OlympicsFan

[hide] Men's Singles Quarterfinals Central European Summer Time (GMT +2) Date and Venue Athlete 1 T1 T2 Athlete 2 May 31st or June 1st 2016, h. TBD, Court TBD, Paris TBD TBD May 31st or June 1st 2016, h. TBD, Court TBD, Paris TBD TBD May 31st 2016, h. TBD, Court TBD, Paris Albert Ramos-Vinolas 0 3 Stan Wawrinka [3] May 31st 2016, h. TBD, Court TBD, Paris [9] Richard Gasquet 1 3 Andy Murray [2] Women's Singles Quarterfinals Central European Summer Time (GMT +2) Date and Venue Athlete 1 T1 T2 Athlete 2 May 31st or June 1st 2016, h. TBD, Court TBD, Paris TBD TBD May 31st or June 1st 2016, h. TBD, Court TBD, Paris TBD TBD May 31st 2016, h. TBD, Court TBD, Paris Shelby Rogers 0 2 Garbine Muguruza [4] May 31st 2016, h. TBD, Court TBD, Paris TBD :TBD [/hide] Why are we only allowed to predict 3 matches? Why not wait with the predictions until we know all quarterfinals?

Very sad news from Germany. No Reus!, Bellarabi, Rudy and Brandt at the european championships. Our team will be: Neuer, Ter Stegen, Leno Hummels, Höwedes, Boateng, Rüdiger, Mustafi, Hector, Can Schweinsteiger, Kroos, Khedira, Özil, Kimmich, Weigl, Draxler, Podolski, Müller, Sane, Schürrle, Götze Gomez This is also very bad for our chances in Rio. Weigl, Kimmich, Rüdiger, Can, Draxler and Sane wouldve been very important for us.

Very sad news from Germany. No Reus!, Bellarabi, Rudy and Brandt at the european championships. Our team will be: Neuer, Ter Stegen, Leno Hummels, Höwedes, Boateng, Rüdiger, Mustafi, Hector, Can Schweinsteiger, Kroos, Khedira, Özil, Kimmich, Weigl, Draxler, Podolski, Müller, Sane, Schürrle, Götze Gomez This is also very bad for our chances in Rio. Weigl, Kimmich, Rüdiger, Can, Draxler and Sane wouldve been very important for us.

Sorry, if the question might seem stupid, but i hope that i understood you wrong. Are you really saying that we gave away 2 quota places for only one quota place in exchange? This doesnt seem like something that any person in their right mind would do ... Is there any good reason for not using the other quota place (the one we didnt exchange for the one in womens 25 m pistol)? We couldve just nominated another athlete and then we couldve decided shortly before the start of the competition which athlete we want to "use" ... !? In addition to that: Why didnt we echange the other quota place as well? Were there no other "open" quota places that were given back by other nations? All of this seems completely stupid, i hope that i understood you wrong. Note: Of course i am very happy that Karsch will get a chance to fight for 1-2 medals in Rio ... Note: Wenzel (womens skeet) and Löw (mens double trap) have been nominated for Rio.

It has become really senseless to follow athletics. One doped athlete from a 3rd world country/USA beats another doped athlete from a 3rd world country/USA, athletics has become a freak show (again). If you want to be world class in athletics as a country, then you just have to have enough poor people who are desperate enough to dope their way to the top. For a start it would be good to ban countries like Russia, Kenya or Ethiopia, then no men should be allowed to compete on the womens side and then caught dopers shouldnt be allowed to compete ever again.

Source? Very sad to hear, stupid decision. So we will give back another quota place.

Mens rapid fire: Reitz and Geis, but i didnt hear anything about womens air rifle. No one reached the final in Munich, so i think nothing changed since my last update, Kreutzer and Gschwandtner should be qualified, Engleder is already qualified in womens 50 m rifle 3 positions.

Thats the first reasonable explanation i heard. Lets see what she will do in the rest of the season.

Dont be sad. Germany and Italy won the last 2 slams on the womens side and now all italian/german girls are already out, i feel with you, better times will come again. We still have Zverev left on the mens side, but he will also be out in about one hour.

