Rafa Maciel

As expected Slovakia have secured their place in the final tournament so we're down to the final qualifying spot. At half time, Germany have a 7 point lead over Bosnia which would mean they would fall just short of Poland's Points Difference.

I think there are still 2 live matches that could impact the qualification but as things stand: Hungary weren't in relevant action today and will qualify as one of the top 4 second placed teams. GBR are currently the second team to qualify after a fairly comfortable 78-48 win against Portugal. GBR have a points difference of +23. Israel are in a qualifying position, but we can exclude them as they are automatically qualified as a co-host. They finished with a PD of +9 Poland currently have the 3rd qualifying spot having defeated Slovenia 65-58. Whilst it is a good win, they probably would have liked a higher margin of victory. They finish with a points difference of -7 Ukraine are in the hot seat at the moment. They defeated Lithuania today 71-65. They finish with a points difference of -15 so are just ahead of Croatia who finished with a PD of -16 The only teams that could spoil the party for these 4 are Slovakia and Germany. Slovakia are currently destroying Luxembourg 50-27 in the second quarter. If they keep this rate of scoring up, they will probably go ahead of GBR to take the second qualifying spot. That will knock Ukraine out of contention. That leaves Germany who will take on Bosnia & Herzegovina later. Germany will probably start as favourites. They currently have a points difference of -15 so they only need to win by a margin of 8 to overtake Poland and secure the final qualifying spot. In the reverse match, Germany ran out 97-58 winners. So I think Poland may just fall short.

So by my reckoning, Hungary will qualify for the final tournament by virtue of being the top ranked second placed teams. (Theoretically they could get caught by another team but they have healthy points difference of +82 so it is unlikely) Israel and Croatia have both completed their matches and have 6 points. Croatia are unlikely to qualify as their points difference is -16 so it is likely that they will be overtaken by another country after the last round of matches whilst Israel will qualify as host. The Netherlands take on the Czech Republic in their last group match. If they win, they will finish with 7 points and overtake Hungary to qualify as the top ranked team. If they lose, they finish with 6 points and it will come down to the margin of defeat. As a benchmark, in their previous match, CZE won by 5. If this is replicated, then the Netherlands points difference would be +15 and they would be likely to qualify. (NB in that scenario, they would also overtake Israel in the table) In Group F, Denmark take on Montenegro and they basically need to win to qualify. If they do win, their points difference will be in excess of +24 and they would likely go through as the second ranked team. Slovakia's final match in Group H is against Luxembourg. Last time around, Slovakia won by 20 points and there's no reason to think that won't happen again. If it did, they would finish with 6 points and a points difference of +16 so are well placed to qualify. The final Group G match is Portugal against GBR. These two teams are neck and neck with points difference of -8 and -7 respectively so whoever wins is probably going to need a victory margin of 25-30 points to be confident of qualifying. GBR played well against Estonia this evening but Portugal surprised with a victory against Greece so this could go either way. In the adjusted tables, Poland are second in group D ahead of Slovenia on points difference. (-14 against -15). They'll face off against each other in the final group match. In their previous meeting, it was a tight result with Slovenia edging it by 7 points. A similar result this time would be unlikely to be enough for either side to qualify. The winning side is probably going to need a margin of 30-40 points to qualify. It is a similar story for Group A (Germany) and Group B (Lithuania) - the margin of victory required to stand realistic chance of qualifying is likely to be in the region of 30-40 points. So with all that said, my best guess for qualification is: , , , and the winner of v

The British women almost threw that gold medal away - it was the most untidy ride I've seen from them in years. The British guys can be happy with their performance after their horror showing in Tokyo and sub-par result in Munich last year. In both cases, a decent platform to build upon for Paris next year.

Really disappointing performance by Fred Wright in the elimination race to finish just 14th. He was riding safely at the head of the pack and then suddenly spat out the back and didn't seem able to respond

Both British teams safely making it through to the gold finals in the team sprint - they're unlikely to win either but at least 2 guaranteed medals. Feel sorry for the Polish guys who came so close to making it to the bronze medal ride off but made a bit of a mistake with the final rider.

