OlympicsFan

France (they will win gold in Tokyo if they want to), Spain and England. Other spot should go to Italy or Germany.

Is there any other event where Germany could have been relegated? The Nations League is a very new invention and there arent many people who really care about this competition, so its not very surprising to see so many strange results.

Oh the irony ... In the darkest hour of romanian artistic gymnastics history ... suddenly a canadian girl of romanian descent steps up and wins a silver medal.

Medal on balance beam would have been absolutely doable for Schäfer and Alt, hopefully they will make up for it next year. I don't think there are many other nations that have 4 individual medallists from the last 3 big events: Bronze for Scheder on uneven bars at the 2016 olympics Bronze for Alt on balance beam at the 2017 worlds Gold for Schäfer on balance beam at the 2017 worlds Bronze for Seitz on uneven bars at the 2018 worlds

Yes, it's much better when bad athletes are like this, then at least we can ignore them.

It's always a bad sign when a country is dominant in a sport that is mostly about endurance. Germany used to dominate when the GDR methods were still around. Germany also used to be dominant in men's cross-country skiing, but thank god those times are over. Noone should ruin his/her health for some performances that noone will care about anymore in a year or so. Now it's much more difficult to dope systematically in Germany. Other countries like GB (cycling), Norway (cross-country) or the Netherlands (speed skating, cycling) seem to be willing to do everything if it helps their chances. It's just sad that most of the people in those countries aren't even remotely objective when it comes to judging how realistic it is that their own athletes are clean. You also have to ask yourself how happy those athlete will be once they retire. If you are willing to risk your life just to be able to say "I am the best in random sport XY", then how are you ever supposed to be happy with yourself once you have to retire and live a real life where you can't just cheat your way to success?

I agree that the level in artistic gymnastics currently is very bad: On the women's side: Russia used to have 2 great all-around athletes and now ... ? What about Romania and China? What about Ferrari, Steingruber and so on? What about the british girls? USA used to have 2 great all-around athletes and now? Hurd is a great talent, but until a couple of years ago her level would have never been good enough to be top 2 in the US in all-around. The only "positive" trends are the improvements of the japanese/canadian girls and of Derwael. On the men's side it's a bit better, but still not great: The US has gotten clearly worse in my opinion. Japan has also gotten worse in my opinion. What happened to Larduet, Uchimura, Leyva and Verniaev? I expected Whitlock to be much better in all-around by now. Does GB have any serious contender for an all-around medal in 2020? The only nations that have improved or at least kept their level in the last couple of years are China and Russia. The number of medals going to "exotic" nations is very surprising, normally most of the finals were made up by athletes from Japan/Russia/China/USA/GB, but now we have tons of finallists from small nations. Some might say that this is a sign of a higher level of competition, but in my opinion it isn't. I think we might see a similar development in other sports (figure skating, swimming) as well, every year it gets harder for western nations to "find" kids who are willing to train for hours every day.

Huge surprise indeed, it's safe to say that Germany could have scored 165 points or more with Alt and Schäfer in the team.

Germany will be without Tabea Alt (bronze medallist on balance beam from last year) and Pauline Schäfer (gold medallist on balance beam from last year), so the chances for a medal are very close to zero. The women's team will also need a lot of luck to finish top 8.

I think Argentina is doing a good job as a host, but i got absolutely no excitement for this event. The level in many/most sports is absurd, how many medallists in swimming/athletics from here would have won medals at the 2014 youth olympic games with their performances? Probably not many ... Of course the fact that this event takes place so late in the year might have something to do with it. The one athlete per nation rule, the absence of many elite talents (mainly fromt the US) and the small fields in many events certainly hurt the level of competition. I am sure that it will get even worse in 2022, so maybe at least 2020 will see a higher level of comeptition.

Every country seems to have some weird politicians nowadays, but Brazil seems to have more than its fair share. I always dreamt of visiting Sao Paulo (Liberdade to be more precisely), hopefully Brazil doesn't return to much darker times.

Very interesting draw for a judo semifinal ... No Japan, Russia, France and so on.

I know that for example in swimming USA didn't send it's best talents. Youth olympics results in general are often not a very good indicator for the future strength of a nation at senior level.

