Updated Provisional Men's Mass Start List   # Athlete Method 1  Johan-Olav Botn Individual Gold, 127 points 2  Quentin Fillon Maillet Sprint Gold, 127 points 3  Eric Perrot Individual Silver, 109 points 4  Vetle Sjaastad Christiansen Sprint Silver, 75 points 5  Sturla Holm Laegreid Individual Bronze, Sprint Bronze 6  Tommaso Giacomel World Cup Rank #2 7  Sebastian Samuelsson World Cup Rank #3 8  Johannes Dale-Skjevdal World Cup Rank #6 9  Martin Ponsiluoma World Cup Rank #7 10  Emilien Jacquelin World Cup Rank #8 11  Campbell Wright World Cup Rank #10 12  Philipp Nawrath World Cup Rank #12 13  Lukas Hofer World Cup Rank #14 14  Olli Hiidensalo 55 + 30 = 85 points 15  Tuomas Harjula 26 + 20 = 46 points 16  David Zobel 20 + 22 = 42 points 17  Dmytro Pidruchnyi 23 + 14 = 37 points 18  Vitezslav Hornig 15 + 21 = 36 points 19  Philipp Horn 1 + 31 = 32 points 20  Joscha Burkhalter 5 + 27 = 32 points 21  Otto Invenius 30 + 1 = 31 points 22  Vitalii Mandzyn 13 + 17 = 30 points 23  Jesper Nelin 29 + 0 = 29 points 24  Jakov Fak 12 + 16 = 28 points 25  Patrick Braunhofer 27 + 0 = 27 points 26  Sebastian Stalder 0 + 26 = 26 points 27  Miha Dovzan 21 + 5 = 26 points 28  Nicola Romanin 0 + 25 = 25 points 29  Fabien Claude 24 + 0 = 24 points 30  Niklas Hartweg 0 + 24 = 24 points

Some words about Ghiotto: for me he doesn't have the same personality/character, like Lollobrigida- I also wrote about this yesterday about case of Wiklund. Ghiotto can only win/win medals when he's in 100% shape. Otherwise, he gives up mentally. He can't break through in a difficult moment during the race and try to salvage at least some of his race. Today, the silver/bronze medal was within reach- all he needed was to win the heat against Begrsma (when was the last time he lost to him in a 10 km race?). In my opinion, Lollobrigida had the totally different personality, that Ghiotto did. When she would a similar mental, like Ghiotto, so she have given up yesterday with max. 2/3 laps remaining and finished 4. Another thing is that even without the right mentality, Ghiotto today had his worst 10k race in over 5 years and there's no excuse for that. Unless he was sick or injured, but I don't know anything about that yet.

Jordan Stolz losing in the 1500m

When I was recently in Warsaw in December and walking its streets, I have the impression that for about 5-10 years, 1/3 of your athletes of most of popular sports summer and winter, will be probably came from Ukraine/Belarus etc., but I could be wrong. Unfortunately, the war contributed a lot to this, and it's not over yet    Poland did a great business with Semyrunyi, but it was certainly influenced by the fact that they have an indoor track and good training conditions there, but it could have been as you wrote, that today he would have won a medal for Kazakhstan or Germany. At all, Poland currently only has excellent sprint teams: men's and women's, so someone like Wladimir would be very useful in the long distances, because without him, Poland is practically nonexistent there. And yet, they have one more medal.    The Czech Republic, however, has the greatest luck: no indoor track at home, no major home events like the Olympics, etc, all the attention on ice hockey, but for 20 years they've had Sablikova and now Jilek- probably for next 20 years. Sport isn't always fair. Actually, Slovakia could at least get someone like that now, just to balance things out, instead of always having lucky of one country

"Hey man, did you touch that rock?" "No, I didn't" "Are you sure, because it looked like you did. You're a good guy, but it looked like you did" "I promise you I didn't" "If you say so" "FUCK OFF!"   -Bad dude   "*mumble mumble* easy to make shots when you touch the stone *mumble mumble*" walks away "Who touched the stone?" Surprised Pikachu face "Who touched the stone?" Even more surprised Pikachu face "Fuck off"   -Not great, but understandable.    If you think someone cheated or made a mistake, talk to the official or confront them nicely. It's not like these guys don't know each other. It's not like Team Canada or Team Sweden hasn't been here before.   This can be turned around and put on the Swedes lashing out over being terrible their first three games. It doesn't appear anyone needs to cheat to beat them right now. 

Uf.  Finally managed to watch the last few skaters.  That was painful (Malinin + all the others...).  Happy for Shaidorov  .  He had a great skate.  Now off to nurse some wounds...   (Can we get a reverse upset and have Campbell Wright pull off a biathlon medal?)  

START LIST of the W Singles Run 3

QUARTERFINALS of the M 1500m   W 1000m Heats Start List HERE   W 3000m Team Relay Semifinals Start List HERE

Based on how people have been skating it kinda feels like nobody deserves to win the women’s TP xD   (so I guess it means it will be an entertaining scrap for gold)

Potential for  Schwinghammer-  Laffont in the 1/8th finals