Australia kicks off Olympic qualifying in 2012

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(I'll have more coverage of Red Wings at the World Junior Hockey Championships later today or this week.)

This post will kick off hopefully a full seven months of coverage of the 2012 Olympic qualification events. For some sports qualification started all the way back in 2010, but there are a ton of sports that have yet to start the process of sending athletes to the 2012 London Olympic Games.

The Oceanian Archery Championships took place on January 1-2, and Australia dominated the competition, ensuring that Australia will have at least one representative in both the individual men's and women's competitions. In archery qualifying, the respective athletes don't win bids to the Games, individual National Olympic Committees do, and most countries determine who will represent them at their national qualifying tournaments.

Aussie Ryan Tyack won the men's individual event at the competition held in New Zealand with a score of 674. Tyack is enjoying continued success after setting the Australian national record of 685 last month. Elisa Barnard, also an Australian, won the women's individual event.

In addition, Fiji and Samoa qualified for the men's and women's individual events at the London games.