Epic Failure

Yes and no. Bonevacia is a 44.5 man at his best, and should be expected to run around 45 consistently. He was 46.1 here. That's as far off his best as Lieke was.

Klaver was poor but only by her own incredibly high standards! She was still 0.3s quicker than everyone bar Adeleke on that second leg. Bonevacia was the worst of your legs, for me, by quite a way.

Adeleke demolishing Klaver on the 2nd leg was the real difference there. Excited to see what she can do on the individual.

I wouldn't assume that Ireland are *definitively* the weakest team. They look poor right now but they've been competitive for a while. It wouldn't be crazy if everyone bar India kept swapping wins in that group. But the US are definitely in the box seat. Beat Ireland and they are through for sure.

Nafi looking as majestic as ever.

Ehammer with a statement jump there.

There's only Taylor who would qualify as wholly developed by the US. But there's 4-5 of them who were born in the US and have moved around before settling back in the States. Then there are several others who moved to the US as teenagers and have been involved in the US team for a good number of years. It's nowhere near as 'mercenary' as I expected it could be.

I mean, Pakistan has a history of being upset in world cups. They are the definition of a mercurial team - can be great one day and then awful the next. Also, if they really wanted the game thrown to interest more US folks, they could have not run it as close as it was. Not to mention, they probably could have paid a better TV channel to increase the eyes on the tournament in the US. I understand what you are saying, I just think it is the latest in the line of weird Pakistan performances. And a US team motivated to perform on home soil.

It's dumb. I thought EAA was starting to be sensible with the attempt to fix things like the French entry fiasco, and then they do stupid things like this.

Since her injuries KJT has only been average at the hurdles. She only ran 13.50 in Budapest last summer on her way to the World crown.

It's a mix. Of the 15 man squad, about 8-9 are naturalised Indians, Pakistani or South Africans. Then another 4 or 5 are US born to Asian or Caribbean parents. And finally there is the Kiwi, Corey Anderson, who is probably the most famous of the squad. He married a Texan and moved there a few years back I believe.

Updated...but still out of date as there are still people showing in the entries who have withdrawn, including the Brits discussed earlier and Konstanze Klosterhalfen.

I mean the discussion was as much just talking about how do different countries do things. And I think there's some disagreement about what does or does not constitute a trial. It's all good.

Oh that makes sense. I was worried that you meant a tipping point in the 'bad' direction and I was confused!

The fact that right now it doesn't matter for many events doesn't change the fact that the system is set up to value performance at those Champs. When the policy was created the selectors don't know who is or is not going to hit what target. The only real difference between the German system - at least as you have described it - and the UK system - is that we potentially assign 2 people based on the performance from our Champs, whereas you assign only 1.

How? It's literally almost identical to the system that GBR uses.

Right, so the German Championship performance can influence it? That's basically the same as the GB system then.

Yes but what I'm disagreeing with is where you are saying the certain date should be. To use your job example, if you accept a job offer but decide the day before you are due to start you don't want it anymore, you won't get punished for that decision. You just no longer have the job. I don't see why that should be different for athletes. For clarity, I'm saying that an athlete pulling out 3 days before these champs is absolutely doing it in time. There should be no repercussions to that athlete for doing so. If there are *any* repercussions at all - and I'm not convinced there should be - they should be to the federation to cover the cost of travel for the replacement.

In what sense? I won't speak for the Canadians, but I suspect that many of them would say hockey (by which they mean the ice variety) comes above everything else and by quite a long way. The US because of its sheer population size was always likely to catch up and overtake Canada in the 'commonwealth' sports when they started paying attention to them. Rugby is an interesting one, because the US has a great university tradition for rugby. But it hasn't previously been able to build on that in any wider sense.

Although I'm always a bit loathe to judge a performance until both sides have batted (as it could be the pitch rather than anything else), Sri Lanka have been hit and miss in T20 in recent years. At the last WC they lost fairly comprehensively to all the top tier sides they played and also lost to Namibia as well.

But how do you know in advance? Like, to use GBR as an example. Dobson and MHS are the only 400m runners qualified as of *right now*. But the qualification window runs until June 30th. The GBR champs/trials are 28-29th. Suppose another 3 athletes were to run the qualification time at those champs, or before it. How would you decide the team? For GBR the system has been top 2 at trials/champs go no matter what, as long as they have the qualifying time. And a 3rd discretionary spot that can be applied where the selectors want it (in case of injury at the trials etc). I'm just puzzled about how other nations do it if you don't decide it based on performance at a championship/trial - are you all just writing your athletes off?

I've never known someone who accepted a job offer and then turned it down to be actually punished for doing so. Sure, that employer might not offer them a future job but that's a different matter. If you want to have a system where you get banned from a future EC having withdrawn at the last minute, maybe that's a way forward. Banning someone from other events that aren't ECs seems weird. Frankly, I'm fine with some sort of fine for the national federation, as it is them who are in control of the entries. Just not the individual athlete. Personally, I still think that the easiest - and best - solution is a standby list. That's what a university would do. That's what someone advertising a job would have. Again, I think that there has to be a degree of reasonableness here. We're still 3 days before any event starts, let alone a specific event that might happen later in the programme. There's nowhere in Europe that you couldn't get to Rome in 3 days from. There's no good reason to not have a back up list. Hell, make the withdrawing federation pay the travel and hotel cost of the replacement athlete. Problem solved.

Most European countries that I'm aware of have their national championships in late June-early July. I'm not sure how many of them are actually trials but certainly the UK champs are always the World/Olympic trials in the years where those events are happening. I'm absolutely in favour of athletes having a European Championship generally for good levels of competition. I just think the timing has been problematic every year that they've had it since they moved from a 4 year cycle to a 2 year cycle which meant that it started colliding with the Olympics in 2012. It would have been better if they had it colliding with the Worlds, frankly. The Olympics are the peak of the sport still. Then the Worlds and then the Europeans. If you are going to have 2 of the 3 happen in the same year, make it the 2 latter events.

If I buy a ticket to an event with limited capacity and then decide the week before that I want to do something else, that's on me. I lose my entry fee but that's my decision. If there is an entry fee for this, I fully support GBR being fined for it. What you are advocating is that I should be additionally punished for doing so. That's ridiculous. If someone else wants to go in my place, I should be able to sell my ticket, as most things let you do these days. Or the venue can decide to let someone else in if they see that there is space. Which is what I'm suggesting should happen.

I agree it isn't ideal. But I have limited sympathy for the Champs themselves or any kind of rule they put in like that. It's insane that we're having European Champs 6 weeks before the Olympics, and 2-3 weeks before national trials for many teams. If they were desperate to have Euros every 2 years, they could at least put it *after* the Olympics. Otherwise they are making athletes risk injury here ahead of what could be the single biggest event of their lives. I don't blame an athlete if they are unsure whether they want to risk that. And, if they had a list of replacements like I'm suggesting, it wouldn't matter. It's not like Hudson-Smith withdrew on the morning of the race. There's plenty enough time to get someone to Rome to fill that spot.