De_Gambassi

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

http://www.worldrugby.org/live-blog/128 The final Monaco men's tournament has started. Samoa just showed its great form nulling Tonga 26-00. It's really hard to see any other team qualifying to Rio here. A bit of history too as I think it's the first time ever that Monaco hold an olympic qualification tournament.

Here we go, team n°8 to Rio Kudos to Argentina to have kept it closed for a 1/3 of the game. They didn't look that bad, maybe they still have a shot to qualify

Finally, something interesting is happening in Nantes China is leading 48-36 versus Belarus

S. Coe just answeared that. There can't be any russian athletes competing under russian flag in any international competition (which includes the olympics). As far the IOC is concerned, they deal with the IAAF (not with national federation, nor with athletes) which is an association that counts 200 or so members, none of which representing Russia at the moment. You can't run under your own flag during the olympics if there is no national federation recognized by the ioc-recognized international sport federation (IAAF in that case).

Yes.

It's worth noting that Laurent Tillie doesn't believe in resting. Only Ngapeth will be missing this week-end. Then, we will side a full squad. It doesn't seem as a very bright idea from the outside with the Olympics around the corner. But, he obviously knows his players better than me. So who knows.

Probably nothing that time, but maybe we might see IOC and IAAF moving to a fixed number of athletes by event more akin to other sport for future games (droping standards basically) ? Coe was allready admiting after the London Games that they had too many athletes qualified.