Werloc

Super small team for Lithuania with no ambitions for semi-finals or finals, so I guess PB chasing is the game for our team here. Women: 100m - Andrė Ožechauskaitė (one of the more promising athletes, but recovering from an injury this season and far from her best times) 100m Hurdles - Gabija Klimukaitė (recovering from an injury as well, hasn't gone under 14s this season still) 400m Hurdles - Ema Sarafinaitė, Gerda Kirkytė (both don't have a full year of competitive experience running the hurdles, they have promise, it's just impossible to expect miracles here) Discus Throw - Paulina Stuglytė (she was also breaking every Lithuanian youth record, but this season she is going only backwards) Men: 400m - Lukas Sutkus (consistently breaking his PB, but still far away from the best here in these championships, going to be a threat next year in EU u20) Shot Put - Rokas Domanaitis (jumped into the qualification train at the very last qualifying event, throws very consistently, but not far enough for final qualification) Sarafinaitė, Kirkytė, Sutkus, Stuglytė should look good next year, this year I guess I can just be happy that they qualified and are gaining valuable experience. Kirkytė already had a long season, was not far off U18 final. Neda Lasickaitė (100m Hurdles) and Aurėja Beniušytė (Triple Jump) both landed qualifications just after the qualification process was over.

Why is this even a discussion when they could've sent all three? Two quota limiter per event is only in u18 level. Perhaps Dimitriadou couldn't be selected, because she's unvaccinated? That's how we had to keep some of ours at home.

Voldemort is entertaining the idea of trying to qualify to Olympics again? Not gonna lie, I'm just writing off events that we have no history in and equestrian is one of those sports, where I haven't seen us do that well. Plus this sport is one angry German coach away from being a human obstacle course race

Okay, I'll have a shot at this, barring injuries, retirements and disasters, perhaps I might get very accurate. In Tokyo we had a very unsuccessful Olympics with 42 athletes and only a single medal, I think it shouldn't be too difficult to better this performance, but let's see sport by sport. We had 0 in archery and artistic swimming and we'll continue to have 0 in both. In athletics we had 11 athletes: Truskauskas, Žiūkas, Mastianica, Gudžius, Matusevičius and Jasiūnaitė should make it. Šerkšnienė and Virbalytė probably gonna be retired. Palšytė, Zagainova and Glebauskas are question marks. I have high hopes for Morauskaitė, Galvydytė, Karinauskaitė, Baikštys, Baikštytė, two marathon runners, one additional race walker at least, Petrokaitė, Kilty, Mykolas Alekna, Martynas Alekna, Zarankaitė and Benkunskas. This would up our athletes in athletics to 20 and if things go well, the number could even rise to 24. Badminton - probably 0 Basketball - one of the most unpredictable sports with so little spots to qualify, the results have not been looking so stellar, so I'll go with won't qualify again. Basketball 3x3 - both the men's and women's teams are showing brilliant results right now, I'd assume they should be able to qualify both. Beach Volleyball - we have some very capable teams and two female teams qualified to the European Championship, but qualification in this event is super tough, so I'd say 0 this time too. Boxing - we have strong men and women, but when it comes to qualifying, it's always a struggle, so I'll settle for a confident 1 (either man, or woman) Breaking - I think we have one girl that's been taking titles left and right, so 1 Canoeing Slalom - Just no Canoeing Sprint - in Tokyo we suffered a major disaster with only 1 athlete qualifying. Nearly everybody had to change disciplines and it affected all of our sprinters. This time everyone will feel more secure during the qualification period, so it would be safe to guess three boats - one single, one double, one four. It's likely we could qualify more, doubt that our women have any chance. Cycling BMX/Cycling Mountain Bike - 0 in Tokyo, could hope for 1-2 athletes in Paris. Cycling Road - we had 2 athletes in Tokyo, I'm going to go with a bold guess we'll qualify 3 somehow. Cycling Track - 3 athletes in Tokyo, though without Krupeckaitė, no chance to qualify a team. The men are forming a sprint team, but too much work there to fix in so little time. Lendel, Marozaitė, Baleišytė could qualify in their individual events. Diving, Equestrian, Fencing, Field Hockey, Football, Golf, Rhythmic Gymnastics - SKIP Gymnastics Artistic - two men are possible Judo - we had 1 in Tokyo, 1 in Paris should be doable. Modern Pentathlon - 3 in Tokyo, 3 in Paris probably as well. Rowing - we had an amazing team of 9 in Tokyo, 9-10 could be possible for Paris as well, but everyone will need to step up in the next two years. Sailing - probably not better than 2 just like in Tokyo Shooting, Skateboarding, Sport-climbing, Surfing - NOPE Swimming - this one is the most interesting and tough to predict, because we have a huge amount of talent, but it's uncertain if there's enough time for them to grow into Olympic level. We had 6 swimmers in Tokyo, but I think we should be capable to beat this number. Rapšys, Šidlauskas, Savickas, Pancerevas, Navikonis, Pavlidi, Grigaitis, Teterevkova, Meilutytė, Plytnykaitė, Margevičius, Statkevičius. Yes, it's a very very brave prediction, I'm even dreaming about a women's freestyle relay, but a season and a half might not be enough. Still, let's say a very questionable 12 for now Add 1 more to tennis and two more to wrestling, and I think you have my final prediction: Projected amount of Lithuanian athletes in Paris - 77 , could go up to 89 if we qualify men's basketball. Projected amount of medals for Lithuanian athletes in Paris - 1 in athletics, 1 in swimming, 1 in modern pentathlon, 1 in rowing would be my guess, with possibilities of another 1-2 in athletics, 1 in swimming, 1-2 in rowing, 1 in canoeing sprint, 1 in boxing, 1-2 in basketball 3x3

