JoshMartini007

Some quick thoughts Ice Hockey At least one of Canada or the United States will win a medal in the men's ice hockey tournament A team from Group B will defeat a team from Group A in the quarterfinals of the women's ice hockey tournament Curling A team from Asia (China, Japan, South Korea) will medal in any curling event Canada will defend its gold medals in the men's and women's curling events. Luge A nation failing to win a medal in the individual events (singles and doubles) will medal in the team relay Bobsleigh At least one athlete will win two medals in bobsleigh Humphries (CAN) will win her third gold medal in two-women's bobsleigh Figure Skating Spain will win its first ever medal in figure skating No European nation will win gold in figure skating Overall Norway will finish first on the medal table The Netherlands will only win medals in speed skating Japan will finish higher than China on the medal table A nation will win six or more medals without winning gold South Korea will finish in the top five on the medal table I'll think of more

Athletes are still qualifying for the team so each time a sport announces a team there's a press release. Today it was the men's ice hockey team.

Gotta catch the North American audiences (11pm-2am eastern) even if there's a good chance neither Canada nor USA reach the final.

I've always been a big supporter of bringing indoor sports to the Winter Olympics. Handball's World Championship is held in January (Men) and December (Women) so it's not like the athletes aren't ready to compete in February.

Here are the Unofficial Badminton Team Event Qualifiers (Top 14+Australia) 1. India - 261864 2. Malaysia - 237912 3. England - 193037 4. Singapore - 125179 5. Australia - 119421 6. Scotland - 111910 7. Canada - 107209 8. Mauritius - 62357 9. South Africa - 37713 10. Sri Lanka - 35914 11. New Zealand - 35821 12. Nigeria - 35515 13. Zambia - 33407 14. Uganda - 27642 15. Jamaica - 27300 ----------- 16. Ghana - 19990 17. Botswana - 15644 18. Barbados - 14530 19. Wales - 11720 20. Pakistan - 11440

Golf Tripartite Places (1 Boy and 1 Girl) Link

They also have figure skating and short track speed skating events.

Canada dominated the points table among nations with no medals, 30 vs. Botswana's 14. Overall 12 top 8 places (5th-8th) with a potential of three more if De Grasse and Drouin competed. Hopefully Own the Podium realizes the performance and won't cut funding.

Every now and then there's talk about moving some of the indoor sports from the summer games to the winter games. Sports like handball already have their world champs in the winter and track cycling is held at the end of winter.

Yup For the girls' event, the top eight nations in the UEFA men's futsal rankings will be invented to qualifying. Two four-team mini-tournaments will be held with the two winners qualifying for the Youth Olympics. For the boys' event, the top 16 nations in the rankings will invited and will compete in four mini-tournaments. The group winners will then be ranked by result and the top two nations in that ranking not qualified for the girls' event will qualify for the boys' event.

To make things crazier they will rank the winning teams and the top 2 will make it to the Youth Olympics.

I wish some of the Canadian players were half as firm as Ovechkin instead of "it would be nice to go" attitude they have.

Yeah, Canada obviously only accepted him and his family as a refugee because they saw the potential of a 10 year old boy. Would you rather he spend his entire life in a Kenyan refugee camp?

The ISSF has allocated its tripartite quotas. Men’s 10m Rifle Women’s 10m Rifle Men’s 10m Pistol Women’s 10m Pistol The other quotas; four men’s rifle, two women’s rifle, five men’s pistol and four women’s pistol have been reallocated as wild cards.

I’m a bit confused by the wording for the BMX team qualification The YOG BMX Juniors Nations Ranking (to be published by 1 November 2017) is calculated by considering the best rank from the following rankings: E. UCI Men Juniors BMX nations ranking following the 2017 Men Juniors BMX World Championships (published 01 August 2017) F. UCI Women Juniors BMX nations ranking following the 2017 Women Juniors BMX World Championships (published 01 August 2017) Ties are broken by the remaining rank. If ties still exists, the E rank is decisive. The 13 best ranked nations in the YOG BMX Juniors Nations Ranking will qualify their NOC. Are we adding the two rankings or taking the best male and female athlete and making a ranking from that? It sounded like they wanted to combined the rankings, but the tie breaker point confuses me (what is remaining rank?). We could wait until November, but regardless the same 13 nations qualify

Just to confirm the Hockey5s tournament will now be a 12 team tournament with Argentina getting a quota for both genders and each of the five continents getting two spots. The 12th team will go to the third place team from a random draw (see below), should the third place team from that continent decline the spot moves to the next continent. For the boys (Oceania > Asia > Europe > Africa > Pan America) and for girls (Africa > Asia > Europe > Oceania > Pan America) Link

There's also a rule where a team can only have one team sport (beach handball, futsal, hockey5 and rugby sevens) per gender. Brazil may pick futsal should they qualify. Should they decline it looks like Uruguay would be the next nation to be offered a spot.

