NearPup

If Dabrowski or Andreescu and Auger-Aliassime want to play they will qualify. I don’t think Pospisil is ranked high enough for Canada to get a second entry.

Honestly really happy for Fichman. I was pretty convinced she would miss out.

Given the variance inherent in such a short tournament any permutation of finalists is plausible.

Whoever recreated that bracket on Wikipedia is a true hero.

A few of them actually. Athletics: Cross Country Running (men’s and women’s individual and team races along with a mixed relay) Climbing: Ice Climbing Cycling: Cyclocross Volleyball: Snow Volleyball My big pitch for XCR and Snow Volleyball is that they would make the Winter Olympics a truly global event since you would have athletes from South America and Africa vying for medals. XCR and Cyclocross are also just better fits for the winter games than the summer games.

That is actually really cool.

Out: Modern Pentathlon In: Squash If forced to pick 3: Out: boxing, weightlifting In: cricket, softball I also think Climbing, Skateboarding and Surfing should be permanent additions. They are low cost, require few athletes, have very well developed professional circuits, have high participation numbers and have the potential to reach a new audience.

Athletics: replace mixed 4x100m with women’s 50km walk, or a mixed 10km road relay, or a mixed shuttle relay, or a mixed 4x800m relay. Really anything but a redundant 4x400m relay. Swimming: replace the mixed 4x100m medley with the mixed open water relay. Or if we want to be really creative a mixed 4x200m individual medley relay. Lets just not give 100m freestylers a *fourth* Olympic gold medal chance. Climbing: replace combined event with speed, lead and bouldering events. I know that’s against the rules but I don’t care. Judo: replace the mixed team event with a men’s and women’s team event. Sailing: simplify the program - men’s and women’s sailboard, one person dinghy, two person dinghy, multihull and skiff.

I am continuously annoyed at the Dutch NOC qualification policies. Like, great, your “substandard” athlete will just be replaced by an even worse one.

That’s a pretty decent medal chance for

It is now 8-3 for the Dominican Republic at the top of the fifth.

Ya, it will be so weird. Japan is so behind in the vaccination and that is so baffling. There were more people in that arena tonight than will be allowed at any venue for the Olympics.

Radio-Canada did a piece on Hamoon Derafshipour, member if the Refugee Olympic Team in Karate: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/sports/1804600/rever-du-podium-olympique-et-dequipe-canada In it he mentions that he plans to compete internationally for Canada as soon as possible with the aim of qualifying for the 2023 Pan-Am games.

You do know why the team is called Chinese Taipei, right?

The precedent for protesting the results of an event on the podium is quite well established. That being said the IOC should obviously not punish athletes who question the fairness of the IOC's policy on transgendered athletes, even if they do so at the games.

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.