First morning's action completed - although couldn't find a live stream of the action which is a bit of a pain in the ass. In the team sprints, Germany looking pretty good for gold and then it will be bun fight with France, GB Netherlands and Poland for the other medals. The first quarter final will be most interesting pitting the Netherlands against Poland as the teams were separated by just 0.042. In the other quarter finals, GBR will take on Belgium, France have Czech Republic and Germany take on Italy. On the men's side, there were no major surprises. The Netherlands topped qualifying fairly comfortably, ahead of GBR, France and Poland - a replica of qualifying from 2022 event. In the quarterfinals, Poland take on Germany whilst France have drawn Italy, GBR take on Spain and the Netherlands will ride against Czech Republic. In the team Pursuit, the British women were about 3 seconds ahead of the field - I think that shows how important Archibald is to the British team. We'll have a rerun of the 2021 Olympic final as GBR take on Germany who will perhaps be a little disappointed to have only taken 4th in qualifying. Italy qualified in 2nd and will take on France. On the men's side, it is going to be hard for any team to get the better of Italy - they finished almost a second faster than GBR and will ride against France in the next round. GBR have been drawn against Denmark.

Looks like it is confirmed: Vizer says IJF promotes peace with reintroduction of Russia and Belarus (insidethegames.biz) From memory, the ban only came into effect in September so theoretically at least, Russian athletes could have been on the tour last year but only took part in 1 event.

The Brits are having an absolute shocker of a tournament in Paris. All three of the women in action - including world number 1, Renshall lost their opening bout whilst our sole male competitor today, Eric Ham could only make it to the round of 32.

So the IOC argument is that because there are no UN sanctions against Russia or Belarus, they should be free to compete but conveniently ignores the fact that the only reason there are no UN sanctions in place is because Russia is blocking them. Putting out rubbish like this really just undermines their credibility.

It's been a while since I updated my judo qualification matrix, partly because I thought the IJF had got their act together and were updating their website but they are still awarding Grand Prix points to the Perth Oceania Open which is throwing their numbers out (in my opinion). From a perspective, the women are continuing to lead the way for the squad and are in strong positions - ranked within the top 6 - in 3 of the 5 weight divisions (52Kg, 63Kg & 78Kg classes). For the other 2, their position is a little more precarious and they could fall out of qualifying spot over the next month or so. On the men's side, only Lachlan Moorhead is currently holding a qualifying spot. Despite a decent performance in Portugal, Jemal Petgrave dropped out of the qualifying positions and is now about 30 points adrift of the final automatic qualifying position. In terms of the team event, since I last ran the simulation in November, would drop out of the team event as would and . would qualify a berth in the team event.

Arguably the best pool performance from Team GB we've seen so far this season to top the group. Unfortunately they just couldn't put together a decent quarter final and lost out to the USA so the highest they can now finish overall is 5th and even that is not guaranteed as they have been drawn against Australia in their 5th place semi-final. It's a bit of a shame as it means they have missed a great opportunity to close the gap on the fourth and final automatic Olympic qualification spot. Going into this weekend, there was a 10 point gap between GBR in 6th place and Ireland in fourth - with France sandwiched in-between. With Ireland making it through to the semi-finals, they will solidify their hold on the qualifying spot with only 3 more rounds of competition to go.

Would caution using world rankings as the predictor as qualification depends on performance since June last year. As of the end of December, Brazil are not in qualifying positions for Men's 60Kg or +100Kg. For the -60Kg class, it looks like Eric Takabatake is now fighting in the -66Kg division so Michel Augusto is the best place Brazilian with 206 points. He's about 200 points adrift of the 17th ranked nation. Augusto isn't listed as taking part in Grand Prix or Grand Slam events in January or February so he's likely to fall back a little over the next few weeks. In the +100Kg class, Rafael Silva is currently ranked 27 in the rankings and is outside of automatic qualification ranking. He is taking part in the Portugal Grand Prix and if he can finish 5th or above, should find himself moving into a qualifying position. On the women's side, Brazil are not currently qualifying in the -48Kg, or -70Kg weight classes The weakest weight class is -48Kg where they are currently ranked 45th for Alexia Nascimento and 48th with Amanda Lima. Both are around 300 points adrift of automatic qualification spot. Amanda Lima was taking part in Portugal Grand Prix but lost her first round match so won't have made much progress in closing the gap. in the -70Kg Maria Portela is currently ranked around 28th and is about 150 points short of the automatic qualifying spots. She isn't scheduled to compete in January or February so she could fall back in the rankings. My best guess at the moment is that Brazil likely to miss out on the Men's -60Kg class and the Women's -48Kg class.

