mpjmcevoy

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.

Ferociously tough ask now for Italy with one race left and two British boats way ahead of them (27 pt lead GBR1 - ITA1 with maximum 31 possible gained if GBR are DQ and Italy win); this looks like a quota for GBR now.

Ever? Yes. In time for Paris? Somewhere between not very likely and not a chance. But hard to tell what end of the scale.

Do we know how many ranking points are left to win? We must be getting to the stage where some nations are mathematically secure?

I can only assume Emile himself has not absolutely decided which event to target, marathon or 10,000...

If I was being ultra objective, 2 men 1 woman would seem fair - GB have a lot of good men, and one brilliant woman. The woman may be the best (50/50) shout for racing gold, but several of the men are medal possible, whereas Beth is about it at the moment. i noticed over the weekend Cat Ferguson picking up a national Track medal - as you do in between snagging age grade medals on CX, MTB and Road.... In the understdable excitement over generational talents like Pidcock, Backstedt and Tarling, I hope we don't take our eye off Ferguson coming through

She's a legend and a super hot favourite, but no way is she a lock - too many good 1500m runners who could have 'that' day in, say, a wet race.

Their bus could crash. Nothing, nothing is ever 100% locked. But yes, the USA men's team come close.

I agree, although I wonder if the BritSurge was more specifically about Jason Kenny than GB sprinters in general - Hoy ruled the roost the whole time when he was on top, as did Vicky Pendleton in a kind of dual monarchy with Anna Meares. It was Kenny who had the unusual talent for peaking. That said, the dutch sprinters are alien-level good at the moment, even if Hoogland is on the downslope. FWIW, I can see the Brit WOMEN sprinters doing a worldie behind Finucane, who already looks a generational talent, maybe even more than Becky James (who GBR have sorely missed the last two cycles)

Not that many though. Yes, some would be an almighty shock, but any one event can go askew. The last four Olympics the Chinese have been red hot favourites for a clean sweep - and in every single games someone got them at least once. Mitcham, Boudia, Laugher & Mears, Daley & Lee - every four years, like clockwork, somebody has the best day of their lives at the expense of China - and its been 4 different events. Maybe this will finally be their sweep. They ought to. But... you can trace a hint of the pattern all the way back to 1988. China dominate, someone spoils the perfect....