Nice! Equaled 10 medal record for Lithuania, and this time, we didn't even need Meilutytė to do it Although, Plytnykaitė was a part of four medals and she's been breaking some of Rūta's records, sooo, Olympic gold when? I had big hopes for athletics and we were struggling the entire week until on the very final day Aurėja Beniušytė won the triple jump with 13.04 and a U16 NR and Danielius Vasiliauskas with a silver medal in 200m, accompanied with a 16yo, 17yo and U18 NR's Very proud of the swimming team, so many finals and 2 relay medals are really setting up a promising future, Plytnykaitė was on fire with her revenge arc after being suspended for 48 hours and thrown out of the team 7 days until EYOF. Statkevičius was swimming brilliantly over in Canada, but junior championships and EYOF was really underwhelming from her, up until she managed to get close to her 200m freestyle PB and got a silver, but medals were highly possible in 400 and 800m if she got close to her time. Seeing as she's also in the team for world juniors + has a qualifying mark in European championships 800m, she'll probably set the longest season for a Lithuanian swimmer record and I hope she'll be able to recover from so much fatigue. Glad that medals also showed up from basketball, badminton and gymnastics, one girl was promising in cycling and I guess what's left is to add rowing to the program so that we could break our 10 medal record next year Though I highly doubt we'll be ready to repeat this success next time, but if the rules are reverted for athletics as I expect, then Beniušytė, Vasiliauskas, Orinta Navikaitė (5th in Javelin) and Justė Perveneckaitė (4th in race walk) will be young enough to participate again next year and are going to be primary candidates for medals again and there's also fine talent in the swimming scene as well.

I have a friend that's in EYOF, helping with managing our delegation, he said everything was organised very well, so not only were the viewers happy, but the athletes, at least on our part, as well

It's crazy how for such a small country, we somehow always manage to land on the medal table in many highly contested sports consistently. The level of our average athletes is much lower than most countries, but we always manage to get enough of those good ones that just do the job

Lithuania ends up qualifying 21 athletes to this event: Women 400m - Modesta Justė Morauskaitė (7th Q), Agnė Šerkšnienė (34th Rating) 800m - Gabija Galvydytė (31st Rating) 3000m Steeplechase - Greta Karinauskaitė (27th Rating) High Jump - Urtė Baikštytė (19th Rating) Long Jump - Jogailė Petrokaitė (18th Rating) Triple Jump - Aina Grikšaitė (16th Rating), Dovilė Kilty (17th Rating) Discus Throw - Ieva Zarankaitė (17th Rating) Javelin Throw - Liveta Jasiūnaitė (6th Q) Marathon - Loreta Kančytė (38th Q) 20km Race Walk - Monika Vaiciukevičiūtė (34th Rating), Adrija Meškauskaitė (36th Rating) Men 200m - Gediminas Truskauskas (20th Rating) 1500m - Simas Bertašius (29th Rating) High Jump - Juozas Baikštys (12th Rating) Discus Throw - Andrius Gudžius (Wild Card Q), Mykolas Alekna (4th Q) Marathon - Ignas Brasevičius (57th Rating) 20km Race Walk - Marius Žiūkas (16th Q), Artur Mastianica (30th Rating) 35km Race Walk - Marius Žiūkas (19th Q), Artur Mastianica (23rd Q) There were also some athletes that were pretty close to qualification: Airinė Palšytė 35th in high jump rating, Diana Zagainova 27th in triple jump rating, Diana Lobačevskė 62nd in marathon rating, Renalda Kergytė 65th in marathon rating, Austėja Kavaliauskaitė 37th in 20km race walk rating, Tomas Keršulis 44th in 200m rating and 42nd in 400m rating, Adrijus Glebauskas 29th in high jump rating, Martynas Alekna 36th in discus throw rating, Remigijus Kančys 61st in marathon rating, Edgaras Benkunskas 26th in decathlon rating. And also some athletes that declined their qualification: Monika Bytautienė and Vaida Žūsinaitė in marathon and Brigita Virbalytė in 20km Race Walk. Edis Matusevičius and Rokas Ickys are injured, but I think they would've made it in.

Yesterday and today, the President's cup was held where Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian athletes have to send forward 2 athletes in every discipline to collect points and Lithuania managed to beat Estonia by two points this year. There were quite a few that missed the event in preparation for the European Championships, but there were still some decent news. The President's cup is awarded to the best male and female performer, both went to Lithuania, Gediminas Truskauskas with 20.65 in 200m and Dovilė Kilty with 14.14 in Triple Jump and she hasn't jumped this far since 2020, looking positive with ECH soon.

