OlympicIRL

Yes, at primary school, we had random days off for holy days of obligation or whatever And yes, I was educated in Catholic schools... my secondary school was run by priests and my sisters attended a "convent" school run by nuns . It's only the older I get I realise how weird the Irish education system is . I think I posted a picture of it here before, but here it is again, a pic of my secondary school

Primary schools re-opened here today. The school year for primary schools runs from September - June with 2 weeks off at Christmas and 2 weeks off at Easter as well as other mid term breaks. Age group 4-12 years. Secondary schools open the last week of August / first week of September and finishes in May. So they have 3 months free in the summer (June, July and August) and 2 weeks off in Christmas and Easter as well as mid term breaks. Age group 12-17 / 18 years. My primary school and secondary schools both had uniforms so I wore a uniform from 4-17 years of age Oh, and there is no tradition of gifts for teachers

It was hard to choose just 5 but if I have to choose then it would be: 1. Athletics 2. Swimming 3. Rowing 4. Artistic Gymnastics 5. Archery Archery just makes it in as it has a special place in my heart when it comes to the Olympic Games. But weightlifting is so close too as well as track cycling and men’s cycling road race. Bottom 5 would be: 1. Softball 2. Baseball 3. Surfing 4. Skateboarding 5. Handball I don’t really have any interest in those sports but I will try to at least watch something from them anyway. Basketball is also probably close to the bottom 5 too.

Yes, let's not remember Rio 2016 . Boxing does not deserve to be in the Olympics as it is currently anyway so yeah, maybe awarding no medals would be the fairest thing

The only exception for 2 bronze medals should be in sports like boxing.... how can you have a fair bronze medal fight after one guy might get trashed by the champion and maybe injured or badly hurt? It's fairer to have 2 bronze medals for boxing. I don't watch a lot of combat sports so don't know how physical the other sports get,but for sure, if there is no disadvantage then all sports should have a bronze medal match.

Yes, and they were so unlucky with the wind in the B final as they should have been redrawn into lane 5/6 along with China. However, that is such a surprise anyway as that team is most of the team that just won a medal at U23 level at the world championships this year and they were sent here mainly for experience. But the rowing experts on our TV were thinking it could be a blessing as this will make our competition for places in the women’s pair even stronger. Our women's pair placed 8th here and qualified to Tokyo.

Wonderful championships for Ireland. We have three big hopes now for Tokyo and the men’s lightweight double look like they could get better and better. Paul and Fintan are the new combination and they have only raced twice competitively at international level. And Fintan is still only 22 but the competition for places on that boat is so tough. Plus Paul was training in medicine for most of this year so with a full year’s training I hope they can be even quicker. Btw this is Paul’s 4th world gold medal in a row! And the men’s double have been a revelation! They have only been racing full time together since the summer as they were both training separately before that so that’s also promising. And Sanita again was just amazing and is now also the two-time champion!

Sorted by gold is the best and most interesting system. Although a points based system gives a more accurate picture of the performance of x nation, there is no fun in that. The fact that Fiji with 1 gold medal might finish ahead of a Belarus or a Sweden who may win a few medals but no golds is something endearing and why I love medal tables.

Ireland qualified a dressage team for the Olympics for the first time ever!! And now I will re-read that sentence a hundred times because it hardly seems possible and even until a couple of months ago I would have thought such a thing was crazy beyond belief

Yes but there is no doubt there were way more active users, especially people discussing on the old forum and a huge variety of different users posting... and from lots of nations too.

Another good thing I noticed recently is there are some new threads springing up. In the past we used to get lots of ideas for threads, even polls and things sparking discussions. So get thinking of new ideas people . I might open up some threads again like polls on favourite Olympic mascot or logo and so on.... we used to have those in the past. But that is just a tiny example

Overall it seems like the forum is starting to get a bit more active again (still far from old forum standards but moving in the right direction again). I would love to see more users and especially from absent nations being encouraged again to register like in the past. Especially as it is the year before the Olympics and it should be the ideal time to get some new interest.

