Monzanator

Polish ES raving about Koukalova's book   Guess that was all about burn every single bridge in the Czech bialthlon?

Well, it's all about finding excuses why Shiffrin keeps winning these days

Andrzej Nedza-Kubiniec with the fastest shooting time. But his skiing sucks as usual. And he missed 3 times too

Lukasz Szczurek 42nd with 10/10. He should drop back in the 4-shoot race though.

Who is this guy in 3rd place? His name sounds Finnish but he represents Sweden?

Why is Ligety even doing slalom?

Talk about a fast burner. She has been a complete wash-out the last few years and I get the feeling Katie Ledecky isn't getting half the hype Franklin got back in the day. USA will still get a gazillion of world class swimmers but Franklin has been reduced to a glorified footnote in swimming history IMO.

24 minutes ago, Gigs said:

If anything that shows you how little knowledge so called "experts" have. Not saying Austrians don't have an advantage but if anything they have historically always been way better on technical slopes and the only reason why skiers like puchner or ager suddenly have great results is because they are (and always have been for that matter) good at gliding and bad on technical slopes. If it was all about the skis and not about the skiers why would Austrians like veith not benefit from this. Why would the Austrian men (with the exception of max franz) struggle at the gröden downhill year after year.

That said I found Stuhec suddenly turning great after maze retired weird too but I think that had more to do with her getting more resources by the Slovenian federation all around and not just getting maze's old ski's which I btw doubt are still used

 

Edit: also people should calm down a bit about stuhec "dominating" the speed disciplines. She just won two races by small margins on a slope that suits her like no other one. she isn't and I' pretty sure won't dominate this downhill and super-g season 

Our expert specifically said she knows that the Stoeckli master team that used to work with Maze is now working with Stuhec hence her sudden upgrade in results in 2016. Without it, she'd be a regular Top 15 performer but never a runaway DH standings winner and world champion.

Val Gardena was a new track for women, nobody had any past experience here hence the technical aspects have been more important and the richest team could work their way around the obstacle. It's not about Veith; Puchner, Ager and Siebenhofer getting their best results of the season says more about the reality esp. that Veith actually criticized the track and due to her rather small frame she was never a gliding expert to begin with. Plus she made one big error in the DH.

10 minutes ago, ChandlerMne said:

Wow,interesting fact.  Something like swimming suits until 2009? 

She was quite average skiier until 2016 and suddenly she is unbeatable. Not that i am against her,nothing like that, but her level of form last 2 years is unexplicable to some extent. Kranjec winning is to be expected, he is among top 5 skiers in GS last few seasons. Put aside Mikaela and Marcel,cant recall any  other skier that is capable of winning back to back races weekend after weekend.

But at least season is becoming more and more interesting.

 

We have a new female expert for the women races the past two years (former European Cup winner) and she says all these litte things that she said nobody has talked about before. It's funny since everyone follows the technical aspect in ski jumping or cross country but not in alpine skiing. She said the gliding courses like here in Val Gardena are particulary prone to a technical advantage of the richest teams and it's also the reason most of the B-team Austrians suddenly posted better than expected results (Siebenhofer, Ager, Puchner).

Olsson completely crumbled under pressure.

Kranjec wins, Meillard & Faivre on the podium!

Hirscher with many errors! Good thing to know he can blow it too...

1 hour ago, ChandlerMne said:

I am always amazed that beside Mikaela in slalom only Stuhec can win 99% of speed events in which she competes. Now started her dominance in downhill and super G. 

Polish TV said her dominance only started when she began using Tina Maze's custom made skis which are Bugatti-like in this business. Of course all this when Ledecka won OG using Shiffrin's skis too.

1 hour ago, heywoodu said:

@Monzanator @rybak 

 

Are/were the Vengaboys big in Poland? I'm watching the darts and on a Dutch forum we're wondering why on earth Polish player Ratajski has a Vengaboys song as walk-on song  

Yeah, Vengaboys used to be quite big over here. They're still doing some concerts around New Year's Eve/carnival or in the summer disco events

Ilka Stuhec won the Val Gardena DH with Nicol Delago a career-high 2nd. Delago kinda hugged & cuddled her entire team after that result

We had the same after Nowakowska flunked the last leg of the Olympic relay and was swamped with online hate. It's funny because she was the team leader that only returned after her pregnancy for us to have a shot at Top 8 and the government funding for the next 4-year cycle. She later admitted she should have never read the social media comments that accused her of going on a trip on taxpayers money (and that was a mild comment). I hope Poliakova recovers from this nonsense!

