Monzanator

The Polish boycott decision was made on May 17th and was announced to public on the evening news. Otherwise legendary Poliish sporting journalist Wlodzimierz Szaranowicz was supposed to break it on TV but refused and was subsequently taken off air for the next 6 months. His mother & brother were living in USA already and he was told he won't be send to cover the Olympics several months before just like he was banned from making a trip to Lake Placid in 1980.

ITF runs the Grand Slams and Davis/Fed Cup plus the challengers with maximum 500k prize money purse. WTA and ATP were formed because the players wanted to make money. They reap the benefits already and that's the whole point (obviously only Top 200 can make a solid living out of playing tennis but every pro sport is top-heavy. Whatever the top names/teams want, that's the way to go). ITF is the only governing body for tennis. WTA and ATP handle the commercial side of things which happens to be what interests the fans & players the most It's like in F1, FIA is the governing body but Liberty Group owns the commercial rights. Every single top-tier soccer league in Europe is run by special companies that are independent from the national soccer federations. This happens everywhere in the world since sport is no longer played on amateur (non-profit) rules.

Polish presidential elections scheduled for May 10th have been postponed - literally five minutes after a presidential candidates debate on public TV

But you're an atheist so you don't believe in that anyway

Pentecost is not about Jesus Christ though so you got that wrong It's about Holy Spirit.

It's Pentecost. I've noticed it's only a Christian holiday in Protestant/Lutheran countries like Netherlands or Denmark. In Catholic countries like Poland it's just a normal working day Then again we have a Feast of Corpus Christi on the first Thursday after Pentecost and that's a Christian holiday here

It's video game stuff. Once real racing starts nobody will remember about some online game crap

Technically speaking they probably compete under Palestine flag. It's not much about Israel as place where they live but the Israeli flag that will never be shown at these Games

Then again, I don't see Israeli Arabs competing there either?

Indonesia is the most populous Muslim country in the world. Them taking part in Pan Arab Games makes more sense than you probably realize

Overall, the NC international level has taken a nose-dive in the last 10-15 years. It's basically Norway vs Germany plus some Austria and Japanese one-offs. Finland is barely more competitive than ski jumping. Czech Republic, Italy and France (post Lamy Chappuis) are running on fumes and I don't even know what happened to USA? From Todd Lodwick and Bill DeMong to nothing in less than a decade. Have they closed Steambot Springs down or what? Our alpine skiing hangs on Maryna Gasienica-Daniel. Maciej Bydlinski who got a rare Top 30 in these Kitzbuhel or Wengen combined events was told he's "too old" at age 27 and became an EuroSport expert instead. Snowboard relied on the Ligocki family clan for most of 20 years but they all became too old and retired (Jagna Marczulajtis became MP and she was the only non-Ligocki snowboarder with any success in the last 20 years). Actually we still have Kwiatkowski and A.Krol in parallel events but parallels are losing ground overall to all the freestyle events. Our freestyle skiing was a one-person squad (Karolina Riemen-Zerebecka). After she retired, we have nobody. What else? The Justyna Kowalczyk success era converted in us building one 5km loop which she called Universiade-level. Now we have some promising juniors and maybe Lukas Bauer and Martin Bajcicak inject some life. We should really focus on sprints IMO. The best winter sport we have outside from ski jumping (with our senior team getting older by the minute, we could bomb out after Beijing OG anyway) is biathlon but of course that's separate from Skiing Federation and maybe that's why it hasn't been ruined yet.

Tomasz Pochwala was forced to resign or they straight kicked him out? He was a poor ski jumper and I have no idea how he got the NC head coaching job (other than having the right connections ).

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).

Thankfully I don't watch these iRacing crapwagons. It's been like 15 years since I played Grand Prix Legends online but that ship has sailed for me

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

So the 2021 World Baseball Classic is postponed? Or World Softball Championships? (which I have zero knowledge of)

Yep, and Darlington keeps the September Labour Day race as well. I can't remember when was the last time a single track hosted three points races in the same season. Probably 1971 when both Daytona Twins counted for points and it was the last season before the modern era.

The positive effects don't have a long-lasting effect which actually fits the current short attention span generation. US movie industry is liberal and pro-Democrat enough without the extra MeToo boost. No offense but Alyssa Milano and Winona Ryder are yesterday's news. California & Hollywood are sliding towards isolated island of progressive joy. The entire left-wing has swung towards ideological wars and battles who is progressive & liberal enough. This comes at cost of losing the blue-collar workers who don't care about ideology but workers' rights & salary. That's why the Rust Belt gave Trump the decisive edge over Hilary Clinton in 2016 and it will happen again later this year. That's why Labour can't win a damn thing in UK anymore and is losing votes to Conservatives in the North East. Margaret Thatcher must be rolling in laughter in her grave

Right. Just make sure you don't wait 27 or 38 years to report rape because they will laugh you out in court. Obviously in politics throwing dirt is standard procedure so you can build a capital based on lies from three decades ago To quote a classic, Who needs evidence in politics? MeToo is heading down the same trashcan the WikiLeaks craze did a while back

And there we have it, Michigan Governor (Democrat) says "Not every sexual assault claim is equal" So much for the support of women when it's your political candidate on fire https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/03/gretchen-whitmer-backs-joe-biden-sexual-assault Guess the whole MeToo crap is going down the drain and even left-wingers know it (not to mention The Guardian got duped by the Wikileaks before). Now the White House can cite MeToo to blast Biden and it's not what the liberals want to hear. Good riddance, it was obvious from Day 1 that MeToo will be used as political tool and now the liberals are getting whacked by the same weapon they thought they will run conservatives out of town. Can they spell irony? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/02/joe-biden-tara-reade-allegations-metoo-trump

NASCAR will resume action on May 17th at Darlington. Four Cup races will be held in May on two tracks (including the 600 mile race at Charlotte). https://www.nascar.com/news-media/2020/04/30/nascar-announces-revised-may-schedule-as-racing-returns-beginning-at-darlington-raceway/

Welcome to real life, sexual desire is universal for humans regardless of the political opinions. Though I can imagine the progressive liberals would only like to think conservatives and Trump supporters are the only ones who can behave that way and the Democrats are too perfect to exist. If this happened to a GOP candidate, New York Times & co. would be all over it. It's funny such a left-wing tube like The Guardian has to make a stance and ditch the usual political lines to make liberals look at least awkward. It is what it is, those liberals who wouldn't have voted for Biden anyway won't change their mind now. All those who stay at home actually help Trump. It seems to me Republicans are not as divided as Democrats and people will vote for him because he represents the party even if they dislike Trump himself. Those Democrats who dislike Biden simply won't vote for him and that's the end of it.

Joe Biden has been sucked into his own sexual misconduct scandal - this from "only" 27 years ago so not as bad as Brett Kavanaugh I smell another pack of lies. Where this woman was when Biden was a VP for instance? I'm not surprised the progressive liberals tried to sweep it under the rug though. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/29/joe-biden-sexual-assault-claim-democrats https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/24/joe-biden-sexual-assault-claim-tara-reade-deserves-to-be-heard-katie-halper

The opposition who doesn't want the elections are the anti-communist right who took on a liberal mask over the last decade. Their candidate wants people to boycott the elections. The genuine post-communist left actually stands put by the elections if they happen. Their candidate doesn't call for a boycott.

Because you thought Ngo Diem and Reza Pahlavi were puppets on the US strings and failed to account what the society of these countries want. 40 years on and Vietnam & Iran remain the biggest blunders in US foreign post-WWII politics.