BBC have announced that they have obtained the rights to show both summer and winter Olympic games through to 2032: Olympic Games to remain free to air on BBC up to 2032 - BBC Sport In the past, British viewers were spoiled by the BBC - particularly in London and Rio - with dedicated coverage for each individual sport so you didn't miss anything. Unfortunately, after the rights were sold to WB Discovery, the BBC coverage pretty much fell off a cliff and we were left with just 2 live streams and only one of them was on terrestrial TV whilst the other was online. For Tokyo, we had to endure hours of "talking heads" filling the time with inane chatter talking about sports that they hadn't bothered to research and didn't have a clue what was going on. So, whilst it's good news that the BBC will be continuing to show the games, if the terms are the same as they were for Tokyo, I think it is safe to say that true sports fans will be left wholly underwhelmed by their offering.

Will be interesting to see whether Max Whitlock is able to earn a spot on the team after his break post Tokyo. All things being equal and assuming no injuries in the intervening period, but it is difficult to see how they can drop Fraser. Tulloch and Regini-Moran as individual world medalists would also be difficult to displace. Jake Jarman gets a lot of media attention but not quite living up to the hype yet, but the expectation is that by Paris, he will have built in more difficulty and will be delivering more consistently. That would leave James Hall as potentially the most vulnerable.

Joe Fraser is having an absolute mare of an evening.

No - although he is strong on the floor, he doesn't have enough difficulty on the high bar to challenge for medal so the conspiracy theorists can all breathe a sigh of relief.

Whilst Gadirova had the highest execution score, you're wrong to suggest that nobody was within 0.4 of her - Four other athletes had an execution score in excess of 7.633 and therefore were within 0.4. In addition, Gadirova had a lower difficulty score than the rest of the top five - it's not that unusual for an easier routine to score higher execution score

I think GB benefitted from the fact that with the exception of China and to lesser extent Japan, all of the teams had terrible routines. Realistically, the bronze medal was always likely to be a fight between GBR, ITA and USA and fortunately for GBR they were able to limit the damage to Pommel and were decent on the rest whereas ITA and USA were off their game on 2 of the apparatus. This should definitely be a wake-up call for the GB team that they will be in a dog-fight if they are hoping to medal in Paris.

So finally, the IJF seem to have updated their website to include Olympic rankings. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be able to actually manage the process of updating the rankings correctly so here's my take on the position as at the end of October. This month's ranking update includes the World Champs, the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam and the Perth Continental Open: For the most part, nations were fairly flat in terms of their qualification numbers this month, either picking up or dropping one weight class. saw biggest movement on the downside, shedding 6 places whilst the unwinding of positions continues as they drop 4. were the biggest gainers this month, picking up 5 spots whilst picked up 4. In the team event, and now qualify whilst and would not.

Pupo didn't win a quota at the recent world championships - although he may well do so at next week's CAT XIII Championships - so I'm not following your logic here. Cuba haven't qualified any athletes as yet whereas Canada has. How can the sentence be incorrect?

Just to inject a note of caution for Team GB after what was a great result with a strong performance however, I do think the team needs to be consistently hitting 165 if they are to challenge for podium place in Paris. We were fortunate that Italy and Brazil didn't have their strongest team whilst China underperformed this weekend.

Canada squeezed into the final by just 0.3 points and look set to walk away with a medal and an Olympic quota spot

So by my calculations, if each team matches the score from qualification for their final rotation, USA would win with a 166. GBR would take silver on 162.5. The all important bronze and final Olympic quota would go to JPN on 161.5.

In rotation 3 On the Balance Beam both teams carried a fall resulting in USA dropping 0.667 against qualification whilst GBR were able to advance 0.334 On the Floor, BRA shed 2.501 points against qualification with ITA dropping by 1.866 On Vault, JPN have picked up 0.567 whilst CHN are up 0.366 Finally on Uneven Bars, FRA have fallen back by 1.634 whilst CAN dropped 0.166