dcro

I always say it will be my last full Olympic coverage, and this time I feel pretty confident about it. I will not be wasting a single vacation day on Beijing 2022. No thank you.

"Unknown"? They have regularly featured in the news here for the past couple of years. Mate Rimac is quickly becoming our very own Elon Musk.

3-6 medals for Croatia.

I don't know about you, but I am starting to get some Rio flashbacks. Sleeping from 7am to 3pm.

Paul Drinkhall

So Bugatti is becoming Bugatti Rimac and moving to Croatia.

I am not sure. Today is the sport entries deadline. So technically all athletes should have been selected by name at this point. However, I know for a fact that some nations have purposely selected larger teams and are in fact still playing with their P athletes or whatnot.

@phelps So Jessica is going after all (though, potentially, only as a reserve - which is to be named from these four). Looks like the selectors left only one spot for those less experienced. I would have preferred to see Lucy Deslauriers, and especially Brian Moggre, but these two ended up as picks #5-6.

Apparently it took CAS ONE (1) day to dismiss Dinja van Liere's appeal regarding Hermes' (wrong) nationality. At any rate, the Dutch teams were announced today: Netherlands - Team dressage Edward Gal (Total US) Hans Peter Minderhoud (Dream Boy) Marlies van Baalen (Go Legend) Reserve: Dinja van Liere (Haute Couture) Netherlands - Individual eventing Merel Blom (The Quizmaster) Janneke Boonzaaijer (Champ de Tailleur) Netherlands - Team jumping Marc Houtzager (Dante) Harrie Smolders (Dolinn) Maikel van der Vleuten (Beauville Z) Reserve: Willem Greve (Zypria S) Japan - Team jumping Daisuke Fukushima (Canyon) Eiken Sato (Saphyr des Lacs) Koki Saito (Chilensky) Reserve: Mike Kawai (As de Mai) Taizo Sugitani was present at every Olympics since Atlanta 1996... But now he miss out on the home Games following a late injury to his horse. Switzerland - Team jumping Bryan Balsiger (Twentytwo des Biches) Martin Fuchs (Clooney) Steve Guerdat (Venard de Cerisy) Beat Mändli (Dsarie)

Is Iceland seriously reduced to 3 athletes? Less than San Marino, Liechtenstein and Monaco?? Thank God they will be eligible for the Tripartite spots from now on...

Belgium, Portugal will have big teams as well. Even Luxembourg, for their standards. Which makes me think Thomas Bach may have a secret agenda against the former commies (plus Iceland ).

Apparently they are doing all of this to "protect" those 44 non-100 m universality athletes... Because if they put them too over the limit, then additional 44 quotas would have to be added as well... And to think football got 100+ late quotas just like that... This is scandalous. If it concerned some big nation (or involved cannabis), it would make all the headlines, but now nobody will even scratch into this story.

58 athletes By far and away the smallest team ever. The previous low-water mark was 81 (!) from Athens 2004.

Barcelona se ne može pretjerano uspoređivati zbog ograničenih kvalifikacijskih prilika. A u usporedbi sa svim ostalim igrama, ovo je nažalost potpuni potop. Atena je bila minimum s 81 predstavnikom.

Granted, the IOC also messed up here? Per the qualification system, 100 m universality spots should have been no different than the other universality spots. Ranking qualifiers should have been removed in their favor. But then they made this unfortunate exception for the 100 m events, which was probably approved by the IOC to begin with...

Same with the gender equality. The IOC hinted they would overhaul the WA system and essentially 'guarantee' that every nation would be eligible to enter a man and a woman at the very least. Nothing of the sort has happened.

Yeah. Seems like World Athletics started insisting at some point on the universality athletes entering 100 m events. I guess to round up their already controversial universality system. Pathetic. Bermuda will have two athletes then....?

Yeah, archery and shooting qualifications are never broadcasted, for a pretty obvious reason...

I suspect they forgot to include Eveline Bodenmuller (P athlete). Her selection was announced like two days ago so I would find it surprising if something changed.

Also 1 equestrian.

And we are arguably the worst here (with Colombia I guess), losing 67% of teams from Rio...

I thought it was over once Dane Rawlins wrote: "We lost. Thanks for the support. Time to move on.", following the second appeal this Friday. But apparently, with only 24 hours to go, Dressage Ireland have called upon the Irish Minister of Sport to intervene. What a mess. So we should know by tomorrow at the latest.

Yeah, most combined event athletes save themselves for the Olympics anyway, so claiming you are a medal contender by virtue of having 7th best season's result pre-Olympics is only telling half a story.

Belgium - Team dressage Domien Michiels (Intermezzo van het Meerdaalhof) Larissa Pauluis (Flambeau) Laurence Roos (Fil Rouge) Reserve: Alexa Fairchild (Dabanos) If you are looking for a new athlete to cheer for, then look no further than Larissa Pauluis...

I am afraid the writing is on the wall for Mauritania. They haven't missed athletics since 1984.