OlympicsFan

Really hurts ... I don't even want to imagine how many olympic medals Germany will lose thanks to Jordan Stolz (speed skating), Coling Heathcock (fencing) and Kaii Winkler (swimming) not representing Germany.

Italy with 9 medals after 9 competitions, absolutely insane level! They are clearly more impressive than China/Japan/USA/GB, only event where they didn't win a medal is men's pommel horse. They don't seem to have any generational talents in this age group, but a lot of depth. At this point it would be almost shocking if Italy wouldn't fight for team medals at every world championships/olympics in the near future (post Paris). Tomorrow they could win 2 or 3 more medals. Not sure if China/Japan/USA competes with their best athletes here? They used to be better at junior level, especially the US on the women's side, but maybe they are having a weaker generation?

Italy again with a bronze medal (men’s floor), has to be some kind of „curse“.

Good results for Germany on the men's side so far, not where they should be, but better than in the past. Of course the absence of the russian athletes has to be taken into account.

Really tight competition overall. Only 0.9 points between first and fifth, all those guys seem to be on pretty much the same level. The colombian guy is one year younger than the german/italian guy, so he looks like a bigger talent right now. Overall great results for Italy, they continue to be really impressive at junior level.

Crazy underperformance by Kevric, the best european gymnast in this age group. She should have sleepwalked into the floor and all-around final.

Titley magic already kicking in. Have to be national records or at least very close to it?

We don’t know what her focus has been on recently, but at least the 200 free record seems in danger, maybe also the 200/400 IM records. Still think that the 200 fly record is out of her reach for now, but maybe she can go 2:03 this year and then attack it in 2024 or 2025. The 200 fly record is probably the most difficult to break on the women’s side (maybe apart from Ledecky‘s 800/1500 free records) and the only record (in an Olympic event) that might be even more out of reach is the men’s 800 free record (+ maybe Peaty‘s 100 breast record). I think Phelps holds the record for having broken the world record in the most Olympic (individual) events. He broke the record in the 200 free, 100/200 fly and 200/400 IM. Crazy to think that Summer could actually match that. I don’t See her breaking the 800 free record, but who knows? List of female swimmers with the most Olympic golds: Jenny Thompson - 8 Katy Ledecky - 7 Kristin Otto/Amy Van Dyken - 6 Emma McKeon/Krisztina Egerszegi/Dana Vollmer/Missy Franklin - 5 List of female swimmers with the most individual Olympic golds: Katie Ledecky - 6 Krisztina Egerszegi - 5 Inge De Bruijn/Janet Evans/Yana Klochkova/Kristin Otto - 4 List of female swimmers with the most Olympic golds at a single games: Kristin Otto - 6 Kornelia Ender/Katie Ledecky/Emma McKeon/Missy Franklin/Amy Van Dyken - 4 Number of swimming gold medals that Canada won at the Olympics (all-time): 9 Number of swimming gold medals that Italy won at the Olympics (all-time): 5 Number of swimming gold medals that Russia (ROC excluded) won at the Olympics (all-time): 4 Number of swimming gold medals that Germany (after the reunification -> since the 1992 Olympics) won at the Olympics (all-time): 3 Number of swimming gold medals that Spain/Brazil/South Korea/Poland won combined at the Olympics (all-time): 5 Right now 3 gold medals seems like a conservative prediction for McIntosh.

Apart from Liendo, Kharun, MacNeill, Maße and McIntosh the most interesting swimmers to watch will probably be Ella Jansen and the young Sandpiper girl in the distance events (Dunford?). Oleksiak and Ruck not competing probably kills Canada‘s medal chances in the free relays and at least opens the door in the medley relay. Maybe Canada can put together a men’s 400 free relay that has an outside shot at a medal, it probably depends on Kharun.

You are right about Sjöstrom, I am going to edit my comment. I think Paltrinieri set a new PB just last year, so (surprisingly) I see no signs of decline.

