JoshMartini007

This might sound bias, but I think the only thing that can defeat Canada is a really hot goalie.

Yeah, the biggest challenge for Team Europe was whether they could play together in a short time. On paper the team is pretty good. On a good day Slovakia can defeat anyone while Switzerland, Germany and Denmark have solid players, though lack depth when it comes to international play (not a problem here obviously). Add a sprinkle of other nation's top players and you could have something special.

Congrats to Europe, I thought they could have been a dark horse, but their pre-tournament games gave me doubt.

Looks like Kosovo was given a last minute approval to have some of their players to switch allegiance so they can play for them.

Pretty much. The second tier European nations (Spain, Czech Republic, France, Germany) have yet to catch up to Netherlands and Italy.

Canadian wrestler Tamerlan Tagziev tested positive for Meldonium and has been banned for four years. He was not part of the 2016 Olympic team. Link

The main difference is that Omnium is part of the World Championship while the combined isn't. Though I guess they have four years to make it an event, but it looks like the 2016 World Championship won't have a combined event. IMO I think speed would have been the most interesting event to showcase. I think the IOC went overboard in trying to get as many events possible with only a 500 athlete limit. Skatboarding and surfing is fine (20 per event) though the other three would have liked more athletes.

It will in the Asian market. There's a reason why table tennis (and badminton) are safely in the third tier of revenue sharing for 2016. Honestly unless the sport is in the bottom two tiers of revenue sharing I doubt there will be any danger of them being dropped. Golf and rugby sevens were automatically placed in group E so their position within the Olympic community will change. Group A. Aquatics, athletics, gymnastics. Group B Basketball, cycling, football, tennis, volleyball. Group C Archery, badminton, boxing, judo, rowing, shooting, table tennis, weightlifting. Group D Canoe/kayak, equestrian, fencing, handball, hockey, sailing, taekwondo, triathlon, wrestling. Group E Modern pentathlon, golf, rugby.

I’m going to analyze each sport a bit more in-depth. Overall I will look at each event within the sport and any potential changes and additions, keeping in mind athlete and event limitations seen in the games. I would like to hear your opinions as well (I am going to split aquatics). Archery Current Events: Individual Recurve Team Recurve Recurve archery has been a mainstay at the Olympics since 1972 though the sport also had some appearances during the early days of the games. Overall the format is pretty good, a 64 person single elimination tournament for the singles and a 12 team singles elimination tournament for the team event. The sport is able to find a balance between bringing the best and increasing universality. In a world where athlete quotas didn’t matter there would be very little doubt about the addition of compound events. Despite not having the Olympics compound archery is highly competitive and is played by many nations. Of course adding another 128 athletes for an event that to a person unfamiliar with archery would see as a duplicate would be a hard sell. While an athlete neutral option is possible where the recurve and compound become a 32 person tournaments and the team event becomes a mixed team (one man and one woman) I feel the reduction of quotas for the recurve will hurt the sport. The event will become less diverse overall, especially if you allow two athletes from the same NOC to compete in the same event and if you only allow one athlete per NOC in the individual event you lose a bit of strength. A happy medium would be two 48 person tournaments with mixed team which would increase the total athlete quota by 64. Again it will likely be a tough sell overall. In the current format I prefer the team event over the mixed team. Having three people shoot is a bit more interesting than two people as it can add more variation to the event. I guess you could just add the mixed team event since the athletes would come from the individual pool and thus keep things quota neutral.

Pretty much, a sport/event being dominated by one nation should have no bearing on its inclusion in the Olympics. Now if the sport is dominated because only a small handful of nations play it is one thing, but in reality table tennis is one of the most played sports in the Olympics. The Chinese and East Asia in general are that good

The race walk has always had people against it and the 50km is an easier target since it does not have a women's event. I would personally like to see a shorter distance. My high school events had 2km walks, though IAAF has had 5km events for younger people. Canoe slalom is also an easy target, not very popular outside of Europe and requires a sport specific venue which costs the host money.

Probably. Qualification to the Winter Olympics is less entertaining since most of them are rankings published 1-2 months before the games. As for biathlon their host quota allocation is a bit weird too. At the top they reserved one quota for a man and a woman, but in the host section they say South Korea would be given a team should they not qualify one.

Baseball/Softball has only been added for the 2020 program (though should US win the 2024 games it'll likely make an appearance again) I'll post my thoughts later.

Women's rugby (and women's football) are listed under summer sports instead of team sports for some reason. As for women's field hockey getting funding I remember reading that the federation convinced OTP that they are worth investing due to their youth team. We'll probably see changes in the funding model once they take Olympic results into account.

What are they protesting? Are they arguing that the pass wasn't fully completed until the athlete entered the passing zone?

Canada is one away from tying the non-boycotted record of most medals won at a Summer Olympics. We still have a few chances though none I would say are favourites (women's 800m is the most likely one IMO) This is assuming we get to keep the 4x100m relay medal.

Not to sound too pessimistic, but while Canada may end up at around the same medals as 2012 our diversity has dropped. Yes it is nice (and important) that we are winning medals in swimming and athletics, but it isn't worth it if our other sports drop in quality (though to be fair sports like rowing were already dying before swimming and athletics rose)

Our nation is hyping up the bromance between the two. I thought it was funny, they almost burst out laughing in the middle of the race while all of the other guys were dying to cross the line and then Bolt is like "lol, not this time." It even looked like he slowed down just a bit just so he can barely beat him.

I don't think we'll see diving over the line becoming the norm. Normally it is not an effective way of moving (you need to slow down in order to get a decent push off) if Miller continued running she would have won, though to be fair it looked like she couldn't take another step so it worked for her here.

What a weird rivalry we ended up having with France. I wonder if they've noticed that.

With USA and France gone I think any of the four teams will fancy their chances. If Germany can get their stuff together they would be the heavy favourites, but they haven't looked dominant at all here, including losing to Canada (though to be fair both teams rested some of their players and the match didn't mean too much as both teams were advancing)

That's on Tuesday, though I'd say Barber has a better chance.

So, Canadian men, are you ever going to win a medal? Looking at the schedule their best chance will be on Monday (though a man could win on Sunday).

The men's fours team made the final, hopefully the women's eights will do the same. They need to save the sport from disappearing in Canada.

Good performance from Canada, it looks like it won't be enough to medal (she'll likely finish somewhere between 4-7)