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Brekkie Boy

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Posts posted by Brekkie Boy

  1. 17 hours ago, Victorian said:

    Sorry but they should actually look at themselves in the mirror and ask why they aren’t hosting. The next games will be 40 years since NZ last hosted a Commonwealth Games…

    Absolutely.   I think NZ hosting would actually revitalise the games in a way yet another games in Australia can never achieve.   Problem is somebody has to pay for it.

    17 hours ago, Victorian said:

    I don't know if cricket has any Olympic ambitions but if they do this is the best place to showcase the sport.  The difficulty though I think is with it already being predominantly a Commonwealth sport the ICC effectively gifting an international event to the games in what is already an overcrowded international schedule is not something that makes much financial sense.

  2. No surprise this is now confirmed.

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/apr/12/regional-victoria-announced-as-host-of-2026-commonwealth-games

     

    Not exactly enthused by it - a shame we've got to a situation where it needs to return to Australia after just 8 years.   The regional concept is interesting, though that is kind of what the Gold Coast was and that for me was the most underwhelming games in many years.    In terms of international appeal centering the games around Melbourne would be an easy win, but I get why they've gone for the regional approach to sell it more to locals and perhaps sell Victoria as a whole internationally too.    It also perhaps provides a new model for the games moving forward of them being city or country based - I know when Wales last looked into hosting they considered North Wales, South Wales and All Wales options.

  3. Can't see BGRS having a chance at the World Cup if they have no chance at the Euros.   I would hope the Russia bid gets nowhere near the vote stage - needs to be immediately thrown out.

    Turkey does deserve it's shot and I think the stadia are pretty much in place there from what I can see too.  The one country bid also works in their favour IMO, however open UEFA say they are to joint bids.

  4. Seen reports of a joint bid from Bulgaria/Romania/Serbia/Greece too.   No surprise some of the British press got ahead of itself.

    You would hope a Russian bid is thrown out immediately, though you never know with UEFA.    Ideally they'd get all this sorted before bids for the 2030 World Cup had to be submitted but that doesn't look ot be the case, and suspect the potential 5 year turnaround may benefit the British bid which will mainly be around existing stadia.

  5. Would be nice to see a one-off Home Nations tournament revival to determine who qualifies automatically.

    As for how games are split it would be nice to see England get two groups and the others one each, but NI is probably going to only have one suitable stadium so it means that isn't quite so straight forward.   The reality is too that Scotland, Wales and Ireland will likely have to centre their involvement around one city, though with two stadia.   However there would be alot to said from a fans and environmental perspective of groups being staged in one city - I really thought that's how Euro 2020 should have been done once covid became a factor rather than games being thousands of miles apart, so I suspect it'll be a case of England contributing at least half the venues, with one or two in each of the remaining nations - and groups not restricted geographically to one area.

    I would guess the second round will see one match in each of the Celtic nations and four in England, then NI dropped for the QF round with one in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.    Wembley seems to be assumed to get the final as the biggest venue.   Whether they repeat the Euro model and have the semis there too or instead use probably Croke Park and the Millennium Stadium as the two biggest non-English venues remains to be seen.

     

    All that is assuming they keep to 24 teams.  Wouldn't really want to see it expand to 32 as that just narrows down potential future hosts further, though I think multi-country hosts will become increasingly the norm.

     

  6. Just the few minutes building up to the Six Nations finale tonight showed what an amazing venue the Stade de France would be for the ceremonies and how well they'd do them, so a shame we won't see it centre stage for the Olympic Ceremonies.   Guess whatever they do for the Rugby World Cup will be the closest we get.

  7. Thanks for collating all this info.   Still some organisations who need to up their games - FINA yet to withdraw the World Shortcourse Champs due to take place in Russia later in the year.    Also FISU were slow to move on excluding Russian and Belarusan athletes from this years Universiade which saw at least three nations as of yesterday (Britain, New Zealand, Canada), pull out of this years event, citing concerns over that and covid protocols too.   They have now today banned the athletes from this year but are yet to withdraw next years summer games from Russia.

    https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1120404/bucs-chendgu-2021-withdrawal-fisu-games

    https://www.insidethegames.biz/index.php/articles/1120472/fisu-russia-belarus-ban-end-of-2022

  8. On 2/21/2022 at 4:38 PM, munichfan said:

    gXn6CfG.png

    By the way, I've had a little fun aligning the dimensions of a speed skating rink (provided by McSmit on Wikimedia) to the stadium floor as closely as possible on Google Earth. It sure looks like a tight squeeze, but it might be possible. The setup would still provide adequate room for ceremony stuff (flag poles, stages for the speeches...) outside of the skating oval, so all you'd have to do to switch from ceremony to sports mode would be to cover/uncover the ice surface with a white surface for projections.

