Rich

European Junior Swimming Championships
 
A strong showing from Team GB who finished top of the medal table with 9 Gold, 5 Silver and 5 Bronze. 
 
GOLD
F. Nowacki - Men’s 100m Breast
F. Nowacki - Men’s 200m Breast*
D. Fearn - Men’s 50m Fly* 
A. Blocksidge - Women’s 1500m Free
A. Smith - Women’s 200m IM
A. Smith - Women’s 400m IM*
B. Kinsman - Women’s 50m Back
Mixed 4x100m Medley Relay*
Men’s 4x100m Medley Relay
 
SILVER
D. Fearn - Men’s 100m Fly
F. Nowacki - Men’s 50m Breast
E. Price - Women’s 200m Fly
T. Taylor - Women’s 50m Free
Mixed 4x100m Free
 
BRONZE
Men’s 4x100m Free
B. Kinsman - Women’s 100m Back
T. Taylor - Women’s 100m Breast
A. Blocksidge - Women’s 800m Free
Women’s 4x200m Free
 
*Championship Record

Yeah, we have such a strong crop of Juniors, that we can’t take them all. They all have exciting trajectories but to predict what Junior swimmers will is always difficult. Better to let them all swim together at Juniors than rocketing them all up to seniors and swimming a prelim and going home.

and  all took the quotas so  have qualified.

Ah yes, today was the dreaded "IOC news day"... As usual there is barely anything to smile at.
 
Men's boxing losing more weights is absurd, especially since their "gender parity agenda" is out of the window after switching the football.
 
Swimming getting the 50s in an already bloated program was sadly inevitable. With US and AUS the next hosts, I'm surprised swimming doesn't have 100 events to begin with. 
 
All the new mixed stuff is Frankenstein as usual, especially the tennis and gymnastics. No one asks for these, even within these sports, but the IOC only care about "Let's have all the stars interact more with each other for maximum TV talk and social engagement, who cares about sporting traditions".
 
Climbing splitting the events is a positive, though for me personally I didn't see any problem with the combined. It actually showed the true overall best climbers, while now the specialists in one event will get more chances to sneak a medal.
 
Host sports with 6 teams are a joke and shouldn't award medals! Have them as exhibition events with a trophy etc. for the winners, but shouldn't be included in the medal table. But what do I know.
 
And still no news on the most important thing for me - extending the Games to 3 full weeks. Things will be crammed, crammed again..

Rightfully so.
 
If we were to axe / make mixed a further rowing event I actually think the fours makes more sense. Eights is simply the most iconic rowing event, if there was one rowing event in the Olympics it should be the eights.

are the champion of IHF Emerging Nations Championship 2025 beating the home team  29-25 in an epic game.
 
still long journey to compete with top teams but it's very promising start to win our first title. 

men have qualified for the 2025 Eurobasket tournament after fighting back to beat  73-69 last night in Den Haag. They'll join  and  progressing from Group F.
 
Their final qualifying match is against  in Newcastle on Monday night
 

From my calculations, GB is on 13 'proper' world cup win's this year (Figure skating and Curling don't count due to limited fields), which would be second behind the 15 in 2022-2023.
 
This doesn't include the world championships which would give another 4 to 2023
 
 
 

Story about that here, by coincidence.  Most of Team GB including Joe Choong are knuckling down.
 
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/articles/cdxng025xw8o

While I as a TV watcher would love this, it would be a disaster. Part of the appeal is all the athletes and fans being in one place all celebrating and cheering together.

Reeves clearly spent too much time watching Keely etc and not enough time watching hockey and other relative disappointments.

Reeves clearly spent too much time watching Keely etc and not enough time watching hockey and other relative disappointments.

The UK won't be building new pools sadly. It would be nice if local government, underfunded by central government in massive debt, stopped closing them. This is an article from 2023:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/mar/12/england-has-lost-almost-400-swimming-pools-since-2010
 

Today definitely falls into the "bad luck" argument for me.
 
We lose a potential gold medal hope to illness, we lose 2 minor medal hopes to crashes in front of them, and we get a bronze in an event where there's not an unreasonable chance that had she been on the other side of the draw it might have been silver.
 
The only real disappointment today is the selection of Evans, who looks hopelessly off form.
 