Each team has 9 athletes Also the 10th team for the men's tournament is currently Brazil, the highest ranked Pan American nation in the men's senior world rankings, since no other Pan American team participated at the U17 World Championship.

By my count here are the FINA points ranking, the top 16 will be allowed to send 4 male and 4 female swimmers to the Youth Olympics. The points were calculated by adding up all of the results of each swimmer at the latest stage of an event (finals > semis > prelims) 1. - 68004 2. - 58998 3. - 51642 4. - 49912 5. - 48253 6. - 40188 7. - 39789 8. - 39496 9. - 39417 10. - 29246 11. - 26804 12. - 22780 13. - 22062 14. - 21747 15. - 21591 16. - 20814 17. - 20288 18. - 20046 19. - 19979 20. - 19658 21. - 19626 22. - 19619 23. - 18864 24. - 17283 25. - 16948 26. - 15919 27. - 15457 28. - 15034 29. - 14687 30. - 13975 Overall there wasn't a lot of movement in the second half among the top nations. South Africa was able to move into the Top 16 meaning it won't take a continental spot meaning Germany will qualify. Spain had a terrible second half and drops out of the top 16. New Zealand on the other hand had a great second half, but just missed breaking into the top 16. Mexico, Belarus and France entered the top 30 while Switzerland, Hong Kong and Slovenia drop out.

I'm a bit split on mixed relays. On one hand it gives some of the smaller nations an opportunity to field a team, but on the other hand it's redundant to have both a mixed and a gendered relay. I guess I'm fine with them at the World Championships, but at the Olympics it should be one or the other. Though if I had my way the 4x200m relay and 800m freestyle events would be dropped and the 50m back, breast, and fly would be added. Here's hoping for another relay medal tomorrow. It's a shame the girls didn't win one at the Olympics and that we can't clone Penny Oleksiak so she can swim the free and fly.

The Commonwealth Games isn't too different than the continental games. It's a bit more entertaining because the diversity of the nations means the medals of certain sports are won by a subset of nations rather than the same group of 3-5 nations. Swimming is dominated by Australia and outside of the top two tier nations there isn't much room for others to win medals. Athletics on the other hand arguably has the top field among any non-World/Olympic event (though not as deep as the European Championship).

They use the results from the senior world champs to decide which nations get 4 men and 4 women quotas, all other nations can get a maximum of 2 men and 2 women (of course all individual swimmers must reach the qualifying times)

The 4x200m was a slow race, mostly due to the fact only 10 teams raced and Italy and Denmark were already significantly behind by the third leg. Nobody was a sub-7:50. Though to be fair while Canada will cut down some time it won't be enough for a medal.

I imagine one of those two extra spots will be used to separate the host nation and the continental qualifier so both China and Japan will likely qualify.

The FINA points thing for Youth Olympic qualification is a bit confusing does anyone know how it is officially done? Currently I have added up the points earned at the latest stage for each athlete (Finals > Semis > Prelims) including giving 0 to athletes which were disqualified (currently this does not change who qualifies). Anyway here is the top 30 at the halfway point. 1. – 28860 2. – 27128 3. – 22251 4. – 21268 5. – 20240 6. – 17480 7. – 16963 8. – 15391 9. – 15230 10. – 11769 11. – 11334 12. – 10298 13. – 10246 14. – 9869 15. – 8979 16. – 8490 17. – 8459 18. – 8326 19. – 8195 20. – 8124 21. – 7962 22. – 7725 23. – 7597 24. – 7377 25. – 6850 26. – 6118 27. – 5868 28. – 5853 29. – 5713 30. – 5709 Unsurprisingly the larger teams have more points. This is apparent with France whom doesn’t even make the top 30 because they only sent 9 swimmers. Remember all continents must be represented which means Egypt or South Africa will replace the 16th place team should they fail to reach that ranking. Also apparently the mixed relays don’t give FINA points.