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

Have a problem with the current system of qualification - seems to have USA as the only team with more than 2 golfers (maybe Sth Korea also qualifies in the women's event ) The no 3 GB Australia or Sth Africa doesn't make it in this system because they are not in the top 10 My alternative? Allow minimum of 21 NOCs(=10 % of all NOCs) to compete (including host + all continents) with all countries having a golfer from outside top 100 in top 100 qualifying. Max of 4 per NOC There may well be more than 21 countries and some golfers outside top 100 qualifying.But not necessarily . Don't see the point oh having a no 250 rather than a no 60 qualifying

This topic makes me realise that reducing the national umbers in swimming events from three to two reduces the number of medals that USA and Australia would win. I think Australia has only had sweeps in swimming but this can no longer happen (say in the W 100m free ) I see that some sports can have 4 entrants from a country. Indeed this is the norm (?)in the Winter Games. The cynic in me says that this is just so countries of the Global North can have more medals ie more entrants =more medal chances

Pretty obvious that the Western Left and the Jihadi lads are natural allies for the time being in that both want to tear down liberal bourgeois democracy. The alliance may not last if they are successful but we aren't there yet

Viewing this as an outsider I confess that I am somewhat bewildered why this event is so popular especially with people here. It's full of music that no one would ever pay money for (admittedly there have been good songs in the distant past) and its greatest fans are either teenage girls or members of the LGBTQIA+ community (not that there's anything wrong with that) Guess it's a European thing

I gather from here that this is really a competition for non English speaking countries

I think an issue for rugby may be that having 7s in the Olympics might mean that many countries will take 7s more seriously than the main 15s game. I'm particularly thinking of USA and Canada who take the Olympics very seriously but are very ordinary in 15s- they often don't qualify for Rugby World Cups and are 3rd tier at best in normal rugby I'm sure rugby wants 7s to be seen as lesser than 15s It would be like 3×3 basketball being taken more seriously than mainstream basketball A similar thing may happen with cricket. All cricket fans see Test cricket as the purest and highest form but Olympic cricket will be the abbreviated twenty20 format

WOW What a surprise! A USA Canada Gold medal match in women's ice hockey. Just like every other gold medal match in women's ice hockey Can't get much more universal than that! Looking forward to lacrosse being an Olympic event do we can have a lot more Canada USA gold medal games

Criticism of the Commonwealth Games existence by non-Commonwealth citizens has been pretty common on this site. Funny how none of the other non-geographical based Games don't get such treatment although maybe they just aren't noticed. Beats me why these Comm Games haters are so bothered.

People here a bit tough on Australia(again!) Looking at their team I'd say that the only soft qualifications they have are in boxing -Australia has remarkably little interest in all the combative sports -and they give out a huge number of medals especially to Japan in judo .Sth Korea in twaekwondo ,Italy in fencing etc etc - and synchronised swimming - the one aquatic discipline which is considered a joke by most (sorry ladies ) New Zealand is the country with the soft entry in association football.They would be favourites to come last (again) in both tournaments

Reading over this topic reinforces my firm impression that Australia and Australians are not particularly liked by many on this site