Why does Germany for example have two medals in men's C1 (canoeing slalom)? Isn't there a rule that every nation can only qualify one athlete?

I expect 12 medals for Germany, less than half the number of medals Germany won in 2014, mostly due to the fact that the teams Germany will send in swimming/athletics are much weaker than those 4 years ago.

Boateng is the weakest out of those 3 and Süle is probably the strongest, most Bayern fans agree on that. Next year Bayern will probably buy Pavard or they will first try whether Lukas Mai is good enough already to play on that level. Like i said before, there aren't many offensive players who are affordable and would help Bayern. Hazard, Dembele, Mbappe, Neymar, Couthino, Salah, Mane are too expansive and have no reason to change clubs. Younger players like Pulisic haven't proven so far that they can make the difference on the highest levels. I think Bayern should have bought Martial, he could have played as a winger and a striker. If Bayern would have a better coach (Nagelsmann and Tuchel were all available, Rose probably as well) then i honestly believe that with the formation i mentioned before, they still would have had a good chance at winning the champions league. Now as a Bayern fan you should pray that Tuchel/Rose takes over next season and that 2 out of Coman/Gnabry/Davies become world class or that Bayern buys another talent who then quickly becomes world class. Currently it's just unrealistic for Bayern to sign a world class winger, maybe the best solution would be to try a completely different system. Juventus doesn't have world-class wingers either and they are doing just fine.

You clearly don't know much about Bayern if you think that Boateng/Hummels should be selected ahead of Süle. Boateng, Martinez, Ribery, Müller and Robben have no place in this team. The team should be Neuer-Alaba-Hummels-Süle-Kimmich-Thiago-Sanches/Tolisso-James-Coman-Gnabry-Lewandowski. The injuries of Tolisso and especially Tolisso hurt the team, but the bigger problem is that for some reason Hoeneß seems to have a problem with spending money. Of course there is also the problem of finding someone who can replace Ribery/Robben, there are maybe 5 players in the world who are as good as those 2 were about 5 years ago and all of them are impossible to get. Bayern has to realize that they have to rebuild with players like Sanches, Coman, Gnabry, Davies and talented young players who are still affordable (like Havertz for example). Nonetheless Bayern still would have easily won against this Ajax side last season under Heynckes. Kovac is clearly not good enough to coach a team like Bayern and Bayern should try to get Klopp/Tuchel/Nagelsmann/Rose as fast as possible.

3 medals in olympic events and 2 of them in gold is great for Germany and somewhat deserved after so many slapstick misses at the Rio Olympics 2 years ago. Even as a non-german fan you have to be happy for the german athletes, considering how hard it must have been for them to come back to the same place where one of their coaches tragically died about 2 years ago at the olympics. 2 gold medals aren't a realistic goal for the next olympics, since Aigner is very unlikely to keep this level for 2 more years, but with Anton/Tasiadias and Funk (who was in great shape this week and could have challenged for gold if she would have stayed clear in the final) 1 gold (and 2 medals in total) should definitely be the goal in Tokyo.

Heynen on the men's side and Guidetti on the women's side? Guess which nation let both of them walk away?

So at the last 2 world championships only 2 european teams have won medals, Poland and ... Germany, both coached by Heynen!

Lithuania already picked a song? "In My Mind" is close to hitting 100 million views on Youtube after just over 2 months.

Still amazed that Germany wasnt able to qualify for this considering how many garbage teams managed to qualify. With a decent format this world cup would last 2 weeks at most and the teams could even get some rest in between games.

Another non-spanish born athlete winning a medal for Spain, at this point you have to wonder whether there are any spanish-born athletes left in Spain?

But apparently only on the womens side. I am still amazed that there are people who dont understand the importance of doping in cycling, just look what happened to british cycling in the last 10 years ... The Netherlands are dominant in speed skating, so noone should be surprised to see them that strong in another sport that is mostly about endurance. The Netherlands in general are more relaxed than other countries when it comes to drugs/doping. Algeria used to be much better than the Netherlands in distance running, but now the Netherlands clearly turned it around (at least on the womens side). You have to wonder how that was possible despite algerian people being more naturally gifted than dutch people when it comes to distance running ...

Will it be a german 1-2? Could be the first german gold since 1994!