NearPup

Based on what? He’s going to have an opposition PM that is propped up by his own party, so what? He’ll be able to govern for the rest of his term and his successor gets to blame all the problems on the left, it’s not that bad of a situation.

Did I miss Macron announcing his resignation?

The big question I have is why the women’s C-2 (and C-1) events weren’t fully developed in the 90s or early 2000s? The men’s C-1 and C-2 were inevitably going to disappear from the Olympics without a women’s counterpart, this was a really predictable consequence, and I honestly don’t understand why more wasn’t done to safeguard the C-2 event from this fate. Is it just incompetence on the ICF’s part? They suffered more from the gender equality push than any other federation except maybe the UWW, and they seemed to completely inexplicably take the longest to create more opportunities for female athletes. Like I really do not understand why canoeing, of all sports, was among the most complacent when it comes to gender equality concerns.

The C-2 event is a casualty of the fact the ICF didn’t bother to start developing women’s canoeing in the 90s or earlier. The sports that waited the longest to develop more women’s participation are the ones that got hit the hardest when gender equality became a bigger concern, and that’s not really a coincidence. I genuinely don’t think there is any way the ICF could have kept the men’s C-2 in Tokyo short of already having a women’s C-2 event developed.

The only athletes I'll really be rooting against are the ones that have known or highly suspected violent, sexual or domestic crimes or doping violations.

This is about what I want, not about what is possible :P

I think my biggest non-Canadian wishlist item is for to win a gold medal in table tennis. Beyond that: and in field hockey Nadeem in the men's javelin Wiffen in swimming Literally everyone who plays against Zverev in tennis Routliffe and Sun in the women's doubles in tennis Ondra in climbing The Alexandri sisters in the women's duet in artistic swimming McIlroy in golf Yulo in gymnastics Nemour in gymnastics And any athlete from a country that has never won a gold medal.

Don't give the IOC any idea, soon they will only allow eight athletes per event

Vite, allons tous chier dans la Seine!

There's almost no such thing as tourists that can qualify to the Olympics anymore. Skiing is the only sport I can think of where mediocre athletes from a big country can still qualify, outside of a few edge cases for some continental quotas. Someone is always going to finish last, but when only 45 athletes can qualify in the 1500m you're a pretty dang good athlete even if you get the last ranking spot. I think in this era where there are very tight qualification standards it doesn't make a lot of sense to have internal standards that are harder than the official qualification standard (outside of continental quotas, some of whom do in fact go to athletes that are genuinely not competitive)

Some extremely different reactions to Cavendish's win I see xD

I'd say the closest thing to a gold medal lock Canada has is McIntosh in the 400m IM, but I hesitate to call McIntosh a shoe-in in any race.

There could be additional athletes added on July 7th

5pm ET

In either case, very happy Tsimanouskaya qualified, and hopefully she will have a much, much better Olympic experience than in Tokyo...

women's table tennis team men's table tennis team women's basketball team women's gymnastics team

Glad to see Canadian representation in both the men’s and women‘s version of my favourite Olympic event (the steeplechase).

I specifically chose the golf example because that isn’t a matter of cost for the NOC. And ya, in this case they wouldn’t even have to decline a quota, they could just pick a team that is one spot lower in the world ranking.

Woke has gone too far, you can’t even rape a child and then go to the Olympics without people complaining smh. Legally there is nothing wrong going on, though if van de Velde qualifies for LA I certainly hope the US will denny him entry into the country. But morally, I think it does say something about the morals of the people running the Dutch NOC that they are more comfortable having an unrepentant child rapist on the team than a golfer that isn’t in the top 50 in the world ranking. I would be a bit more forgiving if this was an NOC like the US or Canada that rarely decline quotas, rather than an NOC like the Netherlands or New Zealand who routinely turn down quotas from athletes that might “embarrass” them.

The top five seeds are from a random draw between continental champions.

Probably would have been fine to have an unseeded draw…

The only thing special or interesting about it is that it’s harder to fuck up for the organizers and the athletes than riding was :P This really feels like a bad / cheap American Ninja Warriors set.

This is technically only decided on site, but logically it should be Dabrowski and FAA.

This is a nice surprise This is only Raonic's second Olympics after having competed in 2012. I guess he only shows up when it's in a Grand Slam venue xD

prob not feeling good about getting a lucky loser berth xD