dodge

3 Races today that's the top 5. From an Irish perspective, very encouraging to see Rio medallist Annalise Murphy perform so well in her first season back in laser radial in a couple of years. Bouwemeester of NED has won her last 4 races here and looks unstoppable for Tokyo

The Irish Department of Health has recommended that the rugby six nations game between Ireland and Italy in a weeks time be postponed The IRFU (irish rugby's govering body) have sought an "urgent meeting"

Team is now at 49 with Kevin Seaward running the second fastest marathon by an Irish man to become the 3rd man to reach the qualifying standard. Himself and Pollock through time, Scullion through his 5th place in Houston Any more and a selection will have to be made

Interesting. They say that the Olympic channell will be streaming the event https://boxing.athlete365.org/african-olympic-boxing-qualifying-event-kicks-off-in-dakar-sen/

In Canoe Slalom, Liam Jegou has won the selection contest and will travel to his first Olympics in July. In sailing, Annalise Murphy was by far the best of the Irish in the recent first world cup event. She's on course to win the Laser Radial selection One last chance for our Laser and 49er crews to qualify. 2 spots available for Laser while only one for 49er. The 49ers are listed as second alternates though so may have a back door opportunity if 2 qualified crews pull out

For sure. I don't know what result Liam can expect in Tokyo but the qualification/selection criteria was well know and included the results from the World Championships so I don't think anyone can have too many complaints. Hopefully Robert can continue to progress himself. In 2014 Jegou won silver a the Junior World Champs while Hendrick won silver at the Youth Olympics.

The AIBA website is usually good for draws etc. Guess they forgot this was happening

Liam Jegou will represent in C1 The place was secured by Robert Hendrick at the World Champs but Jegou has been selected on the basis of a 3 race series between our C1 paddlers Press Release

Not really new news but the Irish rowing team won't be competing at the European championships this year. They're looking to compete in the first and third World Cup events and will attempt to qualify "one, or perhaps two, women’s boats" for the Olympics Ireland has already qualified 4 boats of 7 rowers. The womens 4 came close at the World Championships so the Lightweight pairs would be the other possible boat

Rewriting history serves no purpose, particularly as we honestly can't be 100% certain about any athletes. The Chinese middle-long distance runners of the mid 1990s will always be the group I'm most annoyed by but it's better to see them listed to show the absurdity than to white-wash it IMO (if you branch into other sports, the East Germany domination of rowing is the most grotesque of them all)

In Ireland's case they're calling it Olympic trials because a swimmer must achieve the qualifying standard at this competition. Darragh Greene has the QST from the World Championships so he has some wiggle room (ie a slightly lower standard than the QST) Everyone else, including Shane Ryan who has the QST, must achieve the time at this meet to be selected. It's the first time Ireland has had any sort of criteria, other than the FINA times

It isn’t even borderline bullshit. It is just straight up bullshit.

Indeed, the USA for example have no players under the age of 23!

I'm with Phelps here. It's effectively a snow and ice games rather than a "winter games". Speaking as somebody from a country who isn't tropical and whose people don't care about the Winter Games, it's really no big deal that not everybody is involved. It doesn't really need any changes to it at all

Gracenote, effectively uses a similar method to the one used on this forum as they rely heavily on current medalists at world level. In the absence of that, they use world rankings (eg golf) Not suggesting there's anything wrong with that but I know from following them over previous games, they have yet to get close to Ireland's final medal tally and I suspect it's the same for most countries.

when the new rankings come out, it would be really helpful if someone who knows the intricacies of the UCI track ranking could do up a little preview of the World Championship and what possible qualification scenarios exist I realize it's probably far too much work though!

TEAM is now 48 as Stephen Scullion is added to the list having finished 5th in the IAAF gold label Houston marathon. Our "track and field" team is now up to 6 with only one track qualifier, and no field qualifiers

it might be that they won the last race. Hilarious set of circumstances though. I presume everyone outside of Australia wants American Samoa to win too

Similar to Britain the Irish Sports Personality of the Year is awarded by State broadcaster RTE The 2019 awards went to Sportsperson of the Year - Shane Lowry (golf) Young Sportsperson of the Year - Rhys McCleneghan (gymnastics) Team of the Year - Dublin (Gaelic football) Manager of the Year - Jim Gavin (Gaelic football)