I knew that our young swimmers were a very capable bunch, especially since they showed very promising results in the European junior championships against athletes two years older than them, I just did not expect this level of results when they finally clash with athletes their own age. Fact is, closely following the development, I felt that Lithuania was becoming a swimming nation and seeing that we're consistently qualifying relays to the finals in juniors, breaking many national records and Lithuanian youth records, adding this EYOF where it's possible to come away with 4-5 medals from swimming alone, I'm feeling very good about our swimming future. Already 6 finals and 2 medals for them here, quite possibly another two finals after today as well.

I wanted to pose this question to those that are following the EYOF a bit more closely. Does it seem that this year's EYOF is on easy mode in term of amount of participants and results? I remember Lithuania always struggling to go to the top spots and more often than not, coming away from this without medals even. This year, it's possible to get like 7-8 medals, nearly all of our swimmers consistently qualifying to the finals of their swims, basketballers crushing everyone by a huge number of points, some events in athletics under eight participants. It's been so long since we had a summer EYOF due to Covid, I don't remember if it was always like this

Yuuuuup, it's an entire can of worms. I've heard the rumours last year, but couldn't comment on it since it was not public. Problem is that when Russia invaded Ukraine, she was not really on Ukraine's side and she really fell out of favour with every single Lithuanian on the team after this incident, so her future is so uncertain, I don't even know if she was present in the training camp + she also didn't start in the Lithuanian cup this week too, so I wouldn't be too certain on how her career is going to pan out. In other news: Judita Traubaitė switched to biathlon, she was a u20 and u23 world medalist in skiing-orienteering, this week was her very first competition with the rifle and she finished 6 minutes behind Kočergina, her shooting score 4+3, so she is still a work in progress. Another thing, Viktorija Augulytė started in the cup and won both the roller and the cross-country sprints after two seasons of quitting biathlon, don't know if this is going to be a full-fledged comeback, but one could only hope. It's still not certain if Gabrielė Leščinskaitė is going to continue next year, right now she's with the EYOF team. It's likely that the IBU cup could have Traubaitė, Augulytė, Žurauskaitė, Kresik, Daugirdaitė, Kapancova, Urumova in rotation and even though they're surely there to finish at the bottom of the score sheet, this is still a lot more names than I could've ever imagined before the 2022-23 season.

Fun fact time: During the European Junior swimming championships our young delegation was rumoured to be having a little bit too much fun. When they announced the EYOF swimming team, Smiltė Plytnykaitė was suspended and the only one punished for discipline problems whilst the investigation was still ongoing, the federation claimed that multiple athletes were at fault, but only Plytnykaitė was removed from the team. This story was everywhere in the media and Smiltė became the most famous Lithuanian swimmer overnight since last week. The following day, she was reinstated back into the EYOF team by the new Swimming federation president (but I assume she's still losing the World Junior championships). Well, today she answered this whole situation with a gold medal and a huge PB in the 100m Freestyle. It was a wild ride for her, I'm sure

18cm off from her NR that she set back in 2019, really nice to see her throw this far again

Oh wow, Liveta This is why I have her as a dark horse medalist in my predictions. I don't know how she does it, but she always overperforms when it matters.

Oh I stayed up alright, 5 hours of sleep last night and zero hours so far of sleep this night, it's 6 A.M. here and it's probably not looking good for my atrocious sleep schedule these past few days.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWW History made for Lithuania, two athletes on the podium in the same event, I believe it only ever happened in Modern Pentathlon before with Krungolcas and Zadneprovski both winning medals at the Olympic Games. Probably won't ever happen again, since Gudžius is ever slowly becoming an old man and can't throw that far anymore, but Mykolas Alekna is only nineteen and he's going to hopefully have a decade long rivalry at least with Ceh, they're both the future of discus throwing.

So I didn't go to sleep, for obvious reasons. Only realistic chance for Lithuania to medal in these championships in two hours time. Yes, there's an outside chance that Liveta Jasiūnaitė could sneak a bronze in javelin throw, but that would be hilarious.

Neither Alekna, nor Gudžius bombed out of the discus, good enough start

With so many international competitions cancelled due to the pandemic, there's such a huge gap of athletics information in me that I'm missing so many key names that were last good in 2017/18 Like, I'm in Schippers wiki right now wondering where she gone

Anyhow, I went through some recent and less recent results and now I see that I was wrong, but like if I didn't spot that NR sign near Klaver's name, I might have still thought that NL is dominating European 400m running at least until Munich

Damn, my favourite "any American athlete" finished 4th no points from 10000m

I'm following Agnė Šerkšnienė for years now and it was always the girls from The Netherlands that cockblocked us from the finals, so that's where this association comes from De Witte is probably the biggest culprit of this, because I remember her the best

At least we agree that we don't see either of them top 2 this season Though Stahl could land a 70m throw himself and leave the less experienced youngsters behind him. We've still haven't seen how Ceh and Alekna handles themselves in THE MOST important competition.

You can be 4th all you want, but when only two Polish athletes started, it's good enough for a slot. She would've made SF easy.