FancyFenchel

Olympedia update.
The IOC did pull out of the deal because of "budget reasons" but we compromised by accepting less money and just updating 2024 and not Milan-Cortina for the time being.
The result is that the contract was signed this week and we just need to transfer our private data to Olympedia and then it will be back up to date.
Unfortunately not all our members were happy with the IOC's behavior and some may leave us because of this.

Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I feel all the bobsleds should be the same. They did it with the women's monobob in 2022 and from a spectator point of view it looked as if the best drivers performed the best.

Just look at women's magazines - fashion, diets, makeup, interior design, gossip but never any articles about sport.

Major changes coming to the Curling calendar! Amongst the changes is the expansion of the men's and women's worlds to 18 teams each.
 
https://worldcurling.org/2025/10/competition-structure-changes/

Apologies if this was already known, but in case it wasn't: there won't be 1 'opening ceremony'
 
There will be 4 (or 5) separate ones on the venues, which on TV will be made to look like one. So not really a Parade of Nations and such, just 4-5 shows which are merged into one. Not really a big deal for the average viewer, but very sad for many athletes who this way won't really get to experience the real Olympic opening ceremony vibes
 

Hi all,
 
I'm happy to have found others who love the Olympics as much as I do.
 
Random facts about me:
1) I'm an almost 40-yr-old dad from the States (South Carolina).  I'm teaching my girls to watch international sport/the Olympics...they know that when it's Olympics time, the TV doesn't tune in to anything else.    And now that I've discovered the international federations and the competitions in the 'off years', my wife/kids know there's no telling what sport I'll be watching...currently watching the table tennis for today's finals at the Europe Smash.
 
2) I grew up loving geography, maps, cultures, languages, etc.  (I'm a Spanish teacher now.)  I always watched the Olympics growing up, and my favorite part has always been the Parade of Nations (which I know makes me an outlier among all of my friends who are there for the sport).  Have always just loved the idea of having people from virtually every nation all together.  And to see the sportsmanship and the Olympic spirit on display between the nations is so inspiring.  I'm a Christian, and one thing we believe is that one day in the afterlife there will be peace among all, and while the Olympics isn't a perfect representation of that, it's a nice glimpse.   
 
3) I had the opportunity to go to a baseball game during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta (just a couple of hours from me)...I think it was Netherlands and Nicaragua.  I got to see one of the bronze medals that the USA won in baseball that year, as one of the players (Matt LeCroy) was previously a student at my high school and he came to talk at our church afterwards.  I also got to see the torch relay before 2002 in Salt Lake as it also came through South Carolina.
 
4) I grew up always liking figure skating and gymnastics, and of course swimming/diving/artistic swimming and track/field (athletics) were always fun to watch.  But now, my sport that I follow most closely is Sport Climbing.  I discovered it at the Tokyo Olympics and have been in love ever since.  I didn't really think about it much after Tokyo, but leading up to Paris, I caught some of the Olympic Qualifier Series and discovered the IFSC.  After Paris, I started watching all the comps in between.
 
5) Though Sport Climbing is my absolute favorite, when people ask what sports I watch in the Olympics, I have to honestly reply that I watch them all.  I try to catch a little of each sport, trying to learn about sports that I'm less familiar with.  Current secondary favorites are Table Tennis, Weightlifting, and Modern Pentathlon (and Curling in winter, and SkiMo has recently caught my eye).  It also helps that I discovered more about the structure of International Sport, in that each one has their own federation, like the IFSC.  I took some time to follow each of them on YouTube and Facebook, and I'll try to pay attention if there are some major competitions in the sports.
 
6) As I watch the Olympics, I also try to be intentional about watching athletes from as many nations as I can.  Here in the USA, it's of course not surprising that NBC shows primarily stories related to our athletes...but I know other nations are just as proud of their athletes.  So, in looking at other sports, I get to see other nations shine for a bit.  I also try to watch things like the opening heats for the 100m in the pool or on the track to see athletes from all over the world compete.
 
7) I may or may not have purchased the soundtrack to the 2024 Opening Ceremony and listen to it quite frequently.    (I also have gone back and watched the opening ceremony from the Olympics site a couple of times now, where it's ad-free and without NBC commentators checking in on Team USA.  And interestingly enough, in the replay they uploaded, they fixed the error where North/South Korea were introduced as the other nation.)
 
