OlympicsFan

What a choke by Zverev ... Actually Nadal did absolutely nothing to earn the win, Zverev gifted it to him. Zverev has the level to beat almost anyone, but he doesnt have the nerves to do it. He should have 3 top 10 wins this year already (Berdych two times and Nadal once) ... It was a great chance for him (quarterfinal at a masters tournament against Nishikori, first top 10/top 5 win, entering top 50), but you could really see that the pressure was too much for him, Nadal won 15 of the last 16 points. Maybe he will learn from it, but i am not very optimistic. He clearly has to improve his net play (Monfils destroyed him a couple of weeks ago by forcing him to the net) and his forehand. His fitness and his strength is getting better every time i watch him play. I actually think he should serve better, considering his size. I really like that he risks a lot with his 2nd serve, but yesterday it was too much, he had 9 aces and 11 double faults. I also noticed that he is very bad at attacking the 2nd serve of his opponents. He often risks too much, he throws away tons of opportunities by making easy mistakes.

And why exactly is that good news? Would he be bad for your chances to qualify for Rio, because he is only good at one apparatus?

Medal predictions for Portland: http://trackandfieldnews.com/index.php/category-formcharts/2890-2016-world-indoor-champs-men-s-medal-picks

Will Narang also be allowed to compete in air rifle? Italy has only one quota place in womens trap and it was won by Stanco, so why will Rossi be allowed to compete instead of Stanco?

By winning against Nadal, Zverev could become the first 18 year old to reach the quarterfinal of a masters tournament since Nadal himself in 2005. The only other 18 yo to do that in this century was Roddick in 2001. No player born in 1994 or later reached the quarterfinal of a masters tournament so far.

Some athletes/teams who noone mentioned until now: Athletics: All russian medallists in athletics might miss the olympic games. Björn Otto (silver in mens pole vault) is very unlikely to qualify. The same might be true for Hadadi (silver in mens discus throw). I think Savinova/Poistogova (gold and bronze in womens 800 m), Alptekin/Bulut (gold and silver in womens 1500) are banned? Basketball: Russia (bronze in 2012) wont qualify in mens basketball. Boxing: Campbell (gold in 2012) turned pro, i dont know if he will try to qualify. The same is true for Nevin (silver in 2012), Ogogo (bronze in 2012), Joshua (gold in 2012). Maybe there are other athletes who turned pro and wont try to qualify. Slalom canoeing: In slalom canoeing it could become very interesting, because only one athlete from each nation can qualify, so guys like Tasiadis (silver in 2012) or Aigner (bronze in 2012) might easily miss the olympics. Track cycling: Förstemann and Levy (both won bronze in mens team sprint in 2012 and Levy won silver in mens keirin) might very well not qualify. Ed Clancy (bronze in mens omnium in 2012) also might miss qualification, Cavendish seems to be more likely to compete in mens omnium for GB. Clancy might compete in mens team pursuit instead. Equestrian: Langehanenberg won a silver medal in dressage team in 2012, but she wont qualify for Rio, the same probably will be true for Schneider, who was in the same team. Fencing: Germany won bronze in mens team foil, but didnt qualify for Rio. Joppich at least qualified individually. Japan won silver in London in mens team foil, but only Ota qualified this time. Vezzali won bronze individually and gold in the team in London, but this time she missed qualification. Russia and South Korea won silver and bronze in womens team foil, but this time both nations were only allowed to qualify 2 athletes, so some of their medallists from 2012 will miss Rio, the same is true for mens sabre. Swimming: I think it will be pretty difficult for Cielo (bronze in 2012), Jamieson (silver in 2012) and Beisel (bronze and silver in 2012) to qualify. Shooting: Tons of athletes who won a medal in London and are young enough to still compete (and therefore probably didnt retire) didnt won a quota place for Rio (until now). For example: Cox, Narang, Moldoveanu, Tesconi, Zlatic or Rossi! Tennis: Sharapova (silver in womens single in 2012) might miss Rio.

