rajiv

Love to see him lose his Australian passport. I hate this stuff. He should surrender his Australian citizenship if he was an honest man. Looks like he had been planning this for a while but as too gutless to say so before the Olympics as he may have been deselected Part honey trap. part money. GB track cycling has a big budget, Australia not so much

You can really expand the number of cricket nations by including all the territories which can contribute to the West Indies team _which is about a dozen but there are four main ones (actually Barbados has historically been the number one contributor) The total population of these West Indies states is about 6 million. As for lacrosse I'm betting now that the gold medal game will be USA beating Canada, but I bet I won't find any takers it's such a sure thing. GB and Australia play lacrosse in a very small way so there's your bronze medal game. As for the rest of the world well I think they may have a national lacrosse team but don't really have much in the way of local leagues. But then that could also be said of China and (field) hockey so who knows what could happen. Look at USA and Canada in rugby7s where both are rugby minnows - once a sport is in the Olympics things can change. Flag football will hopefully also be a oncer with USA the certain winners. Maybe not so much here but I'd say plenty of people are becoming very cynical about the Olympics

I peruse a lot of English language media and you only see the argument that the Olympics should be the peak event in the sport for Olympic inclusion in the UK Imagine if the Olympics was full of sports like track cycling and modern pentathlon type sports which have close to zero life outside the Olympics, It would fade away as (especially US )TV would lose interest. I'm particularly struck by surfing on the OUT llist.Surfing has only ever given out 12 medals and each 6 continents have won medals. But Europeans without an ocean frontage don't like it!! Compare to about 100)?) events involving snow.Tough for the majority of the world below the Tropic of Cancer. Then compare ice hockey to (field) hockey Ice hockey has 2 serious countries outside Europe. Yes there's more money in ice hockey but(normal) hockey is a lot more international .Indeed in the Netherlands, for instance , it rivals paedophilia in popularity.

Some people here have been regular complainants about the so-called free pass that Oceania receives in Olympic entries But Oceania ALWAYS does better than Africa and I've yet to see anyone here ever complain about soft spots for Africa In these Olympics: Africa 12-9-14=35 Oceania 28-27-19=74 I don't think Africa has ever done better than Oceania on any medal table . Guess Europeans just aren't allowed to say Africa has too many soft places but have no problem doing so for Oceania

How about Five Eyes nations? ( these nations work together in intelligence and other matters) USA UK(GB) Canada Australia NewZealand Total =91-99-101 =291 Commonwealth= 62-69-79 =210

I note that the Australia medal count is extremely female dominated. Only one gold medal of twelve is by a male. Be of interest to have different tables for men and women for all countries. My impression of Australia (from spending time there) is that the women there are much more Olympic Games interested than men who much prefer their local sports. Simply put sporty boys choose their sport for economic possibility whereas sporty girls want to be an Olympian. Of course, women are also affected by the financial possibilities of sport. I'm sure many Eastern Europeans of both sexes who once would have been track and field athletes now look to play sports like tennis (and of course soccer)

Womens rugby 7s in rather an immature sport which is really only in the Olympics for gender equity reasons. It was actually in the Olympics before it was in the Commonwealth Games-which is curious for what has always been a Commonwealth dominated sport There really aren't local leagues even in rugby countries and teams are selected from sporty girls who may not even have any rugby background (so I've read) .You can tell this by both Canada and USA doing so well.Both these countries have tiny rugby cultures exemplified by neither being men's World Cup qualifiers (the main indicator of rugby culture) Still it's fun to watch.I just say this to show that how an event gets into the Olympics is very political. These days you must have a women's event in everything .I'm sure our grandparents would have been flabbergasted at women's boxing being in the Olympics

I guess that's an understandable postion for someone who wants Ireland to be a major sporting country. In the past The native Irish have done best through doping but that's harder now. Wasn't your top Olympian a doper? Weren't even your horses in equestrian doped? Now you are doing better in athletics via immigration.If your team becomes as immigrant based as GB's is no doubt you will do better still If you can minimise the number of ethnic Celtic types on Irish national sporting teams there should be grand days ahead for Irish sport.

People here have a very different attitude to these faux national teams to me. I loathe these so-called national teams full of recent migrants and expats who can somehow get their hands on a passport. It's pretty common in places like Qatar and even a so called mature sporting country like the UK is well known for making enquiries of people who may have a UK born grandparent

If, as is likely, the Olympic cricket tournament is a 6 or 8 team affair then USA should not be a participant. Fancy USA taking the place of Bangladesh or Sri Lanka for instance. Cricket is their national sport and their only chance for participating in an Olympic team sport. I don't think Greece fielded a team in hockey in the Athens Olympics so there is a precedent. I recall that there was a real argument about GB participating in basketball as they were several levels below the 2nd weakest team. I doubt that Australia would throw a major tantrum if they were excluded from the Brisbane Games Handball tournament

There isn't one USA player who would even be in the conversation when it comes to choosing a combined Pakistan USA team. Pakistan has some history in, shall we say, not giving 100%. India-or maybe I should say some Indians-desperately wants the USA to take cricket seriously goodness knows why but they do) Connecting the dots isn't ridiculous. Cricket is now so Indian controlled through money. OK England and Australia can survive without Indian money (although their players don't mind the million dollars paydays that India provides) but the rest of the cricket world is so greatly dependent on India

I confess that I wonder about this. Cricket had a large corruption problem and Pakistani players aren't paid much compared to ,say ,India (India won't allow Pakistanis to play in the huge money IPL) India is about 85% of the total money in cricket and is desperate to make cricket a bigger deal game. Connect the dots. There is plenty of history of foul play involving players looking for money. Much sport is questionable these days. Sadly.

Viewing this with little interest but I used to have the impression that Canada was traditionally stronger than the US in what many here would call Commonwealth type sports like cricket, rugby and (field) hockey. Seems to have changed. Maybe due to changing immigration patterns.

Every Olympic medal event must have the support of a minimum of 10% of all NOCs (currently that's 21 countries)) with ño continent having more than half of these NOCs There are so many events-especially in the Winter Games -which are just not really very international (although they can be demonstration sports)

Depends where you're from. In Australa and New Zealand eventing is equestrian