8) Super happy to have found this site because of how it highlights qualification procedures.  Growing up, I always wondered how people made it to the Olympics, and now that the Internet exists, I have found the Qualification docs on the Olympics site, and now there are sites like these that show when these events (and many more!) are taking place.
 
I'm sure I have many other thoughts, but I'll let these suffice for now.    Looking forward to following international sport over the next few years as we prepare for LA!  (I hope to be there!)

The mixed events needs to go. The soccer move was dumb too. Could have easily kept it at 12 across thr board and saved quotas

So here are the difference between 2024 and 2028 and my opinions:
 
Aquatics
In swimming the 50m backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly were added while the women's water polo tournament will now have 12 teams. Additionally, 11 men's athlete quotas were transferred to the women's side.
 
In general, I'm okay with the 50m events and despite women's water polo having shallow depth I am happy they are now equal to the men. The IOC still wanting to keep the core sport quotas to 10,500 is a bit ridiculous, but I'll go into that at the end. While the athlete split isn't shown for the disciplines it's quite likely swimming loses 11 men and women quotas each (maybe they might take a couple from diving/marathon swimming).
 
 
Archery
Mixed compound team was added.
 
I've been a big supporter for compound archery being added to the Olympics. Unfortunately the individual events were not added which I dislike. If you are going to have athletes in team event then they can also compete in the individual. I would like to imagine World Archery is slowly bringing the event in. Since no new athlete quotas were added recurve will have fewer archers competing. I imagine recurve will be a 48-52 person tournament. 
 
 
Athletics
Mixed marathon walk relay was removed, mixed 4x100m relay was added.
 
I feel the program has become worse with this change. Not that I felt the walk relay is important, it's not and I wish we would get the 35/50km walk, but at least it preserved some race walk. The mixed 4x100m relay adds nothing extra to the program. This will be repeated a few times, but a mixed event should not be added with the gender component unless if fundamentally changes the event. There's no need to have both a men's/women's and a mixed 4x100m relay.
 
 
Basketball
The 3x3 events will be a 12 team tournament. The athlete quota has increased by 32.
 
Great move. It was ridiculous that the event only had 8 teams so the increase was much needed. Honestly, if we weren't stuck on the 10,500 athlete limit I wouldn't mind seeing 16 teams.
 
 
Boxing
Women saw an increase of one event, equaling that of men (7 each). The weight limits of each category was slightly adjusted.
 
Equaling the event size between genders was expected and I'm glad they decided to increase the women's count rather than reducing the men. The women's athlete quota remains the same despite the event increase, but still remains the same as the men.
 
 
Football
The men's tournament was reduced to 12 teams, the women's tournament increased to 16 teams.
 
I'm glad the women's tournament is up to 16 teams. The qualification system for Europe has been brutal and I imagine Asia will be happy too. I wished they didn't reduce the men's tournament, but the 10,500 athlete quota limit forces them to do so. Ultimately, I agree with the move as the women's tournament is more prestigious.
 
 
Golf
Mixed team was added.
 
I await the chosen format, but ultimately I think it's a good idea to have the event.
 
 
Gymnastics
Mixed artistic team was added.
 
What a weird event. As mentioned before since the men's and women's team remain this is a useless event that doesn't need to included.
 
 
Modern pentathlon
The athlete quotas has been reduced by 8 (4 men and 4 women).
 
This was likely done to reach the 10,500 quota limit. Overall I dislike it, but it's not the end of the world.
 
 
Rowing
Lightweight double sculls have been removed. Coastal single sculls and coastal mixed double sculls have been added.
 
I'm not familiar with coastal sprint canoe, but from what I've seen in videos I think it will be a nice event to have. Losing lightweight double sculls is a bit of a shame and I'm not sure I would make that trade given that coastal rowing isn't well developed yet.
 
 
Shooting
Mixed team skeet was removed, mixed team trap was added.
 
The mixed team shotgun events continue to be cycled. Considering they don't use any additional quotas, I don't see why they don't just have both at the Olympics.
 
 
Sport climbing
The combined event was removed and replaced by separate lead and bouldering events. 8 additional athlete quotas were added.
 
Finally the sport has its proper individual events. I still commend the strategy of going with the combined event in 2020 as a type of Trojan horse with the idea that the IOC will want to keep it.
 
