mpjmcevoy

We've choked in the past. This was not a choke, this was two of four exceptional teams going hammers and tongs - the matches between Ireland, France, South Africa and New Zealand the last 18 month or so have simply been among the best matches there have every been. Heartbreaking, but there's no shame in a one score loss in that match.

Previously Ireland have choked, or just not been good enough. This was nothing of the sort. This was two great teams of the four great teams currently in existence taking absolute lumps out of each other - Ireland going 13 down early and punching their way back, All blacks surviving 20 mins wth 14 men - in the end, a brilliant J Barrett hold up and the astonishing discipline of the NZ defence in the last phase - not sure any other team could have beaten Ireland today, not sure the All blacks could have been pushed harder than they were today - they were pretty much the top of their Game and still just about clinging on in the last phases i wasn't an unreachable black will, Ireland nearly made it through 3 times, but NZL found a way to hold the line. This'll haunt Ireland, but we didn't die wondering - it's no fluke, we are in this league, but well done All Blacks. This match was not quite as ;seismic; as the RSA match, which was frighteningly violent, but in another way it was equally astonishing. The standards in the World Cup generally are easily the greatest they've ever been - and i could probably watch any match featuring a combination of Ireland, France, New Zealand And South Africa all day at the moment.

What d'ya say to a brand new winner.... Semis of ARG v IRL and FIJ v FRA?

Would it not be better, if you're going this direction, calling it the Olympic EGames

He's quite a strong athlete, but I assumed his main aim was 2028. Could he make a mad run at 2024?

Doing a basic look at the 8 new team events and the world rankings, how a 6 team tournament might look, assuming as far as realistic continental representation LACROSSE: It's notable that the same basic teams turn up again and again at the top of the World rankings regardless of version of Lacrosse - Field, Box etc or gender N. America: USA, CAN, Iroquois Oceania : Australia Europe : Great Britain/England, Israel, to a lesser extent Germany Asia: Japan South America and Africa hardly figure So one suspects both tournaments are going to involve USA, Canada, Australia, Japan, Great Britain and one other - the other being either, USA2 (Iroquois), Israel or the winner of a playoff between Africa and South America. Not impossible #6 team are different in the two events (say men Iroquois, women, Israel) BASEBALL/SOFTBALL Great Britain have definitely risen in both the men's and women's game in recent years, but otherwise no surprises, the same basic system, the same likely teams FLAG FOOTBALL USA and Mexico seem the established powers (no Canada?) and given superstar NFL players like Tyreek hill have expressed an interest in trying to make the Games it could be painfully one sided Austria for some reason appear the established superpower in Europe, most of the non north American teams in the top 10 are European However Japan, Korea, Thailand and India are high enough, I think, toguarantee Asia a spot. As ever, it seems Africa will suffer. All that said, it would be interesting if decent 'tackle football' players in strong tackle football nations, esp Canada, choose to get involved. The sport is so underdeveloped, any shit could happen, frankly. CRICKET : Easily the most Global of the new sports (and arguably the one most likely to survive to 32, along with Baseball), it's hard to look past a Host and five continental teams set up which would likely be USA (Host), TRI/JAM (Panamerica) IND (Asia) Great Britain (Eng, and technically SCO and Northern Irish IRL players - Europe), South Africa (Africa) Australia (Oceania). This set up misses out badly on the possible India Pakistan dynamic but it is so hard to give West Indies nothing in favour of USA)

Slowly but surely it's looking like GB Judo may need an intervention, notwithstanding the strong women in its pool...

The quota is arbitrary. Of course we need to avoid bloat, but in a situation like LA that is clearly willing and able to be a three ring circus, holding back the numbers seems a bit pointless. Better, honestly, to have a core, with a proper quota worked out for that core, and then let the organisers prepare what they want in quota terms for 'additional' events. If they want to be crazy and introduce FOUR new team events, let them but on their own head be it. Losing the lightweight rowing seems poor form too; homogenises a sport you claim to want more diversity for, to include a form of rowing pretty much exclusive by design to coastal nations. It's be one thing where it additional, but chopping of the legs of lightweight rowing. If boxing eventually gets the green light I think we're now looking at about 350 events.

