dcmdtruefan

You're right that a badminton medal is long overdue for Thailand, considering that even less decorated countries in badminton like the Netherlands, Russia and Spain for instance have won a medal. But there's a reason why Thailand hasn't won a medal in badminton yet and that has to deal with Thai athletes' inability to deal with pressure when it counts the most in general. When the tough gets going, they usually lose and go home. So if anyone were to win a medal for Thailand, that athlete has to be really mentally strong.

While I appreciate and respect your assessment, I have to respectfully disagree on the badminton picks. The XD pair is prone to losing to lower seeds because their weaknesses are very easy to be exploited. Sapsiree, while having great defensive racket skills, has lost her athleticism due to her ACL injury in 2017 and has never been a competent front court player. This puts a lot of pressure to Dechapol to not only create shots, but to cover virtually the entire half of their court in order to protect Sapsiree. This means that Dechapol is vulnerable to being exhausted when he has to play 80 percent of the shots. If Dechapol cannot put up his end of the bargain and then some, this pair can lose any match against any pair in the top 10 of the world rankings. In terms of WS, Ratchanok, while being hailed as the best technical player in the world along with Tai Tzu Ying, has pronounced stamina issues as well as a weak psyche. If you look at her record in major tournaments, whether it be world championships or World Tour 1000 tournaments, Ratchanok is usually eliminated around the quarterfinals or before then. While Busanan may have great stamina, is pretty toothless in offense and provides a lack of variety in her game. Thus, Thailand's badminton crew is far from guaranteeing a medal. I can agree that Panipak is a favorite to win gold. But with the periodical lockdowns in Thailand, who knows if she has enough training or not. While I root for Thailand, since is my parent's homeland, I have to be realistic about their chances and the downward trajectory of their sports development in Olympic sports in the past decade due to infrastructure and sociopolitical issues. The Indonesian user in this site, Griff, may or may not verify the accuracy of my badminton analysis.

USA: 1. Women's 5x5 Basketball 2. Women's Softball 3. Women's Artistic Gymnastics Team I'm not putting anything for Thailand because they have less than 3 safest medal picks.

1. USA 2. Spain 3. France With Australia, Slovenia, Argentina and perhaps Nigeria as other medal contenders.

Thailand is now 41 after the withdrawal of Thitisan Panmot of Boxing.

Boxer Thitisan Panmot of Thailand, who qualified to compete in the men's 52 kg category has withdrawn from the Olympics after suffering a severe knee tear injury that needs a 5 month period of recovery. This is a huge blow to Thailand's medal standings since Panmot is the country's few athletes who has a genuine chance of winning a medal this year. He qualified by winning silver at the Asian/Oceania qualifiers last year, upsetting Uzbek world champion Zoirov in the process. ช็อค! ธิติสรรค์ เอ็นไขว้เข่าฉีก "บิ๊กชาย" ยันถอนบู๊มวยโอลิมปิก (siamsport.co.th) For those who can't read Thai, google translate might be able to help a bit.

1. USA 2. China 3. France

The more I think about this poll, the more I see the chance than no competing country in the Olympic will win a medal in all of the combat sports. And I think that shows the intensity and level of competition in all of those sports.

My apologies for the factual mistake. Shows that I forgot some of the information I read on Wikipedia. I used to actually remember this kind of information that I read about past Olympics on Wikipedia.

Congrats Indonesia for making it to the final and good luck on being the first Southeast Asian country in qualifying for any kind of volleyball discipline in the Olympics. For myself and my rooting interests, I'm just disappointed in Thailand not being able to push themselves to grab an Olympic quota while being host of this qualification event. I just tired of Thailand being perpetual screw ups in Olympic qualifiers especially their women's indoor volleyball team.

As someone who used to say "To be the man, You got to beat the man". Although Portugal in 2016 did it by doing the bare minimum.

Well, playing against 10 men helps. Also, Poland has a tendency to choke at every major tournament except for Euro 2016.

