Epic Failure

Charlie Carvell had to pull out with an injury. Hope he goes well, still young and inexperienced. Only one of Dobson and Anning can come in if we Q.

Perzamanos makes the final. In 7th with only one athlete left who could overtake him (final is top 8).

I have him in my "outside contenders" bracket (which is people I expect to be roughly 4th-8th). He was 5th last year at the Worlds. So a medal would be a bonus, if not a complete shock.

Probably Gigolo, Isabelle Werth's horse in the dressage.

I think that's an interesting point about the psychology of it all and what difference that might make. You could well be right about that. But, of course, maybe she *is* getting everything out of her body and this is just her way of controlling her emotions to ensure she puts out the best that she can. Personally I'm not convinced that body language etc matters that much. I've seen KJT look miserable but still perform and I've seen countless sprinters look like they could fight the world and then trail in last. But I do agree that it could matter somewhat.

Splits were: Dawson - 1:00.18 Wilby - 59.35 Litchfield - 51.37 Hopkin - 52.83 Fair play to Joe, even with the relay takeover, that's about as solid a split as could be hoped. Compares positively to Jimmy's 52.23 in the individual. Makes Peters disaster at trials even more frustrating though.

I had Bryony down to repeat her Rio silver, but delighted (in the nicest possible way) that the Chinese women wiped out. Yay bonus gold and she completes the set!

Not on this season's form it wasn't. Her SB was only 1.93m, so she would have had to equal it effectively. I'm sure she's disappointed but this wasn't a shock. There were other big names that missed out - 2 of the 5 women who beat her in Rome last month join her in looking at the final as a spectator, one of whom was also World Indoor bronze. It's tough at this level!

I mean she came 4th at the Worlds last year, so I wouldn't quantify that as "doing nothing". A brief glance at her record shows she has represented 24 times in her career (jnr and snr), and has made the final 19 times. She's only missed it 5 times. That's a pretty fine record. She's in the unfortunate position of being world class but not medal winning class. It happens. This season she's been relatively off form, so missing the final wasn't a huge shock. I'd have been pleasantly surprised if she had made it.

She's looked great but so have Sakakibara and Willoughby. In a clean race those 3 look like the most obvious podium, in some order. Now let's hope for a clean race....

Solid evening in the pool. Duncan, Tom and Ben all got the job done with little fuss. Honey and Katie both did excellently to make the final. The 5th place in the relay is about as good as we could have hoped without misfortune for one of the teams above us. Same with Laura really, she might have been 1 or 2 places higher but she was never going to be in medal contention. The big "what if" is Greenbank's DQ the other day. Not sure he'd have had the pace to medal but we'll never know...

I don't think Olympicsnell was *expecting* a gold in the road race. They were using that as an example of the events which are a lottery and which can determine whether this is a 'good' Olympics or a 'great' Olympics. Hell, the BMX racing is another one. Shriever has looked great but the event has so many crashes that you wouldn't expect a gold from it, even if you have a strong contender. You can easily get taken out even if you do nothing wrong. It's not like, say, swimming, where the chance of being taken out should be pretty low.

If Zharnel somehow medals, I shall be demanding it henceforth be GB & NI & Anguila. Sadly, Cav retiring means that the Isle of Man loses its best chance to get added.

I agree that it has been a great start. But in the interests of fairness, we've had our share of positive 'luck' as well - the Aussies mucking up the diving on day 1, the Germans losing a horse in the eventing and the quad sculls coming out on top being some of the obvious examples. Swings and roundabouts, as always happens at sporting events! In fact, part of why I track the top 8s is because I think that sometimes gives a truer reflection on overall strength than just medals/golds do sometimes.

Spain beat South Africa in the hockey, which means the women join the men in qualifying for the QFs.

I'm not sure on that, because the changes in scheduling means that I can't directly compare. But in terms of total medals won by the end of day 5, it's definitely the most in the last 30 years. My personal predictions coming into this were that we were likely to be down on golds this time out but roughly the same as we have been the last 3 cycles in terms of overall medals. The first 6 days have done nothing to change that view. In fact, we're currently 1 medal ahead of where I thought we would be, in terms of both gold medals and total medals.

If anyone ever thinks that we are having a bad games, I can only think that they aren't old enough to remember 1996. Now THAT was a bad games. Incidentally, we just passed the total number of top 8 finishes we got in Atlanta. And we're only about a third of the way through the games.

Women's hockey team finally seem to have hit some form; they are 5-2 at the end of the 3rd quarter.

I mean, this is what the BOA website says in their FAQs about "what is Team GB" I can see why people call it that way, if the BOA is incorrectly choosing to name it as such as well.

I'm confused. I thought the official name of the team was Great Britain and Northern Ireland (or, to be very precise, the Great Britain and Northern Ireland Olympic Team)?

The margins in shooting tend to be incredibly tight. It also tends to be one of the least predictable sports, at least in my experience.

Can you tell me what Olympic sport you excel at? Whilst I'm sure she's disappointed, 10th in the world is still damn fine.

McIntosh having what can only be described as a disaster in the standing. She's going to miss the final by 1 place.

Archers appear to be like London buses...

Her pace wasn't really the problem. It was her inability to get through the gates that was the issue.