The problems in MP are longstanding - if you include riding, it essentially becomes an extended Equestrian event (that was, originally, uniquely, solely for actual cavalry officers which is a giveaway of the element at the heart of the sport) with all the universality problems that creates - worse, while a small nation might produce one or two accomplished horsepersons with their own horses, MP insists and depends on strange horses being volunteered to be ridden by non specialists - often from countries with no equestrian tradition at all - and therefore not much in the way of horses to practice on. And when you have problems even with strong equestrian nations like Germany, it simply highlights that, fun and exciting as the jumping element can be, it's kind of like the famous description of the Charge of the Light Brigade - 'c'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre' - it is magnificent, but it's not war. Well, increasingly the showjumping was magnificent, but it was not sport, it was 'it's a knockout/jeux sans frontieres' - the excitement was who would get the dud horse. Ninja Warrior looks silly in a sports context, but no sillier than the riding sometimes did. So, given it was no longer a military only event, it had moved away from the original de Coubertain idea anyway - and de Coubertain's whimsy is the only reason the sport exsts and is still has its spot in the Games. how do you preserve at least an idea of it? Well, you need to look, I suppose, at what the heart of the sport is, what is it really testing. If it's really an Equestrian event, then it ought to be run as such - probably using athletes own horses - indeed, the three day event has an odd element of it as it is, because if you step back, Eventing is a way of basically getting cross-country racing/steeplechasing into the Games, at least in a kind of mini TT format. Once you allow civilians into MP, you already change the nature of the challenge - it is no longer testing actual cavalry soldiers as originally designed by PdC. So either the point of the sport is gone, or you find a slightly new point. The new point, I would argue, was to create an event of five deliberately very different disciplines which in some sense echoes the theme of the escape of a soldier from enemy territory. And to do so without the increasing farce of strange horses, which the IOC were simply not going to tolerate. Personally, in terms of 'escape of a soldier' and 5 very different disciplines, I think the balance is slightly wrong - a laser run AND an obstacle course seems to make running an element twice over. If it had been me - mad as it'll sound, I'd have leaned into the combat theme - we already have 'sword and pistol' - why not add 'bare hands' - a truncated form of judo (a kind of bracket ranking system or swiss system for a limited number of golden point bouts), for example, and then move the obstacle course element into the Laser run - the added idea of course being that the unusual exertions of the arms will affect the shooting, as it would in an actual escape. So now your event is - swordfight your way out of the battle, swim across a river, fight unarmed an adversary you encounter on the other side, take his pistol, then run across country and around and across obstacles, and hold off enemy with the same pistol before reaching the border. As for Equestrian Pentathlon as we would presumably now call it, that sport may be preserved outside the Olympics by UIPM, perhaps included as part of the World Games, or even the Continental Games in the IOC tradition. Hell, it may even return to its older, more traditional format of separate running and shooting.

I didn't. Rogge was a bit ineffective, but he was relatively straight - a week pontiff but not a totally corrupted one. Bach was, to me anyway, a Rodrigo Borgia figure from the outset.

Athen's likely finance problems were known from an early stage - Greece is by far the smallest recent host - it also marked the end of an aggressive expansion phase with 4 entirely new sports, never mind disciplines or events. It does seem mad that Rugby and Golf - which clearly would have made sense to include in London - had to wait to 2016 and a country not wildly keen on either. Squash should also probably have made its bow in London, as might cricket. The problem seems like the IOC can never stick to a plan

I wonder if in the case of South America, we might not have pan-american qualification - or even an unusual split of one Caribbean spot, and one mainland pan-american spot, with Guyana having to join its West Indie brethren in the Caribbean qualification comp. IS a six team tournament really going to have a one per continent rule when there is such disparity between the continents? Are organisers really going to forgoe the chance of IND v PAK to accommodate Guyana, or Surinam - can't see that I think somehow we're gonna end up with USA, Europe 1 (almost certainly GBR, although outside chance of Ireland or Netherlands), (Asia 1) IND or PAK, Africa 1 (RSA), (Oceania 1) AUS and a.n.o probably a playoff between Pan America 1 (Say TRI) and Asia 2 (PAK or IND) An eight team comp would make much more sense in that context with guaranteed spots for Pan America 1 and Asia 2, and a grand final qualifier for the eighth spot., but it is what it is.

