OlympicsFan

Not sure how many swimming fans care about track cycling, but swimming fans should care about the U23 european championships. Guys like Märtens or Wiffen will compete.

More than a second slower than her PB, the trend is obvious for anyone who is able to look at her objectively. Her 200 m races were both PBs while her 400 m races were both at least a second behind her PB.

Miracle year for France. Before this year they were complete trash in men's medley relay and now they found a fast fly and breast leg. Always amazing when nations just switch it on for their home olympics.

McIntosh will learn from this competition. PBs in both 200 m races (200 fly, 200 free) and rather "off" in the two 400 m races (400 IM, 400 free). The 200 free seems like the most difficult race for her to win next year.

Wellbrock has to decide what he wants his legacy to be. I think he has to recognize that he has to decide between open water and the pool. Winning a gold in the pool would be much bigger for his legacy than winning another open water gold in my opinion. I wish he would decide to only compete in the 800/1500 free next year, but sadly that doesn't seem likely. Märtens should probably focus on 2 or at most 3 events. He should definitely either drop the 200 free or the 1500 free.

So far GB has always won 2 medals when they had 2 individual finalists, don't see that continuing in women's 400 IM.

The morrocan guy is probably the most obvious case since Mellouli. Improving your PB by 30 seconds is insane for an age group swimmer, but completely unbelievable for someone of his age. This guy has never before done anything in the 800/1500 free long course. He is mediocre at best all season long and then completely smashes it at worlds. He becomes the 2nd fastest guy ever out of nowhere (ahead of guys like Paltrinieri, Wellbrock, Romanchuk or Hackett) and makes Finke look like a turtle, who himself has always made everyone else look like turtles. I hope that the german coach finds an answer to this. Wellbrock and Märtens won't stand a chance against the moroccan guy, Finke and Short unless they go all out with their doping program as well. If they aren't willing to do that, they should just retire and save the tax payers their money.

Why? This german team is trash, both France and Brazil would be the huge favorites.

European fans can look forward to the U23 European championships and the athletics U20 European championships, so maybe less reason to be sad.

The fight for bronze in the women’s medley relay might turn out to be more exciting than expected. China is still the favorite, but maybe Canada or Sweden can challenge. GB not making the final is somewhat surprising, but in the end they don’t really have any outstanding legs. Both their breaststroke and their butterfly leg were pretty slow.

Actually somewhat deserved for not using Miressi in prelims. They still should have beaten Germany and Canada. In the end they wouldn’t have won a medal anyways.

Interesting result in women's volleyball. Slovenia vs. Germany in the final, seems rather unexpected. Not sure what happened to Italy, Serbia, Poland and Turkey.

I think it was you who started with what-ifs ... I agree that 5 medals would be very good next year, not sure if i agree that 2 medals would be a complete disaster. It might be a complete disaster based on what italian fans have gotten used to, but in my opinion Italy could win "only" 2 medals without underperforming. I don't know how much money Italy puts into swimming, so that might also have an influence on whether you consider 2 medals a disaster.

Pretty unlucky results for Germany in the tennis tournament. McDonald getting injured cost him a (gold) medal chance in the individual and the double. On the women's side the german athletes were unlucky to run into athletes from the Czech Republic in both the individual and the double competition in the quarterfinal already.

Apparently women's shot put was won by Nafy Thia M from Belgium ...

1) If Martinenghi swims 0.01 slower, he doesn't medal. 2) In the men's 4 x 100 free relay Italy might as well have finished 4th (behind GB and the US) 3) In men's 200 free the 10th place was a huge success for De Tullio. You shouldn't forget that multiple faster guys flopped or didn't even compete (Märtens, Pan, Marchand). 4) In men's 200 fly you shouldn't forget that Milak didn't compete, otherwise Razzetti would have been 0.5 seconds away from the final. 5) In men's 200 IM multiple faster guys flopped or didn't compete (Wang, Qin, Kos). 6) Not sure if Franceschi would have made the final if McKeown, Pickrem, Wood and McIntosh would have competed/not been disqualified as well. 7) Poggio was unlucky, not sure how close he would have been to the final if Peaty and Imoudu would have competed (not to mention the two russian guys and Shymanovich who were missing as well). Before this year i would have expected Italy to definitely to better, but in my opinion 4 medals is pretty much a perfect result for them given where they are at right now. I would give the following italian athletes a chance to medal next year: Maybe Miressi (100 free) Maybe Galossi (400/800 free) Men's 4 x 100 free Maybe men's medley relay Martinenghi (100 breast) Ceccon (100 back, maybe 100 free) Quadarella (1500 free) Pilato (100 breast) I think 2-6 medals are realistic in my opinion (Quadarella, Ceccon, Martinenghi + X).

The Netherlanda with 8 individual finals in olympic events, as much as Germany and one more than Italy. Italy could also get to 8 tomorrow if Franceschi makes the final in women's 400 IM. Very good result in terms of medals for Italy if we consider this. Italy: 7 individual finals, 4 medals Germany: 8 individual finals, 1 medal Hungary: 7 individual finals, 1 medal Japan: 10 individual finals, 1 medal

Does anyone (from Italy) know why Italy competed with a completely new women's team here? They had a completely different team at junior worlds earlier this year. Did they want to give their "reserve" a chance to compete at the international level?

Very impressive week by Kevric in women's artistic gymnastics. She won 4 out of 6 possible golds and it very well could have been 6 out of 6. The women's team missed gold by only 0.8 points and in the vault final she only missed gold by 0.016 points. Difficult to say where she is at compared to the best talents in her age group, but she for sure is one of the best talents Germany has produced in a long time.

Crazy level in women's 800 free. Gose finished 5th with a time that would have been enough for silver in 2022 and for bronze in 2021. Europe is getting killed here. I have hope that it will be different next year in a different time zone, but Europe definitely has a lot of catching up to do. European gold medals in olympic events on the women's side: 1 European gold medals in olympic events on the men's side: 7

Germany still on track, good to see. Hopefully they achieve their goal of not qualifying a single athlete for the olympics. List of the olympics in the past 50 years where Germany didn't win a single medal: 1976 2016 2020 I don't see how they will win any medal next year. In 1988 Germany won 8 medals while no other nation won more than 5 ... Noone seems to be bothered by this federation burning threw millions of euros without producing any results.

Very surprsing result in women's 200 back. I was sure before the start of the competition that bronze would go to White or maybe Masse, but the chinese won a very surprising bronze. At least her time was decent, but normally there should be multiple american women who can go faster than 2:06.7.

He went from being completely irrelevant to one of the fastest all time within one year. If you would have asked experts about the favorite in the 100 fly before the start of the year, they probably would have mentioned 50 other guys before they would have mentioned Grousset. With the olympics being in Paris he has to be the favorite. I wonder what he could have done in the 50 free. I think he would have won silver if he would have competed.

You could argue that longevity is also part of the game ...

France is saving Europe. Golds in olympic events: France: 4 Rest of Europe: 4