Rafa Maciel

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.

Absolutely - the right teams won the quotas today. The lads can make it up by both securing individual quotas later in the week.

I know there's no quotas on offer at this champs, but the acrobatic scores don't count for olympic qualification right - just technical and free?

If only the platform lads had qualified in 3rd, they'd have taken silver Only solace is that of the 4 synchro quotas, this should be one of the easier ones for GB to secure at Doha next year (all things being equal and barring any injuries)

These are only quotas for the synchro events and are separate from the individual events so this doesn't impact Italy's individual quota

3 from 3 for All the more impressive that GB hadn't won a women's diving medal before yesterday and now we have 2 in 2 days. Just hoping that the platform guys don't screw it up by failing to medal now.

The feeds seem to be a lot more stable today - managed to get through entire women's 3m synchro without breaking up once

Really solid performance by the pairing in the women's 3m synchro event to qualify for final in 3rd place in what is arguably our weakest synchro event. By coincidence, we also qualified in 3rd for men's 3m and women's 10m and went on to win silver in both - here's hoping we can make it 3 from 3 later today

Only for countries with a wealth of options For it will be the same old names who'll line up.

So not sure what this means, but possibly BBC will be covering some of the championships after all: "Key sessions from the World Aquatic Championships will be available either on 5 Live Sports Extra, the BBC Sport website & App, and BBC Sounds"

Squad for Glasgow World Champs Men Neilson Powless Matteo Jorgenson Lawson Craddock Quinn Simmons Magnus Sheffield (Road Race & Time Trial) Sean Quinn Brandon McNulty (Time Trial Only) Women Chloe Dygert (Road Race & Time Trial) Veronica Ewers Heidi Franz Megan Jastrab Coryn Labecki Skylar Schneider Lauren Stephens Kristen Faulkner (Time Trial Only) Amber Neben (Time Trial Only)

Lonato World Cup Men's Trap Final Gold: Nathan Hales Silver: Qi Ying Bronze: Prithviraj Tondaiman

From what the commentators have been saying, the actual changes make a lot of sense - routines made up of set number of elements, each element has a degree of difficulty score and if they fluff the element, they aren't awarded the degree of difficulty which results in reduced score. Teams that qualified for the finals in 10-12 will have had multiple base marks applied - the minimum score for an element - rather than the full degree of difficulty. This means that they can lose 7 or 8 points from their DD so whilst the difference may look dramatic, it may just represent a tidier routine. The problem at the moment is that there is no way for the spectators to make sense of what is going on as it is just presented as a score with no visibility of which elements have been penalised. I'd like to see on screen graphics which show which elements have been fully awarded, which are under investigation and which have been failed - similar to what they now show for figure skating.