Roamingrover86

This is going a very tricky decision for the ICC.
You can't really use the current world rankings because ranking points will be won or lost against teams that are not eligible for the Olympics.
I think that any country who fails to qualify because will launch an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport and probably win.
 
So here's what I suggest for the six.
 
1 Possible host country place - USA - but only possible - what you do is recalculate the ICC rankings and take out all points gained against non-Olympic teams.
Then once you done this and taken out non-Olympic countries like West Indies and either England and Scotland then if the USA are in a high enough ranking position they qualify. This position could be as high as 10th or as low as 20th depending on how important the IOC and ICC see their presence in LA.
(I'm assuming that, like in curling and women's soccer Great Britain would nominate either England or Scotland as their official qualifying representatives)
USA are currently 18th
 
2 2026 World T20 champions
 
3 and 4 Asia-Pacific qualifying tournament winners and runners-up
 
5 and 6 Euro-Africa-Americas qualifying tournament winners and runners-up
 
(7) If the USA don't meet the qualifying standard then a play off between the 3rd place teams in the 2 above categories decides the final qualifiers
 
The qualifying tournament would be held under IOC eligibility rules not the ICC rules

So here are the difference between 2024 and 2028 and my opinions:
 
Aquatics
In swimming the 50m backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly were added while the women's water polo tournament will now have 12 teams. Additionally, 11 men's athlete quotas were transferred to the women's side.
 
In general, I'm okay with the 50m events and despite women's water polo having shallow depth I am happy they are now equal to the men. The IOC still wanting to keep the core sport quotas to 10,500 is a bit ridiculous, but I'll go into that at the end. While the athlete split isn't shown for the disciplines it's quite likely swimming loses 11 men and women quotas each (maybe they might take a couple from diving/marathon swimming).
 
 
Archery
Mixed compound team was added.
 
I've been a big supporter for compound archery being added to the Olympics. Unfortunately the individual events were not added which I dislike. If you are going to have athletes in team event then they can also compete in the individual. I would like to imagine World Archery is slowly bringing the event in. Since no new athlete quotas were added recurve will have fewer archers competing. I imagine recurve will be a 48-52 person tournament. 
 
 
Athletics
Mixed marathon walk relay was removed, mixed 4x100m relay was added.
 
I feel the program has become worse with this change. Not that I felt the walk relay is important, it's not and I wish we would get the 35/50km walk, but at least it preserved some race walk. The mixed 4x100m relay adds nothing extra to the program. This will be repeated a few times, but a mixed event should not be added with the gender component unless if fundamentally changes the event. There's no need to have both a men's/women's and a mixed 4x100m relay.
 
 
Basketball
The 3x3 events will be a 12 team tournament. The athlete quota has increased by 32.
 
Great move. It was ridiculous that the event only had 8 teams so the increase was much needed. Honestly, if we weren't stuck on the 10,500 athlete limit I wouldn't mind seeing 16 teams.
 
 
Boxing
Women saw an increase of one event, equaling that of men (7 each). The weight limits of each category was slightly adjusted.
 
Equaling the event size between genders was expected and I'm glad they decided to increase the women's count rather than reducing the men. The women's athlete quota remains the same despite the event increase, but still remains the same as the men.
 
 
Football
The men's tournament was reduced to 12 teams, the women's tournament increased to 16 teams.
 
I'm glad the women's tournament is up to 16 teams. The qualification system for Europe has been brutal and I imagine Asia will be happy too. I wished they didn't reduce the men's tournament, but the 10,500 athlete quota limit forces them to do so. Ultimately, I agree with the move as the women's tournament is more prestigious.
 
 
Golf
Mixed team was added.
 
I await the chosen format, but ultimately I think it's a good idea to have the event.
 
 
Gymnastics
Mixed artistic team was added.
 
What a weird event. As mentioned before since the men's and women's team remain this is a useless event that doesn't need to included.
 
 
Modern pentathlon
The athlete quotas has been reduced by 8 (4 men and 4 women).
 
This was likely done to reach the 10,500 quota limit. Overall I dislike it, but it's not the end of the world.
 
 
Rowing
Lightweight double sculls have been removed. Coastal single sculls and coastal mixed double sculls have been added.
 
I'm not familiar with coastal sprint canoe, but from what I've seen in videos I think it will be a nice event to have. Losing lightweight double sculls is a bit of a shame and I'm not sure I would make that trade given that coastal rowing isn't well developed yet.
 
 
Shooting
Mixed team skeet was removed, mixed team trap was added.
 
The mixed team shotgun events continue to be cycled. Considering they don't use any additional quotas, I don't see why they don't just have both at the Olympics.
 
 
Sport climbing
The combined event was removed and replaced by separate lead and bouldering events. 8 additional athlete quotas were added.
 
Finally the sport has its proper individual events. I still commend the strategy of going with the combined event in 2020 as a type of Trojan horse with the idea that the IOC will want to keep it.
 
 
Table tennis
The men's and women's team events were removed. Men's and women's doubles and mixed team were added.
 
