kapil857

Hey guys - http://indiafantasyolympics.com/ is running a pretty similar game to our planned game. Thus, dont think our google docs based game is really required anymore... They dont yet have the feature of mini leagues yet but if they do add we can surely create a totallympics mini league

Calm down...these tournaments are for the players, not for the public. They are to be used as warm-ups in whichever way the athlete sees fit. May be they are trying new things, may be they just dont wanna show their full cards. Dont analyze them as the results mean nothing...

http://sportsdemo1.gracenote.com/documentation/vmt Another prediction site, another set of laughable results... 5 medals for India - 1 Gold, 1 Silver, 3 Bronze - seems pretty reasonable at first glance... But then u go deeper, and the GOLD is in Tennis Mixed Doubles and Silver to the men's hockey team, and no medal in shooting

I read somewhere that they gave Sajan the advantage as he had good points in 3 events whereas Sandeep had just 2 events. Doesn't make any sense when u consider the fact that whoever goes will still be able to compete in just one event...thus they should have probably just selected the swimmer with the highest points in 1 event.. Then again, not much that the swimming fed does makes sense. This decision definitely strongly indicates to me that it was they who messed up big time in London with the Gagan Ulalmath entry before blaming it in on FINA to save face...

@tirtha22 am personally not in favor of mentioning silvers and bronzes against all athletes for the reason mentioned in the above post

Not sure why this is happening but something definitely went wrong today. It seems like the sheet somehow reverted to an older version. In any case, the advantage of using a sheet is that everyone can see everyone else's teams and we cab change our teams as many times as we like. i think its a good idea to continue with the sheet till 30th and we can then post our final teams here if required...of course if anyone has a better idea, plz suggest...

Sania/Hingis doubles first round being telecast on Star Sports right now !!!!

Damn this boxing qualifying tournament in Vargas is a joke. There are a total of just 79 boxers across the 10 weight categories. Most categories have just 6-7 boxers and 3 of them will get quotas !!! The 49 kg event has just 7 boxers and 3 of them will get quotas. On the other hand, the prev qual tournament where Devendro was robbed had around 30 boxers and just 2 quotas. Currently, 1 guy will get a bye into the semi and he has to just win either his semi final or the quota box-off, i.e., he has to win just 1 out of 2 matches, to qualify !!!

@tirtha22 You need to indicate the event for Gagan Narang in your team @sanjaydas You need to indicate the events for Gagan Narang and Jitu Rai in your team https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13TQQ4W-cut7RCuxnem5uQKZaBNJNq4HzYyiXv_JbTo4/edit#gid=0

Agreed. So, in addition to the captain who scores double points and the vice captain who scores 1.5x points, 5 players can be tagged by a G indicating GOLD contenders - if anyone tagged wins GOLD, you get extra 5 points (even if captain or vice captian is tagged with G, additional points will be only 5, not 10 or 7.5. So if your captain is tagged as G and wins GOLD, you get 25x2 + 5 = 55 points) https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13TQQ4W-cut7RCuxnem5uQKZaBNJNq4HzYyiXv_JbTo4/edit#gid=0 Also, if someone has more ideas please share...

Let me ask u this...u give Saina a silver. Then Saina reaches the olympic final and now you are watching the olympic final - Saina vs Li Xuerui. At this point, do you want to be wholeheartedly supporting and cheering for Saina to win gold, or, do u want a thought at the back of your mind - no matter how infinitesimally small it is - that if Saina loses I will get an additional 5 points (yeah !!) in the prediction game I am playing...?? And yeah, I named it wrong. In the current format it is really a fantasy game as opposed to a prediction game. Anyone else playing have any thoughts ??

Ploy or not I know who I'll be supporting through the bidding process....

Thats what the captain and vice captain are for - pick the ones u think will win gold or silver as captain and vice captain. Personally, I dont want to be predicting 4th place and top 8 for players like, say, Bindra or Narang who I hope to see return with gold, but if I have to predict exact placing then i'll probably have to predict a lower placing for them. But if there are others here who want to participate and think its good idea then we can consider it...

