OlympicsFan

Irony? The most likely thing is that something was wrong with the timing. The second most likely thing is that the course was too short. Everyone was about 2 min fast than expected. 20 km in 80 min (1:20.00) -> 500 m in 2 min, so i assume that the course was at least 500 m too short OR the timing didn't work.

We have clearly the best team, if we play with our best team. Brazil and Argentina dont even come close concerning individual quality and we dont even need to use a single player who is not U23.

Good, so we only have a 50% chance of getting a very difficult group.

Or no doping tests ... Everyone was at least 2 min faster than expected, so i would say the course was at least 500m too short (1km = 4min) or something went wrong with the timing. Thank god Diniz didnt compete here, he wouldve destroyed the world record.

Crazy race walking times in Podebrady (Czech Republic) today: Men: 1) Karlström (Sweden) 1:19.11 (previous PB 1:21.03) 2) Linke (Germany) 1:19.19 (previous PB 1:20.37), 3rd on german all time list and fastest german time since 2000. 3) Pineda (Mexico) 1:19.20 (previous PB 1:24.54) 4) Vega (Mexico) 1:19.20 (previous PB 1:21.08) 5) Palma (Mexico) 1:19.38 (previous PB 1:21.02) 6) Pohle (Germany) 1:19.58 (previous PB 1:21.29) Women: 1) Ortega (Mexico) 1:29.35 (previous PB 1:31.04) 2) Buziak (Poland) 1:30.36 3) Szwarnog (Poland) 1:30.50 (previous PB 1:30.56) 4) Galikova (Slovakia) 1:30.53 (previous PB 1:31.42) 5) Trapletti (Italy) 1:31.49 6) Golba (Poland) 1:32.36 Those might be new national records for Slovakia and Sweden. I dont really understand those times ... It looks as if something was wrong with the timing ... or the course was too short ... By looking at the times i would say that the course might have been about 500m too short. Full results: http://www.podebrady-walking.cz/vysledky

All matches will be streamed live on "sportdeutschland.tv", but the streams might be geoblocked and i think the commentary will be in german.

Our womens team will have to play against Australia, our mens team will have to play against Fidji or South Africa. The pots are determined by the olympic results in the last 20 years, so our mens team is in pot 4 because 1988 was the last time that we participated at the olympic games. There is a 2/3 probability that our womens team will have a very difficult group. Australia + China/Canada would be a very tough group. On the mens side our group doesnt really matter, we will win the gold medal anyway if we play with our best team and have a decent preparation.

Some really important news: Agnel (France) will be allowed to defend his olympic title in mens 200 free, Pothain "gave" up his spot. Park (South Korea) probably wont be allowed by his federation to compete in Rio, because he was caught doping last year.

Another disgrace for sport, now i really hope that the dutch team will qualify and France hopefully will fail. It really reminds me of womens volleyball qualification event earlier this year. I hope that our team wont qualify, which is very unlikely anyway, otherwise the funding wont be cut and we will waste even more money for a dead sport. If you want to go to the olympics, then you have to earn it. Water polo is by far the weakest team sport, so if you cant even qualify in water polo, you dont deserve any funding at all.

Another disgraceful result in womens epee. To all the german officials out there: Either you invest some money for good coaches or you stop the funding for fencing. Stahlberg and Ebert are the most talented athletes of their age group, but both horribly failed here, what a disgrace!

If we do this for all nations, then we have at least 4 or 5 posts for every nation just to name the qualified athletes, so we will end up with more than 50 posts that are just about naming the qualified athletes. There is no need to post the names of the qualified athletes immediately after the end of each session, because everyone who cares will look it up and discuss about it on swimming websites like Swimswam, all other people will have no problem to wait until the end of the event to know the names of the qualified athletes. Of course i cant tell you what to do, but if other people follow your example, then we will end up with tons of comments in the swimming/athletics thread that basically have no value, because you couldve said the same with just one comment.

Your team looks extremely strong. I think you will be the favorite in womens team sabre. Your top 3 athletes were seeded 1st (Infante), 4th (Arrayales) and 11th (Toledo). Infante and Arrayales reached the round of last 32, but Toledo got pretty unlucky and lost 14:15 against Eifler who won the silver medal in womens cadet sabre. It would be cool if you could win a medal, but i will cheer Rifkiss from France, Brunet from France, Emura from Japan and Pusztai from Hungary who was born in 2001! On the mens side i will cheer for Banyai from Hungary.

