Athletes Retirements Thread

[rybak 3,217]

14 minut temu, Olympian1010 napisał:

What the hell happened? This reaks of internal problems. Poland winter sports are fricken dismal when it comes to management right now.

As always moneys and lack of sponsors are main reasons of their retirements. Few good results didn't bring interest of fans and sponsors, national federation doesn't give a fuck to any other sport, they are focusing only for men's team in ski jumping. Even women's part of ski jumping team and juniors of men's team have much less moneys to prepartions, not mentioning about snowboarding and alpine skiing which are bassically dead here. Some athletes gives up because they doesn't want waste their own money for equipment and for foreign camps which should be funded by national federation.

[rybak 3,217]

5 minut temu, heywoodu napisał:

 

Wow, I knew Nordic combined has very tiny depth, but a team with two athletes I've never in my life heard of (and yes, I watch all the World Cups and always check results of Continental Cups) finishing 6th at the world championships says quite something for me  

 

Not good of course when 75% of the main team leaves.

 

Edit: wait, Marusarz was not in that team, Pawel Slowiok was and at least he sounds sort of familiar  

Marusarz was "fifth" the best our athlete in this sport, he was always among reserves, it's probably reason why you never heard about him. Słowiok retired already last year as well...

[Olympian1010 7,976]

26 minutes ago, rybak said:

As always moneys and lack of sponsors are main reasons of their retirements. Few good results didn't bring interest of fans and sponsors, national federation doesn't give a fuck to any other sport, they are focusing only for men's team in ski jumping. Even women's part of ski jumping team and juniors of men's team have much less moneys to prepartions, not mentioning about snowboarding and alpine skiing which are bassically dead here. Some athletes gives up because they doesn't want waste their own money for equipment and for foreign camps which should be funded by national federation.

From what @Vojthas has explained to me, from athletes accounts, and from reading sites like ITG; Poland is easily the best example of how not to run your sports programs. I know Poland isn’t rich. I know there’s still a lot of governance problems. However, I also know that Poland has some of the most dedicated fans, good young athletes, and more money than many other nations. Poland punches way below their weight in my opinion. It’s so sad to see a team I had high hopes for just give up like this. Polish Nordic combined was going places. They had Universaide gold medalists, that 6th place at the World Champs, competitive skiers, etc. This sucks 

[Gianlu33 4,569]

C'mon guys, we are really calling the polish nord combinatist "competitive?

[Monzanator 4,502]

40 minutes ago, Olympian1010 said:

From what @Vojthas has explained to me, from athletes accounts, and from reading sites like ITG; Poland is easily the best example of how not to run your sports programs. I know Poland isn’t rich. I know there’s still a lot of governance problems. However, I also know that Poland has some of the most dedicated fans, good young athletes, and more money than many other nations. Poland punches way below their weight in my opinion. It’s so sad to see a team I had high hopes for just give up like this. Polish Nordic combined was going places. They had Universaide gold medalists, that 6th place at the World Champs, competitive skiers, etc. This sucks 

 

Here's the news. Nobody in Polish Skiing Federation cares about nordic combined, snowboard and alpine skiing. Nobody! The most important people are related to ski jumping and the thing should be called Polish Ski Jumping Federation. Our nordic combined rose from the dead in the last few years (there was nothing for 20 years since Stanislaw Ustupski retired in mid 90s) but Adam Cieslar and Pawel Slowiok were second-rate ski jumpers who converted to nordic combined and somehow managed to get some reasonable results. Szczepan Kupczak is the only guy who doesn't suck at cross country and has the best results. Local clubs are way too poor to carry such a niche sport like NC and like I said, the national federation only cares about ski jumping. Case closed.

 

Btw, our bobsleigh national team also collapsed after last season but that's a case for a different story

[Olympian1010 7,976]

16 minutes ago, Gianlu33 said:

C'mon guys, we are really calling the polish nord combinatist "competitive?

Yes, and I will absolutely stand by that. As a team they beat at least 4 other teams in each team event. They also never finished more than 2:54 behind the world champions. They also had guys place 18th and 22nd in the Normal Hill event. They also scored 4 medals at the Universiade in 2017. I know none of you probably care about that last one, but those are medals at a major international event. Are they the greatest? No. Are they competitive? Yes, those results would suggest that. 

