Winter Youth Olympic Games 2024

[Olympian1010 7,532]

Livestreaming hub: https://olympics.com/en/gangwon-2024/live-stream

[hckošice 13,296]

[Grassmarket 2,791]

22 hours ago, Olympian1010 said:

 sending four(!!) biathletes is quite something 

They had a lot of CC skiers in the World Juniors last year too, so obviously have either ambitions or an eccentric billionaire sponsor.

[Olympian1010 7,532]

6 minutes ago, Grassmarket said:

They had a lot of CC skiers in the World Juniors last year too, so obviously have either ambitions or an eccentric billionaire sponsor.

They have athletes in a lot of sports here. I remember that they wanted to get more involved in winter sports during the last cycle, so they must have decided to put some funding behind that initiative 

[Grassmarket 2,791]

7 minutes ago, Olympian1010 said:

They have athletes in a lot of sports here. I remember that they wanted to get more involved in winter sports during the last cycle, so they must have decided to put some funding behind that initiative 

And not just picking up North American expats, as lots of other sunny nations do.

[heywoodu 13,581]

1 hour ago, Grassmarket said:

They had a lot of CC skiers in the World Juniors last year too, so obviously have either ambitions or an eccentric billionaire sponsor.

Matter of time for them to create their own rollerski circuit and start farming the sweet points in a few years  

 

I hope we'll see more of them, but somehow I fear they will fade away before most of them are 20...

Edited January 17 by heywoodu

[heywoodu 13,581]

On 1/16/2024 at 8:44 PM, Olympian1010 said:

 sending four(!!) biathletes is quite something 

As long as they at least are aware of proper biathlon safety rules. It may sound silly, but they are handling lethal weapons and more than once have junior/youth athletes from this kind of exotic nations (including those competing internationally in things like the IBU Junior Cup) never been taught the strict but basic safety things in terms of handling the rifle and everything around it...I remember a situation where a youth athlete simply put a still loaded rifle back in the hotel, where luckily the next day the athlete who picked that rifle was more experienced..

[Grassmarket 2,791]

2 minutes ago, heywoodu said:

Matter of time for them to create their own rollerski circuit and start farming the sweet points in a few years  

 

I hope we'll see more of them, but somehow I fear they will fade away before most of them are 20...

Might be they’ve just concluded that youth CC & biathlon training is a good foundation for tons of different endurance sports, which is obviously true.

[heywoodu 13,581]

1 minute ago, Grassmarket said:

Might be they’ve just concluded that youth CC & biathlon training is a good foundation for tons of different endurance sports, which is obviously true.

Oh absolutely. And in biathlon they can get very easy money and equipment support from the IBU, so that might help to fund their CC efforts if they'd decide to go that way (lots of exotic athletes compete in one or two IBU Cup weekends just to fund their CC season for example).

[Olympian1010 7,532]

Women's skeleton looks very competitive after the first two training runs yesterday. Some big time gaps between first and last though.