Overview

Not quite. You can only earn two quotas if you have two or three skaters in the free program. Canada only has one so they'll get the chance to qualify another through the final qualifier.

No, but it would give Canada the chance to earn a second quota at the final qualifying competition. To get two or three quotas from Worlds you need two or three skaters / pairs to qualify for the free skate.

I thought Canada qualifies two athletes if she finishes in top 10?

Madeline Schizas had a great day at figure skating worlds and sits in sixth after the short program. She's officially earned one women's quota on figure skating but could give Canada the opportunity to send a skater to the final qualification event if she finishes in the top 10

Thank you for that. So with one race left this year that makes 6 races So it depends if/how many races they plan to have before the deadline in December. If one, that’s seven, still just one dropped If two, that’s eight and a second result dropped And I can’t find any outline of what’s planned for next year. As long as the Canadian’s can keep within one spot of the Yanks ( or preferably beat) in those races they should be alright. As right now even dropping another result wouldn’t hurt us

Well that’s annoying. I wish the qualification process is through full seasons, not one season and one World Cup

It's not as different as you think. Their B-team has guys any given day can beat the guys on their A-team... no different than we'll be looking at in some sports. And we're still sending 4 each for any event we have that many medal contenders in. Which is a lot in sports limited to 25-32 spots

There are two races left? There only one left this season, so that means they're having one before the deadline next season? Beyond that, do they get to drop more scores? If so, how many? It would be great if the ISMF actually explained all this stuff, or any of it.

Yes, but the reason the medals and quotas are distributed the way they are now is because it's very Eurocentric. The same is true in the SOG. Sports and events that Europeans are good at get more quotas and medals. There's been an effort in the SOG to even that out in the last few cycles, though. WOG are another beast, as it's Eurocentric to begin with (along with Canada, USA, China, SK, Japan and Australia to an extent).

Yeah, my point was that Norway, for example, can still send enough skiers to sweep the podium in each event, but Canada, for example, has to leave medal potentials in some freestyle events at home because of the cap. In other words, Norway's B team would still not medal because their A team already took all the medals, while some of Canada's A team is being left home and off the podium because of the cap. But, again, it's not that serious.

Canada seem to be going in the right direction with this now and the rebranding to Nordic Canada, as well as winning multiple medals at the latest world juniors.

Norway’s is no different in cross country and biathlon. Their B-teams have men and women that would be top ten in the world. They often have guys that pop in from the IBU Cup for one weekend and podium

But if you want medals, cross country skiers are the most efficient investment. Takes 25 world class hockey players to win one medal… with 25 world class nordic skiers, Norway wins 20+ medals across XC, NC, and biathlon Not that we could expect to be Norway, but if we got serious and stuck with it, 5-10 every Olympics wouldn’t be out of the question

Not sure if it was discussed here, but Canada is now *narrowly* in a qualifying position in the ski mounteineering mixed relay with two qualifying races left to go.

In defense of short track, it's so volatile that skaters should have more than one chance at a medal. In any event (pun intended), what I'm saying is a country that is strong in x-country can send enough skiers to win lots of medals, while countries strong in freestyle have a limit. And not limited as in only three in a race, but Canada has to leave strong competitors at home who can medal in event X because there is a limit to the overall amount. It's not really that serious, anway.

It's not so much the amount of events, it's really stretching out the same event so that the same people win multiple medals.

That's more a reflection of how bloated freestyle skiing is as far as a discipline is concerned. It should really be three distinct disciplines (freestyle skiing for moguls and aerials, park and pipe for half-pipe, big air and slopestyle and skicross). I'm of the opinion that there should be a reorganization here, with freestyle skiing and snowboarding being eliminated as disciplines and alpine snowboarding, "classical freestyle", park & pipe and cross being the new disciplines (which is how the FIS really seems to think about and organize them anyway)

And I would also say that the biggest culprit for giving a bunch of medals for the "same thing" are biathlon and short track, not cross country skiing. The six cross country events are actually fairly distinct from each other in terms of both competition format and in terms of distance.

Hey now, mogul skiers are about to get two sets of medals for *literally* the same event but with two different competition format (and slightly different judging, admitedly). So lets not complain too much about that atm :P Once the ski cross team event is added to the Olympics the only freestyle athletes who won't have a chance for two sets of medals are half-pipe specialists, but even there, there is some limited overlap between half-pipe, big air and slopestyle (and hopefully a rails event at some point in the not so distant future).

FWIW there is more freestyle skiing events than cross-country skiing on the program

exactly haha

It's kind of annoying that certain countries can win 20 medals in x-country with 5 different skiers, but countries with depth in freestyle don't get that opportunity. I'd rather watch multiple different freestyle events rather than another x-country race, but this time it's 1 km longer.

It was probably done to protect those two countries (Canada ,and the US?). If Canada had to decline, surely it would have came from the Aerials, and that could potentially ruin the viability of the mixed team aerials event.

Though so. It’s a bit of an odd rule given there are only two countries anywhere close to 30