 
Table tennis
The men's and women's team events were removed. Men's and women's doubles and mixed team were added.
 
As a person who likes doubles table tennis I am happy with this change. To keep the athlete quota consistent mixed team is almost necessary.
 
 
Tennis
Mixed doubles was removed. Mixed event was added.
 
While I wasn't a big fan of the mixed doubles event (it's barely played during the ATP/WTA calendar, I don't think we need it replaced by a mixed event. The format hasn't been revealed, but I imagine it would be similar to the Davis/BJK Cup format. My fear is if they're attempting to add the event to the second week as I imagine many players will opt-out.
 
 
LA Only Sports
Baseball/Softball, Cricket, Flag Football, and Lacrosse will be 6-team tournaments and Squash will have 32 athletes (16 men, 16 women).
 
While expected, I am very disappointed that the team sports will only have six teams. You can't showcase the sport really well with such few entrants. Cricket is a great example, there are many smaller nations which play the sport, but we are likely to see only the large nations compete. Squash only having 16 athletes is also a bit small, but it's at least manageable. 
 
 
Final Thoughts
Some good, some bad moves overall. I need to stress that the 10,500 athlete limit among core sports while increasing the number of events is not sustainable. The 2000 Olympics had around 10,600 athletes yet only had 300 events. We now have 341 core events, an increase of 14%. Even if you want to argue that there was bloat in 2000, the 2024 Olympics had 327 core events, meaning we had an increase of 4% yet no new athlete quotas. While some of these new events don't need more athletes, some of them do. Honestly at minimum the athlete quota for core events needs to be increased to 11,000 while more realistically we should be closer to 12,000. If the IOC doesn't want that many athletes then they need to remove events/sports.

GB preselected Matt Richards for the 200m free because he medalled in Paris, so there was only 1 spot for the event at trials. And predictably, Duncan Scott and James Guy tie for Gold, so no idea who will be given the nod.
 
 

From an Italian newspaper: "Watanabe proposes an unprecedented format of the Summer Olympics: to hold them simultaneously in five cities on five continents so as to ensure that they are televised 24 hours a day. The cities would be decided on the basis of several factors, the first of which would be the climatic aspect favourable to athletes, and ten disciplines would be held in each of them."

Winter sports world cups during the weekend, what else???

Which I guess is part of why unfortunately 'our' first wild card attempt of the season was rejected last week  

Looks like the gate malfunctioned and Eriksen Sundal was literally pushed by the ad board
 
 

Look of the Games and pictograms: https://olympics.com/ioc/news/milano-cortina-2026-look-of-the-games-and-sports-pictograms-revealed-inspired-by-new-italian-spirit

IOC Press Release 
11th September 2024
The IOC is pleased to announce the addition of the exciting new winter sport of Lugeage (prounounced Lugg-age) to the 2030 Winter Olympics being held in the French Alps. The sport which combines luge and dressage has a cult following in Germany and its alpine neighbours. Horses and riders judged on speed, technique, artistic impression and survival.
In a statement, 1976 Olympic Team Fencing champion and current Weltsportfuhrer Thomas Bach said "It's a mix of balletic precision and high speed action and the only extra expense we expect is the hiring of extra race marshalls with very large shovels if the horses get too excited".
When asked if the sport could be considered dangerous if the sleds went out of control, Bach commented "Don't you think we thought of that before adding it to the programme?"
 
In unconnected news Thomas Bach is to join the board of the popular Belgian fast food chain, Kortrijk Fried Pony when he steps down from the IOC next years

Agree on the basis of this. 
 
But let's take a look at the recently added sports.
 
For how many of them you could absolutely say they have gained interest and are trending positively. I can for only rugby and climbing. Of course rugby has been popular for decades, they only needed to figure out the perfect format for the OG. Sport climbing on the other hand is the only new sport, which has seen a rapid expansion in the past 10 years. No one was taking it seriously as a real sport a decade ago, but now it has grown in different parts of the World, the fan and media interesting is rising. And it gets more popular and popular. 
 
I wouldn't say the same for skateboarding and surfing. I think their popularity isn't at all that high compared to the 90s and early 2000s. In that period they were much more popular in the American / Canadian zeitgeist from what i recall. 
 
