Epic Failure

Well, that qualification went about as smoothly as could be hoped.

I mean, I'm currently munching my way through an entire pack of Cadbury Fingers in one sitting. I'm not sure if Daniel can do that.

Both Hessey and Jones make the final. Now we wait to see if Reilly will join them.

Not just clean runs but high scoring clean runs to beat them. Daniel Dhers is almost my age. Safe to say I can't do what he does.

Definitely at least 1 Brit through to the final already, no matter what happens from here!

Lovely first run from Hessey there.

MacDonald is fine and O'Neill is probably passable. They probably couldn't be expected to do much more But Calvert was poor. Unlike Hamish/Erin in the climbing, he has vastly under-performed compared to his ranking coming in today. That's always disappointing to see. When you add in the women's situation, it hasn't been a great couple of days. As George Orwell definitely didn't say, four wheels bad, two wheels better!

Less said about the skateboarding the better, however.

Definitely seemed a little bit unsure in the boulder. Excellent from Hamish and Erin. Both outperformed their ranking coming in quite considerably, which is all you can really ask for.

Molly's safe. Still in 16th and only 3 climbers left.

Oh, as I said earlier, without Anderson our chances are pretty much zero. Although, all that being said, we are the current world silver medalists from the definitely-not-weird Doha WCs.

It's a good thing we don't hand out Olympic finishing spots based on trials performance then, isn't it? Also, Summer was 2.5s quicker than Colbert was, not 1.5. Again, for the avoidance of doubt, I'm not saying that I'm favouring GBR over Canada. But I also do not believe that - if both teams are on form in Paris - the gap will be 5 seconds. I would not be surprised if it were around 1.5 seconds, however.

Hence the "slightly further ahead than I thought" part of my last comment... The collective PBs of those 4 Canadians is about 1.5 seconds ahead of the PBs of the likely GBR quartet in Paris. So definitely a gap but hardly a crazy one. Obviously, if Oleksiak or Ruck were to get back to something close to their best, that gap would considerably widen.

My bad, I was looking at the changes made on 15th April and thinking that was yesterday. Only a month out.

The Dutch will go all out on the mixed medley. Their men aren't that strong, so that is a much better bet for them than either the men's 4x4 or the individual 400 is. The women have more time to rest. Bol would have a first round the day after if she does the hurdles rather than the flat 400m, but frankly she could jog around that and still qualify. The US are likely to field a "less than first choice' team, but the team that they field is still likely to be strong enough to win gold. I don't think Poland's men are good enough at the moment. If GBR were go full bore at the mixed, I think they, the Dutch and the US would be the guaranteed medalists, in one order or another. I'm not sure that any other country has the depth to match them. The question is just going to be whether GBR does that, or whether they believe that a slightly weakened team might still be good enough to challenge for the podium and that by doing so they might increase chances elsewhere in the individual events (thinking MHS as the most likely, given his recent championship performances). Basically, the question becomes can we persuade our athletes to adopt a James-Guy-in-Tokyo mentality? Obviously all this is subject to form/fitness. If Anning doesn't carry her college form through the summer, our chances are diminished a chunk I reckon, even with the depth on the women's side.

AHW ran today in at Montreuil. 45.76. The men are bronze medalists from the Worlds last year, so they absolutely should be in the medal conversation. Not to the same extent as the women, but they are definitely in with a respectable shot. What we need on the men's side is a couple of guys in the 45 lows. Not close enough that they qualify in the individual 400m but not far away so that they are still providing respectable relay splits.

Have the Canadian Selectors pulled a selector trick today and amended their selection policy halfway through the Champs?

(Semi) educated guessing here. If Paris uses the same format for the mixed relay as the WC and WR do (ie only one change allowed between heat and final), I suspect that might have an impact on the choices. With the men's individual starting the day after the mixed final, the obvious change would be one of the men, to allow one of them to rest. However, the counter point to that is that the women have much more strength in depth. So swapping a woman would be less of a risk, in principle. Both Dobson and MHS have had injury histories in the past that might make them skeptical of a 3 relay workload. However, they (and UK Athletics) might feel like the mixed is a better chance of a medal than the men's 4x4 is. Obviously if someone else shows top form during the season (AHW or Rio Mitchum being the best options, Davey next so), that would make the decisions easier. My gut tells me that we'll see only 1 of the two men mentioned earlier in the mixed at all and they might only do the final. I'd guess Dobson if I had to. I think we'll see our prospective 2 strongest women, whoever it may be, in both heat and final. I say prospective because I do worry that Amber will not carry the college/indoor form all the way through the summer. History has shown athletes are a mixed bag in terms of whether they can do that. For what it is worth, at the 23 WC, none of our individual runners took part in the mixed. In 2022, 1 did (AHW). In 2019 2 did (Yousif, Diamond). In Tokyo, none did. But that's just all speculation on my part. I realise that I've not really helped clear anything up.

Adrian would never stoop so low. Andy Jamieson, on the other hand...

China were one of the 3 teams mentioned already way ahead of GBR - them, AUS and the USA. If one of those 3 had a mishap, that's when GBR or Canada get in. Looking at their trials, Canada are probably slightly further ahead of GBR than I expected them to be, so they are definitely in pole position for taking advantage of a 'slip up'. GBR's chances are all predicated on Freya Anderson being fit. If she isn't then our slim chances disappear, even in the case of a slip up ahead of us.

Given that the LJ qualification is the morning after the decathlon finishes, I'm going to say that even he probably doesn't know right now and it might depend entirely on how he feels that morning! I'm guessing he'll be entered into both anyway, unless something goes wrong this weekend in Gotzis that puts him off the Decathlon. But that's just my gut. I can't find any press release etc about his plans.

On the other hand, I'm completely on board with Splashy Proud representing us in the pool. Clearly, I value his dignity slightly less than you.

I'm guessing it's because the final of the 200 free is only about an hour after the final of the 400m IM. Not to mention that Summer will have already have had the 400 free on day 1. So if she were to do the 200 free as well, it would be 2 400s on day 1, 2 200s on day 2 and then 3 swims on day 3. Even for Summer that would be a heavy schedule for the first 3 days. Unfortunate scheduling more than anything.

A few in the Canaries tomorrow - https://www.watchathletics.com/page/5448/canarias-athletics-invitational-2024-start-lists Also, just to complicate the picture of British middle distance running a bit more, Jemma Reekie is running a 1500m in Poland this weekend -

In fairness the team kept giving up the puck in open areas in front of him. There was only 1 goal (the 4th I think) that I would say is solely on Binnington.