JoshMartini007

It's not about whether Cuba would be rich/poor. Communist nations spent more on sport in order to make their nation (and communism as a whole) appear strong. Once that disappeared, their strength dropped over the next decade.

True, but the sport budget would have been slashed decades ago.

Given what happened to most of the former communist nations, Cuba would likely be a lot weaker from a sporting perspective.

Nice to see Pan America doing well. Even if you subtract the United States we have 2G-4S-5B which is comparable to Europe who has 2G-5S-3B. Not sure how long we can keep up though...

Strategy is a big thing as the races get longer

Not to take anything away from them, but Canada has consistently been better than Australia in women's rugby union. Still, a strong win. Hopefully we can get one more win in our final two matches.

It'll be tough as only 6 teams will compete. Hopefully they'll create a more fair qualification system than 2020. World Cup, three continental qualifiers (Americas, Europe/Africa, Asia/Oceania) and a final qualifier.

The following won a qualifying spot to compete in the main draw. Men's draw Patrick Rooney Matias Knudsen Matthew Lai Ivan Perez Women's draw Lauren Baltayan Nardine Garas Marta Dominguez Toby Tse The round of 48 begins in a few hours

Honestly there isn't that much money in swimming and once the novelty runs out (and possibly someone dying) then I feel this experiment will die out.

Bookmaker odds are less about reality and more about feels. If betting people feel he's the favourite then he will have the best odds. In the end the bookmakers want to make a profit.

I'm not surprised about Bolivia's win over Brazil. Brazil hates playing in Bolivia (Moreso than the other South American nations) and with nothing to play for it was expected they wouldn't play at 100%. I think the other confederations are happy with the result

1st day of the men's qualifier saw most of the top seeds advance with the biggest upset being Matthew Lai defeating his compatriot Henry Leung. The women's qualifier saw similar results with the biggest upset being Malak Fathy defeating Emilai Soini

The Egyptian Open begins today. This is a Diamond Level event, the highest outside of the World Championships in the PSA Tour.

Another case of an executive team forgetting that running a sport federation is different than running a business

Not really, the athlete quota remains the same for the core sports. As for the extra sports they really only benefit a handful of nations. Over 90% of nations will see no benefit.

Given that the United States will be given host quotas and the additional team sports help us inflate our numbers we might set a record of the largest Canadian delegation with over 400 athletes.

I mean, you could do cross-country running in the snow (they are allowed to in the rules), but that gives me the "you can play chess on ice/snow" vibes.

Yeah, they basically need to create a new Olympic qualification tournament (or use the World Cup results)

To be fair, I don't think it was ever a qualification event. I'm positive some news agency in South America made the claim and everyone, including the author from Olympics.com just followed suit without bothering to check if it was true.

Looks like someone is following their own rules

To be fair, Rogge inherited an IOC whose predecessor expanded the Olympics from 27 disciplines to 40 during his reign

I still subscribe to the conspiracy theory that wrestling was safe as long as it conceded to the IOC's demands, but you are correct wrestling was voted out, but only because something had to go. Baseball/softball actually met the threshold to be removed. Hopefull Coventry makes it more transparent. At the very least, applicant cities should disclose which optional sports would be added if they were to be chosen.

Speed 4 was nice to watch at the World Games. It also lessens the chance of a top athlete getting eliminated early on. It brings consistency to the event which may or may not be good depending on who you ask.

Sailing is fine. There are so many sports which basically have one athlete per event. Using that logic rowing would be in much more danger. All sports have their pros and cons, but when it comes down to it, it is very difficult to find enough people to vote something out which is why only baseball/softball was cut in the last 100 years. Even then, it looks like baseball/softball will show up whenever the host country wants it.

While winter sports are narrow, Nordic Combined is clearly the least diverse sport at the Winter Olympics. Their main draw is that they reuse existing venues so they cost almost nothing to host while the lack of women's events have painted a target on their back. The good news is they now have a women's world cup events which is a lot better than Bobsled creating women's monobob without creating a world cup until just before the Olympics. Besides ski mountaineering there really isn't much competition for new sports at the Olympics.