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Paris 2024 will have a busy qualification schedule, which will take athletes to every inhabited continent in 32 sports. While some ranking events and pre-qualifiers have already started, the first event that directly qualifies athletes (or more specifically in this case, teams) to the Olympics is just around the corner. A dream that will end in the second weekend of August 2024 when the gold medals in Men's Football are given out will begin nearly nine thousand kilometres away in Honduras as the qualifier for the North/Central American and Caribbean region, the 2022 CONCACAF Under-20 Championship takes place from 18 June to 3 July: two spots will be earned from this event, which is the only way North American teams can qualify for the Games. Out of the forty-one members of CONCACAF (the North American Football continental federation), thirty-four entered the tournament. The top sixteen ranked teams did not have to qualify, instead entering the group stage of the final tournament. The remaining eighteen teams did enter a qualifying tournament in the Dominican Republic, with the four winners of groups of four of five entering the final tournament. For their troubles, they will skip the group stage and have a bye directly to the Round of 16. These teams are Curaçao, who won a group containing Grenada, the British Virgin Islands, Sint Maarten and Dominica; the Dominican Republic, who topped a group on home soil including St. Lucia, Belize, Anguilla, and Saint Martin; Puerto Rico, who topped a group with St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Bermuda, and Barbados; and finally Nicaragua, who overcame a group with the Cayman Islands, Guyana, and the US Virgin Islands. There will be four groups, with Groups E and G being based in the Estadio Nacional in Tegucigalpa and Groups F and H being based in Estadio Morazán in San Pedro Sula. The groups are as follows: Group E: United States, Cuba, Canada, St. Kitts and Nevis Group F: Mexico, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname Group G: Panama, El Salvador, Guatemala, Aruba Group H: Honduras, Jamaica, Costa Rica, Antigua and Barbuda The top three teams will join the four qualifiers in the Round of 16, with all action from the Quarterfinals onwards taking place in San Pedro Sula's 37,000-seater Estadio Olímpico, the home of the Honduras senior national team. Both finalists will reach the Olympic Games, and all four semi-finalists will also qualify for the 2023 FIFA U-20 World Cup in Indonesia. Players have to be born in 2003 or later, with no overage players. For these young athletes, this is a huge opportunity. Since 1964 there has been a specific CONCACAF qualification tournament, but now this competition carries that torch instead, and there is a chance to become a hero. In the last Games, Mexico and Honduras qualified from this region, and they will be hoping to repeat that feat. The United States are defending champions from 2018 after the 2020 edition was cancelled. With an extra incentive this time, it promises to be an exciting tournament, where names once unknown can be thrust into the spotlight in the most famous and lucrative sport of all. Patrick Green Writer, Totallympics News

As we approach the start of the qualification period for Paris 2024, Football has become the latest sport to announce its qualification procedures for the Games. Football Football has a Men's 16-team tournament and a Women's 12-team tournament (no change from 2020): each team is a squad of eighteen players. Qualification is on a continental basis. One spot will be going to hosts France, with the other fifteen spots to continental qualification events (dates and locations TBC). Three spots will be earned for Asia, Africa and Europe, two for "North, Central America & the Caribbean" and South America, and one for Oceania. The final spot will be earned at a play-off between a team from Asia and Africa. While most events have not been detailed, the North/Central America and Caribbean competition will be the 2022 CONCACAF Under-20 Championship (Various locations, 18 June-3 July). Men's Football is unique as it is an underage competition, with a stipulation that fifteen of the eighteen players in the final squad be born in 2001 or later. What this means is a spot has been taken from Europe (although as the hosts are European there will still be four European teams) and given to the new Afro-Asian play-off. The North America (et al) region had a specific qualifying event in 2020, but no longer. On the women's side, which does not have age restrictions, there is a 12-team tournament. One place is given to the hosts France, with two spots for every continent apart from Oceania, that gets just one in continental qualification events (dates and locations TBC). Like the Men's tournament, only the details of the North/Central America and Caribbean region's tournament has been announced: the 2022 CONCACAF Women's Championship (Various locations, 4-18 July 2022). Compared to 2020, this removes a place from Europe (although once again there will still be three European teams as the hosts are European) and removes the Afro-South American play-off, instead giving two spots to both teams. In the CONCACAF Championship, the top team will qualify automatically, while the runners-up will play third place in a September 2023 CONCACAF Women's Olympic Play-in Series (dates and locations TBC). This document seems somewhat hastily assembled being released just a day before the start of the 2022 CONCACAF Under-20 Championship. It means that that competition is the first to begin that directly gives quotas (not counting ranking events or pre-qualification events). This latest update also means that only four sports still have to release information: Aquatics, Athletics, and Table Tennis have not released any documents, while Cycling has only released the procedure for its Mountain bike discipline and we are still awaiting the release on other systems. Patrick Green Writer, Totallympics News

