NearPup

The Asian and African quotas will heavily come down to luck, unfortunately. Hopefully the two American and European quotas are, in the end, decided in a fair way.

So, every team that made the Ro16 at the world cup is guaranteed a spot in one of the four final Olympic qualification tournament. In the end the top 23 or 24 teams (depending on where Japan finishes) will qualify. However, based on FIBA ranking the following teams that aren’t currently guaranteed to qualify for the OQT based on their World Cup finish should qualify: Africa: 1. Nigeria 2. Senegal Angola and Tunisia should also be safe. Egypt, Cameroon and Morocco are on the bubble in that order. Americas: 1. Mexico 2. Canada Mexico cannot qualify through the World Cup. If Canada qualifies for the OQT through the World Cup their spot should go to Uruguay. Other than whether Canada qualifies through the World Cup or the world ranking there is no drama here. Asia / Oceania: 1. Iran 2. China The Philippines and South Korea should also be safe. New Zealand, Jordan, Lebanon and Taiwan are on the bubble, in that order. Europe: 1. Slovenia 2. Croatia This one is actually pretty secure since neither Slovenia nor Croatia can qualify for the OQT through the WC. The above assumes no major shakeup in the relative world ranking of the teams that fail to make the top 16 at the World Cup. Edit: this qualification system is terrible.

What a boring logo.

I expected nothing and I’m still let down. A pretty large part of me feels like it would be well deserved for this current generation of Canadian NBA players to never qualify for the Olympics.

It does undeniably cheapens the tournament. You can only beat the team in front of you, sure, but it is undeniable that regardless of who wins this tournament, they aren’t the best national team in the world (including if this US C-team wins). Kind of reminds me of Olympic weightlifting (especially on the women’s side) where the Olympic champion often didn’t have to beat the best athlete in their weight class. Just feels a little cheap.

Walk off home-run to cap off a five inning, 7-0 victory for Canada over Brazil. Canada, along with the US and Japan, maintains their records of qualifying for every Olympic softball tournaments. Brazil actually played pretty well, their fielding especially was impressive.

Not as bad as when that same IF made the ‘B’ World Championships an Olympic qualifying event...

Ya I remember rumors way back in 2015.

Maybe instead of abandoning against athletes people should try to, ya know, beat them?

This is how it always works at worlds and at the Olympics for Judo.

So, beat 17-0 in 2.5 innings (Canada only batted two innings), powered by a 15 run second inning that started with Canada stealing home plate. Obviously Canada was favoured to win this game, but Cuba is probably not that bad most days. Amazingly some of the Cuban players are veterans of their only Olympic campaign in Sydney 2000, where they actually finished ahead of Canada. Spare a thought for Yilian Tornes who now has an ERA of 126...

The biggest esport tournament in the world, The International, has just taken place in Shanghai. OG repeated as champion and won the 15.6 million dollar grand prize over 2017 champion :LIB Team Liquid. Hometown favourite PSG.LGD finished third.

I duno, at least I was able to watch some of those...

What’s up with Eurobasket having the most random collection of host nations?

I mean, it's about time they transition from the heptathlon to the decathlon.

So, basically you have three teams of four. The game is played with a giant, light ball. Three members of a team hold the ball while the fourth hits it, immediately after announcing which of the other two teams they are "attacking". If the ball hits the floor or a foul is committed both teams that weren't being attacked get a point. The team that was attacked now attacks one of the other teams. Game continues until a team reaches a predetermined number of points. The game is basically about finding creative and deceptive ways of attacking another team, along with obviously being good at chasing down the ball when your team is attacked.

We actually played this a lot in high school. Probably the second most obscure sport we did (after kinball).

I mean that works too :P

I really hope gets both a men’s and women’s trap wildcard.

Laser run? I thought that was going to be some cool laser tag thing, not the lame biathlon but worse in every way combined run shoot they use in Modern Pentathlon.

...was it even ruled a tie initially? Hard to arrange a tie when they have a photo finish camera.

They might as well call this the B Basketball World Championship, it’s worse than the Ice Hockey World Championship in terms of player participation. Though, granted, even the Olympics are weird in that regard given that the US could probably have the best, second best, third best and fourth best teams. Either way, it’s shaping up to be a bit of a boring competition. Big scrap for silver while the C team dominates.

Japan would have qualified even if they weren’t the host nation, so...

So at least in Canadian English there is a difference. The prime minister is the leader of the federal government while a premier is the leader of a provincial government. Meanwhile in French (even in Canada) both are the same word.

A men's quota gets re-allocated since the US, who won the mixed team event, already had a men's quota and Brazil was in the top 4 of the individual event.