1 hour ago, NaBUru38 said:

The Americas deserve a third spot.

Unless there is expansion, don't see Americas deserving a third spot. Oceania, Africa already have bare minimum spots. So, any additional spot for Americas have to come from either Asia (3) or Europe (7). Americas doesn't deserve more spots than Asia. One can argue that almost 50% of spots for Europe is high but then Europe does have a large number of good teams. In fact, except Argentina and occasionally Canada, none of the other American teams have been competitive at World stage. Asia on the other hand has in  5 decent teams and 3 spots. I would prefer a system with 5 spots for Europe instead of 7 and remaining spots to go to a World tournament. 

2 hours ago, NearPup said:

Given their stated goal (per their own MoU) is essentially to overthrow the government and abolish the Canadian constitution, not that crazy. The people running this either have no idea what the implications of their MoU are, or they are just crazy.

 

All MPs were advised to stay away from Parliament Hill.

For the past one year, so many Canadian politicians, including Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh, have been supporting such protests in India. Hopefully, these protests show them how wrong they were and they think twice before supporting anarchy in other democracies. 

Come on guys, lets be realistic. AO organizers wanted Novak to play. So, they gave him a medical exemption. Australian officials had no problem, so they gave him a visa. There was public outcry over this exemption, so politicians do what they always do: backtrack to save their ass. All this talk of procedures is simply for public consumption and to give themselves reasonable defense in case of any legal action. 

On 1/1/2022 at 2:51 PM, up and down said:

Coaches Mulyo, Tan Kim Her to be again in India by year-end

 

I so happened to read a lot of news like this online. Somehow it is already 1st January 2022 and yet both these coaches are nowhere to be seen in India. So is it referring to end of year 2022 next? Strange?

From what I can gather, Mulyo's contract with Singapore team is till Jan or Feb. Only after that is over, we will get an official confirmation on where he is headed next. 

P.S. Double Olympic medallist Yong Sung Yoo has joined Prakash Padukone Badminton Academy as head coach. 

Honestly I would blame AO authorities more than Djokovic. Djokovic is a known anti-vaxxer so his participation would have raised questions for sure. The first question he would have been asked would have been about his vaccination status. So, he keeping silence about it was not possible. Also, he is fully within his rights to try and play. It is the job of organizers to be firm and unbiased. You want Djokovic to play, either convince him to get vaccine (which is not happening) or drop the vaccine requirement from your side. Simply say, anyone who can get Australian visa is eligible for the tournament. You can't give exemption to Djokovic while denying others. And it is clear that Australian authorities must have given verbal green light to organizers about Djokovic visa before the announcement. But they changed their stance after public outcry. Well, politicians have to win elections. They care more about their votes than Djokovic and tennis world's opinion. Organizers should have known this. 

Lastly, it is really sad that one of the biggest sporting player of our times, a legend of the game, a player who I enjoy watching is an anti-vaxxer. I understand that it is his choice and it doesn't take anything away from his achievements but it is just sad. 

An Indian junior tennis player also applied for exception citing the fact that India has not started U-18 vaccinations. He was denied. Well being a legend of the game has its perks. 

12 hours ago, heywoodu said:

"Why is Christmas generally celebrated on the 25th of December?"

A) Jesus was born on this day B) Saturnalia C) Sol Invictus festival D) Winter Solstice

51 minutes ago, Griff88 said:

Let's hope BAI can get Mulyo to come back and stay longer if they really want the results

It seems his return to India is almost confirm, alongside Tan Kim Her. Hopefully they stay longer this time. 

13 hours ago, Fly_like_a_don said:

I definitely felt he had a chance to win it if he beats Axelsen. He is in great form and improving day by day .

It would be interesting to see how he performs next year when there would be more pressure on him, opponents would have analysed his game more and he won't be coached by the legendary Mulyo. But, inspite of all this, I am sure he will be among the elite players for years to come. LKY was simply phenomenal this championships and fully deserved to be World Champion. 

17 hours ago, Fly_like_a_don said:

I think it's time to decrease  investing in inland Rowing . 2024 will be the last games with so many events in rowing on river. 

 

It's all but a sureity that coastal rowing will have a substantial number of events from 2028 and inland rowing and costal rowing are totally different .

 

Honourable mention for Gayle Zulema de Miranda who took up the sport at 14 in US and has been winning numerous medals in sprint category , a creditable quarter final finish at the WC (top 8 ) only losing out to the world champion (it's a head on sprint format) at just 18 years. Hopefully if she doesn't get lured by the USNOC as she does qualify to compete under US too, and coastal rowing gets added to 2028 LA she'll be a great talent to watch. 

I honestly want to know how in the world do you know about her. 

What are the chances that a certain Tongan flagbearer will start swimming in Seine? 

On 11/28/2021 at 2:03 AM, Grassmarket said:

Germany has just this week installed a predominantly-Marxist government.  You in the Netherlands have a Marxist Socialist Party.  We in  have a governing party that is firmly Marxist. The Corbyn wing (about 40% of the    Labour Party is happily Marxist.
 

Of course, modern Marxists do not have luxuriant moustaches, smoke pipes & speak with thick  accents, but they’re still firmly in that tradition.

In India, we have Communist Party of India, Communist Party of India (Marxist) as mainstream national parties. CPI(M), in alliance with CPI and other parties, even rules the state government in Kerala and is a major player in some other states. 

On 10/10/2021 at 1:03 AM, hckošice said:

99.99 % of votes counted

 

The coalition "Spolu" composed of civic Democratic party, Christian-Democratic party and liberal-conservative Top 09 party had kinda incredible finish in the last hour of counting (Prague district) and surpassed the current leading ANO party (populist party of PM Andrej Babiš) and shockingly won the elections.