Marco Huck said that he wants to compete in Rio, but we already have a qualified athlete in his weight category ... He might try to qualify in an other weight category or he could also compete for Serbia. Jürgen Brähmer, Felix Sturm and Artur Abraham dont want to compete in Rio. In general i think that not many german pros (if any) will try to compete in Rio. I think most pros can only loose at the olympic games. They have to fight in a completely new system with only 3 rounds instead of 12 and they dont earn anything. Not to talk about what would happen if a pro looses at the olympic games ...

At least 50 medals in total. I think USA, China and Russia will be top 3. GB, Australia, Japan, South Korea and France also could be ahead of us, so we should at best be 4th in medal table and not worse than 9th. I expect us to be 5th or 6th with 13-15 gold medals. I hope that we will win medals in at least 20 different sports and gold medals in at least 10 different sports.

I really hope that GB will win a gold medal in mens foil in Rio. We will have a small team (as expected), but at least we wont have any tourists. I expect 1 medal and i would be very happy with 2 medals. I am sure that we will have at least one team in Tokyo (our mens sabre team should qualify), but this could also be the only positive thing to say about our future in fencing. Joppich, Heidemann and Golubytskyi all will retire before Tokyo, so we have to hope that talents like Ebert or Stahlberg will take their place. I expect a lot from France and USA in Rio, i think those nations will each win 2-3 gold medals.

Schöneborn is very good in fencing and pretty bad in swimming. Riding is like a lottery, because you have to be lucky to get a good horse. I think you could just look at the results of the last world championships, to get a feeling for the strengths and weaknesses of all the athletes. http://www.pentathlon.org/events/results/?id=135 I think swimming is the only discipline were results are pretty "predictable". By looking at the results i would say that Murray for example is pretty good in swimming and for example Asadauskaite seems to be pretty good in combined. I think combined also is pretty difficult to predict, because you need a bit of luck for the shooting part and you never know who has most energy left for the running. In fencing a lot of people can overperform if they get into a "flow". Here are the world records for all disciplines and overall, maybe that helps you: http://www.pentathlon.org/athletes/world-records/

Canada! Before the race i wouldve never believed that they could win a medal. At least Germany, Norway, France, Austria, Italy, Russia and Czech Republic are all better on paper. This is a very good result for biathlon, it shows that many nations can be competitive, unlike in many other sports like womens cross-country. I think Canada last year won a medal in mens sprint, so you could say that they defended their medal. You also have to give huge respect to their coach. I think they dont really get much/any funding, like Gagnon in womens alpine skiing, so those results are very surprising and you have to be glad for those athletes who invest so much of their own money.

In general very disappointing results. No individual medals for Gabi, Hildebrand, Preuß, J. Boe, Schempp and Shipulin. Thank god there are world championships every year, so that most results will be reversed next year. Gabi, Dorothea, Hildebrand and Kaisa deserved clearly better here.

Zverev managed to win in 3 sets, but like expected it was a lot of work. In the next round against Dimitrov he also shouldnt be chanceless. I think it would be cool if he could make the top 50 in world ranking before his 19th birthday. Most of the big players (Federer, Nadal, Murray) have done it and Djokovic entered the top 50 on shortly after his 19th birthday. I dont think that the H2H is really "important" at such a young age. Fritz clearly improved in the last couple of months, so i thought that he should be able to overcome his problems against Tiafoe. Maybe Fritz isnt yet ready to compete at such a high level every week, which would be normal, considering that he just started to compete on the tour. Maybe he also trains/trained with Tiafoe or competed against him very often in the past, this would explain why Tiafoe knows how to play against Fritz. I dont think that this is in general a bad matchup for Fritz.

Funny that you mention it. I was about to ask you what happened to Ymer, he always seemed to be a pretty interesting prospect, but apparently didnt improve much in the last couple of months. Other young players like Kokkinakis, Rublev (although he recently jumped to 150th in world ranking), Halys, Mmoh or Paul also seem to be a bit behind, compared to Zverev/Fritz/Coric/Kyrgios. The most "shocking" example for me is Kozlov, he competed in the 2014 AO final against Zverev, but no he is only 338th in world ranking.