As part of our statistics records, we will now keep a record of "Posts Per Day: Top 10" in each year. For the purposes of these lists, we will not include Olympic or TISC Grand Final days as they are always huge outliers in terms of the number of posts. Those Olympic and TISC records will be immortalised in the "Posts Per Day: Top 10 All-Time" list so will be interesting to see the busy days on the forum besides those unique occasions. So, as you can see, yesterday, August 11th, 2019 was the highest of the year (excluding TISC Annual 2019 Grand Final) with 633 posts made. That is also the second highest ever outside of Olympic and TISC Grand Final days. Posts Per Day: Top 10 2016 *Please note that this not include Olympic or TISC Grand Final days 1 July 10th, 2016 442 2 April 17th, 2016 441 3 July 6th, 2016 422 4 May 15th, 2016 415 5 June 25th, 2016 407 6 August 2nd, 2016 400 7 May 14th, 2016 377 8 June 16th, 2016 363 9 June 23rd, 2016 355 10 July 8th, 2016 352 Posts Per Day: Top 10 2017 *Please note that this not include TISC Grand Final days 1 July 23rd, 2017 540 2 July 21st, 2017 437 3 August 13th, 2017 432 4 August 6th, 2017 426 5 August 5th, 2017 372 6 July 22nd, 2017 364 7 July 25th, 2017 358 8 July 24th, 2017 342 9 August 4th, 2017 335 10 July 26th, 2017 333 Posts Per Day: Top 10 2018 *Please note that this not include Olympic or TISC Grand Final days 1 August 12th, 2018 661 2 August 7th, 2018 599 3 April 7th, 2018 576 4 October 27th, 2018 525 5 August 8th, 2018 504 6 August 10th, 2018 502 7 August 9th, 2018 491 8 October 7th, 2018 454 9 August 11th, 2018 440 10 August 4th, 2018 436 Posts Per Day: Top 10 2019 *Please note that this not include TISC Grand Final days 1 August 11th, 2019 633 2 July 21st, 2019 600 3 July 27th, 2019 580 4 July 19th, 2019 543 5 July 23rd, 2019 506 6 June 2016, 2019 494 7 April 6th, 2019 486 8 June 23rd, 2019 480 9 July 26th, 2019 473 10 July 25th, 2019 457

Ok, so the 2746th version of the final, not-final table is as follows..... Second League Final Standings Rk Nation Pts P Estonia 336.5 2 Slovenia 321 3 Denmark 313 4 Latvia 306 5 Croatia 306 6 Bulgaria 298 7 Austria 275 R Israel 272.5 R Cyprus 260 R Luxembourg 180 R Georgia 141 R Malta 96

You mean? but I just... I thought that.... what the hell? Ok, new table.... you're all relegated including the officials Second League Final Standings Rk Nation Pts R Estonia 336.5 R Slovenia 321 R Denmark 313 R Latvia 306 R Croatia 306 R Bulgaria 298 R Austria 275 R Israel 272.5 R Cyprus 260 R Luxembourg 180 R Georgia 141 R Malta 96

Third League Final Standings Rk Nation Pts P Iceland 430 2 Serbia 427 3 Bosnia & Herzegovina 385 4 Moldova 377 5 Montenegro 283 6 Armenia 273 7 North Macedonia 263 8 San Marino 228.5 9 Kosovo 181.5 10 Albania 172.5 11 Azerbaijan 149 12 Andorra 108.5 13 Small States of Europe 72

Ok so i better post this again since my last post needs so many edits thanks to my jinxing of Austria and Serbia in the relays. The final, not-final line-up for 2021 is as follows: Russia *pending removal of their suspension of course Romania Hungary Slovakia Lithuania Slovenia Denmark Croatia Bulgaria Latvia Israel Iceland

Oh dear Lord... so I jinxed Austria and Serbia all in one go

I went on this ride last summer with my niece and brother when we were at Universal in Florida. My niece and I were in the front row seats (same seats as Jimmy Fallon and Kevin Hart in this video). It was awesome.

So the line-up of the First League in 2021 will be as follows: Czech Republic Sweden Greece Finland Switzerland Belarus Norway Netherlands Turkey Belgium Ireland Estonia Top 2 will be promoted to the Super League and bottom 3 will be relegated to the Second League. That's going to be very hard to survive next time. Time to start training us some throwers and horizontal jumpers... recruitment and talent search begins tomorrow morning

Second League Final Standings Rk Nation Pts P Estonia 336.5 2 Slovenia 321 3 Denmark 313 4 Latvia 306 5 Croatia 306 6 Bulgaria 297 7 Israel 279.5 R Austria 275 R Cyprus 259 R Luxembourg 179 R Georgia 140 R Malta 95

So there goes their survival

Meanwhile, barring some kind of disaster in the relays, Serbia is poised to be promoted to this league for 2021. So the line-up in 2021 will be as follows: Russia *pending removal of their suspension of course Romania Hungary Slovakia Lithuania Slovenia Denmark Croatia Bulgaria Latvia Israel Serbia

So 4th place overnight for Israel still wasn't enough for them to avoid relegation.

Croatia is much closer to promotion than to the relegation. No fears about staying up.