Vektor

Thankfully Switzerland collapsed in the last few minutes. This won't be enough against Croatia, we have to improve. Meanwhile with a huge upset against !!! (Bad news for us, this will complicate things in the next round)

Oh boy....

I don't know, there's absolutely no confidence in this team in Hungary, the general consensus is that this is the weakest Hungarian women's handball team ever. No world class players, the promising young players who won the junior WCh and ECh in recent years are mostly disappointments, many supposedly good players were left out of the team because they are having a terrible season. The main narrative in Hungary is that we should be fighting for the gold medal based on how much money went into our handball, yet here we are with a team that at best is fighting for the 8th place. We haven't won a single medal at the senior level since the 2012 Euros, which makes this the worst period of Hungarian women's handball ever, at the time when our budget is the highest ever.

I hope we will start with an easy victory today. We are doomed if even is a hard task for our team.

I have to say what some of you must be thinking: it makes no sense that isn't banned by IOC when they are a more active participant in the war at this point than , who are included in the Russian ban in most sports. Yeah, you can say that Iran isn't breaking the Olympic truce like technically Belarus did in February but that was always a bullshit excuse for the ban anyway. This ban will go far beyond the 2022 Winter Games, it's got nothing to do with the Olympic truce at this point. IOC should be consistent, they should either only ban Russia or they should ban ALL nations that are supporting the war on the side of Russia. And yeah, if the recent news is true and Iran will attack Saudi Arabia.... but let's hope that won't happen.

throws away their medal and quota at the very end.... I guess wins the bronze after all?

The fact that is great in handball (and in team sports in general) and is missing, makes Olympic qualification far easier than any previous one that we witnessed recently. That's basically two more spots up for grabs than what we usually have. It will be interesting to see which nations benefit from this. (Hopefully us, we need any help we can get to qualify...)

And yeah, because of the Russian ban and France already having a quota, I would say that are the heavy favorites to take this quota.

There's absolutely no way that we will make it to the final. Trust me, we are weak as hell, at best we will reach the Top8 thanks to the lucky draw. from Path A/B from Path C/D Those are the 8 strongest teams in Europe right now. We are lucky, we will only have to beat and to be in the Top8, which seems easier than beating the Germans or Montenegro. I would say that we are part of the "second tier" of nations right now, which consist of And then the "third tier" of this ECh, the supposedly weakest teams are

Our team still sucks, the friendly matches didn't go well for us at all. So nothing new, no improvement from . v 22-22 v 21-19 v 33-28 v 20-31

Still pretty great for us, the Top12 and the Olympic team quota would be a huge deal next year for Hungary, we haven't qualified a gymnastics team in ages.

So appears to be the heavy favorites to win men's team event? Russia isn't here and the other big rival China flopped in the qualifying.

will be around 14th by the end of the day, right? That's kinda crazy, 3 points from the Top12, even with Kovács' injury.

So many "potential host". But I think we should all know that if Seoul wants this, they will easily win 2036 SOG without any contest just like how Brisbane did. It's a no brainer, IOC will take the easiest, savest route, and that is going to be Seoul. The only other option is Berlin, but I kinda doubt that the Germans will take that bid seriously. But if that happens, I think IOC will just pull another Paris/LA and reward both Seoul and Berlin with 2036 and 2040. IOC will rotate the Summer Games between the same couple of wealthy countries until the end of time, unless none of them will bid Plus maybe at some point and hopefully some day. The rest will likely never host a modern Summer Games.

So damn pointless if they will still play at the World Cup. Either boycott the event or focus on your matches instead of doing this bullshit that will achieve absolutely nothing. Western nations did the same thing during EURO 2020 in Hungary and that didn't help progressives here at all.

Don't worry, you gave plenty of time for everyone to vote (more than what I gave them at the previous contest ). The contest should go ahead, regardless of how many users miss the deadline, especially because we wouldn't have that much time to delay anyway as the World Cup will start in a couple of weeks.

