NearPup

241 - 241 , 15-15 in the super over, England wins despite the match being a tie. Congrats?

TBH I wouldn't be surprised at all to see artistic swimming axed in 2024 or for all the current events to be replaced by a mixed duet event.

Shocking result: two time defending world champion Aurelie Muller misses the Olympics by 0.1 seconds after leading with about 200m to go. Since her teammate Lara Grangeon finished in the top 10 she won't be at the Olympics unless she drops out.

Beer mile. Lets do it.

Ah yes, cannabis. The well known performance enhancer for... sprint swimmers.

Can we take a moment to mention that the camera work at the finish was terrible? They literally didn’t show the fight for second and third at all.

I don’t think even the athletes like the idea if monobob tbh.

The rest have 0.25 spots to fight for amongst themselves. How generous.

Yes. Meanwhile one of Canada’s Gold Cup match didn’t because Martinique isn’t a FIFA member. It would actually have been much better for Canada to fail to qualify for the nation league A group since now we play two fewer games and we got drawn against a bad team (Cuba). This is basically just CONCACAF rigging the qualification process for the big boys. Typical.

This is some bs...

No more than Grabar-Kitarović is a man *shrugs*

Canada wins the men's event over Jamaica 40-5. It's good enough. Honestly happy for the team, even though this was the only acceptable result after the US finished top 4 in the World Series (thanks, America). Also, I really appreciate that there was a stream this year. Having to follow the 2015 finals through Twitter was painful.

There is not.

Apparently the point is to use those tournaments as an opportunity for the teams to have a tuneup for the Olympics first and foremost. It's... a little silly. https://www.cbc.ca/sports/olympics/fifa-womens-olympic-qualifying-1.4711566

There are so many ways to spin this as a positive without sounding like an a-hole, too. Like "of course we are disappointed that we lost, but we are extremely pleased that our top four finish allowed us to qualify for the Olympics, which was our main objective beside winning the World Cup".

Hard to know who will qualify until we see the draw. I think every team other than Sweden will be a heavy favourite. Sweden will have to earn it.

Never in a million year would I have expected Canada to win a world championship in beach volleyball while Brazil was shut out of the podium...

In a way yes, but in another sense if the Olympics was the only thing keeping double trap alive then the blame can’t be all on the IOC, the ISSF clearly didn’t put in enough work fostering that discipline. Events can survive being dropped from the Olympics, sometimes they even come back (see: the madison).

It honestly makes no sense that Golf and Tennis at the Olympics don't count for their respective rankings. The Olympics used to be the equivalent of an ATP 500 event in terms of rankings, which at least made sure the people who competed at the Olympics didn't get punished in the rankings. Some marginal PGA player skipped Rio for that reason - he was in danger of losing his PGA card (so basically his livelihood) and he couldn't afford to skip any PGA events.

Especially considering that the US, Brazil and Peru are already qualified from the 2018 worlds. We are going to go pretty deep down the America's depth chart by the time the NA and SA spots are allocated.

Belgium and Russia.

Kind of feel bad for Belgium and Hungary, I feel like they are both better teams than Russia and Sweden.

Yes. Same account, but new account name (technical reasons for that).

