De_Gambassi

Finaly, we have a wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_AIBA_World_Olympic_Qualifying_Tournament

I don't understand how russian athletes could compete under the russian flag when there is no IAAF recognised russian athletics federation at the moment. You may remember the case of the franco-togolese canoeist who won a medal in Beijing. They had to create a togolese canoeing federation from scratch and makes it recognised by the ICF for him to participate under the togolese colors. And how russian athletes are supposely to make the olympics standards to start with ? That's very confusing

France: Tsonga allready annouced he is not going to play the mixed double. Mladenovic announced she will play with Herbert (they playd together at RG), and Mahut more or less said he was going to pair with Garcia

Yes, as far as I'm concerned.it will be better that way. The atmosphere should be much friendlier and the stadium should easely be filled up (they were still 40K spectators last year). The stadium is also in Paris proper, unlike the Stade de France.

An off the field news: The former Aviva parisian meeting will move from the Stade de France to the much smaller Charléty Stadium (20 K, possibly to expand to 24K) from 2017 onwards. With the loss of their name-sponsor and Bolt on his way out, the french federation is looking for a much, much reduced bill (800 K€ at the moment). Besides the meeting was far from a full house the later years. Veteran athletics fans might remember the stadium from the Meeting de Paris which was held in that stadium up to the late 90's. The french federation is also looking to hold the 2020 euro championship in that stadium.

Stage 2 sounds fantastic

: Julie Bresset (Gold, Mountain Bike)

It does seem like it isn't. Which is completty silly as individual athletes have nothing to do with it. They are not the ones who are banned, but the russian athletics federation which is banned from the IAAF (and subsequently from the olympics) The only possible case I could see is the russain athletics federation challenging its ban from the IAAF (we have a lawyer here I think, maybe he could tell us more).

Same here.

It's happening, Russians are goinf full CAS trying to overun the IAAF decision: http://espn.go.com/olympics/trackandfield/story/_/id/16332749/russian-race-walkers-denis-nizhegorodov-svetlana-vasilyeva-launch-appeals-rio-de-janeiro-olympics-ban It's nice that someone who is clean beyond any doubt like Nizhegorodov is leading the charge... Such integrity.

From what I'm reading (in french) it doesn't seem that clear. Her probable future sport's assessore (Lo Cicero) being a great Roma 2024 partisan to start with.

For some athletes, the biggest prize in their sport is not an option, so the olympics became their by default-objective. A cyclist like Tom Dumoulin is not going to win a GT anytime soon (even, if we've seen worse in cycling ) , but he makes a great deal of winning the olympics. Likewise, a young polish rugby players is never going to win the 15 a side rugby world cup (it'm crushing your dream here I know ), but he might have a shot at participating to the Olympics and that objective might become his main goal. It doesn't make the olympics the more important event of the lot, but simply the biggest event one athlete could successfully win/particpate to.

Let's add Sailing to these lists (Vendée Glove, America's Cup, Volvo Race, etc.) and we are probably done.

Unfuckingbellievable

The biggest in any Rio qualification tournament as far as I'm concerned.

The wait is over, morning results are allready (!) published http://www.aiba.org/2016-world-qualification-event/

It's nice to know we have old people on these boards. Welcome David.

Samoans are much better rugby players than anybody else here. But they really did not try today... Talent alone will bring them to Rio, but I wouldn't have been pretty.

The shock, the horror, the spanish team 20 minutes away from Rio. I Hope that David Hart care also about rugby We do need a nice petition for this "horrific" situation to never happen again. Humanity is at stake.

LIU J. (CHN) & AL NAAMA I. (QAT) Hopefully, we won't see this second referee again

Immagine, something like that during the Olympics

We were leading 2-1, 10-8 in the fourth set when the second referee called a french out of poistion fault... that was going on since the beginning of the set. So everything was reset to 0-8 for Belgium in the fouth set. We then lost the fourth and fith set.

Canoe slalom used to have multiple entries by country up to 2004 (don't know what was the qualification process though). And for your last sentance, just have a look at the world championship results. Medals are usually spread among a very limited number of countries. Besides other sports have more events to spread their better athletes (to an extent).

Yes. Something like in cycling (mountain bike, BMX) would be a good start. If only, the top 4 or 5 nations in each event could field at least two boats, the all thing would feel a lot better. Not asking much here, I think.

If there is a sport that could use some extra quotas, it must be that one. So many potential medallists are left home each time. That's frustrating. Last time, Tony Estanguet (future gold medalist) had to eliminate the then reigning world champion during the french championship just to make the olympics Dear IOC, we want quotas