@JoshMartini007 and Near: Do you guys plan to update the qualifier list every day? I think most (non-canadian) people dont really care about those results (and if they care, they can look it up on other sites like Swimswam), so why not wait until the end of the canadian trials to post the names of all the qualified athletes?

Go Italy, Spain, Hungary and Romania, please qualify!

Another horrible performance by Ebert, she is the far most talented athlete in this age group, but completely lost her shape. By now she should be dominating at this level. I guess we will never come back to where we belong if we dont decide to spend some money for good coaches.

You are pretty unfair, everyone knows that this team will never reach anything important. In fact there are probably very few "serious" teams in the world who are worse than our team. I am still angry that there even is funding for this sport. We should just spend the money for something useful. No one in Germany cares about this sport and we will never win something, so we should give this money to other sports like fencing or boxing.

Our team is playing like always. First it looks as if they might really do something good, but in the end they always fail. I have no doubt that it will be the same here. We are always close to a big result, but never quite get there. Lets not forget that we shouldnt even be here, so you cant even say that we deserve to qualify.

We are just better than you! No, seriously, you will win any way. In the end you should only avoid 4th place in the group, so that you wont face Hungary, you will beat anyone else in the quarterfinal. This reminds me of your mens basketball team at the european championships last year, i have absolutely no doubt that you will qualify here.

We are destroying South Africa ... Spain seems beatable for us, which probably means that we will lose by 10 goals or something like that. The dutch win is pretty bad for us. I still think that Spain and Italy will be first and second, but now it will be very difficult for us to become 3rd, which would be our only chance to qualify.

Extremely dominant performance by Tourette in mens foil, noone scored more than 8 points (Klein in the semifinal) against him!

Todays semifinals: Mens foil (starting at 19:45 CET live on Youtube): Borodachev vs. Marini Tourette vs. Klein Womens epee (starting at 19:00 CET live on Youtube): Bozza vs. Petri Cagnin vs. Stewart Some observations: Russia, France and the big asian nations seem to be weaker than in the past. Italy and USA are still very strong. Singapore is extremely strong so far and in my opinion the biggest surprise. Poland seems to have a pretty good depth, but they are a bit unlucky so far. From a german perspective: We really improved on cadet level, i never thought that we could win 2 individual medals "without" Ebert. Especially in womens sabre (where we finally seem to have a good talent) and mens foil (where we had the number 1 seed and one other athlete in the semifinal) the results are very positive for us. Its still annoying that there are no team events on cadet level, this year we couldve won medals in womens sabre and mens epee.

Thanks! I really dont understand it ... Either russian athletes live on the moon OR they just dont care OR meldonium remains much longer in the body than expected. There is no other explanation why they are still caught, more than 3 months after Meldonium became illegal.

1) When was he tested and for which substance? 2) Is he part of the russian roster at the world qualification tournament for Rio?

1) Source? 2) I think this is really bad news for Russia, this destroys their (already small) chance to fight for a team medal in Rio. 3) I just hope that Verniaiev, Belyavskiy and Ablyazin are clean.

Positive surprises in my opinion: Men: Boyang (born in 1997) 3rd, Kolyada (born in 1995) 4th, Vasiljevs (born in 1999) 14th Women: Wagner 2nd, Gold 4th, Daleman (born in 1998) 9th, Tursynbayeva (born in 2000) 12th, Da-bin (born in 2000) 14th Pairs: Wenjing/Cong (born in 1997 and 1992) 2nd, Tarasova/Morozov (born in 1994 and 1992) 5th, Ilyushechkina/Moscovitch 7th Ice dance: Shibutani/Shibutani (born in 1994 and 1991) 2nd and Sinitsina/Katsalapov (born in 1995 and 1991) 9th. Negative surprises in my opinion: Men: Chan only 5th, Uno only 7th, Ten only 11th, Kovtun only 18th, Han only 26th, Nguyen only 27th Women: Radionova only 6th, Asada only 7th, Meite only 25th Pairs: Volosozhar/Trankov only 6th, Cheng/Hao only 12th Ice dance: Basically all russian paris, none of their pairs from last year competed this year. The biggest "shocks" for me were Nguyen, Meite and Volosozhar/Trankov.