Vojthas

First of all - the riding is a lottery, the host is responsible for horses and the leader after two events draws the horses. In theory it means that host country's representatives have a handicap as they train on those horses, but in practic they do not always like the horse they get during the competition. Laura Asadauskaite (Olympic Champion from London), Lena Schöneborn (Olympic Champion from Beijing), Zsófia Földházi (silver medallist of YOG 2010 and the biggest star of her generation), Qian Chen, Oktawia Nowacka are in my opinion main favourites for the gold medal in Rio. Another ones who will fight for medals are Samantha Murray, Donata Rimsaite, Margaux Isaksen, Yane Marques and Elodie Clouvel. Of course there might be some surprise, but they are the top now. Among men the best are Aleksander Lesun, Ádám Marosi, Róbert Kasza, Amro El Geziry, Pavlo Tymoshchenko, Riccardo De Luca, Valentin Prades and Valentin Belaud. About the experts in certain sports - as I said riding is a lottery, most of the best run/shoot athletes are those mentioned above (except Marques and Clouvel), in swimming the leaders are Brits (Joseph Choong, James Cooke, Samantha Murray), Hungarians (Ádám Marosi, Zsófia Földházi, Sarolta Kovács), Egyptians (Amro and Omar El Geziry) and a few others (Woojin Hwang, Jiahao Han, Elodie Clouvel, Gulnaz Gubaydullina). Fencing is quite an tiring event as the ranking round lasts about three hours and the result often depends on the day. I think that's enough for the beginning.

The brothers may get two quotas from ranking or World Champs and Hamad, who won the African OQT may not start in Rio. Do you know what are the internal rules of Egyptian team?

I think it's about the list of events counted and the period of gaining points.

It is hard to comment the event - Chen might have won with Cesarini for sure if not the target malfunction, but let's be honest - Cesarini had such a great day and she wasn't losing distance to Chen at all during the three laps so I think that she deserves the win, though I'd like to see the fight until the end. And Asadauskaite was also heading for the top position, until her third shooting. But there is one more important thing to focus - the riding. If the course and horses will be the same in August we might see an interesting competition. Four maximum results is not bad, but there was quite a few results below three knockdowns. Clouvel had a big advantage before the riding and fell down to fifth before the combined. Let's see how will it look like today with men's event.

Martwi mnie trochę kontuzja Nowackiej. Niby drobny uraz, ból przeciążeniowy, ale od kilku tygodni nie może biegać, szuka alternatywnych metod nabierania kondycji, wczoraj świetny występ w kwalifikacjach, ale, jak to powiedziała "stopa dostała w kość" i spodziewała się bólu dzisiaj. No i musiała się wycofać. Cztery lata temu Tereszuk też na początku roku olimpijskiego nabawiła się kontuzji i jak wróciła to już jej tak dobrze nie szło i w Londynie skończyła poza top20. Oby historia się nie powtórzyła.

We are after qualifications. Among women no big surprises (maybe no qualification for Burjak, Tocchi and Sotero) - all top athletes qualified. They also held the fencing ranking round (this is Olympic test event, so they had to hold the whole competition in the Olympic format, which means ranking round day before the rest of the competition). Oktawia Nowacka unfortunately had to withdraw - she still didn't cure the foot injury until the end and the pain came back during today's fencing. Another poor fencing of Földházi - she will have to decrease the loss to the top during next events again. Among men there are some sensations - Lesun and Cao did not finish the combined event (I don't know why, I can only suppose that it's because of the heat, Samuel Curry, who was in the same group as Lesun and started in the same hours in the same conditions got a heatstroke), Lanigan-O'Keeffe was 20th in his group, Frolov, who started in the same group, was 22nd, Kuf was 24th in other group.

Już sam fakt, że tak długo czekamy na ranking, świadczy o tym, że FEI ma poważne wątpliwości. Albo czeka na łapówkę ze strony ukraińskiej, która pewnie jest świadoma, że ich przekręt może się nie udać.

It looks like the second Russian player to be caught is just a matter of time.

You do deserve the Olympics, just because of the match against Poland and sensational bronze at World Champs. And the anti-doping rules are obvious - if one athlete from the team or in some sports relay is caught, the whole team is disqualified. I don't see the reason why this should be changed.

No, it's fine for me.

World Cup #2 ahead of us. It starts on Thursday (not Wednesday) and ends next Monday (istead of Sunday). The training camp is held for a few days in some militarian sport centre in Curitiba with a few nations (for sure Germany, Guatemala, France, Ireland, Canada and of course Brasil). Today the Polish team departed from the Warsaw Airport, this time with Nowacka (although she still didn't cure the foot injury so she might not achieve some big result, but it is important for her to see the Olympic venue, as she already secured the quota and for sure will go to the Rio Olympics).

What I didn't like in old forum (Discuz) was that the result were with such a big font, that the discussion posts were hard to see during fast scrolling. But definetly the results were useful and I think that we should go back to that. Also the threads for every event was better. My idea is to post the links to results in the first/second post of the thread and to hold the discussion only in the following posts. Another advantage of the new version is that we can see all the unread content in one place, not only 30 last updated threads (wich was also very often bugged). So technically new version, but let's go back to the old content in some new version.

What is very probable for both Földházi and Isaksen. And in men's event for El Geziry and Marosi.

We are after the first World Cup event in Cairo. Among women the best was Lena Schöneborn, ahead of her teammate Annika Schleu and Elodie Clouvel. Just behind them Zsófia Földházi and Margaux Isaksen were qualified. Both Hungarian and American are among the top favorites to qualify for Rio Olympics during World Champs in Moscow, but Schleu made it really good in combined in Cairo and she seems to be knockin' to the world top. But in Cairo Oktawia Nowacka, Laura Asadauskaite, Qian Chen, Donata Rimsaite, Samantha Murray and Sarolta Kovács didn't start and they all would surely get good result there. Among men we had a domination of host country's Amro El Geziry, who unexpectedly loss last year's African Olympic Qualification to Eslam Hamad and still has no quota for Rio (yet). Behind his back we had a wonderful fight for second place between two great runners Ádám Marosi and Valentin Belaud, eventually won by the Hungarian who also had great event at Budapest Indoor competition earlier this season. Among those who didn't start James Cooke, Aleksander Lesun and Róbert Kasza. Mixed relay was pathetic - only nine pairs and that was no surprise that Italians Lavinia Bonessio and Auro Franceschini (the only Europeans except of Turkey) won with a big advantage over Mexicans Tamara Vega and Jorge Abraham Camacho and Kazakhs Elena Potapenko and Vladislav Sukharev.