I'm curious how he got mononucleosis in the first place.

I supposed the Indonesian Judo Association did not have any funding to send their judokas to qualification tournaments, which is a shame because they're pretty decent in the Southeast Asian level.

I hope Simone could be fit enough to win the gold medal. But if she can't, I won't fault her considering her health issues. Making the team after a quick turnaround from her health issues is an achievement in itself.

Turkey has got to be the most disappointing teams of all time in the European Championship. Never seen a darkhorse flop this hard with a -7 goal difference and no points at all.

Congrats to Ireland for the upset and Olympic quota. A much needed upset for a sport which has been mostly predictable so far in regards to Olympic qualifiers.

As a Thai-American, I can think of a few that would be fun: -Carlos Yulo of the Philippines winning a medal in Gymnastics, because Southeast Asia has never won a medal in the sport and to win it in a mainstream sport means a lot for the region (At least in my opinion). -Tai Tzu Ying of Chinese Taipei winning the Women's Singles in Badminton. Some badminton observers would say Ratchanok Intanon is the best technical player in that division. But Tai ups her game to a higher level in comparison to her peers. She works hard on her technical game and physical fitness and it shows on the court. She embodies what it means to be a professional and rarely lets outside stuff like social media comments distract her unlike Ratchanok. She is basically an upgrade version of Ratchanok with less stamina and mental issues. For a neutral, Tai is very easy to root for. -Belgium winning men's field hockey. Because that sport badly needs a new country to win the Olympic gold medal. -Naomi Osaka winning the Women's singles in tennis. A title win to cheer her up after her off-court fight with the media at large. -Ireland winning any medal with Rowing, Sailing or any other sport besides boxing because I have a soft sport for that country and they need to win medals in events they haven't won before. -Any medal won by someone from a Refugee Olympic Team because that would be historic and weird in the same time that a person without a country can win an Olympic medal. -Anyone who could beat China in Table Tennis because it's been 17 years since someone else won a gold medal in that sport.

Thank you for the reply. Seems like the issue is the mixture of some politics as well as the two star athletes not wanting to adapt to a new coach/coaching system. Glad that all of that is resolved. Let's hope nothing like this happens to your country's badminton team before the start of the Olympics.

Thank you for the insight. I did know not about it since I can't read Bahasa. Do you mind saying what the dispute was about? If the feud did not end, I guess that it would affect Indonesia's chance of making to the Olympics as a team since both of them won a medal at the 2018 Asian Games.

Congratulations to Indonesia for sticking up for Southeast Asia and qualifying in the men's team. Based on recent Olympic World qualification events in various sports, I thought the SEA countries were struggling, partially due to the pandemic affecting their training and preparations. Indonesia's qualification shows that there something to cheer about for countries in that region.

If UEFA forced this, I think it's too early to resume the match. Some empathy needs to be involved and let the players simmer down emotionally and play some time tomorrow. This is not a teammate who was a risk, but probably a friend who was endeared by many. But if the players willfully want to resume playing this soon, then more power to them.

Yeah. My apologies. I forgot about that and it just happened this past weekend. Saso is definitely a darkhouse to win a gold in women's golf and she has proven her mettle in representing her country before by winning the gold medal in the 2018 Asian Games.

Since China is going to compete in the 55 kg, it looks like the Philippines will have to rely on Boxing or Carlos Yulo in Gymnastics to win their first ever gold medal.

I'm not a gymnastics expert but would like to take a stab at these predictions. For the Men's Team, here's my pick: 1. China 2. Russia 3. Japan; I do think in a good day, Japan can push for second if either China and Russia gets too tense on the day of the finals. I think Japan has good enough depth to go higher than third place. And here is my predictions for the women's team: 1. USA 2. Russia 3. China; It's going tot ask a giant collapse for the US to lost the gold medal. Too much depth and too much talent to fail.