Germany will nominate Eva Roesken and Barbara Engleder in womens 50 m rifle 3 positions, so Beate Gauß (current world champion in this event) wont be in Rio ... In mens 50 m rifle 3 positions Germany will nominate Andre Link and Daniel Brodmeier, in mens 10 m air rifle Germany will nominate Julian Justus and Michael Janker. We got 6 quota places in mens 50 m rifle prone/mens 50 m rifle 3 positions/mens 10 m air rifle, but we will only use 5 for Julian Justus, Michael Janker, Andre Link, Daniel Brodmeier and Henri Junghänel, so we will give one quota place back and i think we will try to get a quota place in womens 10 m air pistol for Monika Karsch.

What the fuck is Azarenka doing? I hoped that Azarenka would prevent Serena from getting her 22nd slam ...

First time since 1952 that we wont have anyone in mens/womens single, cant say that i am surprised. We clearly concentrate on mens eight, mens/womens quadruple sculls, we will see in Rio whether it was the right decision.

German boxing federation announced that they will try to get a wildcard for Sarah Scheurich (womens -75 kg). What are her chances?

Coming home just to see that Siegemund was chanceless against Bouchard, what a horrible result ... Not surprised to see that Kerber lost, she was shit on clay this year, has always been shit on clay and it will never change. The shocking thing is that Bertens didnt even play good tennis, pretty much everyone wouldve won against Kerber today. Kerber is just hopeless with such slow conditions (Stuttgart is indoor and much faster), she needs faster courts, thank god the olympics arent played on clay. Bertens was mentally pretty weak and offered two breaks to Kerber in the 3rd set (at 3:1 and at 5:3) but Kerber just wasnt mentally there today. I hope she will be able to get that loss out of her had, then she will be a contender again in Wimbledon and at the US Open. Now Beck/Ostapenko/Gavrilova/Safarova have to win this tournament, otherwise i will be very pissed.

Expected loss for Nimani, she wouldve deserved to be in Rio, but the draw killed her. In the end we will probably qualify more athletes for Rio all sports combined than i expected, but not the athletes that i wanted to qualify. My dream wouldve been to have about 300-350 athletes in Rio, we will have more in the end, but many athletes/teams who shouldve qualified didnt qualify.

I am very sad for Sarah Scheurich. Her only chance to qualify here was to reach the semifinal, because the girls from Sweden and Russia who finished ahead of her at the continental qualification tournament didnt compete here (very clever decision, but bad for Scheurich) and she had to fight against Shield from the US (number 1 seed) in the second round ... I hope that we get at least one quota place on the womens side, considering how unlucky we have been so far. Edit: I just found out that our best chance for a quota place has to fight against a girl from Kazakhstan in the quartefinal, so its time to say goodbye to the quota place, although she beat the number one seed in the last round.

Anni! Pliskova again with an early exit at a slam ...

I hope that we qualify in mens single, mens lightweight four and maybe also womens eight, but i only expect our mens lightweight four to qualify.

No, matches have been (re)started. Nothing unexpected happened, so you didnt miss anything. Lisicki is already out against some no-name, Wawrinka and Muguruza both dropped the first set.

I think Babos can at least reach the match against Serena, but probably she will have no chance to beat her. Begu has a better draw and seems to be in a pretty good shape (like all romanian girls), so i wouldnt call her a possible upset, especially because she is seeded. I just noticed that the same is true for Cibulkova, so you probably cant call her a possible upset either ... The most interesting players for me will be Chirico and Cirstea. Before australian open i expected Crawford to go pretty deep but she really let me down, i think the same might happen with Chirico. I will also have a look at Stephens and Keys (who have a lot of potential but finally need to take the next step) and of course my favorite players (Ostapenko, Beck, Safarova, Gavrilova, Zverev and Kyrgios). Kvitova has often a very slow start, i wouldnt see it as a bad sign. Kerber had a match point against her in the first round of the australian open and then went on to win everything. I think Kvitova might need faster conditions, so she has to hope that the rain will stop soon, the same might be true for Kerber, so i wouldnt bet anything on Kerber winning against Bertens, especially because Kerber still isnt 100% fit after her shoulder injury and Bertens just won Nürnberg. I am not so sure about Coric winning easily against Fritz, both players didnt look so good recently, but Coric should be more experienced. Fritz on the other hand did pretty good at the australian open, so i can see him beating Coric here. The biggest advantage for Coric might be that Fritz doesnt seem to have a lot endurance, so Coric probably "only" needs to take the match to a 5th set and then Fritz would probably fall apart.

