Monzanator

Well, Top 5 for Sakkari would really be crazy given she's won a grand total of 1 WTA title so far. She's not that good but WTA is a mess right now anyway. Beatriz Haddad Maia bounced #1 seed Karolina Pliskova just minutes ago. Haddad Maia is back after doping suspension and profited from LL spot in MD. And she's into R4 of Indian Wells! Defending 2019 champion Bianca Andreescu is out after losing to Anett Kontaveit. The fall from grace continues and Andreescu's 2019 season appears to be a complete flash in the pan.

I still remember Osrblie hosting World Cup in the 1990s. The Duszniki-Zdroj venue is undergoing an ownwership change which for some reason resulted in the IBU Cup calendar drop.

Commonwealth Games have cut down mandatory events from sixteen to two: athletics & swimming. Another sign how this event is basically expendable in modern era. They can always go with "urban" events for kids and e-sports for teenagers? https://www.bbc.com/sport/commonwealth-games/58870657

Your are stuck in recency bias tunnel vision. You really believe the IOC heat rules will stay there forever? Or NBC will ban SOG from being held in November forever too? Whoa! I don't have anything to add here.

Tyson Fury knocked out Deontay Wilder to finish the trilogy

Oh yeah, because desert heat is mystic knowledge for anyone? Of course I know about the heat but this excuse to prevent Qatar from staging SOG will eventually be overcome by money. IOC is ALL about the money so they will eventually give in. The question is when? 2052? 2060? Who knows? World will probably look very different in 30 years from now.

If Beijing can host the Winter Games then Doha can host the Summer Games too. It's only a matter of time. Let's don't forget Moscow 1980 remains the hottest SOG ever

Hamilton will take a 10-place grid penalty in Turkey. Red Bull appears to be way off in practice so far. Meanwhile Michael Andretti seems to be serious with the Sauber/Alfa Romeo buyout which would bring Colton Herta to F1. https://racer.com/2021/10/08/andretti-set-for-further-sauber-f1-takeover-talks-in-austin/

Yeah, the honeymoon is over. Raducanu has a target on her back and no longer can play the underdog card. Btw, Sasnovich only has three Top 50 wins all season (vs injured Serena Williams at Wimbledon, vs Podoroska at Cleveland and now vs Raducanu in Indian Wells).

Russell Wilson suffered a finger injury in a loss vs Rams and could miss over a month. This probably means Seahawks (2-3) season is basically over.

Astros spanked White Sox at home twice alrready while Chris Sale gave up five runs in the 1st inning vs Rays but Red Sox came back to win 14-6 ti even the series.

Well, her last season was pretty bad already. Guess she figured out she's got no chance to win the gold so why bother.

In winter sports there is no growing of the sport. On the contrary even, fewer nations are relevant there year after year. Finland has completely fallen off the cliff, first in ski jumping then in cross country. Germany in alpine skiing and not looking all that great in biathlon either. Canada is gone in alpine skiing too. Czech Republic is gone from ski jumping and we're like one Olympic cycle away from Poland being gone too. The ski jumping struggles to even field 50 jumpers at World Cup level these days if the event is held outside of Europe in Russia for instance. Even if the reason is the growth of freestyle skiing it doesn't explain how former powerhouses are completely irrevelant in certain events. It's been 20 years since the Lahti WC doping fiasco derailed Finnish cross country. That's like two full generations and their answer is a 42 year old RL Roponen? Putting on mixed relays solves nothing. Cross country goes down with inbreeding and will become more irrelevant year by year. Only Norway, Sweden and Russia seem to care about this sport these days and everyone seems to be fine with it. FIS can sell these new ideas but nobody is buying that.

Rules can alwas be changed on the fly. Who will stop Norway from boosting the team count anyway especially since Russia and Sweden would also be for adding a second or third team if neccessary. Cross country has about three relevant countries left running the show so of course they will get their wish. Anything to further extend Norway's dominance of the sport will be fine.

Like which smaller nations? If they allow Norway B, Russia B and Sweden B to compete (duh) then these smaller nations would end up where they are now - without adding another event Norway can dominate The biggest competition is in individual sprints. Relays are basically a wash with the same 5-6 big nations always finishing in Top 5-6 places all the time.

Woo! More cheap gold medals for Norway? How exciting

Well, Bach probably won't be in charge of IOC by the time some of these "interested parties" fall off the list. He risks nothing by sending out a list like that. IOC has been long ridiculed as corrupt organization so every bit of positive PR helps. And Australia is one country that will heap praise for IOC after being awarded the SOG in Brisbane. I can understand where you come from.

Thomas Bach is a butt of jokes for a long while already - on this board as well. I wouldn't pay much attention to all this scripted PR talk whatsoever.

It's a fine PR talk but everyone knows Olympics are there to make money in the end. The "new" norm will become "old" one way or another. And Qatar & China will still be there to host all the events they can because they don't care about losing money - unlike the Western countries. It doesn't take much to have another 2008 economical collapse before people start bailing out over the lost money and view hosting process as expendable. The biggest economy in Europe hasn't hosted Olympic Games in 49 years & counting and they want nothing to do with it

#9 in the line-up Chris Taylor hits a walk-off HR as the Dodgers beat Cardinals 3-1 and win the NL wild card game. ALDS: Rays vs Red Sox, Astros vs White Sox NLDS: Giants vs Dodgers, Brewers vs Braves

Please, the same happened in Beijing. I know fully well big TV sports in USA get the favorable time slot in US TV. Same happened with figure skating in Pyeongchang and will probably happen in Beijing in few months time. At the end of the day this is all about entertainment and hardly about sport anymore so talking about this bidding process is quite frankly a waste of time. Besides, with Brisbane IOC actually stopped even pretending a bidding process matters and awarded it right away. This is life. These bidding contests will soon be totally over. Obviously Gulf sheiks will still have money and will keep throwing that at whatever event they can host so maybe even IOC caves in when suddenly there will be no bidders outside of USA, China and Australia and there will actually be some uproar why the same three countries host the OG over and over again. I still remember when Sydney OG was held in September. Obviously Brisbane had to cave in to NBC demands too since that will be held in July/August. No chance NBC approves any Games being held in September with the NFL season starting there.

It doesn't matter Super G is exciting. The schedule has favored the technical skiers for years. Super G is back to pariah status? They need to get rid of this to put more of these parallel city events IMO. I feel like I might not watch alpine skiing in 5-10 years time if the schedule will be 50% parallel slaloms and three downhills per season. Not to mention parallel events where one course is clearly better than the other and you can guess the winner before the start already.

Well, if NBC is more important than IOC then all this discussion we have here is obviously pointless A Muslim country will never host SOG either IMO. Sorry, I forgot NBC is the one making the final choice when it comes to hosting the Olympics. I rest my case in this thread.

New England Patriots released CB Stephon Gilmore (2019 Defensive Player of the Year) which is quite shocking indeed.

Red Sox beat Yankees 6-2 and advance to ALDS. Gerrit Cole gave up two early HR and was pulled in the top of the third inning already. Yankees never recovered from there.