JoshMartini007

6 minutes ago, dareza said:

but how Russia beat Canada? They are very weak

Russia has defeated Canada multiple times this year. Canada was the favourite, but losing to Russia (especially after losing to Germany) was realistic.

I really thought Canada would at least make the finals and lose to Samoa, but we've had trouble defeating Russia this year too.

12 minutes ago, dcro said:

ISSF has updated the qualification table.

Armenia and Morocco have received one quota each.

It looks like the two spare quotas came from Russia

With that bracket Germany could pull off the upset.

lol Canada.

Ireland will be the favourite going into tomorrow, but Samoa will have a great chance at qualifying.

You can't form an opinion on Canada's chances until it at least faces Germany. Sri Lanka is the weakest team in the event while Uruguay isn't too much better.

It seems the gain in popularity in rugby sevens has hurt Tonga the most. They use to be on the outside looking in, but to be fair group A is a very strong group, both Zimbabwe and Tonga would have had a chance to reach the quarter-final if placed in any other group.

Ireland just defeated Samoa. It looks like the nation is finally taking sevens seriously.

IAAF could have avoided this if they made their standards harder and added the next highest ranked athletes if needed like in swimming (in fact that's pretty much what is said in the qualification document). Do we really need almost 200 runners in both marathons?

It looks like we may go over the 2005 athlete limit set by IAAF. Even ignoring relay only athletes and Russia we're already around the max. I know the larger nations have additional requirements so the real number is lower, but once you add wild cards and relay only athletes plus last minute qualifiers it doesn't look like they will finish at or below the number, especially if Russia is let back in.

I wonder if the IOC will do anything about

1 hour ago, dcro said:

Still clueless about those 20 wild cards... Don't get what's taking so long.

Maybe they are waiting for the other nations to confirm the quotas before announcing. Let’s see if we can make some educated guesses. In total there are 103 tripartite nations. Of those 35 qualified to the Olympics through the rankings, leaving us with 68. Only South Sudan doesn’t have a judo federation meaning the other 67 nations have a chance. I remember from 2012 that athletes which did not have an Olympic ranking were given a wild card so you can’t rule anyone out, but here’s a ranking list of nations with athletes which have a rankings (ordered by athlete with the most points). In total 29 nations have ranked athletes.

Montenegro – 541pts

Monaco – 233pts

Andorra – 133pts

Yemen – 125pts

Cape Verde – 67pts

Congo DR – 56pts

Burundi – 52pts

Liechtenstein – 52pts

Palestine – 50pts

Afghanistan – 48pts

Guinea – 48pts

Chad – 44pts

Botswana – 30pts

Panama – 13pts

San Marino – 8pts

Djibouti – 6pts

Nepal – 6pts

Rwanda – 6pts

Swaziland – 6pts

Macedonia – 4pts

Malawi – 4pts

Syria – 4pts

Laos – 2pts

Malta – 2pts

Nicaragua – 2pts

Paraguay – 2pts

Suriname – 2pts

Bangladesh – 1pt

Central African Republic – 1pt

25 minutes ago, dcro said:

I don't get why they discriminate heavier boxers and give them much less quotas than to others... Boxing is the only combat sport which doesn't have the same number of quotas in all weights.

There’s less participation in the heavier weight classes. If the IOC gives boxing more quotas they may make things more equal, but they are not going to reduce the other quotas.

It’ll be interesting in 2020 to see if the IOC gives them more athlete quotas since they want to add more female events. I suspect the IOC may try to get AIBA to reduce the number of men’s events.

Spain has announced its swimming team. A total of 23 swimmers will compete. Men’s 1500m freestyle swimmer Marc Sanchez who was included on the initial roster has been removed due to not recovering from surgery fast enough. The list doesn’t include their open water swimmer so in actually their total is 24.

Link (in Spanish)

El Salvador's Oscar Ticas was found to be doping (also Canada's Jay Lyon). If his suspension stays it will be likely that El Salvador will lose its qualification spot meaning it will be transferred to Cuba.

Link

18 minutes ago, dcro said:

Well, looks like someone could stop China. Spain destroyed them today, with 77 - 43 win.

I wouldn’t call for the end of China just yet. They are the type of team that would essentially throw a game knowing they don’t have a chance here and focus on the quarter-final/winning the 5th place match.

23 minutes ago, De_Gambassi said:

 

What about Argentina then ? From the little I've seen, they looked like a decent team also.

 

By the way, Cuba's first half yesterday night was awful.

