heywoodu

Bit late, but this was an absurd stage last week

If only there was a serious independent candidate to have any chance at all against these two who barely know their own name anymore.

Eliminate that in the rules. Every officially valid race (for World Athletics) counts. We had that nonsense in the Netherlands in the run-up to Sochi 2014. Alpine skiers needed a top-8 finish in a World Cup competition (totally crazy requirement, but ok), Marvin van Heek by some miracle managed to do so in a downhill in Gröden I believe......only to then be told by the Dutch NOC that it wouldn't count, because he was lucky with his late start and therefore good wind conditions. No Olympics for him, despite clearly having earned it.

Super useful heats in the women's 200m in the US...two DNS's resulting in every single other competitor qualifying for the semi's by simply finishing

Apparently also by their own decision, because more than 1 wrestler was accepted and invited, but most were declined: Edit: I see I am mightily late with this information, sorry

Make 'period X' the Olympic qualification period. Doesn't World Athletics have a set period in which times are counted? Make it equal to that, then. Great time early in the window and out of form later to me seems similar to being a midfield athlete, having an amazing day at the trials and qualify, and then go straight back to your usual level of being a midfield athlete. That one is accepted, so the first one can be too. Make it a mix of both and both formats have a chance.

Of course I know they're not going to go back to 16 teams, despite the 3rd place nonsense, but one can still have an opinion about it And honestly I'd much rather see a 32 team Euro than a 24 team Euro. To be clear, my first choice would obviously be 16 teams, but with that being entirely unrealistic unfortunately, I'd very much prefer 32 and a normal format over 24 and an intrinsically unfair format.

Exactly. There's already other sports, if I'm not mistaken, where this thing with 'best numbers 3' exists and that's bad enough, it should be slowly taken away from sports, not added to other sports...it's just entirely unfair because you simply can't fairly compare the performance of teams from different groups.

Also: it might be useful if this thread goes back to what it was originally, a compilation of who will miss the Olympics due to injury, illness and so on. Athletes who simply failed to qualify despite being healthy are a bit of a different story I'd say (and could be collected in a different thread).

One can't accuse anyone of bias if the third quota is filled in by, say, the non-qualified athlete with the best time/result in period X. That should be very straightforward.

And tons of athletes are often on 1 or even 2 missed tests, which can happen for perfectly normal reasons. Athletes can spin whatever they want, but once you miss a 3rd, that's very shady at best (because who in their right mind would not take extreme caution every single day, double checking their whereabouts information multiple times a day, and so on?).

Thanks to this Czech idiot (I mean, two yellows in 20 minutes, come on) we'll play England at the end. I mean, it's thanks to the awful Dutch team of course, but this doesn't help

Before the tournament started: yes. After two matches: no, I was genuinely not kidding when I said I saw it as very realistic

I see Slovakia is through, as expected, but that must be wrong, since @hckošice was so sure that wasn't going to happen?

In other words, it's not just his fault, but this whole thing would have been avoided if only one player avoided a yellow. Which in some cases wasn't too hard... And that's why you want players who either can keep their frustrations in check or use them as extra drive instead of just using it for dumb tackles

Maybe Slovenia is not eastern enough to be involved in all this never-ending nonsense

I can even accept 32 teams, anything to have a regular format where simply the top-X goes through to the knockout round Of course I'd prefer 16, no doubt, but 32 would be a lot better than 24 and this 3rd place nonsense.

Dude!

People booing the Slovenian anthem. Good to know not just we Dutch (where lots of idiots were booing the Austrian anthem) have amoebae among the 'fans' This is becoming a really annoying trend among the lowlifes in the stadium..

You can make that a lot easier though. Assuming there's three available spots: top-2 of the trials + whichever other athlete has the best result in time period X (whether that's the qualifying period, this year only, whatever). It keeps chances alive for the 'lesser' athletes who might have a fantastic day at the trials, while also having at least one back-up for the best athletes who have some sort of mishap during the trials. Just to be clear, not saying Mu was screwed by that, everyone knows the rules beforehand so that's fair enough. I just think the overall system would be a lot better with the other way

Next time we need to get a Slovak referee, can't you just do it? You seem intelligent, so I assume you are able to count

Referee Ivan Kruzliak doesn't seem to understand the basic concept of time: Austria wasted almost a minute with a substitution and two minutes with an 'injury', both inside the extra time, but Kruzliak somehow forgot most of that immediately and stopped already a minute after the end of the added 6 minutes. Maybe someone can teach him how clocks work Which is clearly not why the Netherlands lost btw, the reason for that is that the Dutch team played so, so, so awfully bad, that might have been their worst performance in years, every pass that arrived somewhere got there basically just by luck

Aaaaand it's gone (the tweet).

Any idea what happened? That's sad, I'd have loved to see Tebogo in a big relay.

Just caught up with Oregon of last night now, I guess Athing Mu's fall is exemplary of why it's just so stupid to decide 100% of your starters on a one-off event Obviously everyone knows the rules beforehand, so it's not unfair in any way, but if you so desperately want trials, it should just simply be something like two tickets being decided that way and one based on who is the best in general or something like that.