OlympicsFan

I said that Australia and the U.S. are a lock for gold and silver (not in that order). USA is the favorite for gold. 1) Australia is clearly faster than Canada (combined almost 2 seconds) on backstroke and freestyle, about equal on butterfly and at most a second behind on breaststroke. 2) Please look up the Chinese breaststroke leg … China is about equal on butterfly, clearly faster on breaststroke, about equal on freestyle and maybe (half) a second slower on backstroke. Right now there is absolutely no basis to say that the breaststroke leg is close. At the moment it looks like a coin toss. Canada is definitely much closer to China than to Australia.

How does that make it any better? Why not throw from the top of the Himalaya or in a wind canal?

Realistically you have to subtract 5 or 6 meters. He is still one of the favorites for the Olympics, but nothing more.

It is much easier to qualify in handball, but I feel that concentrating on qualifying in basketball would be a much more „natural“ choice for GB. Basketball should be a much better match.

Germany has to hope to get Hungary and Slovenia. If everything works out perfectly, Germany might be able to finish 4th.

10 medals in swimming? Masse: She isn’t a medal favorite (behind Smith, McKeown and the 2nd American), but we will see. Women‘s 400 free relay: They aren’t a medal favorite (behind Australia, USA and China), but we will see. Kharun: I see at least Milak, Marchand and Honda ahead of him, but he might end up on the podium. Liendo: He could win gold or end up without a medal. Dressel, Milak, Ponti, Grousset and Temple are all at least as likely as him to win a medal. Women‘s medley relay: Australia and the U.S. are pretty much a lock for gold and silver. Canada should battle with China for bronze. 4 medals (Women‘s 400 free, women’s 100/200 fly and women’s 400 IM) should be the minimum. 7 or 8 medals seem like a realistic goal.

1) Depends on how you sort the medal table. 2) Depends on what you mean with „close“.

2 medals for Corbeau seems borderline insane. I think 2 medals in the 4 breaststroke events seems realistic. The only medal favorite is Schouten in the 200 breast and even she could very well end up without a medal (Chikunova (if she competes after all), Schoenmaker, Douglass).

1) You wrote men‘s 100/400 m hurdles when it should be women‘s 100/400 m hurdles. 2) What happened with the women’s 1500 m prediction? 3) I think that Hassan will win more than one medal. 4) Not sure about Omanyala/Hughes/Samukonga/Eid Naser/Samba-Mayela winning a medal.

Would be interesting to have a ranking of nations with the most athletes under the A standard. I was quite surprised to see that Japan has clearly more athletes under the A standard than GB.

Obviously lightweight categories are completely retarded. 1) Height is an advantage in many sports. Should we also have lightweight basketball? 2) „Smaller nations“ have advantages in other sports (gymnastics, table tennis, diving, figure skating), should we also introduce heavyweight categories there? 3) There are way too many events in rowing anyways. If IOC wants to reduce the number of participants, they should have 3 events at most per gender. Rowing is very unpopular and barely anyone cares to watch, so it make the most sense to save costs by reducing the number of athletes in super fringe sports. In general: More nations are able to win medals -> Bigger viewership => How do you (as federation/IOC) make the sport more accessible and how do you make the races less predictable?

Where did he say that Netanyahu and the Hamas grandpa are the same? Your source is obviously completely irrelevant to this discussion. In addition to that I despise senile Biden and I am certainly not a fan of the U.S. (completely degenerated neo-capitalistic shithole).

To call it a genocide is your opinion, but obviously a very uneducated opinion. The Palestinian population size has exploded over the last couple of decades, but somehow that all happened during a genocide … Israel could easily kill most of the Palestinians in Gaza if they wanted to.

Nicaragua is just a Russian puppet, pretty pathetic attempt. I guess a shithole country like Nicaragua has no other options.

Did Israel already recognize Catalonia as an independent country?

That is a disgusting thing to say (that Netanyahu is the same, leading criminals).

Don’t know anything about the procedure, but it is safe to say that Romania would have been more competitive and probably would have „deserved“ it more. GB starting to care about handball (volleyball, basketball) would be good for the sport, but it doesn’t seem to be GB‘s strategy to focus on team sports. France on the other hand seems to care a lot more about team sports. I guess for GB it is enough to be (somewhat) competitive in football and rugby.

1) Milak went 21.8 in the 50 free in the same session afterwards, so not sure if he went all out in the 200 fly. 2) Milak swam a clear PB in the 50 free, so his speed is excellent. We‘ll see how it translates to the 100 fly.

They could do only mixed teams: Option a: 1 or 2 female Sabre/foil/epee + 1 or 2 male Sabre/foil/epee fencers -> 3 team events Option b: 1 male/female epee fencer + 1 male/female Sabre fencer + 1 male/female foil fencer -> 2 team events More nations that can realistically win a medal (= better tv ratings) + less athletes -> win-win for the IOC

Very encouraging end of the season for 19 year old Leon Ulbricht, one of the most positive German surprises across all winter sports this season.

I wasn’t alive during the heyday of German fencing, but I think that fencing used to be much more popular. Even 10-15 years ago there was more attention, someone like Britta Heidemann was somewhat popular. Now no one in Germany knows any of the fencers. I think Ebert getting injured also hurt the chances of the women’s foil team, but I am not sure how well positioned they were before her injury. Also Colin Heathcock suddenly deciding to compete for the U.S. probably didn’t help either. With him the men’s Sabre team might have had a better shot at qualifying. Personally I consider the tax payer money spent on fencing a huge waste of money and I wish that all the funding would be cut.

1) It isn’t always better to have 2 individual (Olympic) events. Focusing on one event can improve your medals chances, examples would be Manaudou, Proud or Armstrong. 2) He has a chance (probability greater than zero) to win a medal in the 200 back, but it is impossible to tell from the outside how big his chance is. So far he hasn’t shown anything to indicate that he could be one of the favorites for a medal. Training for the 200 back might destroy some of his speed, which could hurt him in the 100 back. At least the 200 back schedule doesn’t collide with the 100 back/4 x 100 free/4 x 100 Medley schedule, so it probably wouldn’t hurt too much to give it a try.

The course was dead after the first 5 or 10 guys. Nice result for Jacquelin, don’t see how he could equal the Norwegians with fair conditions though. Next year the fight for the blue jersey should be interesting. Perrot, Wright and multiple Norwegians should deliver an interesting fight. From a German perspective I hope that Kaiser, Kesper and Pfund will get the spots of Doll, Rees and Strelow/Horn. No point in dragging average talents along until they are 30 years old.

Nice to see that he has dreams, but he has never shown anything to indicate that he can come remotely close to Kos in the 200 back. He should save his energy for other events. Also I don’t see how Marchand and Ceccon are connected, Marchand obviously is lightyears ahead of Ceccon. Ceccon will have enough trouble to beat the Americans in the 100 back, Marchand is infinitely more dominant in the 400 IM. In addition to that I think that Marchand will try to go for 4 golds, otherwise they probably wouldn’t have changed the schedule so that he can swim the 200 fly and the 200 breast.

Both Germany and the Netherlands are trash teams, don’t think that the outcome of this match means anything in terms of medal contenders. Hopefully German tv won’t show much football at the Olympics. If the two German handball teams qualify as well, then this might turn into one of the biggest teams Germany ever sent to the Olympics. Sadly the Netherlands will get their revenge in women’s volleyball. Personally I would have preferred it the other way round (Germany qualifying in women’s volleyball and the Netherlands qualifying in women’s football).