I wonder if weightlifting and taekwondo might provide some indirect help. Part of their system is that any NOC can only gain quotas in a limited number of events, unless (in the case of taekwondo) they are right at the top of the world rankings - so if a nation has a TKD in the top 5 in the world, they get a quota place, and technically could get one for every weight - BUT if they get 4 or more in this method, but don't get them all, they cannot pick up new quotas to 'fill out' the team; this allows tkd to keep the Q numbers slightly lower, and slightly more varied, than might otherwise be the case. The effect might be that you need to use two world champs, or a world champs and a Q regatta, and a relatively limited number of spots are distributed in the first event - and if the 'big' nations qualify a set number they cannot go to the Q tournament to gain more boats, and those that can go to the Q regatta can only take as many boats as would get them to the limit too. If you then allow nations qualified in certain boats but not others to have rowers enter two events if they wish (i.e 2 from the M8+ can enter the M2- for a nation that otherwise cannot get an M2- boat (or, in extremist, 4 from the M8+ enter the M4-) you should still get a pretty full timetable but reduced quotas a bit, while keeping the continental spread - would mostly affect teams like GBR, NED, ROM, USA who will have large numbers of boats come what may but are maybe not top 6 in world in a few of them. But they can still enter the less high ranked event, they are absolutely not barred from it, but can only use existing quotas/athletes in other boats to do it. This would NOT however cause any disadvantage to rowers of small nations who are never going to be caught in the limits - indeed, it might allow a lower ranked boat from a non trad nation to sneak another Q place in certain bigger boats if the final Q regatta place/ or continental place were not open to bigger nations with already strong entries guaranteed. Thoughts?

if they went for 5 would surely shadow badminton and tennis - M+W singles, M + W doubles, X doubles? Very small projected quotas number though.

There's many a slip twixt cup and lip.... but, seriously, wouldn't it be nice to see Egypt have their Fiji rugby moment in some ways (I know they're good at some other sports like MP, but still)

I think that's unfortunate in some ways, but it does help make a tighter games. for the record, if cricket survives to Brisbane, I doubt you'll be talking 6 teams then - it'll immediately migrate to the core and a minimum of eight. Brisbane is very much RL country rather than Aussie Rules (read about the Baressi line, it's wacky); I wonder if rugby League nines might look to take the space left by flag football (which I cannot see surviving after LA) and whether that may even signal a future where one VERY local sport gets a spot each time (also possibly ensuring at least a couple of medals for that host)- Wushu in China , Kabaddi in India, Sumo in Japan, Hurling in Ireland, Boules in France etc, etc - along with a small number of locally popular but still international sports. I think if the IOC are going to land 8 new team events, it behoves it to find a way to increase quotas to match, rather than continually squeeze the core sports, some of which are already bare bones (canoe slalom chucking the C2 event, the reduction in weightlifting, the lack of weightclasses in taekwondo)

Putin-esque levels of physical separation. Figures.

As for sports at a hypothetical Olympics Hat : OUT : Breaking IN : SPORTS Cricket T20 Squash Snooker + Billiards Hat: Out : Breaking In : Snooker, Gaelic Games

Interesting picks - despite their image outside the British isles and the low countries, to me snooker, billiards and arts are perfectly respectable sports as sports - objective physical skill and plain competition - in a sense, darts is to archery and snooker is to golf as table tennis is to tennis.

It's not beyond the bounds of possibility that cyclo-cross, cross country running, winter triathlon and even indoor athletics and short course swimming could, in theory, make the winter Olympics, adding an element of "sports protected from the elements" to Sports played in specific elements.

GBR are reigning European champions, and the coming force in WOMEN'S European flag football. They are not all that close among the men, In Softball GB are already in the ballpark but it is baseball, bizarrely, where GB seem to be making strides - most might have predicted basketball to kick on rather than baseball...

Don't you realise cricket celebrates the END of colonialism, not colonialism - every great non-England team has been based, to some extent on the nation finding its separate identity - the original Australians, the great West Indies teams, the brilliant Indians and Pakistanis - all reclaiming their own identity, not celebrating colonialism at all. You need to watch Lagaan.

You've answered your own question: "the all too-predictable USA v Japan WBC final" Cricket is not as predictable because there more genuine contenders GBR(Eng, technically Sco), AUS, NZL, IND, PAK, SRI, RSA are all plausible gold medalists. As for West Indies, they'll do what they do for Commies - have an internal island tournament - which they have anyway - and then send JAM, BAR, TRI or GUY, and whoever they send might be good (or might not, at the moment!). All five continents have a plausible contender for gold and as for baseball - why do you think it is followed so strongly in Japan?

I'm european. Did I complain about diversity?

Rugby League nine's wouldn't bother me, despite it being unlikely Ireland would get in. The Rugby League World Cup is a niche event, but the international game exists. The better comparison would be Flag AFL, or Dublin hosting a game and reinstruding Gaelic football 9's or Hurling. Actually, lacrosse, hurling... You'd love hurling though. Only sport in the world actively designed for psycopathy.