As a person who likes doubles table tennis I am happy with this change. To keep the athlete quota consistent mixed team is almost necessary.
 
 
Tennis
Mixed doubles was removed. Mixed event was added.
 
While I wasn't a big fan of the mixed doubles event (it's barely played during the ATP/WTA calendar, I don't think we need it replaced by a mixed event. The format hasn't been revealed, but I imagine it would be similar to the Davis/BJK Cup format. My fear is if they're attempting to add the event to the second week as I imagine many players will opt-out.
 
 
LA Only Sports
Baseball/Softball, Cricket, Flag Football, and Lacrosse will be 6-team tournaments and Squash will have 32 athletes (16 men, 16 women).
 
While expected, I am very disappointed that the team sports will only have six teams. You can't showcase the sport really well with such few entrants. Cricket is a great example, there are many smaller nations which play the sport, but we are likely to see only the large nations compete. Squash only having 16 athletes is also a bit small, but it's at least manageable. 
 
 
Final Thoughts
Some good, some bad moves overall. I need to stress that the 10,500 athlete limit among core sports while increasing the number of events is not sustainable. The 2000 Olympics had around 10,600 athletes yet only had 300 events. We now have 341 core events, an increase of 14%. Even if you want to argue that there was bloat in 2000, the 2024 Olympics had 327 core events, meaning we had an increase of 4% yet no new athlete quotas. While some of these new events don't need more athletes, some of them do. Honestly at minimum the athlete quota for core events needs to be increased to 11,000 while more realistically we should be closer to 12,000. If the IOC doesn't want that many athletes then they need to remove events/sports.

Eh, not sure I agree. The team events are basically a free gold medal for China, so they are trading two free gold medals for one free gold medal and two likely gold medals. Doubles is a format where upsets are much more likely to happen than team matches.
 
Either way, I think from a spectator standpoint it is a win. The doubles tournaments will be much more interesting than the team tournaments were.

Really hard to see how they design a fair qualification system for cricket given the small number of available quota spots.

OH, I missed something big. The men's and women's team events in Table Tennis are *gone*, and replaced by men's and women's doubles.
 
Format for mixed team is simply a Bo5, with a men's single, women's single, men's doubles, women's doubles and mixed doubles match. Teams must consist of three to four athletes of each gender, and at least three athletes per gender must compete in each match.

Squash only 16 seems ugly. I hope its not a direct elimination draw but a 4 groups of 4 and then QF, SF and Medals.

Apparently only Modern Pentathlon lost quotas (they go to climbing)
 
Breaking quotas went to adding 3x3 teams.
 
Format for mixed gymnastics event is TBD.

I hated the decrease in Men's Football! they should just increase women's competition

Cricket, Baseball, Softball, Flag Football and Lacrosse are all six team tournaments. Squash is a 16 men's single and women's single draw.
 
Roster size per sport:
Baseball: 24 Cricket: 15 Flag Football: 10 Lacrosse: 11 Softball: 15  

https://stillmed.olympics.com/media/Documents/Olympic-Games/LA28/Official-Programme-of-the-Olympic-Games-Los-Angeles-2028.pdf

Might be wront because I'm transcribing while watching live (while also being on a work meeting)
 
50m events in all strokes 12 women's teams in water polo Compound (!) mixed team event archery 4x100m mixed relay in athletics Mixed race walk relay removed 12 teams in 3x3 basketball 7 men's and women's events in boxing Football will have 16 women's teams and 12 men's teams Mixed team event in golf Mixed artistic gymnastics team event (!) Coastal rowing is three events (men's, women's, mixed double sculls), removing lightweight rowing NO MORE COMBINED IN CLIMBING! Speed, boulder and lead are all different events Mixed team event in table tennis (in addition to mixed doubles? O.o) 10500 athlete quota only applies to core sports for LA More women's quotas than men's quotas overall  

The thing is, counting football players in the athlete quota doesn't even really make any sense. They don't stay in the village, and they bring in more revenue than they cost.

Like I get why people dislike the men's football tournament, but it would be an absolutely braindead move to remove it.

https://sportstar.thehindu.com/other-sports/india-2030-commonwealth-games-2036-olympics-bid-submission-ahmedabad-details/article69357977.ece/amp/
 
 has officially submitted an expression of Interest to host the 2030 Commonwealth games in Ahmedabad. 
The CWG federation will now evaluate the bid & decide on hosting rights 

it took two Olympics (and 4 years) for UWW to finally realize there is a big big flaw in their current rules (we have this since early 2021)
 
in Greco-Roman, in high level specially in heavier weights it's just hard to score. in this case sometimes the match ends up 1-1. (1 pt for passivity caution for each) under current rules lots of wrestlers decide to be intentionally passive in first 2 minutes to receive the first caution. this created lots of ugly scenes in Olympics. for example  Yasmani Acosta won an Olympic silver in Paris without doing a thing! he was passive in his 3 pre-final matches and won all of them 1-1 
 
UWW will test a new rule at the European Championship next week, only in case of 1-1 and only in Greco-Roman whoever gets the first point wins. I believe this will become an official rule soon, they should make this change long time ago but yet late is better than never
 
https://uww.org/article/uww-test-new-greco-rule-2025-european-championships

Haven’t done an update on my dad since mid July, so thought I’d share.  
 
