mpjmcevoy

India pushed hard for Shooting and archery for Birmingham, it's what they do, and it doesn't tend to work.

My hunch would be: Athletics, Swimming Bowls, Netball, Squash, Sevens, Badminton Boxing, Weightlifting, Track cycling If more than 10 sports : Wrestling, table tennis, Triathlon are next in that order. I'm presuming the four venues mentioned are Scotstoun (Athletics, Sevens), Tollcross (Swimming), Chris Hoy velodrome (Track cycling, possible badminton) and Emirates Arena.(the rest)

Scottish government agree to hosting of the Games, CFG announcement done https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce8ddeeklxko now to see what this slimmed down idea looks like in sporting terms - given the Glasgow experience of hosting the European Championships in 2018, I'm quite hopeful it will not look as 'cheap and cheerful' as all that. And if it works well, and the Commonwealth Game Brand isn't diluted, it may set up the event more soundly going forward.

Sorry but that is a ludicrous and frankly farcical overreaction. At least four of the named candidates would, IMHO, be a significant improvement over Bach who displayed the worst excesses of a Borgia pope. One - Coventry - would just be a puppet, which is unfortunate given she ticks so many boxes, and a couple are cut from the same authoritarian cloth as Bach. It's hard to imagine even they'd be as spiteful as Bach, however. The worst choice, IMHO is Coventry, for that reason - she's the most puppetlike of the candidates, and her relation to Mugabe does not reflect well on her moral compass. I have my own biases in this, as a supporter in particular of women's sport and consequences for doping. I think Coe would possibly be the most athlete-centric candidate, Samaranch Jr possibly the most 'movement'-centric. I'm not a great fan of Watanabe, and while the UCI president has done a pretty good job there, I don't entirely trust him - he's the one that could be a 'new bach', as opposed to bach's puppet - I think he might just win it, though.

I'll be honest, this always felt like a bit of horsetrading. glasgow is taking on the job of doing it at very short notice, so not surprisingly, it's looking for others to back it up

Anyone familiar with old British Superstars show would recognise the fun to be had in "Fish out of Water" championships! Personally I want to see Cam McEvoy v Harry Levreyson over 60! or Tambieri v Barshim on Trampoline

Great result for Sammi, and great effort from Chan in the LJ - feeling much better about the athletics suddenly. And swimming has already pulled its weight, all these lovely silvers are gravy. Very happy with the Fencing, we have a decent shot at the gold in MC1 in the table tennis. I still think we might struggle to hit 100, but I'm oddly not that bothered - we're still doing brilliantly despite a fair few tough luck stories and a bit of a transitional feel in some sports (athletics, cycling and triathlon). WE've finished 2nd overall in every games for ages bar, bizarrely enough, London where we went as low as 3rd - I can't see us finishing below 3rd here at worst. And perhaps as importantly, as a big fan of this event, the actual 'sport' has been better than ever - so many genuinely competitive events, so much sklll upgrade - some of the archery was simply astonishing, for example. Almost all the team sports comps have been really good - wheelchair rugby was fantastic, as is the men's basketball, the goalball and the ever eccentric yet utterly wonderful blind football, where the close control skills would put many an able bodied sighted player to shame - the 'fat ronaldo' argentinian in particular is a god. so many track races have been close, so many swim races have had competition to the final metres, the track and road racing. The women's C4 triathlon was absolutely fantastic.

Good.

Not a single male medal in the road time trials. Suspect they may do a little better in the road races. The factored C1-2-3 racing was a little unfortunate here for GBR, as the individual C1, C2 and C3s was a better scenario for them. Results pretty much in line with 2023 World otherwise, including Katie George Dunlevey getting a gold on the board for Ireland. Beginning to wonder if the 100 target will be reached; the equestrians, cyclists are simply not the dominant forces of old, and Athletics is in a funk by the look of it. The Swimmers have performed wonders, but the remaining timetable feels a bit light - that said, what's already been won is a perfectly respectable haul, just feels like the Olympic vibe is repeating itself - fast start, some near misses, lots of strong attempts, but maybe a bit of a fade coming at the end.

It's all getting...Well, it's getting a bit silly now. I expected gBR to hold their own in track cycling, they did, despite leaving possibly two golds on the track. 2 golds in taekwondo was doable. We knew the rowers were ace, and triathlon would bring home some metal. But the swimming, Jesus h Nora, the swimming! The swimming medal table actually makes me giggle slightly hysterically! Super delighted for, well, all of em, but especially Fiddes who has been a bit of an npc in the wake of the Firth-Applegate rivalry, and looked like she might suffer the same fate with new generation. And yet, and yet, she's now an individual paralympic champion! Now if only the track and fieldies could come to the party! Bear in mind we still have Canoe, equestrian, road cycling to open up their accounts....

She was visibly shaking in the gate, and I don't think it was nerves. She had a very serious MS relapse this year on top of her other injuries, and this looked connected, like the pretty strong morning effort took too much out of her ability to control her symptoms - particularly the way she had to be helped off the track - it didn't look like a collision injury, it looked like she was ill, unsteady. Kadeena used to get grief from the 'are you really disabled?" mob, because she is clearly such a strong natural athlete. Today was a sad but very useful reminder of the battles Kadeena actually faces, as do so many other paraathletes, and which they so oten seem to conquer - one can forget a fair part of their lives is not conquering, but surviving, and that's heroic too. And it puts in perspective the extraordinary success of the Neilsen twins. Pretty sure Groot would have preferred to face a fit Kadeena (and a firing on all cylinders Murray for that matter) - given the longevity of para careers, I'm pretty hopeful she'll get that chance in LA. Hopefully the track program will expand a little too, as the Worlds showed you can absolutely do scratch, points, sprint and omniu style events with para riders (tandem match sprint is arguably more exciting than Olympic match sprint because the co-orination of effort is so extraordinary)

Because even at 7s, rugby is full contact. Flag football is closer to tag rugby than sevens. That said, there's no problem having a tag/flag sport IMO in the Games

Of course there is still something of a halo effect in the sport, but the code of points has gone a LONG way to making the gymnastics less arbitrarily subjective. Hoepfully the AI experiments can do something similar for Diving, which is better than it used to be, but still has an awful habit of giving Chinese divers 8.5s and 9's for moves objectively less tight than what earns other countries 7.0s and 7.5s, especially in synchro

When you have complete control of a population of a billion or so, you can use the Jan Ullrich model. As famously described, I think, by Tyler Hamilton, regardless of the doping, you had to understand Ullrich was ( a bit like Katrin Krabbe) the last prodigy of the east german system - and that system was notorious even beyond doping - it simply threw every talented egg it had as hard as it could at the wall, then selected the one's that coped best in the long run - As Hamilton put it - Ullrich was the egg that couldn't break, except once GDR died, the system collapsed, and Jan found beer. I get the feeling the Chinese trow a lot of eggs at a lot of walls, in the hope of finding a few that won't crack. What happens the broken eggs is not a matter that concerns the system greatly.

I think Ed Clancy at one point was a handy Kilo rider while still doing pursuits, but I could be wrong...