Group B is clearly stronger in my opinion. In group A Brazil and Russia should finish top 2, ahead of Japan and South Korea. On the womens side USA should win the group, China/Serbia should finish 2nd and 3rd, but the fight for the 4th spot could be very open, i still would put my money on Italy. I think the fight for the 2nd spot in group B will be most interesting, everyone will try to avoid Russia/Brazil in the quartefinal. On paper Russia, Brazil and USA are the clear favorites in my opinion, but it would be cool to see one out of Italy/Serbia/Netherlands on the podium. I think its safe to say that only 3 european teams will reach the quarterfinal, which is fair, considering the strength of Brazil/USA/China/Japan/South Korea, but in my opinion the tournament wouldve been more interesting with 2 out of Turkey/Germany/Thailand/Dominican Republic instead of Cameroon and Colombia. Edit: Its really sad to see how weak Cuba has become, in the past Cuba was a real powerhouse in volleyball.

It really hurts that we didnt qualify in mens C2 1000, because we are the defending olympic champion and since 1988 we always won a medal in this discipline (gold in 1992, 1996, 2004 and 2012). I cant say that its really shocking, Kuschela ended his career and Kretschmer was injured all the time. Sadly we couldnt compete with our best boat (Rebstock/Brendel), because Brendel already qualified in C1 1000m. We will send a very small team with only 11 athletes, but the good thing is that all of our athletes have a realistic chance to win a medal. Our goal should be to win 4 golds (mens C1 1000m, mens K2 1000m, womens K2 500m and womens K4 500m) and 6 medals in total (mens K2 200m, mens K1 1000m, mens K4 1000m).

Good joke, i really love your sense of humour! This is the perfect end to this "discussion".

I really dont want to discuss this with you, we will never agree. I wouldnt call those jumps normal. 1) Its her biggest improvement since 2013 and much bigger than her improvement from 2014 to 2015 2) Its still very early in the season, so its very likely that she will further improve this year 3) Most importantly: There is a huge difference between improving from 58.04 to 56.81 (2012 to 2013) and improving from 55.97 to 54.82 (2015 to 2016). Normally the jumps get smaller when you get older, but with her it seems to be the other way round. 4) What happened to her in 2014? 5) She turns 22 in less than a month, thats not really young for a female athlete. A one second jump wouldve been normal for a 18 or 19 yo girl maybe but not for a girl turning 22 this year. Last year she was 45th in world ranking, with her time of 54.82 she wouldve been 17th last year (less than 0.5s outside the top 10), which is also a "remarkable" improvement. You probably know what i generally think about canadian athletics/swimming and i know that you will never agree with me on this topic, so we really dont need to fight this out again and again. I wont be surprised by any canadian athlete showing huge improvements this year (i was absolutely not surprised to see such huge improvements by Oleksiak, Acevedo or Masse), so this was probably the last time that i wrote something concerning this topic. As a canadian fan you will be very happy with the results in Rio, you will win at least 10-12 medals in athletics/swimming and at least one gold medal.

A lot of interesting matches in the first round, especially on the womens side: Coric-Fritz, Chung-Halys, Pospisil-Berdych, Granollers-Fognini, Dimitrov-Troicki, Rosol-Wawrinka, Verdasco-Johnson, Svitolina-Cirstea, Kerber-Bertens, Friedsam-Kasatkina, Görges-Konta, Siegemund-Bouchard (my personal highlight), Osaka-Ostapenko, Stosur-Doi. I think Chirico, Cibulkova, Cirstea and maybe even Babos might surprise a lot of people here. On the mens side the same is true for Kyrgios, Pouille and Cuevas. On the womens side the part of the draw between Kerber and Kvitova looks pretty open, although Bacsinszky, Keys and Kvitova are pretty safe to make the quarterfinal in my opinion.