Many of the other sports are just host fodder and/or are basically a 3-5 country sports. Flag football, cricket, lacrosse, baseball, breaking have limited appeal. What is the justifiable reason for adding them, beside the host jerking for throwing a ton of money for organizing the Games. 
 
And here lies the IOC's flow. Instead of firstly help growing and popularizing these sports before adding them, they first bring them on the OG in the hope that will automatically make these sports more trendy. It doesn't...
 
If you want to include lacrosse, then the IOC should work with the Governing body and all the National Associations in making a campaign to familiarize it around the World. Say you are including lacrosse, but in 3 Games time, so there is time to make an International footprint. After 8 years if you can make a Lacrosse World Championship with 24-32 teams, then including it at the OG makes it a much, much bigger factor. 
 
Now they beat their drum "We are including new sports, look how modern and urban we are", when the truth is they are a joke event with 6 teams, which gives absolutely nothing for growing said sport and is just another statistic. 

Wow, I had no idea about this. Just looked it up, watched a super young Michal Martikan in 1996 and damn that course looks amazing!

This one is mainly on IOC and their policy of having everything huge, in exceptional and glittering venues. Such crap.
 
Canoe Slalom by nature is a sport you need literally some 200 meters of wild water you can find in every river in this planet. The olympic race in Atlanta (Lake Ocoee was still on river and it was/still is considered as the best canoe slalom olympic races ever held. Sydney in 2000 however stunned the world with a super modern artificial Penrith wild water venue and since then it went all wrong, IOC asked hosts to build similar expensive artificial venues beginning in Athens 2004.
 
If IOC stayed smart and so-green-ecologically thinking institution like they love to be presented, then they would have kept this sport where it belong on rivers, where you do not need anything expensive just a couple of gates and ropes for tying

Never mind table tennis, we should remove men’s pole vault due to lack of competition. Who’s with me?

1) I like seeing new sports at olympics, but I guess total athletes quotas cannot rise substantially, so it allways have some disadvatages and unpopular reductions (for example track cycling - 1km time trial/individual pursuit/points race all gone). While I like olympic village idea, where all athletes from different sports are together - what is exactly problem to have more athletes?  Capacity? Money?

2) Competition format in some sports was quite strange - for example Double sculls rowing -  13 pairs entered, and we had heats and repechages to eliminate just ONE pair, everyone else continued to semifinals. Was it so difficult to add few more teams (or remove one and start with semifinals)?

3) OG should be top event for all athletes - this will probably never work for some sports (and some decisions do not help that - why soccer has age limit??)
Also why there is nation quota limit in some sports? You can be number two in some sport, but you are not allowed to participate because number one is also from your country. In all individual events (and probably also in double/pairs events) country should be allowed up to 3 entries if they are among best on world, so they can fight for medals.
 
 
 
 

As always, most of the suggestions I see make me think "wtf, no", but also I'm not creative enough to come up with lots of realistic suggestions myself  
 
I would love for football to be kicked out though. It takes up so many spots and especially the junior men's event is just ridiculous (as an Olympic event).
 
As for mountain bike: please no shorttrack, those races are the epitome of 'it must be short and spectacular', resulting in usually nothing happening at all until the last 2 minutes. It's not done on the same course, it's done on a short course (hence the name) of which most of the mountain bike elements have been taken out to increase the speed. Yes to downhill though, absolutely, that would actually add something.

Paris 2024 was the 4th Games (Sommer+Winter) where i did not care about the medal table. And enjoyed the Games and sport very much. (well Eurosport, Max, DiscoverPlus (branding may vary by region) has destroyed it for me by showing the medal table at pauses in the broadcast.)
 
It weird concept to me, summing medals from team and individual sports, sports with a lot of same-but-little-different events or lot of different weight classes etc.
Yeah, a lot of people don't care about sport, games, about the athletes, about the competition, but just care about a number in a table.  There is a plenty of statistic on the world ranking countries - why not interested about that?
 
 
 
 

Ok, this one. This is probably one of my all-time favourite interviews  
 
"All the coaches were laughing, because I was swimming out by myself, because I wasn't arsed to swim behind anybody. All I could think was I can't be arsed to get kicked in the face"  
 
"After the gold I thought about pulling out, but I wanted to do it because my friends were doing it, but I didn't actually see any of them."
 
What a legend.
 

No! Leon! NO! Leave the flame there!