Men's Basketball FIBA World Cup 2023 (European Second Qualifying Round, Week 5)

Canada had a great home-boost in 2010. Unfortunately, that's not the case in us – look at 2006... We won fewer medals in Torino 2006 than in 2002 (11 vs. 13)

Short-track is unpredictable and ridden by bullshit refs who give out weird penalties and home-advantage calls to favour the home athletes. Women’s hockey, we aren’t beating the US this time around, the rivalry series went horribly and I’d be happy if we can hang on to silver. It was that bad.    Freestyle skiing team, a lot of them have been getting injured our ski cross contenders (Hoffos, who was in the best form of her career, Sherret), Kingsbury, Oldham... Then you have Blouin, and reigning World Champion Liam Brearley in snowboarding, 2024 world champion in skeleton Hallie Clarke, and 2023 world champion in ski jumping Alexandria Loutitt who are all out injured for the season.   I don’t think you have anything to worry about, Italy will have a nice home boost and win 5-6 golds, but yeah that would’ve been pretty bad for us even before our entire team getting injured. I still view it as a disappointment either way. 

Do you have short track, freestyle, snowboardcross, hockey x2? You'll definitely win 5-6 gold medals. If you want, I'll gladly sign now for Italy to win 5-6 gold medals in February... Canada has at least 3 girls competing for medals in the long distances, and we only have 1 Lollobirigida- also quite old.

team is seriously in shambles and I wouldn’t be surprised if we only win a few bronzes or slightly better at Milano-Cortina…   Our men are nonexistent, Dubreuil still is awful coming back from injury and nowhere near his 2021-22 form, he’d be lucky to get a top 16 finish. Jan-Bloemen is old and his 5,000m WC podium was a fluke, at best it’ll be a top 8 finish in each event. For the women, Weidemann won’t beat Groenewoud/Wiklund in the 5km/10km and Blondin with Groenewoud (probably, she beats her all the time) or Mangianello in the mass start, and Maltais can only aim for a minor medal at best. We don’t even have our team pursuit anymore, used to be by far the best and now we’re getting beaten by Netherlands/Japan…

A true champion- van der Poel came to Beijing for 2 gold medal, and he won 2 gold there, without worrying about other people from the Netherlands: Roest, Norway, or any other country. These are the kinds of people Italy lacks.