OlympicsFan

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.

True, but Savchenko was born in Ukrain, so this is a very interesting pair. In the end i am just happy that we have such a great new pair and that Aljona can keep competing. The bronze medal was a great end to their first season and i am sure that they will only get better and that Aljona will be able to fulfill her dream of an olympic gold medal in 2018. Its also interesting to note that they have a german (Alexander König) and a french coach (Jean-Francoic Ballester). I think its fair to say that its an "international project", but they have to compete for one country and they decided to compete for Germany. Aljona might be the more important part of the pair, but both profit from each other and in the end they could have as well competed for France and noone wouldve had a problem, because they are just a great pair. Its also interesting to know that France also has a history of "buying" athletes, for example Vanessa James who was born in Canada and formerly competed for GB. Andrei Novoselov was born in Russia but now competes for France. Florent Amodio is a bit different case, but also quite interesting. He was born in Brazil and still has the brazilian citizenship but got adopted by a french couple early in his life and decided to represent France internationally. Overall figure skating and especially pair skating seems to be very "international". Other interesting cases: Tatiana Volosozhar also was born in Ukraine but now competes for Russia. Vladimir Morozov was born in Germany but represents Russia. Ashley Wagner was born in Germany but competes for USA. Yuko Kavaguti was born in Japan but competes for Russia now. Lubov Ilyushechkina was born in Russia but now competes for Canada. Ivan Righini was born in Russia but now competes for Italy. Oleksii Bychenko was born in Ukraine but now competes for Israel. Misha Ge was born in Russia but now competes for Uzbekistan. Elizabet Tursynbayeva was born in Russia but now competes for Kazakhstan. Kaitlyn Weaver was born in the US but now competes for Canada. Piper Gilles was born in the US but now competes for Canada. Charlene Guignard was born in France but now competes for Italy. ... Overall 3 of the top 20 in mens single skating dont represent their country of birth. Overall 3 of the top 20 in womens single skating dont represent their country of birth. Overall 9 of the top 20 pairs in ice dance have at least one athlete who doesnt represent his/her country of birth. Overall 11 of the top 20 pairs in pair skating have athletes who dont represent his/her country of birth. Its really interesting that 50% of the pairs in ice dance or pair skating have an athlete who was born in an other country.

We have to become third in our group to avoid Hungary. On a good day we can beat Romania, France or Russia, but we are missing 3 important players. Do you have any news about the russian doping cases in mens volleyball? I still have hope that we can go to Rio. I would clearly prefer our mens volleyball team over our mens water polo team in Rio. Even our mens basketball team might still have a tiny chance, if FIBA decides to "ban" the italian federation any time soon, although its very unlikely and wouldnt be fair for the italian national team.

I really dont know whats going on with Ebert ... just the fact that she still competes in this age category shows that she isnt very confident. By now she should dominate at this level, but it looks as if she at the moment isnt better than 2 or 3 years ago. I hope she will recover soon! On the other hand very good for Eifler finally, she always was a big talent but never was able to show it at the big stage.

I think Giorgi wont play for Italy in the future. It will be interesting to see which italian girl will go to Rio instead ...

Mitchell Whitmore wont be allowed to compete in ISU events until March 31st 2017: http://static.isu.org/media/1001/2016-01-donagrandi-vs-whitmore-final-decision-for-publication.pdf

Two (more or less) interesting news from german handball: 1) Our mens team won today 33:26 (17:15) against Denmark in Cologne. I think this should give a lot of hope to Norway and Croatia. 2) From now on our womens national team will be coached by Michael Biegler.

The qualification format was a bit more complicated and i have only a german source. The qualification consisted of 3 competitions and the final decision was made after the results at the "Trofeo Princesa Sofia" this week. I can also tell you that Brauchli/Hausser (mens 470) will compete for Switzerland in Rio.

Really? He wont be able to swim the individual mens 100 free, although many people saw him as a gold medal contender. I think this is quite a big upset. On the other hand he will probably win 2 gold medals, so this wont hurt him too much. I think that athletes like Grangeon, Santamans or Joly all will be selected in the end, so no need for all the stress, in addition to that many athletes will be selected for the relays, so France will probably have about 20 athletes in swimming at the olympics.

Its official that Germany will be represented by Heil/Plößel (mens 49er) and Jurczok/Lorenz (womens 49er).

Great result for Schöneborn again, she has become extremely consistent this year, everything but gold in Rio now would be disappointing. At the moment Schleu is much better than Kohlmann, but for some reason Kohlmann is already qualified for Rio ... I am happy to see that we seem to get better on the mens side, Zillekens always has been a big talent, but now he seems to finally become consistent on senior level.

Its really disgusting that Spain is "buying" tons of athletes in all sports. I think they are the 3rd worst european nation, only behind Turkey and Azerbaijan. If you also take the big doping scandal a couple of years ago into account, then there is absolutely no reason to be a fan of spanish sport. They did the same with Mirotic and they will probably try the same with talents like Doncic. So far only one german talent has been bought by Spain (Nicola Kuhn in tennis) and i am happy that Mushidi or Hartenstein dont play in Spain, otherwise they would probably also try to buy them, although they have absolutely no connection to Spain.

Great result for your team, so Italy wont defend their title from 2014. At the moment we are destroying France (60:30 before the last quarter), although our 2 best players here (Mushidi and Freudenberg) are playing pretty bad so far.

What a disgusting result, obviously the judges are trying to push Gracie Gold. If we look at the results of this season so far, the only acceptable result would be a gold for one of the russian girls, although i would love to see Mao Asada winning the gold.

I wouldnt call Germany vs. France a final before a final, i dont think that anyone can stop Italy here. Do you know if France/Italy/Serbia are missing any of their best players? Germany is missing Hartenstein and Bonga both due to injury, both apart from that we are playing with our best team.

The german womens head coach said that its only a minor injury and that she is optimistic that Schäfer will be able to compete. We already had enough bad luck this year (Schrader, Holzdeppe, Dissinger, Hambüchen), so we also deserve some luck. I hope that our womens team will qualify, because Seitz and Scheder are possible medal contenders in womens uneven bars. On the mens side i am not too worried honestly. Lets say we wouldve competed with Rittschik instead of Hambüchen at the world championships last year and Rittschik wouldve scored about 14.5 on mens pommel horse and 0 points everywhere else, then we wouldve had only about 0.5 points less overall, so we still wouldve had more than 345 points. France and South Korea were the only 2 other teams to score 342 points or more. I dont think that 2 out of Netherlands/Romania/Ukraine/Spain can score 345 points or more, so our team should qualify, unless they completely loose their nerves. In addition to that Nguyen and Bretschneider are in a clearly better shape now, so i think that 345 points would be pretty much the minimum for us.

Kerber seems to be back, its really great to see that she can reach the semifinal of such a big tournament, although she isnt at 100% and in addition to that this surface is too slow for her. This is her best result ever in Miami and she is back to number 2. Cmon Angie, you can beat guest again! Wilander quit working with Keys after just 8 days ...

It would be sad, especially because Janas and Berger are also missing, but we still should be able to qualify. I think in top shape we would have the 5th best team in the world behind GB, USA, Russia and China. Lets say our team wont qualify, would we be able to send Scheder or Seitz to Rio instead of Schäfer? I think Scheder and Seitz would have clearly better medal chances.