 

I knew people have high standards, but athletes deserve recognition when they perform well. I mean Poland had an actual Nordic Combined program that was producing some decent results for a while. There should have been a good amount of funding going into the that program. There was clearly talent there. I’m positive they had a smaller budget that most of the teams in that competition as well. 

[Olympian1010 7,976]

5 minutes ago, Monzanator said:

 

Here's the news. Nobody in Polish Skiing Federation cares about nordic combined, snowboard and alpine skiing. Nobody! The most important people are related to ski jumping and the thing should be called Polish Ski Jumping Federation. Our nordic combined rose from the dead in the last few years (there was nothing for 20 years since Stanislaw Ustupski retired in mid 90s) but Adam Cieslar and Pawel Slowiok were second-rate ski jumpers who converted to nordic combined and somehow managed to get some reasonable results. Szczepan Kupczak is the only guy who doesn't suck at cross country and has the best results. Local clubs are way too poor to carry such a niche sport like NC and like I said, the national federation only cares about ski jumping. Case closed.

 

Btw, our bobsleigh national team also collapsed after last season but that's a case for a different story

I’m so sad about the Nordic Combined situation. It’s exactly like you and I have said. These guys should have had zero success. However, they were winning medals at the Universiade (and I don’t think Poland generally gets a ton of those in the winter) and doing amazingly well at the Wolrd Championships. It’s such a shame. Poland kills so many of its promising talents. Of course it’s not an isolated problem to Poland, but you hate to see that anywhere.

[Gianlu33 4,569]

3 minutes ago, Olympian1010 said:

Yes, and I will absolutely stand by that. As a team they beat at least 4 other teams in each team event. They also never finished more than 2:54 behind the world champions. They also had guys place 18th and 22nd in the Normal Hill event. They also scored 4 medals at the Universiade in 2017. I know none of you probably care about that last one, but those are medals at a major international event. Are they the greatest? No. Are they competitive? Yes, those results would suggest that. 

 

I knew people have high standards, but athletes deserve recognition when they perform well. I mean Poland had an actual Nordic Combined program that was producing some decent results for a while. There should have been a good amount of funding going into the that program. There was clearly talent there. I’m positive they had a smaller budget that most of the teams in that competition as well. 

It's Nordic combined, the team event level is quite depressing. In this World Cup season FIS should removed some team events becouse they aren't enough teams.

[Monzanator 4,502]

1 hour ago, heywoodu said:

 

Wow, I knew Nordic combined has very tiny depth, but a team with two athletes I've never in my life heard of (and yes, I watch all the World Cups and always check results of Continental Cups) finishing 6th at the world championships says quite something for me  

 

Not good of course when 75% of the main team leaves.

 

Edit: wait, Marusarz was not in that team, Pawel Slowiok was and at least he sounds sort of familiar  

 

Slowiok was a ski jumper until late teens and actually came alive in youth categories later than our bygone prodigy Klemens Muranka He switched to nordic combined in 2009 IIRC. He quit in 2019 citing bad results (well, places in World Cup Top 30 was still very impressive but he lacked motivation and even the WCh relay scholarship didn't change his mind).

[Vojthas 949]

Polish Ski Federation has more a less the air proportions: 78% of nitrogen (which is men's ski jumping), 21% of oxygen (which is women's cross-country - earlier based on Kowalczyk as an athlete, now she is building the team of her heiresses, which should have been done by the federation ten years ago) and "the rest" (mostly women's ski jumping as they now seem to be looked forward to complete the mixed teams with the men + the granddaughter of federation's president started her career).

 

What's more - nordic combined has its "sports director" together with ski jumping - as you might suppose, Małysz concentrates mostly on ski jumping.

 

Now Kupczak as the only remaining senior athlete will train with the Czech team (Mateja, one of Małysz's teammates from late 90s-early 00s, will join their coaching staff). The juniors will be trained by... federation's president son (also Małysz's teammate from SLC2002 - did I mention that current federation president was the ski jumping NT coach then?)