mpjmcevoy

It's clear from Malaysia OlCom website that they are all in for this - it's up to Malaysian government now, but if it's slightly scaled back, and designed to suit Malaysia in terms of sport, the chances are probably high its been rescued rfom the jaws of death, for now. The offer from CFG of 100 million to Malaysia (which they seem to like as a umber) also leaves 100m in the kitty, I would suggest, for off site Commonwealth Championships in any sports keen to have one that Malaysia can't host either itself or with Singapore - thus squaring the circle of a scaled back Games. Malaysia has athletics, aquatics, gymnastics and track cycling venues already - most of the rest doesn't require huge infrasctructure, but can always be offered elsewhere (singapore would be happy enough to take on sevens, Malayia will be happy to do Netball - bowls in Darwin, prghaps?

Of course, but as an Irish Olympics fan we understand all oo well this process of BBC adoption!

No, She'll fight for the refugee team. BBC will just make sure you know she's a multi time British champion!! Fans of Irish sport have some experience of this kind of 'adoption'!

I'd say GB are pretty content. 2 in. 2 chances left and Ngamba essentially one of theirs now too (watch how she's 'claimed' now before Paris!)

Gibraltar was a bit wild, but Jamaica certainly made sense, esp for netball and cricket, neither wildly high on Canadian agenda. IMHO sending the triathlon to Bermuda would have been another easy win, and they also have long standing links with Turks and Caicos. Gibraltar should be reserved, perhaps, for the next UK based games - with cyrpus offered beach volleyball and gymnastics, Jersey the bowls and Isle of Man the road cycling.

Singapore, like Monaco, is very good at creating room when it wants to. There are a number er of sports they d love to host given the chan e, Inc swimming and badminton ton, and possibly sevens

If they were willing to share a few events with Singapore, or even Brunei, that might work even better.

Not been a great advert for non-IBA event, this comp - it feels like the problems simply run too deep to be easily fixed.

Exactly what I thought. My suspicion is the team might well be significant enough, with only the most obvious medal chances sitting out, and a few 'punts' from people trying to maybe get an OG Q- not to mention the number who will be there because a European medal is the limit of their ambition, but a viable one. Athletics, especially at the less long distance end, do not have the tapers of say swimming or cycling. Of course 'Orangehair' is now getting into the 'my sources' bullshit which is clearly now now just daft opinhions, but straight up lying - and at that point, should be banned from the forum for deliberate wrecking of the threads

You mean the European Championships?

Even a respectable 4x1 could probably be stitched together from swimmers likely to be there anyway - Harris does a decent 100 free, Hopkin, Anderson, Wood and Hope are all also likely to be there anyway. There may though be an issue of load management, especially around Freya Aderson and to a lesser extent Abbie Wood, but the same issue has arisen historically with James Guy and Duncan Scott, and may this time with Richards and Dean, and they still all got thrown in. Basically the 3 men's relays, the mixed medley are the main event for GBR, with a punchers chance in the women's 4x2, and women's medley worth a punt as three of the four swimmers will have few other commitments.

It was obvious the 'points per blow' system was right - sure it needed tweaking (perhaps with extra buttons/points for combos and power shots) but the basic objectivity was clearly better than this pretendy nonsense, brought back, in my view quite deliberately to create corruption room.

If bolters like Evans come out of the wood work, and various relays, in particular, start looking viable, that 30 'hard' limit will be gone like snow of a rope. That 30 limit is pure penny pinching, but no way they pass up actual medal chnces to keep it.

Given some of the early f***-ups, GBR aren't in that bad a spot, they've strong chances of a few spots - and some big hitters to make amends in Q2. not wildly dissimilar to my other team, Ireland - probably helps me that both Ireland and GB have lost boxers in the few sections were Ireland and GB were going to clash in any event!

In the sense it was the last relay race for qualification - there's two more individual races so it's not quite so bad?

Have to say that's brutally unfair in the relay scenario

I wonder if GB are playing the game a smidge here. IF ONLY Ngamba comes through, she magically gets the passport just in time. IF BOTH get through, Ngamba 'remains' a refugee until after the Games, both get to go, with frequent BBC accidental mention of her GB links...

Will you just quit with this stupid crap?

The return of Kate French to the fray...

My instinct, FWIW, is the final women's team will be Potter, Taylor Brown, Waugh, with Potter and Taylor Brown in the relay. They may not have much of a choice on the men's side, with Johny Brownless looking like he's going through his late Andy Murray period; the lack of new blood is stark. Potter and Taylor Brown remain I think the best gold medal shot, while Yee needs to do something about his week swim which has now hit him at numerous key races. For the relay, the key need in 'Man 1' is a strong swimmer (as Learmonth so memorably was, splitting the race definitively in Tokyo on the first mini-leg) ; if GBR are still in the race when woman 1 takes over, a back end of Taylor Brown, Yee, Potter can take it home. If not, they'll be fighting for podiums.

If Ngamba wins a quota, and then gets GB citizenship, what happens?

The GBR pipeline used to consist of ex-pursuiters (Wiggins, Boardman, Thomas, Armitstead/Deignan) and imports (Sciandri, Froome) with the odd (often Manx) Maverick (Yates, Miller, Cavendish, Kennaugh, Swift) thrown in. That's the GBR blueprint all the way back to the Beryl Burtons and Tom Simpsons of this world, and in a sense, even before the Keen revolution, it worked pretty well for a basically non-cycling nation with no high mountains. Recently, however, the GBR youth scene seems to have come over all Oranje/Belge, with a steady stream of super quality riders over multiple surfaces - Pidcock, Savkstadt, Ferguson). It's a nice and useful change of pace. From an Irish perspective it doesn't hurt to be so strong that people like Ben Healy take the Dan Martin route, just as we have an Eddie Dunbar and a Sam Bennett, and a handful of other interesting riders coming through home grown.

Fraser is former world champ, Tullough a world medalist - on FORM, they're all medal threats. this might be an unusually form dominated choice; there's too many good gymnasts to pick a good 'un whose currently out of form.

It strikes me Tullouch's great vaulting and increasingly decent PB Bars, along with still strong Rings gives him a much better chance than Rings alone would suggest - he's not far off a finalist level in vault alone when he puts it together. What the team seems to lack at the moment is a genuine AA threat, but it has a lot of impressive 'bits and pieces', with Hall the guy who is jack of all trades, master of none (in the original complementay sense "...is better by half than a master of one") ties it all toether (see, in earlier era Kristian Thomas) If anything the problem is too many good bits and pieces, but few obvious specilist medal shots. It feels like a team that will need to be carefully chosen to really push the Team chances, while noting Whitlock remains the safest bet for an individual medal, followed by Jarman and possibly Fraser. Tullough on rings and PB (two shonky apparatus for GB) as well as vault is a strong argument for him, with Hall as your HB and all around backup on everything. Seems to me Hepworth and , if fit, Regini Moran are the threats to those five, Hepworth to Tulloch, Regini Moran to Fraser or Jarman.