orangeman

I'm going to skip events I don't know much about. I'm concentrating on what brings an audience, global participation (across the board) and infrastructure. (Borrowed @intoronto's template here. Athletics*: cross-country racing Artistic Swimming: I think this should be removed just because of the judging. Wow, the same teams win the same medals at every event. Inspiring. But, I get that it's a real sport and people like it. Mixed duet instead of female duet, and mandatory 2 men per team. Boxing: Gone. 3x3 basketball: Increase to 12 teams per gender, 2 groups of 6, top 4 from each go to quarters. Canoeing Sprint: Add 500m to mens and womens C1. Canoeing slalom: Cross seemed like it was going to be fun, but I'm not sure. I'll give it another shot. Cycling: Add a second event for Mountain biking with no new quotas. In Track, 1km time trial. Equestrian: Gone. Golf: Controversial, but GONE. It's not important to the big names, and the infrastructure is non-sustainable. Also, I find golf boring. MP: Kind of like the idea, now that equestrian is gone. Obstacle course will be good TV, probably. Rowing: I'm good. Rugby sevens: No changes Skateboarding: Watched more of it in Paris than any time in my life, I get it now. But I don't think 11 year olds should be in the Olympics. There should be a minimum age for every discipline. Soccer: Even number of teams for both genders. Surfing: Gone. It's just impractical, and I don't like sports that depend so heavily on random mother nature. Also, not great for TV. Swimming: Eliminate semis for 200 individuals. Table Tennis: Don't care, personal opinion, GONE. Taekwondo: Fine. Tennis: Fine, but extend the calendar so athletes aren't playing 2-3 matches per day. There two weeks, use the two weeks. Triathlon: Fine. Volleyball: Fine. Wrestling: Maybe remove Greco-Roman wrestling Elective sports from Paris/LA Baseball/Softball: Continue to have it in countries that can support it. I think it's good, but no need for a country like France to build stadiums they'll never use again. Breaking: No thanks. But gold for Canada! Cricket: Yes, it includes otherwise neglected South Asian countries. Flag Football: Gone. Interested to see it, somewhat. Lacrosse: Yes. Squash: Sure. Includes otherwise neglected countries. Too many racket sports, but I'd take this over Table Tennis. Sorry, lived in East Asia for many years, still think it's not an Olympic sport. Come at me bro! Athletics* = New field team event. Countries have competitors in all 8 field events, add up placements like team figure skating. Only three attempts in each event, or something like that. All in a few hours. DO IT.

As a Canadian in 2024, I absolutely support this idea.

The guy sounds like a scumbag and should be banned.

I think there's a big drop off from the top 4-5 teams in the synchro events. There's no benefit, in my mind, to adding more teams. What I like about synchro is that it's one and done. I think the individual diving events could drop the semis. I get their purpose, but it's just a lot. Should be like athletics, 18 divers get to the final and after 3 dives it gets cut to the top 8. Or something like that. I'll eventually add my thoughts on the whole programme, but generally I like having more sports, less filler within each sport (i.e. semis in diving, 200m swimming).

I'll never underestimate a New Brunswicker again!

Haha, I literally wrote, "Sorry NearPup!" but then deleted it, thinking it could go unnoticed.

Honestly, I think all 200 individual races should lose the semi-finals.

A lot goes into it, but a home-continent Olympics helps. First summer home-continent Olympics since 1996 which was our medal haul record until Tokyo. Edit: No, I don't count Rio as home-continent no matter what the IOC says. It's a longer flight than Europe, it's a different season and no time zone most of Canada is used to.

1. Rate the performance on a scale of 1-10 8/10 Positives: Record number of medals, record golds, record number of sports that medals were won in, 4th on the swimming table, 3rd on the athletics table. Negatives: Some big disappointments, as other Canadians have said. Basketball coming up with an air ball (see what I did there?) was horrible. So many 4ths again. I know it's a meme here, but it seriously is a national sporting problem for decades now. 2. What were the surprises and heartbreaks ? Kind of mentioned it above. Surprises: 4x100 relay gold, rugby silver, pole vault bronze, canoe gold, fencing bronze (and one point away from another bronze in the team event). Heartbreaks: This is probably more personal, but Warner (and Lepage before him) not completing the decathlon, Mitton fouling out in shot put, 3x3 and men's basketball. 3.Was your country's goal achieved? I think so, yes. 4. Which are the sports that will be invested more in future? I don't know. Hopefully fencing now. Hopefully they re-invest in rowing because we have a history there that has been neglected. There's so much talent in canoe/kayak that could be developed, as well as track cycling. It just takes political will. 5. Who could be some the potential star for your country in LA? Summer McIntosh, obviously. Morales-Williams in the 400. Katzburg in the hammer. Some kid sitting at home we haven't heard of yet.

Just spell it Phil Wizard to trigger @Josh to the maximum.