Obviously impossible to predict this early. I think the following records in olympic events are safe: Men's 50/400/800 free, men's 100/200 breast, men's 200 back, men's 400 free relay, men's medley relay, women's 50/800/1500 free, women's 100 breast, women's 200 fly, women's 200 IM. The 3 records in olympic events for each gender that are (in my opinion) the most likely to be broken: Men: 400 IM, 100 free, 200 IM/200 fly/100 back Women: 200 back, 100 fly, 400 free/100 back/200 breast/400 IM/800 free relay Number of world records in olympic events that were broken at the last 5 world championships: 2013: 2 (both by Ledecky) 2015: 5 (4 on the women's side (2 of them by Ledecky) + the mixed medley relay) 2017: 5 (4 on the women's side + the mixed medley relay) 2019: 4 (2 on both sides, but the 2 on the women's side were both in relays) 2022: 2 (both on the men's side) -> From 2013 to 2017 not a single world record on the men's side was broken (but 10 on the women's side), but at the last two editions all 4 individual records that were broken were on the men's side. So if i would have to guess the number of records that will be broken, i would say 3 or 4. Also interesting: Oldest world record on the men's side: 400 IM (Phelps in 2008) Oldest world record on the women's side: 200 free (Pellegrini in 2009) Records on the men's side that were set before 2010: 50 free, 200 free, 400 free, 800 free, 200 back, 400 IM, 400 free relay, 800 free relay Records on the women's side that were set before 2010: 200 free, 200 fly

The fact that you have to sink so low, desperately trying to win a discussion that you can't win, speaks for itself. Obviously you don't care about the "truth", but only about "winning". Still here are some facts to put your "argument" into perspective: - The whole discussion was based on LONG COURSE results. The fact that you need SHORT COURSE results to justify declaring Knox a world class swimmer says it all. Knox finished 17th at the LONG COURSE world championships the same year. Of the 16 swimmers that finished ahead of him there, only 7 competed at the short course world championships. - Why did you feel the need to bring up german results? Did i say that german swimming is better than canadian swimming? No. Obviously this comparison is completely irrelevant for the strength of canadian men's swimming (but if you would have asked me, i obviously wouldn't have disagreed that canadian swimming is much stronger than german swimming). Says a lot about you that you can't lead a discussion without whataboutism. Sure sign that you aren't actually open to change your opinion, so why even bother answering? Knox won one bronze medal at an olympic distance (200 IM) at the 2022 world short course championships, Germany won twice as many medals at olympic distances (men's 100 fly and women's 100 breast) AND Germany was missing 4 of their 5 best swimmers (Wellbrock, Märtens, Gose, Köhler), which should show you how little they thought of this championship. Of course you would have known that if you would have any swimming knowledge. Another proof that nowadays most people think that it is completely irrelevant whether you have any clue about the things you are talking about. Why inform yourself when you can have an "opinion" simply based on emotions? Would be great if we could establish a mechanism where only people who have informed themselves can speak about a topic, otherwise every discussion will be flooded with people who have no clue, but still for some reason demand to be taken seriously.

I am certainly not a fan of Russia, but doping-wise the only thing you can really blame them for is that they were too stupid to cover it up properly. Everyone always knew that Russia wouldn’t change, so I guess the plan was to wait with letting them back in until the public had forgotten about their Doping Problem. What I don’t quite understand is why the western countries can’t use their (political) influence to kick Russia out completely. This would make it much easier for western countries to win more medals. I guess either the western countries have other interests or Russia just has more power over the IOC.

France (and Germany) missed the U19 European Championships (again). Pretty interesting to see that France is producing the most world class talents by far, yet they perform rather poorly at junior level. It also has to be said that the qualifying groups are extremely „imbalanced“. In one group you have Italy, Belgium AND Germany and then you have one group with Greece/Slovakia/Ireland/Estonia and one group with Poland/Israel/Serbia/Latvia.