After 5/11 events for the men and 5/10 events for the women, the following athletes are provisionally in a qualifying position from the World Surf League. Note: athletes from Hawaii are marked with (HAW) as they compete separately in Surfing. I am only including athletes that are qualified to compete on the tour in the selection battle (theoretically an athlete that isn't on tour could qualify for enough events to be selected, but this is unlikely). Men (HAW) John John Florence Kolohe Andino Filipe Toledo Jordy Smith Kanoa Igarashi Italo Ferreira Ryan Callinan Julian Wilson Michel Bourez Jérémy Florès As far as International qualification goes the biggest development is that Leonardo Fioravanti is injured, which means that Ricardo Christie is now the closest challenger to France's second quota. However he has not finished higher than 17th in any competition this season, which makes his chances very low. In practice the biggest threat to France is injury replacement Frederico Morais, who scored a third place in Rio. He is very far behind Florès, having only competed in two events this season, but he has at least showed the potential to get some big results. American selection battle: (HAW) John John Florence - 32,160 points Kolohe Andino - 27,760 points Kelly Slater - 17,735 points Conner Coffin - 16,035 points (HAW) Seth Moniz - 14,610 points Griffin Colapinto - 7,575 points (HAW) Sebastian Zietz - 6,510 points (HAW) Ezekiel Lau - 6,510 points The American selection battle has been completely shaken up by the news that world number one John John Florence is out for the year with a torn ACL. This means he will finish the year on 33,220 points (taking into account that injured competitors get last place points for every events and that only the best nine results count). This means that Kelly Slater or Connor Coffin will overhaul him if they can maintain good results. Slater, widely considered the GOAT of the sport, would be 48 in Tokyo. Brazilian selection battle: Filipe Toledo - 27,195 points Italo Ferreira - 22,150 points Gabriel Medina - 16,895 points Michael Rogrigues - 13,395 points Deivid Silva - 10,630 points Wilian Cardoso - 10,630 points Caio Ibelli - 10,340 points Yago Dora - 9,565 points Peterson Crisanto - 9,565 points Jesse Mendes - 9,565 points Jadson Andre - 5,585 points Adriano de Souza - 2,390 points Filipe Toledo takes a fairly commanding lead thanks to his win in Rio. Ferreira and Medina have maintained the same distance between each other since the last update. Australian selection battle: Julian Wilson - 16,810 points Ryan Callinan - 16,810 points Wade Carmichael - 14,405 points Owen Wright - 12,620 points Jack Freestone - 8,640 points Adrian Buchan - 7,935 points Mikey Wright - 6,510 points Soli Bailey - 5,585 points Wilson jumps from seventh to second in the Australian selection battle thanks to a third place in Margaret River and a fifth place in Rio. Carmichael falls out of Olympic qualification. French selection battle: Michel Bourez - 14,610 points Jérémy Florès - 14,045 points Joan Duru - 9,565 points Bourez takes the lead over Florès while Duru isn't able to make up ground over the top two. Women Sally Fitzgibbons Caroline Marks Stephanie Gilmore Courtney Conlogue Tatiana Weston-Webb Brisa Hennessy Johanne Defay Silvana Lima Lima slightly increases the gap over Paige Hareb who has still not managed to reach a quarter-final this season American selection battle (where the real action is on the women's side, the US has 7 of the top 12): (HAW) Carissa Moore - 31,175 points Courtney Conlogue - 26,845 points Caroline Marks - 26,050 points Lakey Peterson - 26,050 points (HAW) Malia Manuel - 21,715 points (HAW) Coco Ho - 15,185 Carissa Moore has established herself as the clear favourite with a third place in Margaret River and a second place in Rio. Lakey Peterson has introduced herself as a contender thanks to her win in Margaret River, in the process becoming the third American to win on tour this season. The American selection battle on the women's side remains the most interesting and high calibre of the lot. Australian selection battle: Sally Fitzgibbons - 32,580 points Stephanie Gilmore - 30,320 points Bronte Macaulay - 15,185 points Nikki Van Dijk - 14,960 points Kelly Andrew - 13.395 points Macy Callaghan - 9,920 points Tyler Wright - 5,225 points Gilmore and Fitzgibbons continue to increase their lead over the rest of the field. At this point it is hard to imagine them failing to qualify baring injury.

After what snowboarding and freestyle skiing did to widen the appeal of the Winter Olympics it was always a matter of time before skateboarding was added to the summer Olympics. The governance is a mess, the rules aren't good and I don't think anybody has really come up with a good competition format but, ultimately, I think Tony Hawk's quote about the Olympics needing skateboarding more than skateboarding needs the Olympics is correct. Given the potential upsides, the cheap and flexible venue, the small number of athlete quotas required and the self sustaining professional scene that has existed for decades, including skateboarding in the Olympics was such an obvious decision the only question we should be asking is why the IOC didn't bend the rules to accommodate it earlier. This isn't a weird move like including breakdancing, which was the answer to a question nobody asked.