1 hour ago, heywoodu said:

I know, I just find it strange and hard to understand people only or mainly look at flags instead of the actual athletes and personalities who do the main work, but alright, everyone has their own thing.

I only care about personalities in sports I'm a die-hard fan of and that's like 3 or 4 at best. Luge ain't one of them and never will be. If ES didn't broadcast the sport, I'd never look up for online streams to watch it.

32 minutes ago, heywoodu said:

But even then, why would one prefer a hypothetical Norwegian asshole winning over a hypothetical friendly German, just because one has the right flag and another the wrong one? That makes zero sense. 

Because different people cheer for different agenda. Some choose single athletes from various nations, some cheer for the entire nations. You can even cheer for Team Sky if you're a cycling fan!   There's no one fixed way of cheering if you're looking outside of your nation (and even so, some people are fed up with their own compatriots too).

5 minutes ago, Kirkpatrick said:

Anyone knows what is the latest with Lindsey Vonn? I tried her web site and twitter, but nothing useful there.

 

She coming back soon?

From yesterday

https://www.cbc.ca/sports/olympics/skiing/lindsey-vonn-postpones-retirement-lake-louise-1.4948507

1 hour ago, heywoodu said:

Because why would someone only look at flags? I'm no fan of Geisenberger or Hüfner, but I do like Eitberger and I couldn't care less about what her nationality is. Not liking someone just because of a flag is so 1940. Same with Emily Sweeney or Madeleine Egle.

Right. I adore the flag diversity in table tennis when you have Chinese represent like 25 other countries. One-nation dominance kills my interest in ANY sport. I've had enough when Sylke Otto was spanking everyone already Good thing I'm not old enough to remember the East German dominance of the 70s/80s. 40 years of Germany spanking everyone in luge. No, but thanks!

For once Bayern doesn't draw a scrub in R16

I have no idea how can anyone get excited after another German dominance in luge? Lake Placid was supposed to be a bogey track for them anyway?

At least grandma Hufner is struggling a bit!

3 hours ago, heywoodu said:

A1 Grand Prix  

Nur Ali and Basil Shabaan? No, thanks.

One thing A1 GP did great was going back to old school tracks like Kyalami or Brands Hatch. The quality of drivers was suspect besides France, Germany and GB. Neel Jani proved to be a horrible disappointment away from A1GP and I thought he had a shot at F1 back then.

Formula E track selection is soulless. But they are chasing big cities downtown to create easy access for the fans. Saudi Arabia was just a bank robbery, there's nothing there except the sheiks' oil money to jump on.

3 hours ago, Olympian1010 said:

Personally, I was a huge NASCAR, ALMS, and F1 fan when I was younger. I found all racing to be uncompetitive, and only available to rich. I did think that the most competitive racing series was WEC, especially now. I also thought the original season of Formula E was the best racing series ever (Because It Was Fair!). The WEC and IMSA have has down the majority of the best drivers in the world.

WEC, IMSA and endurance racing in general are gentlemen racing level where going 100% at 100% time is no longer required. Whenever I see Tracy fuckin' Krohn I simpy quit. The Audi dominance has killed my interest in endurance racing, then it was Porsche and now Toyota. Sorry but if you complain about F1 how could you find Audi's walk in the park even remotely exciting. That horse is dead to me.

I've followed NASCAR more or less since 1993 so you won't convince me on that  

Bringing up WEC in the era where even Toyota's mechanics could win LeMans as drivers is not the best example.

1 hour ago, heywoodu said:

I don't think one series has 'the best' drivers. Some of the world's best are in F1, some are in IndyCar or NASCAR, others are in WEC and so on.

NASCAR? 3/4 of the drivers there can't turn right to save their lives. WEC is a pensioners' series or the ones who can't buy themselves a F1 seat.

F1 spits out the best of talent in ruthless fashion. The last potential top tier talent who didn't go there was probably Tom Kristensen alas he was already 30 yo when he contested F3000. Similar problem befell Kenny Brack.

24 minutes ago, heywoodu said:

F1 is overrated as 'best class' anyway. The cars might be the best, only a handful of drivers is actually among the best.

So which series has the best drivers? All FE champions have been in F1 before anyway

1 minute ago, heywoodu said:

Not entirely true because there is a difference in development between the teams, but overall, yes, it is indeed much closer than F1. Which is what Massa said. 

Well, you won't hear Red Bull complain they're down 40 hp on Mercedes. Overall though, FE has been taken over by the big manufacturers like I feared whenever the series gained some momentum. The small teams have been phased out and now it's an economy race just like in F1. So they're going the same path as F1 but with gimmick Mario Kart rules and sprint races (plus F1 drop outs and never-beens as drivers).