Road to Tokyo 2020 - Irish Olympic News

With his performances at Commonwealths and the European championships this year - winning both events on pommels and beating reigning World and Olympic champ Max Whitlock both times - Rhys McClenaghan has got to be considered a good prospect for Tokyo 2020.

Qualifying for gymnastics is complicated, and Rhys won't get there via team. Ireland would have to send a full team to the 2018 worlds in order to try and qualify for the 2019 worlds, and they aren't doing that. He likely won't get there by competing the all-around either (he has yet to compete AA at a major event as a senior), so his best shots are:

1. Winning the Event World Cup circuit on pommels. These competitions will begin in November 2018 and will end in March 2020. Rhys would have to attend enough of these competitions and win/finish well to be considered the overall winner. He has already won two World Cup titles in the past year, which won't count, but bodes well for him.
2. Finishing 1st, 2nd, or 3rd on pommels at the 2019 World Championships.

He could also try qualifying as an AA individual by placing in the top 12 men who aren't part of a qualifying team at the 2019 Worlds or by finishing top 2 all around at a continental championships. This will likely not happen. He could also hope Ireland qualifies as one of the three countries who gets an AA berth via the 4 AA World Cup competitions, but this is also highly unlikely.

Oldira wrote: »

I see that teams have been reduced from 5 to 4 as well. Does this mean that if Rhys finished 4th at next years worlds but the three ahead of him were from countries that had already qualified teams he would qualify? Or can NOCs qualify a team AND seperate individuals for the appartus? Trting to read the guidelines and its not too clear.

Yes, he could finish 4th and still qualify if the top three finishers are from nations that qualify as a team. This is different from previous years where he would have to have qualified to event finals and finished 1st, 2nd, or 3rd full stop. That's why they've reduced the number of AA gymnasts from non qualified teams who get to go to Tokyo, to accommodate the event specialists from non qualified teams. Rhys finished 14th at Worlds last year. He had 6 guys in front of him who came from teams that will not qualify for the Olympics. He competed a lower level of difficulty back then, but he will still have to go all out since pommels is an event that several smaller countries specialize in. And he can't fall or have a major mistake, obviously. Also, say two Slovenians beat him in the pommels qualification (Slovenia will not make it as a team), finishing 4th and 5th and Kristian Berki of Hungary is back and finishes in the top 3 (Hungary will also not qualify a team). Berki and the two Slovenians would qualify and Rhys would be out of luck.

The 2019 qualifications process is the quickest way to Tokyo for an event specialist and you can bet countries will be going all out for those spots in qualifying.

Oldira wrote: »

Just had a look at the 2016 Rio tread and at this date there was already 32 pages. Only 4 for Tokyo. Have a lot of people ost interest in this Olympic cycle? Lads like Dan the Man, Dodge etc seem to have disappeared.

Yeah, the numbers on the site in general have fallen and this thread has suffered from the loss of some excellent posters.

Hopefully things will pick up as we move closer to Tokyo.

Chivito550 wrote: »

No loss of interest in the Olympics. More just a reflection of the death of message boards.

This general sports forum is terrible too. It's just a Ben Dunne gym advert section really. Nobody would ever think to look here.

An Olympic sports forum would be nice. Like there was nowhere obvious on this site where one would discus the World Rowing Championships for example.

An Olympic sports forum wouldnt really work bar the time of the Olympics. The individual sports will simply be discussed in the respective sports forum.
General sports forum isnt fantastic and dont see how it'll change.

Imhof Tank wrote: »

Plenty of Olympic sports don't have dedicated forums eg rowing, modern pentathlon etc

Yeah the smaller ones in general dont and an Olympic forum isnt really needed when discussion will be greater/should be better in the individual sports forums.

The Lost Sheep wrote: »

Yeah the smaller ones in general dont and an Olympic forum isnt really needed when discussion will be greater/should be better in the individual sports forums.

So are you saying keep the smaller sports discussion in here in general sports?

Imhof Tank wrote: »

So are you saying keep the smaller sports discussion in here in general sports?

Yeah where else would the discussion go?

Imhof Tank wrote: »

Well, the suggestion is an Olympic Sports or Olympics forum, instead of this backwater

Id be in favour anyway

What would honestly change though bar people like dodge etc posting.
Like the regular posters in athletics forums etc are not going to come here for discussion bar maybe for 2 weeks during the actual olympic games ever 4 years

Imhof Tank wrote: »

There is a perception of the general sports forum as a place for discussion Ben Dunnes Gyms etc

The qualification cycle is only really getting started now and will be going on for the next 18 months. You'll never know unless it's tried but I could see a lot more interest in a new forum for niche or lesser known Olympic sports if you dont have to go searching through the general sports threads. It wouldnt necessarily have to include athletics etc.

