Monzanator

Looks like Skottheim pulled a calf muscle?

@rybakApparently their fathers are distant cousins or something. Btw, ex-alpine skier Christina Geiger who also comes from Oberstdorf is not related to either of them.

Well, Japan keeps hanging on in the men's NC so I assume they will give it a try on the women's side too. They have zero cross country presence so that will be reliant on ski jumping but Japan is one country which seems to avoid demolishing its ski jumping hills. Sapporo and Hakuba is as good base as one can hope for. Norway will find its way to dominate - like with everything that includes cross country. Germany is another NC powerhouse that will attack the low-hanging fruit. Wuerth's skiing might not be good enough but Jenny Nowak barely turned 18yo and looks like a future dominator. This sport should evolve like the women's ski jumping did in the last decade with the usual suspects showing the way: Norway, Germany, Austria, Japan and fringe contenders from Russia and Slovenia.

I know the entire Canada would like to pretend Ben Johnson never existed but he's with you to stay forever

The Comcast & Nike sponsorships serve as the West's state doping. Just ask Kara Goucher what she really thinks about NOP Oh, wait... she already said what she thinks about it

Ben Johnson is not one athlete. He's a poster boy to prove the Western countries are equally as dirty as Russia and East Germany was

Fialkova finished dead last so I presume Hasilla matched that feat? And I thought Poland is having a bad biathlon year

I always find it hilarious that a country which gave us Ben Johnson is calling out people on applying doping standards

Yeah, I presume Germany, Austria & Norway will eventually dominate another sport in women's nordic combined though. I hold out for Japan to maybe join them and form a big four. Everyone else will be reduced to also-runs. Geraghty-Moats should make the most of her time in the sun because I presume it will be short-lived. Another ski jumping convert Svenja Wuerth had the second-slowest skiing time yesterday. Obviously it's looking bad for her but Germany will eventually get it right.

Prochazkova is actually younger than I thought

I just realized Bajcicak retired later than Batory

Ok, so Geraghty-Moats could barely make Top 30 in ski jumping and suddenly she's dominating nordic combined. Just how BAD are the Norwegian girls competing here if a ski jumper from USA can out-ski them? Obviously it's a low-hanging fruit for women yet. USA has Geraghty-Moats and three others that finished in last three places after ski jumping. Depth equals zero. It's gonna take a few seasons where Geraghty-Moats will keep the pace before full-blown speciallists take over. USA used to be a powerhouse in women's ski jumping like 10 years ago and they can barely score a point in 2020. The days of Lindsey Van, Jessica Jerome and Sarah Hendrickson are gone, the traditional ski jumping powerhouses like Austria, Norway and Germany have taken over (plus Japan and Slovenia). I'm gonna predict Japan eventually dominates the women's nordic combined within the next 5-6 years to follow on some of the men's success of the 90s.

[hide] Medal Matches December 20th, 2020 Third Place Match Date & Time (GMT +1) Nation 1 T1 T2 Nation 2 December 20th 2020, h. 15:30 Croatia 6 Denmark Final Date & Time (GMT +1) Nation 1 T1 T2 Nation 2 December 20th 2020, h. 18:00 France 4 Norway [/hide]

Has Slovakia won any World Cup points in cross country since Ivan Batory retired?

Word is Schmidhofer suffered a torn ACL in left knee. Obviously season is over.

It looks like Red Bull has made the only logical choice with Perez and Albon gets demoted to reserve. Announcement is expected tomorrow. Red Bull-owned Speedweek reports this and Autosport has run the headline too. Should be good news for @mrv86 https://sports.yahoo.com/perez-poised-replace-albon-red-224637746.html https://www.speedweek.com/formel1/news/169528/Red-Bull-Racing-2021-mit-Verstappen-und-Sergio-Perez.html

That's not gonna happen in the days of pro sports where sports IS money., You could sell that crap in the 80s when Stenmark or Wenzel got banned for Olympic Games but not now. Even IAAF dropped the 'Amateur' part of their name for instance before a complete name change. Comcast basically tells IOC what to do, how do you expect the sport to be more independent? Multi-billionaire companies run the sports every single day. And those private companies will NEVER become more transparent, they will throw the freedom of speech card at you and you're done. Since you're a journalist you should understand how such huge TV corporations work! The Russian ban is maybe justified but it doesn't justify other nations from being let off the hook. And cheaters like Justin Gatlin being allowed to compete. If Maria Lasitskiene will be ineligible to compete in Tokyo what the FUCK will be Justin Gatlin doing there in first place?

Comcast also owns NBC Universal who is the OG TV broadcaster in USA and dictates the IOC how the Olympic schedule should look like (US-fan favorite sports in US prime-time and screw the rest of the world ). You really think IOC will mess up with their top financial backer like that? This is not how business works. It's gonna take years before the Team Sky doping scheme gets fully exposed, they stumbled upon Bradley Wiggins medical bags and UK Cycling had to clean house or else shit would really hit the fan but it eventually will - only years removed just like in Lance Armstrong's case.

Neah, how long did we have to wait until Lance Armstrong finally got exposed? Handing out life-time bans to athletes who are retired make no sense. Waiting makes no sense at all. Not when Justin Gatlin is allowed to compete as a repeated doping offender like nothing happened. Comcast which owns Sky has a yearly revenue of 109 billion dollars. That's more than Kenya's & Ethiopia's GDP. So much for "state doping" being an exclusive Russian-thing.

The Nike Oregon Project was as good as being state doping. Nike's budget must be more than 70% of world's countries? And of course everyone is ignoring that becuase of course it's only China and Russia who are doing bad. Yet it's Marion Jones and Lance Armstrong - two American citizens - who are involved in the biggest doping scandals of XXI century.

That's never going to happen. China is too powerful to allow that to happen. Besides, if you like Tibet so much then Catalonia or the Basque Country should be competing at the Olympic Games too? Why do you give Spain a pass over them?

Ukraine-born Anastasiya Shoshyna (tennis) has been provisionally suspended for stanozolol. Obviously lenghty ban incoming for this drug

Gender parity comes back to bite the feminists in France Turns out 11 women & 5 men isn't parity after all https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55330297 And of course they're very proud of it. That indicates this whole gender parity crap is pure nonsense. Feminists only want power for themselves. They don't care about the law they created either. I suppose even if they hired 16 women and 0 men they would still bitch about it.

[hide] Semifinals December 18th, 2020 4 Nations, the 2 Winners from each Semifinal will qualify for the Final. The 2 losers from each Semifinal will play the Third Place Match. Semifinals Date & Time (GMT +1) Nation 1 T1 T2 Nation 2 December 18th 2020, h. 18:00 France 2 Croatia December 18th 2020, h. 20:30 Norway 6 Denmark [/hide]

Well, Denmark will probably get run over by Norway in the semi-finals anyway