for an ad-free Fetcheveryone experience!

27% of Brits think they could qualify for the LA Olympics in 2028

9 watchers

First
Prev
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
Next
Last

Mazlin Aug 2024 2:15pm, 15 Aug 2024 12,567 posts	Quote Pin Mazlin I think one of the main problems is being British. If you can claim citizenship of an extremely small country your chances must surely be higher.
Shades Aug 2024 2:18pm, 15 Aug 2024 3,569 posts	Quote Pin Shades Not sure, as very small countries don't have the funds to send athletes
Nellers Aug 2024 2:20pm, 15 Aug 2024 43,613 posts	Quote Pin Nellers If you're rich and can claim citizenship to a small country maybe we're on. Anyone know the numbers for the Lottery at the weekend?
um Aug 2024 2:35pm, 15 Aug 2024 8,786 posts	Quote Pin um I won the Euro one yesterday, will be happy to share/fund as many as the £8 will let me. At uni, I played with an 'international' hockey player. Isle of Man! (I may have to blog sometime, but my experience of 'elite' athletes, eg tennis, hockey, running, cycling, especially para cycling, is that they are often so different to 'good' (eg club/amateur county) level it's difficult to comprehend, unless you've been up against them. )
Nellers Aug 2024 2:51pm, 15 Aug 2024 43,614 posts	Quote Pin Nellers I bet we've all got stories of our running "local hero" and in most cases they're a bloke/woman who is so far ahead of the pack at parkrun that it's starting to look like bullying, but they're falling well short of earning a vest with a Union Flag on it. Same thing is almost certainly true in some form in most sports. The top of the pyramid is really high! Handball, though. If we start now I reckon we could get a team together that would be better than anything we've had at an olympics for decades.
Nicholls595 Aug 2024 2:56pm, 15 Aug 2024 32,047 posts	Quote Pin Nicholls595 Wasn't there an initiative from British Sport to recruit people with the right physical attributes to try out various sports with a view to fast tracking them towards the Olympics? Sure rowing was one of them. Might have been on the build up to 2012? or I might have dreamt it?
Nellers Aug 2024 2:58pm, 15 Aug 2024 43,615 posts	Quote Pin Nellers Yep, that's where Helen Glover got recruited to rowing. I think they also tried to get a Handball team recruited and trained up too, with the intention of having GB representation in all the sports being included in 2012 but I don't think they were able to get to the required qualifying standard.
paulcook Aug 2024 3:00pm, 15 Aug 2024 6,208 posts	Quote Pin paulcook I have it in my head Nicholls, that handball was in fact one of the sports where UK Sport put on some weird trials because it's a sport we've never qualified in. I might be making up any or all of those details but cannot otherwise fathom why I have some daydream of it though.
SPR Aug 2024 3:01pm, 15 Aug 2024 45,703 posts	Quote Pin SPR Small country would still need to meet qualifying standard unless you get a universality place in a sport.
larkim Aug 2024 3:04pm, 15 Aug 2024 25,351 posts	Quote Pin larkim SPR wrote:Even as an outlier, Marigold didn't make it to the Olympics though. Nope, indeed. Though podium at Comrades puts him pretty high up (albeit in a more niche sport) as an elite ultramarathoner. In a sport of fewer participants, he's the sort of person that magically found his previously unknown talent and rapidly deployed it; with his relative level of talent compared to the general population, had his talent been at rowing or canoeing or judo I he would have been in the pool of people in contention for an Olympic spot. Marathoning is (relatively) still too common a discipline that to get one of the three spots in a GB team you need to be right at the top of the ability level.