I dont see it. The specific sports forums are more than enough to discuss sports and the people in the know on them will be posting there like in previous olympics how many of the regulars in swimming/athletics always posted here?

Hoping to see the show jumpers getting the result they need tonight to secure Olympic qualification. Too long since we had a team at the big show. In a decent position to do it as things stand.

KevIRL wrote: »

Finish 7th to miss out by one spot

Just fell short after a monumental dogfight for the 6th spot. Disappointing but still 2 chances left I believe and it’s a very competitive environment with next to nothing between the top nations.

Follow up on Emma:

Yesterday in an interview after her fantastic bars routine, she tried to temper expectations for the final day of qualifying by saying beam was her bad event, and you couldn't be good at them all.

Today Emma finished 4th on beam - her best result yet - qualifying her to another event final, and putting her at 7th place AA over all. So that's 3 event finals, plus AA finals. Beyond that, she showed up to the biggest competition of her life (so far) and hit all of her routines, several of which she's significantly upgraded the difficulty on from just a few months ago. And beyond that, Gymnastics Ireland just caught the attention of everyone in the gymnastics community, because no one has ever seen Ireland finish top 10 AA and make 3 event finals in a competition like this.

She won't be eligible to compete in the world championships later this year (too young), but she'll be eligible for the 2019 Worlds, which is where Ireland can qualify an individual to Tokyo 2020.

Edit: I just saw that Emma had the lowest difficulty score of all the finalists on beam, but the highest execution score of the entire competition, which got her that 4th place rank. And that's a good example of her gymnastics - she doesn't do the most difficulty, but she's very clean and has beautiful lines.

Emma had another great day of competition in the AA final, hitting all of her routines again and improving her qualifying position by one notch, finishing in 6th place. You can see her routines here:



Vault: 30:30
Bars: 1:02:40
Beam: 1:47:40
Floor: 2:30:16

Bronze medal in the boxing today for Derbhla Rooney

The gymnastics world championships started on Thursday and Rhys McClenaghan began his quest to become the first Irish gymnast to make an event final at worlds this morning. He'll have to wait another year - he had two falls on his pommel horse routine. Everyone's been falling - it's been a disaster of an event. Rhys has had a great year overall, so this shouldn't take away from his other accomplishments.

Next year though, he'll want to have a better competition as he can qualify to the Olympics if he does well enough.

Emma Slevin did well at her first major senior competition, the European Championships, yesterday. She finished 32nd (out of 76) in the all around competition, just missing finals by a hair. That included some trouble on balance beam, where she received a 5.0 difficulty score (for comparison, the highest difficulty score on beam at the competition was a 5.7). I've never seen a female Irish gymnast go for a 5 in difficulty! It's good to see her taking risks, even if they don't work out at first. And had she hit her beam routine, she would have definitely made AA finals.

She also upgraded bars to a 4.8 difficulty score. This is Ireland's weakest event - it's not unusual to see difficulty scores in the 2s from gymnasts trained in the Republic. So if she can break 5 there, that will be a big deal (and maybe her coaches can help other Irish coaches start to figure that event out; Emma trains at Renmore in Galway and the Renmore girls massively outperform every other Irish club on bars).

All this to say, she's Ireland's best shot at earning a spot in Tokyo for women's gymnastics. Her chance to qualify will be at Worlds later this year. That's a lot to ask of a 16 year old in her first season as a senior, but she has the ability to do it.

It was reported last week that AIBA have been kicked out by the IOC and that the IOC itself will organise the mens' and womens' boxing qualifying tournaments for Tokyo, all of which will take place in 2020 (meaning boxers will only know within a few months of the Games whether they will be going or not).

The Ireland Women's Hockey Team can secure Tokyo qualification reach the final qualification round tomorrow (Saturday) if they defeat Czech Repubic in Banbridge (1.15pm)

Ireland beat the Czechs 8-1 earlier in this tournament

http://www.hookhockey.com/index.php/2019/06/green-army-one-win-from-a-guaranteed-olympic-qualifier-place/#.XQQ2TIhKjIV

https://www.bbc.com/sport/av/hockey/48640265

Strazdas wrote: »

I believe it's a play off spot for qualification in October that is on offer. That first article says they could end up playing the match at home if things go their way this year.

Edit : and they've secured the Olympic play off spot later this year, beating the Czechs 4-0

Yeah, I think you are correct. Hopefully they can secure the Olympic spot in October.

And the men's hockey team also secure an Olympic play off spot in the autumn with their 4-2 win over South Korea today :

https://www.rte.ie/sport/hockey/2019/0622/1056917-ireland-secure-olympic-qualifier-spot-in-france/

Pierre de Coubertin wrote: »

Delighted to add Natalya Coyle Modern Pentathlon to the list! Qualified today at the European Championships in Bath.

She's a top class pentathlete too, well done to her