I totally called it in Tokyo. When Biles withdrew, I said she'd come back for the beam and knock Ellie off the podium, which is exactly what happened. Not mad at Biles, just sad for Ellie. That was her one great shot.

My excuse is that I hurt my back (playing paintball) on the same day of the OC. Sitting around watching the Games probably hasn't helped, though.

She's

No. It's going to be a whole lot more.

I can't believe they got that movie star from Back to the Future II, Flea, to perform for this!

Ok, that was appropriately cool and stupid at the same time. Love it.

Meh, Lady Gaga already did it at the Superbowl.

I don't want to say this on the main CC thread because I'm making it all about me. But I just realized even though I was at the 2022 OC and CC, I've never actually watched it on TV. I should do that.

Great site, I will continue to visit. I sometimes go a bit without visiting, but that's usually when not much is going on with sports. Less than 2 years to Milano, so lots to keep track of. Shout out to Canada Club!

Specific moments: 1. Canada winning gold in 4x100 relay. Screaming and jumping up and down at work in the middle of Americans. 2. Rugby team beating France and then Australia for silver. 3. Eleanor Harvey winning bronze in fencing. Overall: -Summer McIntosh -Guatemala winning it's second medal ever, then its first gold. -Leon Marchand -Beautiful/Iconic venues -Sarah Sjostrom -Watching more tennis, BMX and skateboarding I've ever watched before

I really didn't Ozempic the commercials, they didn't Ozempic in my mind. I don't Ozempic any Ozempics, maybe because Ozempic. Ozempic Ozempic my Ozempic if Ozempic.

Honestly, I think jumping to the top-10 requires a few multi-medal athletes. McIntosh, Kharun and Vincent were the only multi-medal winners here, the former two the only ones to do it in individual events, and Summer the only multi-gold medalist for Canada since the 90s - And I don't even know the last person to do it in individual events. 2020 was actually an outlier on that. DeGrasse and Masse were the only ones to win individual medals, but Oleksiak, MacNeil and Vincent-Lapointe got individual and team medals, while Ruck and Sanchez got multiple team medals. 2016 also wasn't bad, as De Grasse and Oleksiak again got multiple individual and team medals, Benfeito got an individual and team medal, while Ruck got two relay medals. Before that, you have to go to 2008 Lamaze (individual, team), van Koeverden (2 individual) in 2004 and Montminy (1 individual, one team) in 2000. If you look at the countries in the top-10, you will see they have at quite a few athletes who win multiple medals, usually multiple golds. They also tend to dominate one or two sports. Canada was able to climb the medal table in the 90s because we dominated rowing, but that has fallen apart in the 21st century. I don't disagree that it is good to be competent at many sports just to develop a healthy and entertaining sporting culture, but if Canada wants to move up the medal table it's about developing superstars and concentrating on 2 or 3 specific sports. Becoming good in swimming and athletics is a great development, but that won't do it alone. All the countries in the top-10 are just really good at one or two sports outside Athletics/Swimming (or just really good at swimming, like Australia). Canada needs a sport like rowing, canoe/kayak, track cycling, where there are lots of medals up for grabs and the USA/China are not dominant and where a couple of stars can win multiple gold medals.

Canada's Vincent beat the American woman for gold by 1/100 of a second in canoe. In a fun, family rivalry way, it would have been hilarious if that's what put the US second on the overall table in the end.

In addition to Canada beating their non-boycott records in golds/total medals, they also won medals in the most sports ever (including 1984). 15 sports, 8 new ones from Tokyo. That is very encouraging. As you said, there were some high profile disappointments - decathlon, shot put, judo, boxing, and track cycling (apparently the whole team got a stomach virus and almost didn't compete at all). But there were some out of nowhere surprises - fencing, rugby, tennis, 4x100 relay (surprise gold at least). As usual, we got an incredible amount of 4ths. I think the final tally was 15. If you take 5ths from combat sports it goes up close to 20. That is crazy compared to 27 total medals. Wouldn't be so bad if it didn't quite literally happen every single Olympics. Overall, a great success for Canada in 2024. Many of the new medalists are young and will improve over the next 4 years.

We'll likely have a more in-depth discussion about this in the coming days, but Canada failed to win medals in 2 sports they won in 2020 that were contested in Paris (cycling and football). Given the controversy in football, and the sickness in cycling, that's not too unexpected. We can exchange softball in Tokyo and breaking in Paris. That means they won medals in 7 sports in Paris that they didn't win in Tokyo. That is incredible. -Fencing -Rugby -Boxing -Beach Volleyball -Trampoline -Taekwondo -Tennis Some of these we hadn't won before (Fencing), some we only won once before (Tennis, Beach Volleyball, Rugby), some we hadn't won in a long time (Boxing, TKD), some were a return to the podium (Trampoline). In most, they are young athletes with bright futures.