dcro

I don't really expect any quota there. Men's heavyweight category might be the best chance, but unlikely.

Antarctica wins the first WINTERFEST Annual Contest, not without controversies After winning the inaugural WINTERFEST last year, Antarctica was once again the winner. Although, unlike the last year's WINTERFEST when Antarctica won by a whopping 94 points margin, the 2016 WINAC (short for WINTERFEST Annual Contest) was a much tighter affair. The song contest was held once again in Antarctica on April 1st. Apparently, the idea of WINTERFEST contests is to always have Antarctica as the host. Antarctica's representatives, Antarctica Clear-ice Revival, charmed the crowd with their new hit "Have you ever seen the snow?" and were awarded 147 points from 20 nations competing. Antarctica's win though came out as a quite of a surprise considering that coming into the last two votes they were 22 points behind leading Mongolia. Second last to vote was the jury from Lapland. Voting in general was going very smoothly, but just before Lapland's votes the power went down what caused a break of about 15 minutes. Lapland decided to give the hosts 12 points while Mongolia didn't get any, what was quite surprising considering that each national jury before Lapland gave points to Mongolia. Incidentally, Mongolia was the last to show their votes. But, remember, unlike at the TISC contests, the national juries are allowed to vote for themselves at WINTERFEST contests. Keeping that in mind, Mongolia's win still seemed quite certain as they only needed two points to secure the win. But, the unthinkable happened. Mongolia decided to give just 1 point to themselves and 12 points to Antarctica and therefore Antarctica remained undefeated at the WINTERFEST contests. The announcement of Mongolia's votes was very hard to watch for the home cheering crowd, but after it become apparent that Antarctica is the new-old winner there was a huge roar. Despite this very tight win, the circumstances were quite controversial to say the least. Firstly, it's quite odd that Mongolia gave itself just 1 point. 15 out of 20 national juries gave at least 8 points or more to their own songs. 4 national juries (Jan Mayen, Sandwich Islands, Greenland and Luxembourg) were more fair-play orientated as they refused to give any points to themselves. Moreover, all of them announced that they won't be giving any points to themselves before the contest even started. That's why the fact that Mongolia gave only 1 point to themselves is quite suspicious since the trend was to either give yourself a lot of points or zero points. Secondly, there was another unexpected break just before the last votes as the power went down again! Lightning did struck twice in the same spot, and just before the most crucial votes. But, what happens on Antarctica, stays on Antarctica, right? However, despite these inconsistencies, the winner's trophy remains in Antarctica. In the post-contest interview, Antarctic participants said that they were quite confident of victory, even before the last votes. 20 Nations and Territories competed in this, the first edition of the WINAC (and the second edition of the WINTERFEST song contests). Though, some reports are stating that 23 nations were expected to compete. Two of them were kicked out for not paying the entry fee while Liberia withdrew after some conflict with the organizers. Apparently, Liberia was listed as "Library" on the entry list, what seemed to be a typing mistake. However, Liberia's multiple requests for correcting the name were rejected by Antarctic organizers. Liberia withdrew after that. In a post-contest interview, Antarctic organizers didn't really address that issue, all they said was "We know the grammar". Antarctic organizers also expressed their "disappointment" and "disbelief" because none of the TISC nations decided to join WINAC after Totallympics temporarily went down in February. The final results were as follows:

Link to Croatian song on opening post is leading to Slovak entry!

That's a bit of a stretch but ok.

Lesotho hosted African championships this weekend, and, had the African Olympic qualification been held this year instead of last year then Lesotho would have qualified in men's race. What a pitty.

Amazing for Canada.

Canada leading Hungary 9:8 at the moment!

Live stream of final qualification matches

Probably all of the results so far were at least slightly surprising. Canada defeating Russia, Slovakia losing by only 2 goals and now Netherlands defeating Spain.

Okay, this result put the cat among the pigeons! Netherlands wins 7 - 5.

Sadly, Chinese player who was bought by Qatar will spoil (or rather destroy) the West Asian qualifying tournament. Don't see how Kuwait or Jordan could have any chance (and these two would probably be the favourites with fair play conditions ).

Yes, looking at the UCI calendar, there will also be a bunch of races in Venezuela next month, so more of the same.

Wow, with less than 2 months remaining in women's qualifications, Cyprus is quite comfortably in qualification position! Also Israel. But all thanks to some weird races that took place in Israel last month, Cypriot racer won two of them. Seriously, look at the results. A bunch of Maltese cyclist were in top 10! http://www.procyclingstats.com/race/Massada_Arad_2016 http://www.procyclingstats.com/race/Arava_Arad_2016 http://www.procyclingstats.com/race/Dead_Sea_Scorpion_Pass_2016

If Rajicova finishes in top 10 next year then you will get 2 quotas for women's singles for 2018 Olympics, thanks to the very weird qualification system.

Today's qualifiers Men's K1 200m - South Africa (they will not accept it according to their selection criteria so it should be Egypt) Men's C1 200m - Tunisia Women's K1 200m - Egypt

Though, I hoped for at least 2 since 3 of them were in semis.

Wow, the impossible happened. Egypt failed to qualify in one of the categories.

also in -97 semis!

Guinea-Bissau is in semifinals of both -74 and -86 categories.

We can remove Sudan Men's 200m http://road-to-rio.com/ Don't know how me missed him as a prediction. He had 20.46 last year (before Olympic qualification period) and he qualified for the 2015 Worlds.

Here it is! The circus starts at 10:30

Yes, I am waiting for the video of the bout to be uploaded so that I can post it here. Just wow, that was something

Though, our depth in sailing is a bit worrying. Out of 8 athletes that have qualified, 7 of them competed in 2012 and 5 of them competed in 2008. It could change to 8 and 6 if Kljaković-Gašpić wins internal selection over Vujasinović. Also, if we just look at our 2nd best crews in all classes we would probably qualify only in Laser and Finn... In other classes the 2nd best crews are either too weak or non-existent.

Gainesville, Florida Women's 200m Ashley Kelly - 23.17

Mozambique in canoeing, though I'm not particulary happy with the way they did it (they pipped at the line). Mozambique has been competing since 1980, but canoeing is only the 5th sport in which they will compete (after athletics, swimming, boxing and judo).