ofan

It's kind of ridiculous to me that athletes are being eliminated from competitions before the Opening Ceremony

Very popular. We have large Eastern European populations across Canada.

Ah yes. I misunderstood. That is very possible. By coincidence, Jamie Oleksiak used to play for the Pittsburgh Penguins, so that's what I was referencing.

I think you mean Pittsburgh . They have a massive Polish community, and the city is famous for its pierogis

I'd cheer for Missy Franklin for the same reason

Wow, hats off to Team GB. I thought that the Dutch team had this quota in the bag

Qualified for Tokyo

Conspiracy theories that King was DQ'd in retaliation by FINA for speaking out against doping

King told reporters that no one from FINA explained the disqualification to her

Holy crap, Pickrem ended up with the best time in the heats. Will be interesting to see how she performs in the semis head to head with better swimmers. Wide open now without King in the mix

Anyone know what King was DQ'd for? My stream is in Polish

wow, great swim from Wog

Lilly King disqualified!

Wow, what a horrific final 50 for Thormeyer.

Oleksiak resting for the 4x200 I guess

Oh absolutely, the hypocrisy is incredible (much like almost everything else the IOC does). Women's ice hockey is another example...

FIBA's wishful thinking comes from the fact that basketball is probably the most universally-played team sport outside of soccer, due to the fact that you can play it cheaply on a street corner, and there is not an economic barrier to participating as there is with other team sports. However, the sport is still so US-dominated because of the strong AAU, high school and collegiate program in North America, and because soccer is not quite as popular. Since the sport lives and dies by US interest, as Vektor said, it will never reach the level of the FIFA World Cup. I also agree with Vektor that the situation with club soccer is not comparable as LDOG suggested - the long tradition of international soccer will keep the FIFA World Cup on top for at least the long-term foreseeable future. You can look no further than the competitiveness of the bidding process to host these events - countries line up for FIFA, but no one outside of Asia really seems to want to host the FIBA World Cup.

I'm not discounting it as a legitimate sport - I agree that its addition was inevitable, especially considering the push from the IOC for "youth-friendly" events. For World Skate, it was their best option of getting into the Games because of the popularity of skateboarding versus inline skating. However, with "universality" of sports being an important factor for Olympic inclusion, this sport seems to fall short.

This is such a stupid, stupid, stupid addition to the Olympic Games. There are going to be like 5 nations represented in this sport, and a few other nations with one or two athletes.

This is a change from previous Olympics, where they were transparent in providing all countries and their medalists

I feel like that's really really weak for a softball game

It look like the outdoor venues are re-using the bleachers used at Rio 2016

Hopefully! We don't have a broadcaster in Canada, so it looks like I'll be scouring the web for streams

Oh wow, China DQ'd. What was that for?

Wow, what a bold prediction. How did you come to that conclusion?