interesting scenario now. in the top 16 , we have: 3x Danish players who will qualify 3x Korean players who will qualify 2x Chinese 2x Thai 1x Malaysia 1x England 1x HK 1x Poland (!) and that left 2x Indonesia, namely Alven/Luluk + Limpele/Hian if no more Indonesian players enters the top 16, then those two pairs will go. the two pairs that are close to the 16 are Sigit/Trikus (#19) & Candra/Halim (#20). they only have 3 more tournaments left (KO,JO,Asian Champs). Candra/Halim just got knocked off KO. they better do very very well to gain the extra points otherwise we may not see the defending Olympic gold medalists in Athens. on the next level down, we have Chan/Chew hanging on the #34 spot. if they managed to creep up to #32, they will qualify. however, they also lost in KO so they too will have to fight hard. it also appears that our friend Thomas Laybourn & partner Peter Steffensen won't quality this time around, they are the 4th pair from Denmark sitting at #23
the race is tighter than in singles. only 19 pairs are allowed to go. none of the countries have more than 3 pairs in the top 16 so it may just be pairs ranked #1->#19 who get to go. actually, if Sigit/Trikus or Candra/Halim did make it into top 19 but not top 16, they will be skipped and the next rank down will get to go, how cruel!
Kwun, how will the host country (Greece) or the continental representations rules effect this? I think only the top 16 will qualify plus the top usa, south africa and new zeal / australia.
The good news for the indonesian pairs at 19, 20 is that they are there with only 9 events counting (beofre korea) so whatever they get at korea or before the end of the month will be added to their total, they need to make up 100 pts on the 16th placed pair.....
Yeah .. sorry.. but we only have one pair that qualified so far.. max 2 pairs. Hard to beat the other contenders
Well, ultimately, it's about who gets the gold. And to get the gold, you must first qualify for it. Unfortunately, due to factors like injury, some players of calibre who is able to challenge for the gold, may not be able to qualify. Like Chan/Chew (if on form that is).
only two players (and i think it means players not pairs) from Greece are allowed. more specifically, the top two ranking Greek players. so here is the interesting part. the top Greek players are a WD pair at #54. however, there is also an MD pair at #55. those two will be closely contested. but what i said still hold, Sigit/Trikus or Candra/Halim will only qualify if they make it into the top 16...
that's the cruel nature of professional competition, there is no consolation prize for the injured parties.
in the on-going Korean Open, the two top Indonesian pairs shows that they deserve to be at their spots. both are still alive at the semi-final stage while the other two pairs are already out, one at 1st round, the other at 3rd.
In the latest ibf dummy qual list it seems the greece nomination will be md, meaning even the 16th wr pair don't qualify. Candra/Halim, Sigit/Tri should have considered playing more events, especially easier events rather than gambling on suceeding at the big events, where they have invariably crashed out early on. When you see the polish pair at 15 , with repsect to the poles its a pity the indos aren't higher up.
Their partnership started less than a year ago. Before that, it was Candra/Sigit. I don't know why the Indons switched them, but if none of them qualify, it would be because of that.
The Polish pair look set to qual in 15th place, lets look how they got those points... Their best ten events... They won the Swedish, Bitburger, Austrian and scottish opens.They picked up points at the TC qual, Chinese Tapei, Singapore, Denamrk, AE, DUtch. This allowed them to drop their less successful events..German, Korea, Hong Kong, Indonesian, Malaysian, Worlds etc. In their ten counting events the only top 20 pair I can see they have beaten is Lamp/Boe, in the events they won there were no top 20 pairs, yet all credit to the poles, they have put in the hard work on the circut and chosen their events wisely. This is the way to go to have a good shot at qualifying, winning lower european circuit events gives 180 points, an average of only just over 180 is needed to qualify. Playing only the big events like the indos have done, esepcially without a seeding is very risky. Whilst Candra/Halim have beaten a few top pairs, in almost every event they have played a top pair first/second round, because they are unseeded. Archer employed similar tactics to the poles in his race back up the WR in mixed, winning some 6 or 7 smaller events in a row.
Yes, and this was after crashing too early in several big events before that. He changed his strategy to come back in the world ranking and the facts gave him right. I think Europeans have been using the world ranking system more intelligently than the Asians, and this might give them quite a lot of players in the olympics who would have never qualified otherwise...
There are a lot of these small events in Europe. And travelling from one place in Europe to another is mostly hassle-free and cheap. Not exactly true in the case of Asia. The exception for Asian players are the Japanese. The Japanese are immensely hardworking and you see them everywhere. That's why some of them are quite high in the rankings even though they get nowhere in the big tournaments.
Totally agree. Maybe Asians tend to go for the 'big' gamble to get lots of points at one go. HK used similar tactics during the last Olympic qualification period. I remember the players going for tournament in exotic places like S America to pick up points.
I know this is in mixed but look at Archer/Kelloggs counting events to get 1713 pts (WR16) Won Portugal, Slovenia,Iceland , Scotland, Irish , Austrian =6 x 180 pts Thailand semis =210pts, AE last 16 =168pts,HK last 32=135pts, singapore last 32 =120pts The bulk of the points come from the six euro events, events discounted include Indo, C-Tapei,, DUtch, German, Denmark, Malaysia, China. Most of their losses in big events were against top 4 pairs, sometimes after playing through qual. Its fine just playing the top events if you are seeded but if , as with the indo mens doubles you are not getting seeded you need to put the work in on the American, Australian or european events to boost your average. Countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia should be using the rankings system to their best advantage to ensure they get maximum qualifiers in the doubles events in olympic /wc years.
If you look the last dummy list in MD, only 3 european's contries are in the list. Then i think the most important is not to choose the best tournament for the WR, but it's to win matchs!!! In single, that's a little bit different.