Posting the India based fantasy Olympic game link again...for people who may want to join.. @tirtha22 @Smit @Dolby @rohan sharma https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13TQQ4W-cut7RCuxnem5uQKZaBNJNq4HzYyiXv_JbTo4/edit @nitinsanker I think we need to keep the number to 15 as 10 would make the teams even more similar..the last 4-5 spots are the ones actually creating differences in the teams.

I think Sania gave the commitment to Dodig in Dec-Jan itself. At that point, Leander was considered pretty much a sure bet for the Mixed as opposed to Rohan, with Lee having won 3 of the last 4 mixed doubles grand slams. While his ranking had dipped a bit, everyone expected him to improve it in the Olympic year as opposed to dipping to such a level that he may not even qualify. And there was no way Leander was splitting with Hingis to even play just Wimbledon with Sania (even Saina would not want that situation) .Thats why probably, Sania commited to Dodig. Of course, without a commitment, Dodig might have looked for other partners.

Hate to spoil the mood but seems like the AIBA policy this time, as indicated strongly by the articles at the below two links, was that now that all their favored nations had already qualified a large number of athletes, lets spread the wealth this time and have a large number of different countries qualify. http://www.aiba.org/blog/world-olympic-qualification-event-reached-climax-baku-10-gold-medalists-39-places-rio-2016-confirmed/ http://www.aiba.org/blog/spain-becomes-24th-country-qualify-rio-2016-boxing-competition-world-olympic-qualification-event-baku/ As a result, the 10 gold medals were shared among 9 countries and the 39 quota places were shared among 24 countries. The last of those 24 countries to attain a spot, which also happened to be the country's first boxing quota at Rio - SPAIN - " thanks to light flyweight Samuel Carmona Heredia’s brilliant win over India’s Devendro Singh Laishram"

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13TQQ4W-cut7RCuxnem5uQKZaBNJNq4HzYyiXv_JbTo4/edit#gid=0

u r banking big on archery my friend...good luck

So we have some interest in an India based prediction game....thus I have created a shared google sheet at the below link. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13TQQ4W-cut7RCuxnem5uQKZaBNJNq4HzYyiXv_JbTo4/edit#gid=0 Please just go to the link and enter ur teams of 15 athletes/teams. I say we keep the deadline as the end of July. So up till then, people can change their teams as many times as they wish by using the link above. Here's my team, at the moment. Captain Jitu Rai - 50m Pistol Vice Captain Narsingh Yadav 3 Jitu Rai - 10m Pistol 4 Abhinav Bindra 5 Gagan Narang - 50m prone 6 Saina Nehwal 7 Archery Women Team 8 Shiva Thapa 9 Yogeshwar Dutt 10 PV Sindhu 11 Gagan Narang - 10m Rifle 12 Dipa Karmarkar - Vault 13 Men Hockey Team 14 Bopanna/Sania 15 Heena Sidhu - 10m Pistol

Archery Association of India President confirms Atanu Das is going to Rio as per tweet from sportskeeda

Guys, with everyone out here giving their predictions, would anyone be interested in a purely India-centric prediction game ??? (Hopefully, the mods wont have any issue with it) I say we keep it simple and pick a fantasy team of 15 Indian athletes/teams...and then see whose fantasy team does best. For athletes competing in multiple events, you have to specify the event too. So Jitu Rai in 10m air pistol and Jitu Rai in 50m air pistol is 2 different athletes - u can pick both in ur 15, u can pick 1 or u can pick none. Scoring system: GOLD - 25 points SILVER - 15 points BRONZE - 10 points 4th place - 4 points Top-8 finish - 2 points You also choose a captain and a vice-captain within your team. Captain scores double points, vice captain scores 1.5x points. Anyone interested ???