USA won the SheBelieves Cup with 3 wins against Germany (2:1), France (1:0) and England (1:0). Germany finished second with 2 wins against France (1:0) and England (2:1). Our loss against USA was pretty unlucky, especially the 2nd goal, but still a good result, considering that we played without 7 of our best players. Somehow France doesnt know how to beat us, although they are the better team. I dont think anyone can challenge USA in Rio. I would say Germany, France and maybe Brazil/Australia fight for the other 2 medals.

We won a friendly match against Qatar with a score of 32:17, although we are still missing some of our best players. Either Qatar was missing some players or they are just pretty bad if they dont play at home ... I dont think that they will be a medal contender in Rio.

Great work, thanks! Do you also have a time table for the event?

Yes, but probably a bit too late, maybe he can surprise again in mass start. What was wrong with him all season long? Was he ill/injured in the summer or is he just getting too old?

I wont respond to your personal attacks, this is not the right place. Feel free to ignore me or write me a PM if you have a problem. You seem to confuse a lot of things, i only joined Totallympics about a week ago ... I actually dont even know why i got two plus, what it means or how to give it to someone else, but obviously there are people who enjoy some of my comments, even if you dont believe it. Its funny that you didnt mention Ukraine/Russia. Its ok for you if i am suspicious towards those countries? Why is it ok to be suspicious towards those countries? Because they had many doping cases in the recent past, therefore i dont want any ukrainian/russian athletes to win medals, although i have no physical proof against those athletes who compete. The same is true for France, as i mentioned before, so why not deal with french athletes the same way? I am suspicious towards norwegian athletes, because many of their athletes are in an insane shape, just in time for the home world championships. In addition to that a small country like Norway is dominating a 100% endurance sport like cross-crounty, the same is true for the Netherlands in speed skating. I mentioned before why i am suspicious towards french athletes (probably you were too irritated to see it), i have stated my point and i wont repeat it after every french gold medal, so this was my last comment concerning this topic.

Its great that you are keeping us up to date, but wouldnt it be better to ... 1) Only post the results in one thread 2) Not post a new medal table after every event 3) Post the results in the right order and/or only the top 3 Its your thread, so you can probably do whatever you want with it, but you could safe yourself a lot of work by doing the things i mentioned above.

In general i agree about Jurca, but i think you are a bit too "harsh". I was very surprised that she finished top 10 in the all around last year, considering that girls like Janas or Downie always outperformed her at junior level, but a 16 year old girl finishing top 10 at world championships is still a pretty good result. I dont ever see her winning an individual medal, but she can be very important in the romanian team and she will probably have to compete at all 4 apparatus in the team.

Last year with Iordache, Jurca, Iridon, Zarzu and Bulimar you were 2 points or more behind Belgium/France/Germany/Brazil. I dont think that Germany or Brazil will get any worse, but i dont know about France and Belgium. I think you will need to score better than last year, which will be really difficult without Iordache, considering that she scored about 56 points. Your biggest problem seems to be uneven bars and Iordache is your best athlete at uneven bars, so it doesnt look very good for you at the moment. I really pray that you will qualify, olympics without Iordache would be horrible, especially in womens all around.

This time we wont get 0 points! I think we could finish in top 20.

Fritz surprisingly lost against Tiafoe ... I think Zverev will have the same fate against Dodig. On the womens side Beck is pretty close to qualify for the Olympics, this would mean that Lisicki and or Görges will miss Rio.

Womens 100 m, womens marathon, mens discus throw and mens javelin throw also could get exciting. I think we will see german athletes in many "new" disciplines. Womens 200 m, womens 800 m, womens 1500 m, womens 5000/10000 m, womens 400 m hurdles, mens marathon, mens triple jump and mens high jump.