Juniors were there recently and the track was awful   Although that's not necessarily bad. Tracks don't all need to be fast, a slow track (like the horribly slow one in Poland) simply favors a different style of athletes. Training a lot there doesn't really give much extra advantage though, not like in sliding sports where of course as host country you make sure your athletes know every single meter a year before the Olympics.    And to get back on topic: speed skater Elisa Dul broke her tibia and fibula in a training fall yesterday and will obviously be out of the OQT and so the Olympics. 

The PSL race in Davos was (yet another) insult to a beautiful discipline. The red course (which was actually yellow) had several holes and an exposed ice sheet, which made the athletes slide way too long, causing DNFs or massive time losses. The only positive note is that Caffont won despite racing on the more dangerous course in the final

Aerials WC Secret Garden     Mixed Team Gold-  China 1, (315.35 - Xu Mengtao, Li Tianma, Qi Guangpu) Silver-  China 2 (308.45 - Chen Meiting, Wang Xindi, Sun Jiaxu) Bronze-  United States 2 (272.81 - Kaila Kuhn, Ashton Salwan, Connor Curran)   Full Results

Parallel Slalom WC Davos     Women Gold-  Elisa Caffont Silver-  Zuzana Maderova Bronze-  Miki Tsubaki Surprising 4th for  Annamarri Dancha   Men Gold-  Arvid Auner Silver-  Gabriel Messner Bronze-  Aaron March   Full Results

Ski Cross WC Innichen   Women Gold-  Marielle Berger Sabbatel Silver-  Fanny Smith Bronze-  Sandra Naeslund Naeslund only winning bronze    Could very well be a preview of the women's big final at the Olympics.    Men Gold-  Reece Howden Silver-  Alex Fiva Bronze-  Tobias Bauer   With his win today, Howden is now the all-time leader in men's WC wins with 20!    Solid 4th for Jared Schmidt as well   Full Results

Not just Erin Jackson, but several others like for instance Joep Wennemars. Think of it what you may, it’s all down to the way the rules are written up. The rationale is probably to prevent that a rider that falls is automatically relegated to the B group.

*sliders    I still refuse to use riders for anything other than cycling or equestrian. 

The strategy is paying off. The coaching staff calculated that it is a lot easier to finish in the top 4 at the North America Cup than the top 16 at the World Cup.   We are about 80 points ahead of  who along with  and both  riders would have to leap frog our second man.   We may or may not hold on, but we are playing smart given our current weakness in the event.

The Canadian men having 2 quotas, while not competing at the World Cups, is something interesting 

Unfortunately, bacouse to the terrible performance of our second girl in this year, we will 99% likely not be able to field two duets in the mixed doubles and in my opinion this is very bad news for us.