I was a bit lazy when I made that. And by that I mean it's not user friendly, I would have to rework it if someone else wants to use those scripts. When I was hosting I was burned out on coding so I decided to simply use an Excel spreadsheet instead to calculate stuff. The spreadsheet calculated the results and then I exported those results to html tables via a Python script. Simple enough for me, but for anyone else it's kinda complicated for no good reason. Essentially I would have to write the entire logic of the voting system into a Python script that calculates everything, that would be the most user friendly solution. I should have done that in the first place for the previous contest, but oh well... I mean, it's not that hard to do, I just never got around to do it and right now I don't have the time for it. Hopefully it will be done by the time of the next contest. If the host is struggling to create the scoreboards in time, they can contact me for help. I can create all the scoreboards in a couple of hours, but they would have to reveal all the votes for me before the final. Which is not ideal, but it can be an emergency solution if that's the only way we can avoid another Open 2021 situation.

So the Grand Final will be on Nov 6th, one week after the voting ends? I mean, it's not impossible to prepare everything in 9 days, but it won't be easy for the host, so I am just doublechecking that the Final's date is correct.

The inclusion of Ukraine feels like a desperate move for me, UEFA probably knows that they are likely losing to Saudi Arabia. Most of Asia and Africa will vote for Saudi Arabia and Egypt, it will be incredibly hard for UEFA to win against that, especially when they might even steal some European votes with the help of Greece being part of this intercontinental bid.

Another very obvious way to free up spots for more worthy team sports like cricket: get rid of 4 teams in men's football. I mean, this is a no brainer. How much time will it take for them to do this? This is the one quota reduction that no one will be upset about because no one cares about the men's football tournament at the Games, yet it has 16 teams, unlike any other teamsport.

Those two disciplines should be worried because of their scandals, not because of cricket. Boxing and weightlifting are two of the most fundamental Olympic sports, they should only be removed if they are beyond saving at this point, not because they would be replaced by yet another team sport. Also, I think having both cricket and rugby at the Games is a bad call. This isn't the Commonwealth Games, pick one of the two and leave the other out of the program. Personally I would pick T20 cricket over rugby sevens. T20 isn't that different from "traditional" cricket, while rugby sevens feels like a cheap imitation of the real thing. Rugby sevens shouldn't have been included in the first place, it's pretty much the equivalent of 3x3 basketball, which also shouldn't be part of the program. So here's my solution: get rid of 3x3 basketball and rugby sevens. And wow, look at that, we just found 352 athlete quotas for T20 cricket this way, which is almost enough for two 12 team tournaments.

300 days to go (hopefully...), tickets will be on sale by the end of November.

I agree that Europe should host 2036, a 16 years gap for European Summer Games would be unprecedented. The issue is that the current economical crisis will hit Europe the hardest out of all the regions, so... yeah, maybe you shouldn't expect Europe to host any Olympic Games or FIFA World Cups soon beyond the ones we already have (Paris 2024 and Milano Cortina 2026). Dark times are ahead of Europe in our near future, so I am expecting that IOC and FIFA won't be eager to pick the continent. I think the 2030 FIFA World Cup will go to Saudi Arabia (plus Greece and Egypt, but we all know which country has all the money out of the three), and the 2036 Summer Games will go to Asia (Seoul or China again, maaaaybe India). Personally I would pick Berlin for SOG 2036 (I don't care how that would look historically, it's been 100 years.), and Spain-Portugal for the 2030 World Cup. But Germany and Spain will probably be busy saving their country (and the EU) for the terrible recession we are facing than to lobby for these events at IOC and FIFA.

That's because the government isn't allowing stores to sell oil, sugar and flour on their market price, they are stuck on the same level as their were in October 2021. Same goes for gasoline. Orbán has to be ensure that people won't literally starve, so that's his solution. 480 HUF for gasoline for example for more than a year now. So there are a few stuff that are crazy cheap compared to the rest of Europe, while everything else is becoming a luxury item for many Hungarians as their wages are worth less and less as the Hungarian currency is on track to hyperinflation.

Budapest is literally on the brink of bankruptcy, as are many other Hungarian cities. The only thing we should be bidding for at this point is help from EU/US/IMF. Even before the current recession Budapest was unsuitable for such an event. Now I am not sure if we will even be able to host the 2023 Athletics Worlds because we are about to witness our worst economic crises since WW2. Edit: I mean, this is not a joke. We might even have to suspend our national leagues during the winter, some venues are already closing down because everyone is out of money. Some of our Olympic athletes might find themselves in a situation where they can't train during the winter. The situation can get as bad as during the pandemic, except this time it's not a virus, we just can't sustain anything due to the insane levels of inflation.