10,935.36 60 10,875.36 10,484.51 564 9,920.51 9,674.62 488 9,186.62 8,962.19 272 8690.19 8,316.06 1,074 7,242.06 The table shows that both Australia and Spain will be defending significant points totals in the Giro. Based on the provisional entry list, the prospects for each nation look varied Belgium - Remco Evenpoel should be well placed to extend Belgium's lead at the top of the rankings. France - None of the ranking French riders look like they are taking part. Denmark - Both Mads Pedersen and Magnus Cort Nielsen are on the start list and, in the absence of French riders, they will have a good opportunity to move up to 2nd in the rankings. Spain - Like France, none of the ranking Spanish riders appear on the start list and with strong teams from both Slovenia and Great Britain in the race, Spain could frop to 6th in the rankings Slovenia - Primoz Roglic and Jan Tratnik should be able to do enough to elevate Slovenia above Spain. Great Britain - Half of our ranking riders are on the start list - Hugh Carthy, Mark Cavendish, Tao Geoghegan Hart and Geraint Thomas. Both Carthy and Geoghegan Hart are in pretty good form so collectively there is a good chance that GBR could overtake Spain and move into 5th place in the rankings. Netherlands - Thymen Arensman and Bauke Mollema would need to have a stellar event to move up the rankings, but will be looking to close the gap on the higher ranked nations. Italy - Unsurprisingly, half of Italy's ranking riders are taking part in the Giro and they will be hoping to close the gap on the Netherlands. Australia - Jai Hindley was the 2022 champion but is not defending the title so it is down to Simon Clarke, Jay Vine and Michael Matthews to fly the Aussie flag but they may struggle and ultimately there's a good chance that Australia will drop below Colombia in the rankings.

The results from the 3rd and final Nations Cup have now been included in the UCI Track Cycling rankings but it is a bit like going from comedy to farce. Last week I thought the reason for the delay was that the Olympic Ranking was only going to count the 2 best results from the Nations Cup series but this week's ranking is including all 3 results.

The entry lists for next weekend's first round of the world cup have been released and they make pretty poor reading for anyone who is a fan of the sport. There's no Team GB, no France, Italy, Australia, China or Poland. Germany have only entered the Men's Single Sculls and the Netherlands are only going for the Lightweight Women's Sculls. Add to that there's no USA or New Zealand - but looking at previous years, that's not hugely unusual. The depth in each event is ridiculously poor - the Women's Pair has only 5 entries listed and 3 of them are from Spain, whilst the Women's Quad only Ukraine and Switzerland.

With Adam Yates winning the Tour de Romandie, it's been another good week for the GB cyclists as they fight for a top 5 ranking to get the full team of 4 for Paris. I'm expecting them to net around 400-500 points in the next ranking release which should be enough for them to stay ahead of the Netherlands and would cut the deficit to Slovenia by around half.

As expected, Ukraine withdraw from the Judo World Championships in protest at the inclusion of Russian/Belarussian athletes. Ukraine boycott World Judo Championships after decision to readmit Russians (insidethegames.biz)

Looks like 20 Russian/Belarus athletes have been cleared to take part in the Judo World Championships next week. There's essentially a full slate in the women's weight divisions but on the men's side, no competitors listed in the -60Kg and nobody in the -81Kg division either. Apparently, an "independent, reputable company" was employed to perform background checks on all of the individuals to ensure there were no references to war propaganda. Got to assume that we will be hearing about the withdrawal of the Ukrainian team before too long.

Reading the rules, in the event that the teams are tied on the same points, the tie breakers are: 1.) Overall Scoring Differential across the season 2.) Try count across the season. On that basis, I think would be the team to qualify as they are currently the only team with a positive points differential and have a 40 point cushion ahead of Ireland. They have also scored the most tries out of the 3 teams.

The standard UCI rankings published on Tuesday do include the points from the Milton Nations Cup leg - it's only the Olympic Ranking list that doesn't include the data. The only reason that I can think of for the discrepancy is that the only the best 2 results from the 2023 Nations Cup series will be counted for the Olympic Ranking and it may be taking some time for the UCI to get their system set up to reflect that.

I'm actually a fan of Raducanu - she was a breath of fresh air for British women's tennis which had been in a bit of a rut despite the best efforts of Baltacha, Konta, Watson and Robson - but she is frustrating and the novelty is beginning to wear off a bit. Whoever has been acting as her advisors since winning the US Open have done her a real disservice. She has barely been able to string 2 wins together, she's gone through coaches like they are disposable tissues, she dissed the country's BJK team and barely a month goes by where we're not hearing something about an injury. At some point, if she is going to carry on in tennis, she is going to have to swallow her pride and step down to the WTA 125K events and go on to the ITF circuit. It might not be as glamourous as the main tour, but there should certainly be no shame in getting a decent foundation of matches under your belt.

