heywoodu

Last time there was basically no hype at all, but I assume that was both because of COVID and because of the nonsense of having it spread in so many countries, which took away all of the 'championship feeling' (which is what makes a tournament special).

Albania 1 after barely 20 seconds

Montenegro's (and Milwall's) football goalkeeper Matija Sarkic has suddenly died this morning. Played an excellent match against Belgium not two weeks ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matija_Sarkic

Definitely agree with that. Although still I would have felt the stronger overall team qualified no matter who won that match yesterday (but even so, had Canada won, I would of course have felt just as frustrated with all the other factors, so that's definitely understandable).

I don't think it's a matter of deciding certain schedules. It's probably a matter of things that had been decided long before the race was this tight and now happened to end up this way. It could just as easily have been Netherlands - Canada in week 1 and being just as decisive, but less easy to notice because it wasn't at the end. Also, to be fair: there were Olympic Qualifying Tournaments. The qualification pathway actually was pretty nicely done and well-balanced: half the spots through three OQT's and the rest through the world ranking, so countries that failed in the OQT's (like both Canada and the Netherlands, but especially also Italy and China) aren't automatically out based on one mediocre tournament. The one country that really, really threw it away is the Dominican Republic. It's like if the USA in athletics would have trials for part of the spots on the team, and fill the rest up based on rankings, to increase the chance of the actual best being there (both those who peaked perfectly and those who maybe didn't, but showed that they belong there).

Ah, it's been a while since this classic appeared Also: spain 12 and Norway brought thousands of doses of asthma medicines to the Olympics.

Not likely, but obviously you're not going to really celebrate yet if it's 99% sure Strange to see the celebrations though: with the VNL teams being bigger than the Olympic teams, there's players in there who know that sure, they can celebrate a bit, but they are not likely to actually make the Olympics. That must be such a bitter feeling, especially when trying to pretend you're feeling awesome after a big win like this.

Not sure. I think I prefer a clear-cut rule like "who sets it first, is first", like in many sports (take F1, for example, where recently Russell and Verstappen tied for the fastest time, but Russell set it first, so he got the pole position). Otherwise it's going to be that massive mess of figuring out which races are 'smart' to do and so on, that's already bad enough with the FIS points system in the winter

Well, step 1 is of course the time, but the time is equal, so that's the issue. If one of the 38,30's was a 38,29 or 38,31 there would not be any issue at all

Seems like, yes. No idea what would otherwise be the tiebreaker (definitely not thousandths)....

Very bitter silver medal for the Dutch 4x100m men's team. Sure, silver, nice, but the only thing that counted here was the time and now they only have one chance left (next week) to beat the 38,30 with which they shared 2nd place in the non-qualified ranking with Trinidad & Tobago (but TTO ran it earlier, so is ahead...).

Gajanova

43.88 split for ThunderDoom

Yeah for Klaver that's somewhat worrying, for Bol not so much, she really didn't need to push at all except for a little bit in the last 20 meters to make sure the gold would be theirs

Meanwhile Dutch TV is ignoring all the non-running action to talk endlessly about......giving the sticks to the other person in a relay. Luckily there's Belgian TV, but too bad it's relay day and they don't talk about their relay teams in terms of normal words, but just by their nicknames (like every single Belgian sports team has a nickname) We've just seen the Cheetahs get bronze, now the Tornados should no doubt get gold. Afterwards we'll get the Rockets and the Falcons, respectively.

Femke Bol tried her best to make the race exciting but then switched from easy jogging to running in the last 12 meters or so

Well this turned out to be a massive disappointment for everyone involved: racing was stopped half an hour before midnight due to fog (not unusual there), but after a few laps behind the safety car in the early Sunday afternoon (until then it wasn't even possible to try) the race was called off entirely and the result was called at a little over 7 hours into the race. This weekend we can hopefully have better luck, the 24 hours of Le Mans is on and that's usually a lot less weather-influenced. It absolutely has every bit of potential to be one of the most entertaining and fun editions in many, many years, with this utterly massive field of Hypercar competitors (most of whom are definitely competitive):

To be fair, it'd be sort of senseless to make it 5cm difference even well above 6 meters. I mean, from 5.50m to 5.55m is a rather much smaller step than from 6.10m to 6.15m

That very much depends: what is the bonus for a world record at the European championships? If that's not that high, and it's financially better to do it in the Diamond League, I'm going to say no, no WR tonight (even if there is a great bonus of course the chance is always higher of not having a WR)

No worries, just read the text, Italian Senate Some photoshopped joke, I assume

More than what he did Commentators here often just don't look into the multi-events well and say things like "Kaul made a fantastic comeback!" (last time for example), or talk about how Kaul is disappointing when after day one he is way down the rankings, even though that is exactly what one would expect when actually looking into the event. It's like if you'd do an all-round running competitition with a 100m and a 10k and after the 100m you say "omg, Kenenisa Bekele is way behind Usain Bolt, awful start!"

Nice decathlon Kaul definitely lost his medal with the javelin and high jump, but especially the fantastic consistency with which Erm scored on almost every event was impressive

Awesome job! And cool to still have a full four way fight for the medals, gold even

Wow, Gletty. That's a rare way to throw away a shot at a medal.

Yeah, it's too bad. A few years ago it was like a nice extra that sometimes happened after for example a surprising win or something, now it's just part of the more or less obligatory procedure (like all those football players who 'need' to create some weird celebration or something instead of just....you know, celebrate and run and cheer ) Oh well, I'm getting too old to keep up with these things, I realize that