Yes..NRAI would have still sent Ayonika...thats the policy. The scenario you are saying was pretty close to what happened before the CWG...Jitu Rai had just set the world cup stage on fire but he still competed at the CWG only in the 50m pistol event (and won GOLD by a whopping margin of 6.9 points) whereas Nanjappa and Om Prakash competed in the 10m event and returned with just a silver from Nanjappa. Sometimes the policy works and sometimes it doesn't - nothing is perfect in this world but it definitely does have a sound logic behind it. You may feel that current form is all that should matter, but someone else, like the NRAI, may feel that stability is more important. But once the policy is made, you cant keep changing it or it means nothing. And in a country like India where there is always a lot of politics in qualitative subjective selection, a quantitative objective selection policy is one of the best decisions taken by the NRAI. And remember that the current world cups are all a little low on competiton level - with most of the top olympic-qualified athletes around the world picking and choosing which events to attend and which ones to skip. China's policy in badminton is the exact opposite, but then it is a different game. As compared to shooting, it is far more physical (and thus recent form is a much better indicator) and involves one-on-one competition whereas shooting is all mental with all competitors competing simultaneously (and thus may be the mental peace before the olympics is more important for the shooters). Even the end of the qualification period in badminton is just a couple of months before the games. They picked Xuerui over Shixian primarily because Xuerui had better head-to-head record over non-chinese players, mainly Saina, whereas Shixian had a bad record against Saina. Even now, they have not officially declared which 2 players will be going to Rio. And I know a lot of people in India are fascinated with world rankings but outside of racquet sports, world rankings matter little. Have always mattered little.

Quota winners have been given priority for the world cups...if they wanna participate. But if they want to skip an event and focus on training, thats fine too. Ayonika didnt participate here on her own volition, not because Ghatkar and Moudgil were chosen over her...

Look at it another way...instead of forcing an athlete to always be on the edge and demonstrate form, the NRAI has designed a policy whereby qualification period ends with the last official olympic qualifier...after that, you know whether you are in or out. You dont have to demonstrate form after that, as you have already proved you are the best, and you are allowed to train and work on your game and on your weaknesses, in peace, at your own pace. Just like regular people, even athletes need some stability, or job security. You can choose whatever training method suits you best so as to peak at the olympics and not at events prior to the olympics. For some athletes, that means competing at every world cup and getting medals. For others, it means being at the training range. And it is the Olympics, everyone knows the value of a medal. No extra motivation is required for any athlete to ensure that he/she trains in the best way possible. It's like the board exams or an entrance exam like the IIT JEE or the CAT. At the end of the day, you just have to do well at the final exams. Many different coaching institutes will be conducting mock exams before the big day but u dont need to do well in all of them to do well at the final exam. The time before the big exam is the intense final study period and its up to every student to utilize it the best. For some, the best way to study is to take those mock tests. For others, its to be locked in ur room with ur books. And we havent seen anything in archery...u dont even know that it was Champia who shot the weak arrows - neither against Brazil nor against Malaysia. And u definitely do not know that Rahul would have done better. It's not like Rahul set the world on fire, just finished a little better than Champia in qualification and lost in the first round of individual matchplay himself. Had Rahul competed and lost, some people might still be saying to as how Mangal Champia, our most experienced archer (and he is the most experienced by the way) and our individual quota winner was left out...people would be justifying the logic saying that Champia may have scored 5 points lesser than Rahul over 72 arrows but he is always best under the pressure of matchplay and olympic qualification...as demonstrated by his performance in winning the individual quota itself, and his performance at the selection trials with the olympic spot on the line. One of the worst things we supporters can do when our athletes lose, is to say that those not competing were better. It always happens in cricket selection and it is happening now in olympics sports as well as people start to know the names of the athletes who were not selected. Rarely makes any sense. Archery is just a highly unpredictable sport due to short duration of the match, and losses happen. That is sport.