FancyFenchel

Why can't chess or Cue Sports be in the Olympics, they are popular throughout the globe

Well, from my point if view, Olympics aren't more dangerous (with athletes vaccinated, of course) that, for example, EuroCup with 20,000 fans at the stadium from different countries across Europe, and lot of them without quarentine nor vaccine, but I can understand that you are explaining.
 
I hope that Olympics will go ahead and we will able to celebrate that this happen with safety.
 
P.S: I'm sorry if I can't explain well my point of view and for my grammar mistakes, it's difficult for me to argue in a different language.

Just to add some last minute discussion, here are the bottom ten events (averaged between men and women) in my diversity index (in simple terms it weighs the number of nations which attempted to qualify to the Olympics and weighs nations which do not compete in a lot of events a bit heavier). Please note that since the qualification process is not completed, the numbers will change in the future.
 
1. Rowing - Coxed Eight - 0.4228
2. Rowing - Quadruple Sculls - 0.5000
3. Diving - 10m Synchronized Platform - 0.5197
4. Rowing - Coxless Four - 0.5459
5. Triathlon - Mixed Relay - 0.5695
6. Diving - 3m Synchronized Springboard - 0.5861
7. Skateboarding - Park - 0.5948
8. Rowing - Coxless Pair - 0.5996
9. Artistic Swimming - Team - 0.6154
10. Cycling - BMX Freestyle - 0.6164
 
Rowing has an issue attracting nations outside of single sculls and lightweight double sculls. 4/7 of their events are in the bottom ten while double sculls isn't too far behind. Synchronized diving isn't too surprising either and then you have new events which haven't had as much time to spread.

I think that’s the right principle. The Olympic Games should be the summit of that particular sport, so yes to basketball, volleyball, ice hockey, women’s football, softball*, sevens rugby etc, but no to golf, men’s football, baseball*, tennis.
 
* You can have softball without baseball because the pitches are a lot smaller.

Controversial Polls always manage to create comtroversy lol

Agreed, which is why I don't much care for events where men and women compete against each other head-to-head (like in athletics). They often come across comical and are just insanely hard to follow, even worse when there is no set order.

I'm going to answer this as a tier list:
 
Mixed events that are must watch for me:
Badminton mixed doubles Table tennis mixed doubles Tennis mixed doubles Triathlon mixed relay  
Mixed events that I am not upset are in the Olympics:
Archery mixed team Sailing mixed multihull The three shooting mixed team events  
Mixed events I don't believe should be in the Olympics:
Athletics mixed 4x400m relay Judo mixed team event (the format is simply unfair) Swimming mixed 4x100m medley relay I am against the athletics and swimming mixed relays because they are essentially redundant (wouldn't be opposed to mixed relays that are markedly different from the same-gendered relays). I think the mixed judo team event has a fatally flawed format that has no place in a serious competition like the Olympics (too few weight classes and a very unfair mechanism to resolve 3-3 ties).

Swimming by a country mile  
 
I do like platform diving as well. I find rowing a bit hard to follow sometimes, I always mix up all the different classes and it's not made easier with the main focus always being on nations instead of athletes  
 
The thing I don't like about swimming is the insane amount of events, the similarity between a lot of events and the consequence of that: athletes who will obviously win more medals than in other sports, followed by media designating them "greatest Olympians ever" because of the medal counts. I'd like it much more if there was one breaststroke champion, one backstroke champion and so on.

Zero chance the Games will be cancelled at this stage. Japans cases are lower per head than Irelands and we are opening up again. All the test events in Japan have ran without a hitch. Most of this is just 'noise' from internal Japanese politics. There is an election this year after all.

I will add my "5 cents". Olympics will not be cancelled, it's too late for that, too much qualification events are happening or already finished, 75% of athletes already qualified and prepare for life time chance to earn the medals. We had also many other sport events which weren't "super-spreader" and the Games also won't be this super-spreader as IOC and WHO are trying made Olympic Village and sport venues the safest places in the world right now.
 
Japanese people and opposition parties are blaming current government for fourth wave, they have right, because Japan NEVER had proper lockdown as almost every country in the world had in March-April and then in October-January. Such things like banning drinking alcohol outside, closing shops after 21:00 and home office are laughable restrictions. If they would introduced real lockdown way earlier now Japan would have similar number of cases as Australia and New Zealand have. Also having 6k-9k cases per day in country with such huge population is laughable too. They are acting as people would die on the streets and nobody can't get help from nurses and doctors... Most of countries at such number of cases opened everything and are trying return to normal life.
 
But all those protest doesn't make any sense as it would hurts the athletes the most (they will be for 99% separated from Japanese citizens) and cancelling the Games will not improve current situation and additionaly it would destroy worldwide good opinion of country of Japan, which always was presented as the best prepared country to everything and the most developed, sometimes few years above the rest of the world. The real chance for improving situation is vaccination system which doesn't work in Japan, why? Such smart and well behaved people like Japanese are afraid for vaccines? Hilarious, really. Without those vaccines they will have dozens more waves and will never ends there.

Love seeing your spreadsheets! Makes me want to start my own already.

Here's the one I had from 2018.  Fewer events so it's a lot easier to manage, but the final version of the Tokyo spreadsheet will include TV times like this one has.  Easier to plan out viewing and sleeping that way

I've been updating mine, including to add in matchups for most of the team sports.  I'm also doing this from the standpoint of Eastern Time and US television.  This is what mine looks like.  And yes, I'll be happy to share this when we reach July..
 

Here a page from a simple spreadsheet I've been working on, set to Eastern US time, so I can get an idea what's going on at any one time.  Did this in Feb. 2020, so some of the times may not match exactly, and as we get close (and if it looks more likely that the Games will actually take place), I'll fine tune it a bit.
 
 

 

To be honest, we should be looking at removal of events rather than reduction of quotas. Any team event with fewer than 12 nations and any individual event with fewer than 16 entrants should either be removed or expanded. If an event's talent pool becomes too diluted than it isn't exactly worthy of competing at the Olympics.
 
The IOC may claim it is trying to reduce costs, but athletes themselves aren't the issue. It's the venue size (and amount) requirements

This wouldn't have happened in interval race.
 
Ahem, FIS.

Swedes totally blew it. They let Weng on the inside before the climb and then Karlsson took the same lane in the sprint. How woeful was that? Andersson 4th.

How the hell do you get lapped when one lap is 6 km? The equivalent in a track 10k would be to be lapped 5 times after less than 9k. There is no way that someone like that should be allowed to compete at worlds. I am sure you could find hundreds of hobby athletes in Norway or Sweden who would do much better but will never get the chance to compete. „Athletes“ like that are ruining the track for real athletes.

STOP THE COUNT
 

Parmakoski beating out Diggins for bronze in a sprint is just the absolute image of USA's and specifically Diggins' championships..

50 seconds in and Lithuania is 25 meters behind already. Langsam aber sicher as the Germans would say

Thank you!
Found this forum a few years ago while looking for some Olympics replays. After I forgot about it.
Now I was looing for something about Nordic Skiing FIS World Championships. And finally it’s time to join!

H.O. Amundsen is literally flying!
 
Bolshunov is done!

I’ve told this story before, but about a decade back most commentators did not realise that the Kaisa Mäkäräinen who competed on the Biathlon Tour & the Kaisa Maekaeraeinin who competed on the Cross Country Tour were the same person.

Excellent race for Jaque