    Interesting - was only pondering to myself a couple of weeks ago whether a skating oval would fit in an athletics stadium.    The problem of course is since the 90s the requirement has been for the oval to be covered, but actually wonder if going open air could actually renew a bit of interest in the long track variant of the sport.    Always makes me laugh how they throw so many on to the tiny short track rink at a time yet generally speaking limit it to two at a time on the massive speed skating ovals.

     

    The Oval though does seem to be the main barrier when it comes to indoor venues for bidding cities.   Most big cities will likely have adequate venues, or at least future plans for venues, for the more conventionally sized ice rinks and hockey rinks, but a space bigger enough for a speed skating oval can be a costly white elevant, and as much as keeping it as an oval ticks the sporting legacy box practically it's probably better for the space to be broken down into smaller venues following the games.

  9. I think that sort of information fatixxx, although related to some reports is due to being unable to meet some Human Rights guarantees, is better behind a link than posted in detail within the thread.   It's not conducive to a flowing discussion.

    Will be interesting to see how games are split.  I do think environmental considerations need to be higher than they have been in recent times and a return to groups being based across two stadia.  Obviously Euro 2020 kind of saw that, just with stadia hundreds of miles apart.   Northern Ireland likely limited to one stadium means it's probably not going to be two groups in England and one in each of the other nations, but Dublin, Cardiff, Glasgow, Manchester and London could all provide two Euros' ready stadia with minimum investment if they really did see the benefit of a six city approach rather than spreading the games for the sake of spreading the games.

  10. Combining them is a non-starter due to the volume of athletes and events involved - it would likely be detrimental to the Paralympic movement and see less exposure for their events just after all the progress made in the last decade.

    Similarly the idea of them taking place before has been raised before and I think the games would suffer somewhat from the Olympics not acting as a warm up event for them.   However in practical terms for the Winter Games there is an argument they may be better off staged in January than March.

    Overall the status quo is the best option for now.

  11. 12 hours ago, Bear said:

    This might be an odd question, but is it just me or did the national stadium seem smaller and more intimate during these sets of ceremonies compared to 2008?

    I was watching a brief clip of the 2008 ceremonies, and the stadium looked so large and open, almost oversized for the occasion

    It certainly seemed more enclosed.  

  12. Just couldn't muster the enthusiasm to watch this in full, partly due to current events and partly due to how underwhelming the Olympic Ceremony was, but largely knowing we'd get no pay off with the torch moment.   Did catch that though - as crap as the first time - even just lighting a slightly bigger torch within the snowflae would improve things.   Liked the fireworks Agitos afterwards though.

  13. P.S.  And one other factor in awarding Brisbane so early is it's going to hit the next media cycle for the games, which although for 2026/28 is also inviting bids for 2030/32.   The European value for 2032 is going to be signifcantly lower now we know they're in Australia than had they took the media rights to the market before a final call was made, potentially with European cities in the mix.      Perhaps it's more honest to award the rights after the cities are known, but not necessarily to the advantage of the IOC. 

  14. Brisbane 2032 will forever be tainted by being a behind closed door deal far earlier than games are usually awards.   No only do such things whiff of corruption given how they were awarded, regardless of whether they are or not, but most importantly it means it doesn't feel like it's the peoples games.   OK, the problem is half the time the people don't want the games on their doorstep but that is no reason to force them upon them.    This feels like a leaving gift for an Aussie IOC member rather than an event for the people of the city.

     

    It's tricky to get excited about the 2030/34 bids in the current format when there seems to be no clear process.    The way you tackle corruption isn't embracing it - though it often seems to be the solution organisations arrive that.    There must be a compromise which keeps the costs down but the process open and transparent.   Awarding two games at once seems an obvious solution, although I guess some cities will always need a dry run to even have a shot at getting them on the second attempt.   The thing is not to string them along though for the sake of an apparent competition, but without narrowing down your choices so signficiantly so early in the process.

  15. On 2/23/2022 at 10:19 PM, SportLightning said:

    My prediction for the 2030 Winter Olympics joint bid for Japan idea should be: Sapporo-Nagano 2030.

    They're 1000km apart.  Even under "Agenda 2020" that should be a none starter, especially when both are capable of hosting the event alone.

     

    Personally I'd love to see the games return to a European heartland of Winter Sport before long - either Norway or Austria.   Probably not going to happen for 2030 at least, but feel like they need to bring the games somewhat back to their roots before they outgrow themselves even further.

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