NearPup

To add some information, Wang and Ly were pre-qualified by ranking and Jeremy Hazin won the Olympic trials. Wang if competing in his 4th Olympics, Hazin in his second and Ly in his first.

It's very satisfying reading about this news on Inside the Games, with the giant IBA banner across the top of the screen.

I would be shocked if the neutral athlete pathway wasn't something that was designed with input from the French government.

This, however, is 100% true :P

Fun fact: he announced his retirement exactly two years ago on April Fools day

Ah! So you are a fellow American :D Congrats on acquiring citizenship, it's always a huge milestone to gain a new citizenship ^^

So are you Czechoslovak now? :P

Two posts above yours :P

I like telling Americans that watching a full match of Rugby League will explain the origin of basically every weird American Football rule.

I am very aware that change would be bad for (in general, not just this year)

I honnestly much prefer the status quo (where qualifying to the Olympics is extremely hard but where we at least have a full set of events) to this. And as was mentioned earlier in the thread, I think most of the most egregious qualifying situations can be fixed by flipping the priority of the continental quotas with the at large world ranking quotas. Fencing also happens to have pretty good universality already. Just last Olympics and won their only gold medals in Fencing, and both and won their first ever fencing gold in a team event.

Rugby League has already banned this type of tackle, and in fact it looks like the NFL basically copied the rule that was added to Rugby League.

Ya I would definitively *hate* this... Fencing has really great team events. I would hate to see it change. It's also an extremely fun event to actually contest as an amateur (I did a little bit of fencing in university) Having two fencer teams or, god forbid, a mixed weapon team event would not be good at all.

Quad God ate the competition whole, my goodness. He is just incredible.

Pairs, not ice dance :P I don't have a lot of hope they will keep progressing given their age tbh. But the fact they won a world championship this late in their career is incredibly impressive.

Incredible win by Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps in the pairs event! Really didn't expect Canada to win a world title this year, at 40(!) I believe Stellato-Dudek is now the oldest ever world champion. Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps both had very long career, it's incredible to see them achieve a world title after so much time. Silver for Riku Miura Ryuchi and Kihara, bronze for Minerva Fabienne Hase and Nikita Volodin

Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps are world champions in pairs! They did a brilliant free skate and both the crowd and the world feed commentators were going wild.

TBH I’m a lot less mad since Tokyo (and becoming an American, which happened after London xD )

Essentially the easiest possible draw, not too bad xD

Ya, golfers have been asking for a team event since day zero. If golf is going to be in the Olympics this is necessary.

It does seem like the Brisbane games aren't in any real risk of being cancelled, but the big project (rebuilding the Gabba) seems less and less likely to happen.

The way Agenda 2020(+5) awards the games is a big mistake. The complete lack of transparancy and awarding the games this far (11 years!) in advance seems bound to create issues.

This made some sense back when the OQTs were easy, but... they really aren't anymore.

There is also a bronze medal in the men's 1500m from Brendan Corey, who is from my hometown of Fredericton :D

Would be very funny if a bunch of American runners, swimmers and gymnasts fled to Canada and requested asylum after failing to make the US Olympic team.