1) I think the fee was 20 million. 2) So you think that he will sit out the 3 remaining years of his contract (only way that he will get the „missing“ 24 million of his salary)? Obviously I don’t disagree that it was crazy to give him a 5 year contract despite the fact that he had never coached a big team before. I think the 20 million euro fee only would have been justifiable if there wouldn’t have been other world class coaches available, which in my opinion wasn’t the case. I still remember that I thought that Bayern would sign Ten Hag (who had coached their 2nd team before when Guardiola was there). If they could have gotten Ten Hag without paying a (huge) fee, than that probably would have been a better option.

Don’t think so. I think teams like Morocco or Croatia have a ceiling that makes it pretty much impossible to win a World Cup. In the past 70 years or so no really small nations have won the World Cup. Only Germany, Italy, France, Spain, England (although their winning goal was irregular), Brazil, Argentina. Spain (barely beating the Netherlands despite having a once in a lifetime generation) and England only did it once and needed a lot of luck. Nations like Portugal, Belgium or the Netherlands never did it and Argentina had to wait for a very long time. You need the right mentality and the individual quality (which Morocco doesn’t have). Unless something crazy happens, France again will be the favorite, probably followed by Portugal/England/Brazil.

Italy is going crazy in ice sports. 2 medals in figure skating + 2 medals in speed skating + 4? Medals in short track + maybe some medals in curling. They might have won more medals in ice sports than in snow sports. Only other nations to do it are Canada and weirdly enough Belgium ... no China/USA/South Korea. Italy is the only nation to win multiple medals in all those sports.

Nice debut for Tedesco. Not a huge fan of him, but another german coach doing great internationally wouldn't be a bad thing. Now we only need Löw to land the job ... Not sure if there were ever that many good/great german(-speaking) coaches: Klopp, Tuchel, Nagelsmann, Flick, Schmidt, Glasner, Ten Hag, Tedesco?, Streich?, Rose? Schmidt, Ten Hag, Glasner and Xabi Alonso in my opinion have the potential to coach Bayern in the future. Another interesting coach who is currently flying under the radar is Jan Sierksma, who coaches the AZ Alkmaar Youth League team.

I don't think that there is any team where he wouldn't be the biggest star. He is probably the 3rd biggest star behind only Ronaldo and Messi. I think the problem is that other teams (probably) won't pay him as much and won't be able to pay the transfer fee. Maybe once Messi and Neymar are gone, PSG will be able to finally form a TEAM around him.

For me it is crazy that people think that they can have an opinion on everything, even if they can't even be bothered to inform themselves. In addition to that it is crazy for me that people would rather work until they die instead of reforming the pension system or properly taxing rich people. As long as "normal" people don't understand that politicians don't give a shit about them and that they don't have any true power in this system, nothing will ever change. I guess as long as we can travel, buy a new Iphone every couple of years and watch some Netflix, we have nothing to complain about ... Weird that the level of productivity has skyrocketed over the past decades, yet retirement age goes up and wages/pensions stagnate/go down ... Crazy to say, but Putin in some sense was right that the end of the soviet union was the greatest tragedy of the 20th century. Since communism "ended", there is nothing to "control" capitalism anymore. I guess as long as it is this easy to brainwash people like you, the people who run the system have nothing to fear.

I think you used the wrong flag for Tucker. I fear that she didn't switch nationalities, so would have been the right choice

Nicole Schott Finishing 7th, 2nd best European, better than the best Canadian athlete. Didn’t think that I would live to see the day. I guess all the top American/Canadian women were absent?

Was confused by the results at first. I guess you will post the overall results later.

Kind of a „chicken or the egg“ question. If you look at NCAA swimming, you will see that there are tons of foreign men competing, but far fewer women. Did the weakness of American men allow European men to „blossom“ or did the strength of European men stop American men from „blossoming“? Not too long ago Phelps and Lochte were super dominant. I guess Seto and Hagino „disappearing“ also helped. I think it might change again (at least to some degree) in the near future. Heilmann, Winkler, Williamson and Diehl are all looking very promising, but of course Popovici/Galossi/Milak/Marchand are all also still very young.

Yes, you have produced one world class male swimmer. Kharun didn’t even know that he was Canadian and is 100 % a product of the American system, not much of an accomplishment for Canada.