Yup, Argentina has a good chance for an upset too. Cuba's second quarter was pretty bad. I want to say Cuba was just saving its energy since it was always going to lose to France, but it was just France outworking them.

China will be the favourite to take the last spot, but I wouldn't call them a lock. Cuba has a decent team and Nigeria has looked decent in its first two matches too.

50 minutes ago, rybak said:

Anyone know how big are chances to see Polish diver in Rio? I remember that we qualified provisionaly one diver via World Cup in February, but later he dissapear from list of qualified divers. We will know this after end of reallocation process?

It will come down to how many divers overlap between the 3m synchro and 3m individual events. Poland is currently third on the wait list meaning it can only afford up to four athletes from nations which qualified to the synchro event to not be selected to compete in the individual event. Overall it is hard to say. Looking at 2012 Poland would have just missed it, but it could be different this year, I say about 50%.

13 minutes ago, james89 said:

I'm happy that Canada made it in, but this is one sport I really don't understand the qualification and how some competitors can fluctuate their performance so much. 

Eligible nations (nations which did not qualify through the world championships) are ranked based on the results of each event, the top three athletes are given 28, 25 and 23 points respectively while the ranking continues in sequential numbers (22, 21, 20 etc). The top six male results or top four female results are summed together to create the ranking list. For the Pan American championships the top seven men's teams and the top four women's teams qualify one quota for that gender which can be used in any event.

Overall I think it is a poor system. While it gives weaker nations an opportunity to qualify it hurts middle-tier nations where they may have two decent athletes, but are not strong enough to qualify more than one quota. Plus you have the whole issue of dividing a maximum of six athletes into eight events for the men and four athletes into seven events for the women.

Poor Vanuatu. Maybe without Australia's and China's top teams they can take the continental quota.

30 minutes ago, Milan said:

Guys like Isner, Thiem and Tomic make it look bad. Wozniacki and many others who in fact don't meet the requirements will probably be allowed to play.

Then what's the point of making the requirements harder if you aren't going to uphold them? The ITF gambled and it looks like they lost.

28 minutes ago, dareza said:

 

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Caroline Wozniacki isn’t eligible to compete in the Rio de Janeiro Olympics yet even though she has been picked to carry Denmark’s flag at the Opening Ceremony.

She has appealed against the International Tennis Federation’s decision on eligibility, and Denmark Tennis Federation spokesman Thomas Konigsfeldt said on Friday it was backing her hearing on June 30 during Wimbledon.

The former No. 1-ranked tennis player failed to play the required two Fed Cup ties in the Olympic qualifying period.

Wozniacki was set to meet the Olympic criteria in April against Bosnia and Herzegovina in Cairo. But nine days before the tie, she rolled her right ankle so badly that she didn’t play for 10 weeks until this week in Nottingham, England.

In February, the Danish Olympic Committee chose Wozniacki to be its flagbearer, and she called it “a dream come true.”

She can still be the flag bearer ;), Manny Pacquiao carried the flag for the Philippines at the 2008 Olympics.

I feel the Davis/Fed cup requirements were a bit too harsh and we're seeing it with many top players missing out at the Olympics which will make the sport look bad.

29 minutes ago, Pavlo said:

hmm, i`ve always seen Panama as stronger nation, they have already some medals and often are quite close to 1 or 2 each games. El Salvador? Maybe they have 2-3 more qualified athletes but in my private opinion they are weaker than Panama and on similar level as Honduras. I was surprised that those nations were classified to 2 different "divisions".

I disagree, having one or two good athletes doesn't mean you are good at qualifying. El Salvadorians may not be top level, but they are strong enough to qualify, unlike most of Panama's athletes. Honduras is like Pakistan, they can qualify in team events, inflating their numbers, but overall they are very weak in Olympic qualifying.

I'm not saying El Salvador is clearly better than Panama, but it isn't surprising to see them on the other side of the tripartite line.

35 minutes ago, Pavlo said:

stronger HON and PAN are tripartite and El Salvador isn`t....IOC

El Salvador is stronger than those two nations in Olympic qualification. Honduras is almost nothing without football while Panama doesn't have much outside of athletics.

El Salvador is just on the other side of the cut-off for tripartite consideration. They have qualified six athletes without help and will gain two more spots in athletics and swimming through the wild cards so they aren't hurting for spots.

5 minutes ago, intoronto said:

Raonic and Pospisil have announced they are competing in doubles together. So looks like Nestor is out.

That was back in 2015, but you're probably right. I've heard Nestor is hard to partner with, but I don't expect Raonic to look good once they face a true doubles team.

It's always weird to see an athlete from a different continent competing. What's Iran doing here?