 

Tey already claimed to want have coalition only with the PiratiSTAN coalition of Czech pirates Party (Liberal progressive anticorruption, antifa, proecological party etc.. you know..pirates) and Stan (Mayors - liberal party).

So it looks Czech Republic is going to be the first country in the world having the Pirates actually in the governement lol . Czech forums and medias going completely mad right now

 

Once pirates join the government, do they remain pirates?

Qatar is hosting WC. Emirs are buying Football clubs. I am sure that if they throw enough money at IOC, they can get Olympics as well. In fact IOC will showcase it as an important step in fight for human rights. 

Regarding Badminton, post-COVID struggles aside, Lakshya Sen is a super talent. He had already started winning tournaments (lower levels) in his first year in Senior circuit. So, I have high hopes from him. Apart from him, I think we have a host of players who would be in 20-50 ranking range. Basically, same as now. 

In WS, I don't have much hopes on any of the youngsters. If you are still playing in Junior circuit at 18-19, it is a clear indication that you are not going to be the next superstar. Tasnim looks promising but not enough dataset to make a prediction about her.

MD seems to be our deepest category now. Satwik/Chirag are monsters. Arjun/Dhruv have been the only ones who gave some fight in both the ties in Sudirman Cup. Then, we also have Krishna/Vishnu pair who also seem promising. 

In WD, we have 3 very good pais: Tanisha/Rutuparna, Ashwini/Sikki and Gayatri/Treesa. Ashwini has been our best WD player for quite some time but I don't think it makes much sense in pairing her with Tanisha or another youngster. Teams should be made keeping Paris in mind. 

Considering that we have a decent pool of young doubles players, having decent XD teams is doable. 

BTW, really disappointed at our performance in Sudirman Cup. Tanisha/Rutuparna won the trials ahead of Ashwini/Sikki but still didn't get to play WD. What is the point of having trials then? Srikanth/Sai are in horrible form. They both should seriously take a long break and return in lower tournaments to get some match practice. Also, what is this fascination of playing Singles players in Doubles. Couldn't Dhruv or Arjun played in XD? Ashwini/Dhruv even played a couple of tournaments together this year. 

19 minutes ago, Agger said:

When you say 90 % vaccinated, do you mean of the ones who can get the shot? I mean, right now it's only approved for 12 years and up (though Pfizer is testing on younger already). With that, most countries have a hard time getting to 80 %.

Yes, I mean of those eligible. 30-35% of India's population is under 18, so impossible to cross 60% of total population before kids vaccination starts. 

Although Zycov-D has been given emergency approval for 12-18 group about a month back, it has not been launched yet. I am expecting rollout for kids by November end. By that time, we should have a decent amount of Zycov-D vaccines available and also stress on delivery system will also be less. 

We should cross 600 million atleast partially vaccinated citizens and 200 million fully vaccinated citizens by tomorrow. Considering that we are averaging 5-6 million vaccinations per day, I am hopeful that we should cross 90% partially vaccinated mark by November end. 

By the way, today is a mega vaccination drive in India. To celebrate PM Modi's birthday, there are extra efforts on part of ruling party members to get maximum vaccination done. We are nearing 10 million vaccinations already and the pace at which it is going I am expecting it to near 20 million vaccinations for the day. 

If anybody is interested in the vaccination statistics for India, you can find them here:

https://dashboard.cowin.gov.in/

11 hours ago, Bearas said:

Afghan women to be banned from playing sport, Taliban say:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/08/afghan-women-to-be-banned-from-playing-sport-taliban-say

7 hours ago, Olympian1010 said:

I know that the classification process was highly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, so that may be why there has been so many classification controversies at these Games. I think the lack of major international competition is also to blame for the controversies as well.

I don't think this is classification issue. If there was classification issue, he would have been disqualified. I think it must be some issue which came up after his first throw which resulted in yellow card and removal of his remaining throws. 

I think Syrian also had atleast one of his throws removed retrospectively. During live scoring, he went ahead of Indian and then dropped back below him. 

I am sorry, but these things should not happen. You can't come back half a day later and say sorry we made a mistake, you are not eligible for this competition or sorry, the WR throw that you made yesterday was a foul and our judges couldn't spot it in real time. All these things should be handled before competition. 

You want to delay the competition, delay it but all these issues need to be solved in real time. Not a day after. 

You guys still don't get it. USA doesn't see Taliban as a terrorist group anymore. ISIS-K is the terrorist group now. Taliban is the newest ally who needs to be supplied arms to take on the ISIS-K. 

And no point in blaming Joe Biden. He is just continuing the same policy that has been in place since Obama admin. Hillary/Kerry started peace talks with Taliban. Trump took the complete withdrawal decision. Grandpa Joe is simply continuing the work started by his predecessors. He can only be faulted on the horrible way the withdrawal is taking place. 

12 hours ago, NikolaB said:

Love him or not, Libya was much better place than today. And how many peple lost their lives in bloody civil war there, hundreds of thousands...

 

Afghanistan is the best example how big nations play the game

Was USA right to invade Libya? No

Is situation now in Libya worse than it was under Gaddafi? Yes 

But does this mean that Gaddafi was net positive for Libya? Hell No

In fact, USA might argue that the situation in Libya is worse because they didn't commit enough boots on ground, that if there was sizeable US troops in Libya, situation would be less volatile. 

20 hours ago, NikolaB said:

Iraq hosted 3 times, Guatemala 2, and we only once 😞

Libya?