Paris 2024 isn't too far away now, and on 26 June the first quota places will be allocated in Triathlon. Three more sports have revealed their qualification procedures since the last update: Sailing, Surfing, and Tennis. Sailing Sailing has taken a reduction in quotas from 2020, with 165 athletes per gender (down from 175). There are still ten events. On the men's side, the Windsurfer, Dinghy, and Skiff events survive, but the Dinghy (Heavyweight) and Two Person Dinghy events are gone, to be replaced by a Kite event. On the women's side, the Two Person Dinghy event is replaced by the Kite, which joins the surviving Windsurfer, Dinghy, and Skiff events and there is also a new Mixed Dinghy event to join the Mixed Multihull event. There are ten events in total; four each for men and women and two mixed events. There will be one boat per NOC per event. The first event worth consideration are the 2023 World Sailing Championships (The Hague, NED, 10-20 Aug 2023) which will qualify a large number of boats: 16 in the Men's/Women's Dinghy, 11 in the Windsurfing, 10 in the Skiff, 9 in the Mixed Multihull and 8 in the other events. The 2024 ILCA World Championships (various locations, dates TBC) will qualify 7 boats each in the Men's and Women's Dinghy event. Various Continental Qualifiers (dates and locations TBC) in 2023 and 2024 will earn one boat per continent in each event, the exception being the Men's and Women's Dinghy events which will have three boats earned in Asia and two in the other continents. In the 2024 Last Chance Regatta (dates and location TBC) five boats will be earned in the Windsurfing and Kite events, four in the Mixed Multihull event and three in all others. For countries in World Sailing's Emerging Nations Programme there will be a separate 2024 Emerging Nations Last Chance Regatta (dates and locations TBC), which will grant one spot in the Men's/Women's Windsurfing and Dinghy events to NOCs that have not qualified in this Sport yet. The hosts are also guaranteed one spot per event (with unused spots being allocated to the Last Chance Regatta) and there will be two spots per gender for Universality decided by the Tripartite Commission. There are a few differences from 2020, although much remains to be confirmed. However, the system seems similar, and there is no hint of the transition to ranking-based systems seen in other sports. Surfing Surfing responds as an additional sport with its two Shortboard events (one for each gender), and with an increased quota too: 24 per gender (at most two per NOC, which could be bumped up to three in certain cases) rather than 20. There is one spot for the host and one Universality place, meaning there are 22 qualification spots per gender. The pathway is different for men and for women. Ten spots for men and eight for women will be earned at the World Surf League Championship Tour (WSL CT) from January-September 2023 (exact dates and locations TBC). Continental representation will come from the 2023 Pan American Games (Santiago, CHI, Oct 20-Nov 5 2023) for the Americas and the May 2023 ISA World Surfing Games (WSG) (exact dates and location TBC) for all other continents: one spot per continent, for a total of five, and five spots for men and seven for women at the 2024 ISA WSG (dates and location TBC). Finally, the highest rated team (that is to say, NOC) at the 2024 ISA WSG and the 2022 ISA WSG (Huntington Beach, USA, Sep 17-24 2022) will earn one spot each, which does not count to the NOC quota meaning that these NOCs can qualify a maximum of three places instead of two. With the addition of those 'team places' notwithstanding as they correspond to the enhanced quota, the system seems mostly the same as 2020. Tennis Tennis returns from 2020 with the same events (a Men's and Women's Singles event, and a Men's, Women's, and Mixed Doubles event) and the same quotas (86 per gender). There are three host places and one universality place per gender, with a maximum of six athletes per NOC per gender (a maximum of four in singles, two teams in Men's/Women's doubles and one team in mixed doubles). There will be 64 players per event in Singles. 56 places will be earned from the Rankings of 10 June 2024, there will be one host place, and six "Final Qualification places". Four of these will be earned at continental events: the 2023 Pan American Games will yield two spots, and one each will be earned at the delayed 2022 Asian Games (Hangzhou, CHN, dates TBC) and the 2023 African Games (Accra, GHA, dates TBC). The final two will be reserved for Olympic Gold Medal or Grand Slam winners that have not qualified (confirmed on 12 June 2024). Finally, there will be one universality place. In Men's/Women's Doubles there are 32 teams each. One place is for the host country, and the remaining 31 are chosen by the rankings. Firstly, the top 10 doubles athletes based on the ranking of 10 June 2024 will qualify (this may be less than 10 teams if one athlete's partner is also in the top 10, or more if a few athletes are tied for 10th). The remaining spots until the 24th team (or more if the quota of 86 places is not yet reached) will be filled based on Combined Doubles Ranking. Any other places will be based on ranking, but chosen with priority to teams with both athletes in the singles event. In Mixed Doubles, there are sixteen teams: one host country team, and fifteen teams selected based on Combined Doubles Ranking of 10 June 2024. This is basically the same as the Tokyo 2020 system, except for the fact that the continental places will be won directly at events. Finally, we turn attention to Canoe Sprint. In the last update, we reported that the document was taken offline quickly, but it has now been reuploaded with some edits. Basically, one spot has been cut from the Canoe Single and Kayak Single events for both genders, and this means one extra boat in the Canoe Double events. All changes have come out of the World Championships table. This latest update means that just five sports have to release systems: Aquatics, Athletics, Football, and Table Tennis in their entirety, and Cycling which has revealed the system for Mountain Bike but not the other disciplines. Patrick Green Writer, Totallympics News