If my assumptions from above hold true, the quarter-finals would look something like this: v - Australia probably would start as favourite v - Could be close but GBR have really poor track record against USA so USA likely to edge it v - Could go either way - can only find 1 match up between the two so far this season and FRA came out on top - both GBR and IRL would need FRA to win in order to keep quota hopes alive. v - NZL to run out comfortable winners. So assuming IRL, GBR and FIJ all lose in the quarter finals, the 5th place semi-finals would be: v - Will be close but on current form, GBR could just have the edge v - FIJ would start as strong favourites This could lead to a scenario where would compete against for 5th place and were up against for 7th. In this scenario, would be slight favourite to take 5th, with 6th and 7th. Final points totals: - 72 - 72 - 72 Don't have a clue who would qualify in that case

Pools for the final round of the 22/23 Rugby 7s event in Toulouse have been announced and with only 4 points separating Ireland, Fiji and GBR it's all to play for in the battle for the final automatic Olympic berth and realistically, whichever of these teams is able to reach the semi-finals will bag the quota. Pool A Should be relatively straightforward group - will come out on top followed by . The key challenge for will be to minimise the scale of defeat against if they are in with hope of taking a quarter final place. NB - haven't seen in the tournament before so nothing to gauge their performance on but assume that greater experience will give them the edge. Pool B This one could be close. Based on current form, should edge it to finish top of the group. Key match likely to be v to decide who takes second place. Again, based on form, think will be most likely winner, but should still be able to make the quarter finals as one of the best 3rd place finishers. Pool C The only real question in this group is whether or emerge as group leaders. They've competed against each other 5 times in the last 4 events and edge the head-to-head by 3-2 so it is a tough call. Will go out on a limb and say to take the win (but actually would perhaps like them to lose as it could give them an easier quarter-final). likely to take 3rd place and probably be able to do enough to take final quarter final spot.

To be honest after October 17th I will go back to ignoring the rankings but until then, I'll be trying to figure out what need to do to get a full team in Paris.

A pretty good week overall for team GB cyclists with Pidcock taking second on the Liege-Bastogne-Liege today and Geoghegan Hart winning the Tour of the Alps. This should result in a big swing towards GB in the rankings - not sure it will be enough for them to overtake Netherlands but should slash the deficit from 1,000 points to a couple of hundred.

Great result for Healey in the individual event but really disappointing results from both the men's and women's teams. women won this event last year so got to expect a big drop in their world ranking.

dropped back to 90th in this week's ranking list because the results from the 2022 Argentine National Championships are no longer included in the ranking. climbed into top 40 ranking after strong performances from Sanchez Vargas in the Central American Championship.

Happy to admit it looks like I was wrong!! Men's sprint team to race for Bronze whilst the women take 4th. Not forgetting both pursuit teams taking home golds so at the end of the Nations Cup, Team GB still looking pretty good for a full squad for Paris. (although would still advocate wrapping Katie Archibald in bubble wrap until she steps foot on the plane)

Can't believe GB decided not to take up their place in the pre-qualification tournament. OK, they were unlikely to qualify, but let's be honest, they don't get a huge amount of international competition so how do they hope to improve if they're not even going to bother trying. UK Sport (so basically UK taxpayers) awarded GB Basketball 1.3 million for this Olympic cycle as part of their Paris Pathway program - but where has the money gone? We've seen nothing from the 3x3 squads despite the success and excitement that they generated during last year's Commonwealth Games and now they don't even want to try to qualify the men's team for Paris. It's smacks of pretty poor management within the sport but then again, basketball is not alone in that respect in UK sport right now.

Not loving the look of either of the Team Sprint squads - could be a really low scoring stop for us unfortunately.

Whilst that idea would be sensible, I think history shows us that GB Swimming isn't always sensible in their selection policies - I struggle to think of any other federation that has had to change their selection policy halfway through their trials because they realised their policy was nuts. I think the priority for the 2024 Worlds is going to be on the relays - they'd be perfectly happy to come away without a single individual medal if they can get full quota of relay places. Going by previous selection policies, I think any individual medalists from this year's World Champs has a chance of being pre-selected for Paris but for the majority of the squad, selection is going to come down to performances at the 2024 trials which should take place in April next year.

I think it is safe to say that for Team GB, results in 2023 are going to be pretty meaningless for Olympic qualification. I fully expect that they will only select athletes who have secured the qualifying times in 2024.

Agree to an extent - Tulloch isn't an all around gymnast, but with Fraser and Jarman in the team, it could be argued that we don't really need another all-rounder. Rings and High Bar tend to be GB's weakest apparatus. With Fraser and Tulloch in the team, you've got 2 athletes who are capable of scoring 14.2-14.7 which is much higher than the rest of the team and makes it easier for the team to hit a score of 43 for that rotation.

I think the problem for Luke Whitehouse is that he seems to be a bit of a floor specialist and isn't currently carrying high 13s/low 14s in the other apparatus. I think, assuming everyone is fully fit, the selectors are pretty much guaranteed to go with Joe Fraser, Jake Jarman and Courtney Tulloch. That would leave 2 open spots. It would be difficult to leave Whitlock at home given his strength on the pommel and if he is able to get 14+ on high bar, he could book his spot. That would leave James Hall and Regini-Moran fighting for the last spot.

are 1 of only 3 nations announced so far taking a full squad to Doha