[POLL] Which are your 3 Top Favorite Winter Olympic Sports? (2018 version)

[OlympicIRL 5,683]

Biathlon is my favourite by a big margin, followed by Cross Country Skiing and Curling.

Snowboard cross is probably my favourite event of all though.

[VolleyRuller96 264]

Wow, what a vote difference between short track speed skating and speed skating 

[heywoodu 16,014]

2 minutes ago, VolleyRuller96 said:

Wow, what a vote difference between short track speed skating and speed skating 

 

Even bigger difference between biathlon and cross-country skiing  

[Werloc 3,191]

On 1/4/2018 at 13:48, heywoodu said:

 

Even bigger difference between biathlon and cross-country skiing  

One of the problems with cross-country skiing is that they're not showing any effort to draw in more nations in the game. That's where IBU has them beat by a huge margin. For example, no quota limitations with endless starters from Scandinavian countries and friends, the score system that only rewards the 30 best, no league similar to the IBU cup that deprives most athletes from the necessary experience needed to make a transition to the World Cup where they usually finish in the bottom 10 if they actually ever make it there. And it's not as exciting anymore to see 5-6 Norwegians in the top 10 of every race, with some Swedes and Finns in between. I think what cross-country skiing still has going for them are the sprint races and the 50k.

[dcro 10,210]

5 minutes ago, Werloc said:

One of the problems with cross-country skiing is that they're not showing any effort to draw in more nations in the game. That's where IBU has them beat by a huge margin. For example, no quota limitations with endless starters from Scandinavian countries and friends, the score system that only rewards the 30 best, no league similar to the IBU cup that deprives most athletes from the necessary experience needed to make a transition to the World Cup where they usually finish in the bottom 10 if they actually ever make it there. And it's not as exciting anymore to see 5-6 Norwegians in the top 10 of every race, with some Swedes and Finns in between. I think what cross-country skiing still has going for them are the sprint races and the 50k.

 

That is so true. Relays are really the best proof.

Biathlon - 20+ relays at every WC (20 at Olympics)

Cross-country - Doesn't even exist at WC level anymore! (lucky to find relays 15 at the Olympics, with only a handful that have any dreams for the podiums...)

 

It's not only the case in cross-country though. It's in all FIS disciplines.

[Werloc 3,191]

14 minutes ago, dcro said:

 

 

It's not only the case in cross-country though. It's in all FIS disciplines.

True that. We in Lithuania are really trying hard to be involved, even though we don't have the winters anymore. During December, there were only a couple of days when the temperature fell below 0 and January ain't looking promising either, since we've only had one day of snow this month accompanied by some rain on other days. Even though we're failing at cross-country skiing, trying to rebuild our figure skating, pretending that we are alpine skiing and forming teams in curling, it's nice to see that we're still involved even if it's very poorly funded. Short Track Speed Skating was on the rise, but after multiple injuries, our skater failed to qualify to OG, but there are a good amount of youngsters with pretty decent results that are training and might be ready to challenge in four years time. What I am impressed the most about is our biathlon. How we went from having 1 woman starter like 7 years ago, to 1+1 woman/man starter 6 years ago, to 3+3 and relays nowadays. It shows how well we embraced the system. Unfortunately, the future does not seem bright as our youngsters are still very young and inexperienced and there might not be anything left of the women's team after this Olympic season, because most of the team is already near at the age of retirement + years of disappointing results and unluckily the middle of the pyramid fell apart as from the five girls that we've had (whom would be capable to qualify to WC by now) there's only Gabrielė Leščinskaitė left, one went to cc skiing and 3 left the sport. It would be miserably sad to abandon so many years of work as our other two girls are not yet strong enough for WC qualifications. (Long rant )

Edited January 6, 2018 by Werloc

[intoronto 6,463]

I disagree. The IBU has made it increasingly difficult for smaller nations to qualify for the Olympics. In many of these smaller countries funding usually hinges on the Olympics. No Olympics = no funding, which effectively will kill the sport in smaller nations. For ex. less countries scored qualifying points for 2018 vs 2014.

 

On the other hand, the FIS changed Olympic qualification rules after 2014, to allow roller skiing events to be counted towards Olympic qualification, which will increase the number of participating nations.

[dcro 10,210]

4 minutes ago, Werloc said:

True that. We in Lithuania are really trying hard to be involved, even though we don't have the winters anymore. During December, there were only a couple of days when the temperature fell below 0 and January ain't looking promising either, since we've only had one day of snow this month accompanied by some rain on other days. Even though we're failing at cross-country skiing, trying to rebuild our figure skating, pretending that we are alpine skiing and forming teams in curling, it's nice to see that we're still involved even if it's very poorly funded. Short Track Speed Skating was on the rise, but after multiple injuries, our skater failed to qualify to OG, but there are a good amount of youngsters with pretty decent results that are training and might be ready to challenge in four years time. What I am impressed the most about is our biathlon. How we went from having 1 woman starter like 7 years ago, to 1+1 woman/man starter 6 years ago, to 3+3 and relays nowadays. It shows how well we embraced the system. Unfortunately, the future does not seem bright as our youngsters are still very young and inexperienced and there might not be anything left of the women's team after this Olympic season, because most of the team is already near at the age of retirement + years of disappointing results and unluckily the pyramid fell apart as from the five girls that we've had (whom would be capable to qualify to WC) there's only Gabrielė Leščinskaitė left, one went to cc skiing and 3 left the sport. It would be miserably sad to abandon so many years of work as our other two girls are not yet strong enough for WC qualifications. (Long rant )

 

Tell me about it, it's supposed to be 16 degrees here tomorrow. I so wanna have the North American temperatures right now.

 

Last January/February we had around 30 days when temperature didn't rise above 0 degrees. Good times.

[Werloc 3,191]

1 minute ago, intoronto said:

I disagree. The IBU has made it increasingly difficult for smaller nations to qualify for the Olympics. In many of these smaller countries funding usually hinges on the Olympics. No Olympics = no funding, which effectively will kill the sport in smaller nations. For ex. less countries scored qualifying points for 2018 vs 2014.

 

On the other hand, the FIS changed Olympic qualification rules after 2014, to allow roller skiing events to be counted towards Olympic qualification, which will increase the number of participating nations.

Yes, this year the Olympic qualification for biathlon is not the best, but the World cup level biathlon system is pretty amazing as new countries are putting in efforts to start building teams.

Heck, the IBU cup consistently brings in 100+ athletes in men's/women's races from countries like Mongolia, Brazil, Argentina, Hungary, Moldova, Denmark building a team, Turkey, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Australia, Chile, Macedonia, Greece, Spain and let's not forget the junior cup with 100+ athletes as well where these countries are starting to send in their youngsters and they get valuable racing experiences in the snow. IBU cup had 30 single mix and 26 mixed relays and there's not a single winter sport that could come close to that at the moment.

[Werloc 3,191]

9 minutes ago, dcro said:

 

Tell me about it, it's supposed to be 16 degrees here tomorrow. I so wanna have the North American temperatures right now.

 

Last January/February we had around 30 days when temperature didn't rise above 0 degrees. Good times.

I remember days where you could skip school, because it was too cold. Nowadays, I don't remember coming close to -20