Dolby

No chance. Why would Italy chose cricket when it is not that popular in Italy plus Italy is nowhere near the top in the sport.

I did. I remember commenting after Asian Games how we have decent athletes in all women track events from 100m to 10000m, atleast at Asian level (ofcourse still missing hurdles).

Source is twitter handle of KP Mohan @kaypeem, who is a retired Sports journalist

They are giving Gold to Kento Momota who is not even going to participate in Rio.

Thanks for the clarification. Wish IWF was more prompt with finalising the situation. Must be really tough on the lifters.

With due respect, Chain Singh has been in much better form in the past 2 years while Gagan is a legend who is in good form as well. So, sadly if Sanjeev Rajput was selected it would have meant 1) Either Gagan Narang or Chain Singh, who are in decent form would have missed out on atleast one event 50x3 or 50 prone (or Rio if Sanjeev was selected to start in both) and 2) Young and talented Kynan Chenai would not have been able to get the exchange quota. So, leaving Sanjeev out of Rio bound team was a tough decision but it was also the correct decision. We need to stop analysing decisions based on events that happened after the decision was made. Nobody knew Rajput would win silver here, nobody knew Pooja Ghatkar would perform so well. Based on the information NRAI (and we) had at the time of selection, I think NRAI did a perfect job of team selection.

We have had talent coming in tennis for quite some time. Youngsters doing decent at the youth circuit, including GS. But sadly, except Saina for a short time, none of the others have come even close to expectations in Senior Singles. I would love if these youngsters buck the trend, but history suggests that we should be cautious while having expectations.

So, they have updated the World Championship Rankings ranking with RUS/KAZ/BLR still in it. I am assuming this means that these countries will be participating in Olympics and their ban will start after Olympics. Has IWF clarified anything?

Interesting. I would have put Belgium alongside Australia/Netherlands. Rest I agree.

Judges must be furious. They must have lost a fortune.

Shooter A wins a quota in Event X. Now, this means a) Shooter A cannot win another quota in any other event and b) Shooter A's NOC has a quota in Event X. Now, whether NOC wants to send A or some other guy B (who has MQS in Event X) is purely upto NOC. The shooter who is selected by NOC can participate in other events as well provided he has MQS in that event as well. This can be done as long as the number of shooters in that event does not cross 2 per NOC limit. If NOC wins 2 quota (A and B) in Event X and has another shooter C who has quota in Event Y and MQS in Event X, then NOC must decide which 2 shooters would take part in Event X. This is what happened with China. They decided to use shooter C and hence returning their quota. All these selections are not part of exchange of quotas. Exchange of quotas is when NOC returns its quota in Event X and instead gets a quota in Event Z. Like we exchanged Rajput's quota in 50x3 and got quota in Trap. This exchange can only be done once by NOC. Hope this clarifies the situation.

oops yes. Of course it is 11.30

Dutee Chand has broken her NR and qualified for Rio Olympics by clocking a time of 11.30s in Almaty meet

Source? 81kg semifinals are going to be held in evening session.

In a way there is. There is target quota for each event in athletics. If enough athletes don't get A standards then best ranked athletes will be invited to Olympics. At present, in the events where Indians are close to A standard, target quota has been reached so require A standard only.

I have mixed feelings about restricting participation. When AFI had our own qualification standard for CWG and Asian Games, I had opposed the move as I believe we need to encourage more participation, with an aim of better performance in future. But have to admit, situation has indeed improved since then. This time all of our athletes (17) are qualifying with A standards. Agree about need for change in mentality.

These are medal prospects not predictions. We should win 1 medal for every 3-4 prospects. So, with only 20-25 medal prospects we would need extraordinary performance to win 10 medals.

Chenai also reaches final with a score of 123

Bindra and Narang reach final in 10m Air Rifle

Any idea why Manavjit is not participating here?

If RUS/KAZ/BLR are banned from Olympics (instead of just removing x lifters from final tally) then their lifters will be removed from all Olympic qualification tournaments. This would mean that Combined ranking will be recalculated without lifters from these countries. IWF did the same thing when a) Brazil failed to win a quota based on combined ranking and had to use Host Quota and b) when they banned Bulgaria from Rio Olympics.

by the time all these calculations will be over, we will have new list of doped lifters

and after that new rankings for continental qualifiers without nations replacing these 3 nations in Combined list

If Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia are banned, then we may get second quota. We are third in line but someone below us might get ahead as majority of lifters from these 3 nations are in higher weight classes and our points are from lower weight classes. But still

Completely agree. After London Olympics, instead of focusing on boxing, he was busy doing movies and Roadies and then out of the blue became pro just a year before Olympics. If he was so keen about Olympics, why didn't he wait for a year or join the AIBA Pro Boxing league? And now when Vikas and Sumit are very close to Olympic qualification why is he needlessly creating a controversy. I didnt expect this from him. I thought if Vikas and/or Sumit fails to win quota here, he may try to participate in the last qualifying tournament and if needed ask for a trial against Vikas but this statement about bias against him is just sad.