heywoodu

Like I said, she's definitely not a medal favourite, but "she hasn't been top-5 in any race this year" is rather underselling her qualities/performances Since January, every single race she has done from the Deakin University Elite Women's Road Race on (where she finished a more than excellent 9th) has been a big one-day World Tour race, none of those smaller .1 races in between. A very respectable 25th in a tough Strade Bianche, after being in the breakaway for a long time, 11th in the Trofeo Alfredo Binda, 9th in De Panne, 13th in Gent-Wevelgem and probably the best of all, 10th in Roubaix after very much being part of the main part of the race at the end. Her weakest race in the past two months was a 23rd in the Tour of Flanders, of all places. That being one's worst result says a lot (in a good sense). In her entire pre-Olympic career, Anna Kiesenhofer had basically accomplished nothing remotely near to what Pienaar has shown in the past three months alone. Again: that does not make her the (or a) favourite, obviously, but in road racing weird things can happen and she is definitely a contender to keep an eye on, instead of one of the default 'exotic nation riders' who we often see in the first lead group of the world championships.

As far as I could tell, there is no specific thread for this but with the first gold medals, and I didn't think it'd be big enough to open one, so here we go It's not a first medal, since Mauritius has won one bronze medal in boxing once, but they surprisingly have a shot in women's cycling this year. It's not a huge chance, obviously, but in Tokyo we saw how someone who wasn't even considered on any list of dark horses ended up with the gold due to the Dutch women totally fucking up their tactics, so weird things can always happen Kimberley Le Court Pienaar has been very impressive this year, often fighting at the front of the very biggest one-day races. Again, she is far from being the favourite, but I'd say her chances are significantly bigger than Anna Kiesenhofer's chances were ahead of Tokyo, and we know how well that ended. Definitely worth a mention, the chance exists!

So I'm guessing you're even less of a fan of Omanyala? At least Lyles backed up the most important of his talks, Omanyala just said he was going to win every 100m and then lost everything

As a sport I'd put (men's) weightlifting high on my list, haven't seen it since Tokyo despite always enjoying it. Just have mixed feelings about it because of the tiny field size. Same kind of thing with wrestling, I find it fun to watch but never really get to it, so I'm looking forward to that as well. Most of the running events in athletics, the 100m freestyle in swimming, most of the rowing, obviously the mountainbike...I'm surely forgetting some things but off the top of my head I am definitely looking forward to those

What's the problem with Lyles? I get Richardson, but Lyles doesn't seem to be all over the top (for a sprinter, at least)? Of course anyone has their favourites and dislikes (personally for example I'm beyond happy that the aggressive idiot Mekhissi-Benabbad isn't competing anymore, although it'd have been even better to see him compete and fail miserably at home...probably the only athleted I'd wish that one, since most of my other dislikes I just, well, kind of dislike, but don't really wish ill or anything )

Where can one find the full timetable for the apparatus finals? All I can find on Wikipedia and official websites is a generic thing saying "apparatus finals, part 1" or something, but I want the actual timetable (like, at the very least which apparatus finals are on which day?)

Now I'd like to see William Poromaa try and fail miserably*, after his comments about biathletes basically being failed cross-country skiers. *unlike Nilsson, who like you said gave it a real attempt and definitely did not 'fail'. Most World Cup athletes never get a podium at all in their career, so she's done a fine job. Nice to see her in the races for the real tough ones from now on

A regular Diamond League.

Also according to Dutch media, press conference later today. That is awesome!

But more importantly, which riders?

I'm already surprised she is planning to even run anything at all

Super surprising anyway to see doping in a sport where world records set in rocket suits are falling left and right all the time...

Best throw since Ivan Tikhon in 2008!

And to think Martin Haven (and John Morgan), the gods of bobsleigh commentary, are native English speakers...throw them a bag of money and let's go.

Definitely not sarcastic, but honestly I also don't think it's a matter of being dumb My guess is that the main athletics commentator, who is sick, was supposed to be replaced by someone who is kind of the default backup commentator...but he also wasn't available, so the guy doing it today is someone who as far as I know literally only does commentary for football usually. With that in mind, he actually did a pretty good job overall, just that Perkovic/Elkasevic mistake was a bit unfortunate

What was embarrassing about the race? The times were definitely fine. Women's 200m and men's high jump, those were probably the lowest-level events of the day I'd say

"In Croatia, the women are good with the discus, for example this Sandra Elkasevic. No Sandra Perkovic this time in Xiamen." I hope the main Dutch athletics commentator gets well soon, because the replacement has a bit to learn, let's say

Made the screenshot without looking, because I didn't get to the discus yet, but I hope my blind screenshot caught the full result for you

I am definitely watching (although not entirely live, 20 minutes behind because I forgot ), but it'd be good to have the results to check and so on. Omega isn't updating neither. https://www.omegatiming.com/2024/Xiamen_2024-live-results Edit: whoah, there's life in the DL website!

I see nothing besides regular sports programming focusing on football..

If someone could give the Diamond League server a reboot so the site with results loads, that'd be great https://xiamen.diamondleague.com/program-results/program-2024/

About time for a new Hajo Seppelt special

Well that is some nonsense.

I do genuinely hope she gets her life in order though, assuming the bone cancer diagnosis is real. She's still young enough to have a normal life outside of sports, so hopefully she gets better medically speaking, puts this behind her and starts life as a regular working person

Seems like a relatively small strike on some military base, which at least to the outside world Iran seems to be more or less denying in order to not 'have' to hit back. In the words of Iran at the UN after they attacked last weekend: the matter should now be deemed concluded, one would imagine (and hope, nobody needs this to keep going and going).