As of 2 January 2020... 47 quotas earned in 11 different sports Sports with quotas earned in alphabetical order: Athletics - 5 Ciara Mageean (1,500m) Alex Wright (20k walk) Brendan Boyce (50k walk) Fionnuala McCormack (marathon) Paul Pollock (marathon) Others that would get place by virtue of their current ranking would be Thomas Barr, Mark English and Phil Healy. Of the highly rated juniors; high jumper Sommer Lecky and heptathlete Kate O'Connor have the best chance of making the early step up. Canoeing - Slalom - 1 boat (men's C1) Ireland are unlikely to qualify any more boats in canoeing with our best sprint canoeist being Jenny Egan who specializes in longer (non-Olympic) distances. Robert Hendrick qualified the boat but himself and Liam Jegou are set to fight for the ticket to Tokyo. Cycling - Road - 3 Men's Road race (3 quotas) Men's ITT (1 quota) With several riders at world tour level, the fight for Olympic spots will be on next year. Equestrian - 9 Eventing (team with 3 individuals) Dressage(team with 3 individuals) Show jumping (team and 3 individuals) Finally a full Irish quota! Gymnastics (artistic) - 1 Rhys McClenaghan Rhys's bronze medal performance in the pommel final at the world championships was enough to earn him a spot. Megan Smith is first reserve on the womens side Field Hockey - 16 Women's team The women's team have qualified for the first time. Could they repeat their amazing World Cup medal winning performance from 2018? Modern Pentathlon - 1 Natalya Coyle Natalya will be hoping for her third top 10 placing in the Olympics in Tokyo. Arthur Lannigan O'Keefe could medal if everything goes right but he struggled with injuries. He needs to have a great start to 2020 to shoot up the rankings. Rowing - 7 Women's Single sculls - w1x Women's pair - w2- Men's double sculls - m2x Men's lightweightt double sculls - lm2x Whoever is with Paul O'Donovan in the lightweight double sculls will be a medal favourite in Tokyo. Paul has won the last two world championships, one with his Rio medal winning brother Gary and the other with newcomer Fintan McCarthy. Sanita Puspure is double world champion and only injury or horrendous luck will stop her from medaling in Tokyo. The men's double won silver this year and are improving all the time. Ireland will try and qualify a women's 4 next year. Sailing - 1 Laser Radial Aisling Kelleher won the quota but Rio medalist Annalise Murphy has dropped her 49er FX plans to try and get in the Radial boat for Tokyo. The 49er crew and a couple of Laser individuals have one more shot at qualifying this year. Swimming - 2 Darragh Greene (100m, 200m breast) Shane Ryan (100m back) Irish swimming is one of the only sports that have stricter rules than the IOC for qualifying so neither of these may actually go. Greene achieved his time at the worlds so has to get close to it at the Irish nationals in 2020 to validate it. Everyone else, including Ryan, has to earn the OQT at the Irish nationals. Brendan Hyland and Mona McSharry look the two most likely to add to the team in individual events but swimmimg Ireland is aiming to bring a 4x100m medley relay team and is currently OK in the ranks Taekwondo - 1 Jack Woolley After being so close in 2016, Jack qualified through the olympic rankings and is consistently in the top 10 in the world. Likely/possible quotas in these sports Badminton Nhat Nguyen is currently in a rankings spot. The mixed doubles of Sam and Chloe Magee are outside the top 16 but may sneak in. Boxing Traditionally our strongest Olympic sport. Ireland will be hoping to have at least 8 of the 13 quotas available next year. Our women's team is particularly strong and they'll hope to win medals next year. The European qualifiers start in march Cycling On the track we may qualify 2 women (madison rankings) and maybe one man (omnium). The qualification criteria is complicated and there are a couple of world cup events to go. Diving Oliver Dingley and Clare Cryan have hopes for next year through the world cup series. Golf Ireland will qualify 4 for golf next year with McIlroy and Lowry being medal contenders on their day in the men's. Leona Maguire and Stephanie Meadow will go in the women's event Judo We currently have 2 judoka in ranking positions; Ben Fletcher and Megan Fletcher. Nathan Burns is just outside the cut off in the rankings Triathlon Russell White and Carolyn Hayes are our best hope of qualifying for Tokyo and both are just inside the quota spots at the moment. Hayes was 6th at the European Championships in May and is a relative newcomer to the sport. She'll easily shoot up the rankings list with performances like that. The ranking period ends in May 2020. It's unlikely we'll have qualifiers in other sports but maybe the rugby sevens team can surprise us or someone new comes along next year!

Just to be clear, I meant that they had everything the needed to qualify I wasn't suggesting there was anything untoward Happy to see Woolley qualify as he was very close to doing so for Rio

Yep, all set up for China.

For Ireland, although 2 athletes have obtained the OQT, neither have been confirmed by Swim Ireland. They have their own qualifying criteria. All athletes must obtain the OQT at our national championships in April. The only exception is if the OQT was previously achieved at the World Championships (as is the case with Daragh Greene), they must achieve a slightly easier mark at the national championships https://www.swimireland.ie/news/2020-olympic-games-nomination-policies-released

That’s great. Thanks for the clarification lads.

Am I right that with Dell’Aquilla winning, Woolley is now confirmed?