dcro

Oh well. I guess we will never know unless some other federation becomes as messed up as IWF, which seems incredibly unlikely to ever happen.

What on earth does popularity have to do with weightlifting's current situation?

I guess one of my favorite random moments goes back to Day 1. Larissa Pauluis & Flambeau were going through their test when torrential rain suddenly started. It was pretty much the only rainy moment of the equestrian Olympics, if my memory serves me. For some backstory, Larissa Pauluis was more oriented on the business / training side of dressage, rather then competition. But that all changed when her husband Greg died suddenly in May 2020 (age 39, heart attack). She became a single mother and business owner overnight, and basically started preparing for competitions to fill in the void. She received a last minute Olympic call-up after Belgium received a late team reallocation (following Ireland's controversial withdrawal). Was so pleased for her when she nailed that second piaffe (at 1:07). The rest of the test did not go as smoothly, unfortunately. Even the heart she drew on her glove started turning into mush by the end of the ride.

Fear and/or corruption.

Earthquake in Haiti. Right, now it's time for the big guys to care about Haiti with all the short-term help again.

B-boys and G-girls.

True, but the sport was portrayed in an absolutely horrible light.

I mean after that TV production fiasco, to say the least, shooting is lucky to stay in the program.

Not happening.

It's interesting when you accidentally open the first page of a thread like this. This post though. The logo turned out to be very reminiscent of Croatia. So much so that I mistook officials/volunteers as Croatian athletes a few times.

Here we are, European Championships for Olympic disciplines will be held in a matter of weeks in September. They will be hosted by Hagen (dressage), Riesenbeck (jumping) and Avenches (eventing). It's really unusual to have two major, season-concluding championships in one year, but there you go. Nations who failed to qualify teams/individuals for Tokyo insisted on holding these events, and it seems like a lot of big nations are interested as well and will be attending in full force. Should be interesting.

I swear Australia is wack.

This has already been reached for Paris so I guess it's over. Interesting how people keep talking about removing sports (or disciplines), and really there is no indication that IOC would ever do that. Baseball/softball are like the only sports which ever got removed, and both of them were in the Olympics for a short period to begin with.

It's not equal since the number of athletes is different. Artistic gymnastics should arguably have more spots for men: Considerably so, even.

Probably because corrupted judging seems salvagable when compared to the outrageous doping tradition of weightlifting...

Fun fact, Novi Sad loosely translates as "New USA".

What is this tyranny? We can no longer edit our own posts?

After witnessing the Chinese performance in eventing and especially show jumping in Tokyo, I have no doubt that your hockey team will be able to pull out a respectable performance as well. China seems to be pretty good at avoiding humiliations in their non-specialist sports.

Stressed rider = stressed horse. A story that goes back to the ancient times. It's like it was her first time riding a horse. Casual fans will as usual just blame the horse, because humans must be faultless, naturally. Does anyone actually believe that a pro-rider would have such problems managing a stressed (even naughty), but at the same time a capable horse? From what I read on the equestrian outlets, Schleu received no sympathy.

They likely planned to have a (non-related) mixed team event with no individual medals.

Much as I anticipated, Steffen Peters & Suppenkasper got their social media minuted.

Most disgusting event in the Olympic history. Two individual events without individual medals, but rather with some fabricated mixed propaganda podium.

So I've read that FEI sneakily changed the rule in late 2020. Now any broken device results in 11 penalties, period. There is no assesment on whether the device prevented a fall or not, and reportedly in Michael Jung's case it did not. I hope federations raise hell on this, otherwise cross-country will turn into show jumping...

How nice, same thing as with track cycling and GB. Russia just assumed they will be the masters of rhythmic gymnastics for all times...

To clarify my mark of 5... I can't really go any higher since this event failed to deliver the Olympic atmosphere. Sure, it's COVID, but everyone knows that empty stands were largely a political decision. I didn't feel Tokyo or Japan at all. It could have been held anywhere else and I wouldn't know the difference (especially with all those curious music choices, like Bolero during the torch ceremony (WTF?), or 80s American rock standards while victory ceremonies were being prepared, or just the most cheesy medal ceremony music ever - as if someone googled "emotional uplifting music"). Appareny this lack of Japan in Japan was felt by many athletes/officials on site as well, so was there any hope for the TV spectators to begin with...? There were other underlying issues as well. Most notably the worst graphics/info system in many, many editions. Half of the shooting finals were totally unwatchable. Other sports had their glitches too.