NearPup

Defining what is and isn’t political is in and of itself a political exercise, so. As for the 1968 raised fist incident, lets not pretend that the IOC of that era was an apolitical creature. Brundage made a lot of very politically charged statements as head of the IOC.

It's complete nonsense to compare scores that are given at different competitions anyway, and that was always a glaring flaw of this dumpster fire of a qualification system. Any outcome that came down to the best score tie-breaker would always be unfair. Liu Yang was robbed by the judges, and the alternative was Petrounias being robed by an unfair tie-breaker. It's a bad situation created by a bad qualification document.

What makes you think the IOC thought this through? (My guess is that they will do special IOC invitations like they did for Saudi Arabia in 2012)

God the South African women’s Rugby 7 team must be *livid*. They are at a much higher level than either South African Water Polo teams.

Would have been really nice for FINA and the South African Olympic committee to not put the Greek team through an emotional rollercoaster.

Probably because they need an alternate for Hayden. He may not be able to swim on short notice.

Also worth mentioning McIntosh will swim the 200, 400 and 800.

Canadian swimming team: Women: Bailey Andison (Smiths Falls, ON) Katrina Bellio (Mississauga, ON) Tessa Cieplucha (Georgetown, ON) Mary-Sophie Harvey (Trois-Rivières, QC) Margaret Mac Neil (London, ON) Kylie Masse (LaSalle, ON) Summer McIntosh (Toronto, ON) Penny Oleksiak (Toronto, ON) Sydney Pickrem (Halifax, NS) Taylor Ruck (Kelowna, BC) Kayla Sanchez (Toronto, ON) Katerine Savard (Pont-Rouge, QC) Kierra Smith (Kelowna, BC) Rebecca Smith (Red Deer, AB) Kelsey Wog (Winnipeg, MB) Men: Javier Acevedo (Toronto, ON) Ruslan Gaziev (Toronto, ON) Brent Hayden (Mission, BC) Yuri Kisil (Calgary, AB) Finlay Knox (Okotoks, AB) Joshua Liendo (Toronto, ON) Gabe Mastromatteo (Kenora, ON) Cole Pratt (Calgary, AB) Markus Thormeyer (Delta, BC)

So the soon-to-be gold medal winning US team was announced: Stefanie Dolson, Allisha Gray, Kelsey Plum and Katie Lou Samuelson. They are essentially the US 'B' team - all four are primarily five-a-side players who were in contention to make the five-a-side team but didn't quite make it.

Talk about a tiny team. It was 30 (10 men, 20 women) in Rio.

Sydney Pickrem’s mom is fantastic.

50 year old Siphiwe Baleka, who competed at the 1992 US Olympic trials under his birth name Tony Blake, will compete at the Olympics. First swimmer from Burkina Faso.

She doesn't actually need to swim the 1500m free at trials. Trials doesn't decide the team for the 800 and 1500, it's the best time between May 1st and the end of trials. As long as two people don't beat 16:15 at trials (which seems unlikely) Summer will get a spot in the 1500 if she wants it.

There is absolute discretion in so far as what constitutes fitness, but by the wording of both the nomination document and the definition of fitness anyone who hits an A standard or a B standard at trials and who is invited by FINA should be selected.

According to the qualification document if there are less than two swimmers qualified in an event at trials Swimming Canada will nominate the next best ranked swimmer that has the A standard, and will nominate the best swimmer with the B standard and a FINA invitation in events where Canada doesn't have anyone qualified, as long as they pass a "review for competitive readiness", which is defined as them being reasonably able to match their qualifying time at the Olympics. The document very specifically says will, not may. From my reading of the document the only real discretion is if a swimmer is injured or otherwise no longer in good enough form to hit the standard.

Yuri Kisil swam under the FINA A standard in the morning and will probably get a spot in the individual 100m free, too.

IIRC the simultaneous translation was unacceptably bad and one of the adjudicator made some racist comments.

The Swiss Supreme Court ruling allowed WADA to retry him. The original verdict was overturned because the first trial wasn’t conducted in a manner that was fair to Sun.

The result of Sun Yang’s retrial is now known. He is banned until May 2024. https://www.cbc.ca/sports/olympics/summer/aquatics/sun-yang-2nd-cas-hearing-may-1.6075430

This is so sad. Given his history of substance abuse I don’t believe for a second that this is related to doping. I hope he can overcome this latest setback.

Dutch NOC obviously isn’t taking the Olympics seriously.

Other than the biographical information literally the only part of this tweet that is correct is that he qualified for a second Olympics ?‍♂️

1:43.17, world leading time this year (though it seems like a bit of a soft WL time to me).

Huge upset alert: Donavan Brazier, the world champion in the 800m, finished eighth at the US Olympic trials and will not be in Tokyo.

Canadian Olympic trials, day 3 Women's 800m Free Summer McIntosh - 8:29.48 Men's 1500m Free - no automatic qualifier Women's 200m IM Sydney Pickrem - 2:09.24 Kelsey Wog - 2:10.21 Men's 200m IM Finlay Knox - 1:58.07 Women's 50m Free Kayla Sanchez - 24.66 Men's 50m Free Brent Hayden - 21.80 Joshua Liendo - 21.90 Really happy to see Hayden’s comeback pay off. I don’t think he has a realistic chance to medal in Tokyo unless the mixed medley relay does something special but it will be nice for the team to have him around.