heywoodu

To be fair, in a sport like cycling one of the biggest things is also building up to certain peaks, basically nobody is strong for months at a time. I've never really believed that swimming for example is so unique in it's specific needs compared to a lot of other sports: you train and rest in certain moments to be good at a chosen moment, basically. But, we all know that if you hold an event one and a half months before the Olympics, you're gonna get like a D-level field, which is just unfortunate for everyone involved, both organizers and fans.

Did he not have any chance to compete in the Olympics at all anymore? And obviously this doesn't make the whole story any less sad, it's still a teenager who drowned doing some fun diving... Edit: it's not like the Olympics thing just appeared out of nowhere, over a month ago they were writing about him going to the Olympics already. https://matangitonga.to/2024/05/15/tongas-jj-rice-preps-summer-olympics-paris-2024

Elaine Thompson-Herah won't defend her 200m title, she hasn't registered for the 200 in the Jamaican trials, 100 only.

It's a shame the event is in Belgrade this year...this setting (finally an outside championships again!) is truly fantastic! This deserved to be in a better year, not right before the Olympics...

Stanciu's contract was once reported as 2 million euros a year...it's not Mbappe-like, but I think 99,9% of professional football players in Europe alone would absolutely dream of that

Just caught up now, a well meant and for Slovak buddy @hckošice

Yeah, Serbia vs England....not without reason that it's being called a 'high security risk event' by authorities, due to certain elements within the 'fan groups' of both sides

I agree Argentina deserved it overall, they were simply better, but what I meant is that they put Weghorst in, then absolutey pummelled Argentina resulting in a 2-goal comeback. If it was a boxing fight, that was the one moment, the 5-minute window where Argentina was badly hanging in the ropes and only needed one small push to be knocked out....but once it was tied again, Van Gaal let the team play super defensively, like they had done for the first 80 minutes (which resulted in Argentina being way better and dominating the match). Unsurprisingly, that failed to result in success...

Not in Dutch at least Slovenië Slowakije

And if you simply want to go for the betting outsiders: go for Georgia or Albania, the two biggest underdogs of them all, very closely followed by Slovakia and then a group of Slovenia, Scotland and Romania

Georgia, they can use some positivity over there after the recent political mess and protests being kicked down and so on.

Here it's SLV, for whatever reason

To think Weghorst could have been one of the biggest Dutch football heroes, arguably ever, if it wasn't for the idiotic Van Gaal going back straight to defending against a completely broken Argentina in the previous World Cup.

As per usual, Dumfries and Van Dijk the only ones who showed some sort of....I don't know, interest or intent or something on their faces

Maybe, just maybe, it could be Rinus Michels, but I don't really recognize him in it

Couldn't tell you if my life depended on it and am not really getting much in terms of useful answers on a Dutch forum neither, sorry

So, in athletics we know there are super shoes which greatly contribute to the breaking of world records (Kelvin Kiptum, for example, was surely a great athlete, but there is no doubt the shoes played a big part in his marathon WR, like with most recent WR's). What's the thing in swimming that has made world records been broken again and again, year after year? Are they just on an overall low level, or are there certain equipment developments, or faster pools, or, I don't know, wetter water that makes WR's be broken so often in swimming? Surely it's not just 'athletes get better', because athletes get better in every sport.

To be fair, there are only two factory Ferrari teams, the #83 is run by a different team (just like the JOTA Porsches and the Proton Porsche are separate from the 4, 5 and 6 Penske Porsches). It's been a fantastically entertaining race until 4am or so, when the rain came, which is not necessarily bad, but it was just too much to go without safety car and it's still going on an hour later (with probably another hour to go) So the best time of the race, the night, has basically been neutralized half the time due to weather. For now, it's Toyota (both), Porsche (a Penske and a JOTA), Ferrari (both factory cars and the AF Corse car) and possibly Cadillac (both) that are still in it for the podium positions.

That's the first set for against and with that, the Olympic qualification is there at long last

So yeah, hypes just are different by nation I think I think the last time we really had a real hype here was the 2014 World Cup. In terms of European championships, I'd say 2008 was the last time with a real hype, with the amazing group stage destroying Italy and France

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).