He ended up getting out of the hospital a couple days before the Olympics, and has generally been getting better the past couple of months. 
 
Unfortunately, the past couple of days he’s been really sick, and was vomiting for much of yesterday. He was taken to the hospital last night, and is expected to be there for at least a couple of days. 
 
Just sucks to see him struggling this much, hoping for as speedy of a recovery as possible 

This is what I dont get. If criquet is going to be held 4.000 KM away from the Olympic Village, why reduce the tournament into a 6 team event? 
 
I get the reduced quotas for LA, but having a 10 team event in New York should be no problem. They should take advantage of having multiple host cities to manage athletes numbers better. Same thing for Softball, that is going to be host in another big city far away from LA....

9 days left and a reminder for still missing users who might want compete @titicow @vinipereira @brunamoura @dcro @Agger @Dragon @catgamer @Ted @maestro @Yannakis @Finnator123 @Roamingrover86 @Dnl @Werloc @mrv86 @Braulio @Illya @avlar @owenp_23 @dophuquy

something interesting for you guys
 
this guy who won a gold medal yesterday and will probably win another one in next few days
https://olympics.com/en/paris-2024-paralympics/athlete/serkan-yildirim_2000715
 
is in fact the same person as this guy
https://worldathletics.org/athletes/islamic-republic-of-iran/sajjad-hashemiahangari-14422407
 
and he is not blind,  he is a national record holder in Iran in 400m and 2012 Olympian
 
I'm no doctor but I highly doubt he is qualified to participate in Paralympics in T12 class. he probably has a better eyesight than some of us here.
 
there are other Iranians in Paralympics, paid to compete for Turkiye but only this one completely changed his name, guess why ? probably to not get identified.  didn't work well.
 

Slovan Bratislava just made it to the Champions League.
 
Becoming only the 4th club in history to progress to the main round after nowadays non-existant 1.FC Košice in 1997/98 (lost all 6 group games), nowadays 2nd division Artmedia Petržalka (Bratislava largest suburb) in 2005/06 (the only team to win a group match in Porto and reached also 3 draws in that group against FC Porto at home and in both games against Glasgow Rangers) and MŠK Žilina in 2010/11 (lost all 6 group matches)

4th
 

 
 

 
 

Looked up a press article about the olympic prizes in this otherwise God forsaken country:
Turns out the prize for gold medal this year is 140.000 euro, for the silver about 100.000 euro and the bronze about 82.000 euro. Even the 8th place is worth 8000 euro.
In total about 6.25 million € was paid out as olympic remuneration.
The "highest grossing" athlete was Tamara Csipes (canoeing) with 280.000 € in total.
In addition to the lump sum prizes the medallists are entitled to a lifetime monthly payment from age 35. Currently this payment is 1450 euro monthly for a gold medallist.
(The article states the amounts in the monopoly money otherwise known as forint, it was converted to euro at the exchange rate valid as of today)

A little late, but  NOC just announced the prizes our medalist will get
Adriana Ruano Gold  about US$387,000
Jean Pierre Brol Bronze about US$161,000
 
in addition the coach for gold medal will get US$96,000 and for bronze US$40,000
 

Bakhodir Jalolov  (Amateur Boxing) 
PR Sreejesh  ( Field Hockey) 
Taha Akgul  (FS Wrestling) 
Aiaal Lazarev  ( FS Wrestling) 

As always, after the Olympics there’s a whole batch of retirements. 
 
 Mijain Lopez (wrestling)
 
 Maggie MacNeil (swimming)
 
 Natalie Achonwa (basketball)
 
 Vinesh Phogat (wrestling)
 
 Nino Salukvadze (shooting)
 
 Andy Murray (tennis)
 
 Portia Woodman-Wickliffe (rugby sevens)
 
 Tatjana Smith (swimming)
 
 Carissa Moore (surfing)
 
 Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce (athletics)
 
 Ma Long (table tennis)
 
 Vivian Kong (fencing)
 
 Emma McKeon (swimming)
 
 Angelique Kerber (tennis)
 
 Perry Baker (rugby sevens)
 
 Timo Boll (table tennis)
 
 Kellie Harrington (boxing)
 
 Mikkel Hansen (handball)

Men
Women
Total
 
Gold
Silver
Bronze
Gold
Silver
Bronze
Gold
Silver
Bronze
Asian Games 2022
3
0
1
4
2
3
7
2
4
European games 2023
1
2
2
1
2
0
2
4
2
2024 World Qualifier 1
2
1
4
0
1
4
2
2
8
2024 World Qualifier 2
1
3
3
0
0
3
1
3
6
African Qualifier 2023
0
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
0
Pan Am Games 2023
0
1
3
0
1
1
0
2
4
Pacific Games 2023
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
0
2
Just a quick comparison of where the medalists qualified from as I was interested myself