dodge

Well if he was a legitimate medal contender, he'd have finished in the top 10 at the worlds and qualified that way. It's not that big a deal IMO

The team pursuit rankings are here was 90 points behind

Really great start to the competition for with Shannon McCurley winning silver in the scratch only our 4th medal at the European elite track championships!

It's the first time since 2013 that Apeldoorn has hosted this competition There's been 8 different velodromes used in the 10 European championships. Apeldoorn (and the entire ) hasn't hosted any of 19 Under 23/junior track championships. It really isn't overused IMO

An update on athletes and quotas where currently occupies qualifying positions in the respective sports rankings (as of 14 October). I suspect these will change significantly but here we go... Athletics Leon Reid (200m) - 29/56 Marcus Lawler (200m) - 43/56 Mark English (800m) - 30/48 Thomas Barr - (400m H) 16/40 Phil Healy (200m) - 40/56 Michelle Finn (3,00m SC) - 31/45 Badminton Nhat Nguyen - 25/38 Sam & Chloe Magee - 14/16 Golf Rory McIlroy - 2/60 Shane Lowry - 12/60 Stephanie Meadow - 41/60 Leona Maguire - 44/60 Judo Ben Fletcher (-100kg) - 10 nathon Burns (-66kg) - 31 (continental quota) Megan Fletcher (-70kg) - 20 Triathlon Russell White - 48 Carolyn Hayes - 52 (in thanks to "first flags") Jack Wooley in Taekwondo may well be in the top 6 when their monthly rankings are published too. Next up for Irish Olympic qualification hopes are the Hockey play offs. First up is the men in Canada on 26/27 October

Apologies I was looking at previous rankings at the time!!! I've fixed now and last in. and first out. Rankings here! https://www.uci.org/road/rankings

In the men's Road Race rankings, the first 12 are set. In the last month jumped from 18th to 13th and now are likely to get 4 riders. has dropped to 4th (and 3 riders) have jumped from 24th to 21st and 21st is the cut off to earn 3 quotas. has fallen to 22nd The nations either side of the 2/1 rider bubble are in 32nd and in 33rd. They need 40 points to over take them The last 2 nations in are and with and just outside the top 50 The Tour of Guangxi is the final world tour event of the calendar.

Because he’s an Irish citizen I won’t be getting into the politics of Northern Ireland but people from NI are free to represent either Ireland or Britain. The majority of athletes in the majority of sports from NI represent Ireland Many of the sporting federations cover both sides of the border. Irish Boxing, for example, has had multiple medalists from Belfast. Football (soccer) is the only sport that isn’t run on all-island basis

He’s from Newtownards in Northern Ireland, yes (and won gold for Northern Ireland at the commonwealth games)

Ireland has its 4th qualifier in Athletics with Fionnuala McCormack (neé Britton) 5th in the Chicago marathon in a time of 02:26:47 Fionnuala was 20th in Rio It means the Irish team with 26 qualifiers so far in 7 different sports

Because it doesn’t matter. They bump their overall nations number up and nobody is hurt. No big deal

It appears appealed their loss to and took their place in the semi finals

Huge day for Irish gymnastics First world finalist first world medal first Irish born gymnast to qualify for Olympics Roll on tokyo

M1x final - W1x final -

Results and start lists are available here in PDF format http://www.worldrowing.com/events/2019-fisa-african-olympic-and-paralympic-qualification-regatta/event-information

It just allows those who travel to finish. Any team who gets the 100/200 points penalty will not get a medal

Medal winners in the 5 Olympic weight categories 51kg 57kg 60kg 69kg 75kg Olympic qualifiers start next year.

To be fair, making the final isn't *technically* enough to qualify. They have to compete in the final (even if its a DNF). The federations are just being cautious. There's no problem there.

I don't wish this to happen, but as the allocations are for named gymnasts rather than national quotas, injuries are more likely to cause someone in the re-allocation waiting list be offered a spot.

I think Monaco is the only tripartite country with a man at the WC maybe Albania and Kuwait? Not sure of their status this time

Huge weekend for Irish qualification and for Irish medal hopes The Irish show jumping team is joined by pommel horse king Rhys McClenaghan

2.698 is the gap for Korea over Italy after 3 apparatus

A similar result happened with Rhys McClenagan last year. Fell twice but it turned out he was injured. Thankfully iy looks very much like he'll have his Olympic place confirmed today.

USA ahead of Brazil. They'll be through

Yesss! So happy for Ireland. Finally they turned up when the pressure was was on