Thanks to Emma and Emily we get through the Games winning a medal every day, which is a first for us that I know about, at least in the modern era.
 
 
 
 
Overall, a good games for me. Not a great games, the drop in gold clearly prevents that. I've no doubt that it will be seen as worse in public perception than it actually was, because of that drop in gold.
 
We increase our total medal tally from Tokyo, as well as our top 8 finishes (as things stand; please no drugs failures taking things away!). We match the tally from Tokyo of medalling in 18 different sports, including 2 new ones (artistic swimming and climbing). That to me shows that our sports are generally in a good place.
 
Clearly I'm sure there will be serious conversations happening, as there should be.
 
But - for me at least - it's easier to have those conversation when you have some silverware to back it up. It shows a system that is mostly working but needs tweaking, rather than a system that needs ripping out and starting again.

Some of you need to be lovers not Hayters in this thread.

Some of you need to be lovers not Hayters in this thread.

Sorry, but this is an absolutely ridiculous comment. Hayter absolutely rode his balls off in an excellent Team Pursuit performance, and is still well in contention in the Omnium.

Fingers crossed for a fun day! How sweet will a gold be if we get one? And maybe that's the point? Highs and lows creating the extreme emotions that wake us all up, not just coasting along feeling smug.
 
Either way, I'm determined to enjoy the ride today. The Olympics come but once a (4) year(s) and feeling glum is just not the way to savour them.

That's not really the press having a go. Nobody has been called a flop of a turnip. I've seen four back pages and it's words like 'pipped'. They reflect frustration not anger.

Sure, but it's also a target that you can't really hold anybody accountable for. If each governing body has met their target then what you going to do.
 
The rest of the world had raised its game. And just like we learnt from the Aussies post 96 so, in turn, others have learnt from us - the Aussies themselves to some extent but also the Dutch and others I'm sure.

Gutted for Matt. Love watching him. Same with Josh and Molly. But there's no divine right and I'm sure the two men would take their performance over Molly's. I'm equally sure both would have good words for her - they've lived through their own athletic disappointments.
 
The silvers are frustrating when so close, no question. But there is a reason that the target is about medals not golds and it's because GB success has been built on controlling the controllables. Sometimes, like tonight and yesterday, no matter what you do to prepare, no matter how extraordinarily fast you run, no matter how much you want it, somebody else is just better.  Medals not golds allows for that uncontrollable.

Gutted for Matt. Love watching him. Same with Josh and Molly. But there's no divine right and I'm sure the two men would take their performance over Molly's. I'm equally sure both would have good words for her - they've lived through their own athletic disappointments.
 
The silvers are frustrating when so close, no question. But there is a reason that the target is about medals not golds and it's because GB success has been built on controlling the controllables. Sometimes, like tonight and yesterday, no matter what you do to prepare, no matter how extraordinarily fast you run, no matter how much you want it, somebody else is just better.  Medals not golds allows for that uncontrollable.

Gutted for Matt. Love watching him. Same with Josh and Molly. But there's no divine right and I'm sure the two men would take their performance over Molly's. I'm equally sure both would have good words for her - they've lived through their own athletic disappointments.
 
The silvers are frustrating when so close, no question. But there is a reason that the target is about medals not golds and it's because GB success has been built on controlling the controllables. Sometimes, like tonight and yesterday, no matter what you do to prepare, no matter how extraordinarily fast you run, no matter how much you want it, somebody else is just better.  Medals not golds allows for that uncontrollable.

Oh god, it's frustrating for sure! But I don't think it warrants gnashing of teeth and rending of garments to quite the extent that some maybe do. And it's certainly not a sign that a) we're victims of terrible luck, or b) individual athletes are irredeemable failures because they just missed out on gold. 

Most of 'the media" isn't worth the paper that it is written on, so I don't frankly care what they think. Or what 'the general public' thinks if they agree with it. As a wise man once said, people like Coldplay and voted for the Nazis; you can't trust people.
 
There's always frustrations in an event like this. The only ones I'm upset about are the shooting mistake, the boxing judging and the sailing wind fiasco. The others are just sporting incidents.
 
I mean, this TP was almost certainly Ethan being on the ragged edge and expending every ounce of energy. At that level, even the slightest mistake can be fatal to your chances. Fair play to the Aussies for putting us under that stress, in my opinion.