JockCartier

Such is figure skating. Word was she'd be skating for another country after last years Grand Prix and the Mimar split Speaking of the Grand Prix, rough showings for the Canadians at the final Gilles/Poirier fell in the RD and was sitting in 6th (last), had the 2nd best FD and moved up one spot... Lajoie/Lagha finished in 4th. Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps withdrew due to injury... word is they've expected to do some major retooling of programs heading into the winter

Rahneva announced her retirement too Calgary shutting down is really showing with how empty the sliding cupboard is

The full relays were today The men had a disappointing outing, getting lapped on the 3rd leg and finishing dead last. Especially troubling as they front loaded their lineup The women are are just wrapping up, and look like it will be 14th for them, which is a decent showing. Good legs from Moser and Paradis in particular

World Cup kicked off with a couple mixed relays Single mixed wasn't pretty. Lunder and Pletz paired up and finished 20th. Both really struggled shooting the first time around, and were battling for dead last... but did improve the second half and picked up 4 spots Surprisingly good showing for the full mixed relay considering I think this was the first ever WC race for three of them, managed not to get lapped and finished 16th. During Moser's leg they got up to about 12th briefly. Runnals interestingly did not compete. Ski times continue to be an issue pretty much across the board, but such is our fate it seems

Geesh, just when he seemed like he was starting to get some results

So, all Bottchers talk about being passionate and excited about coaching, and being committed for years to come, lasted almost five months of an offseason

Given how tight they've gotten with awarding spots since imposing that 10,500 cap in particular I'm amazed how many non-core team sports they added for LA28. It got to be a bit of a nightmare in several sports for Paris, so unless they increase the cap, the core sports are going to have to cut back even further. Would be nice if the IOC set one cap for the core sports, and gave the hosts latitude with the non-core sports. If they wanted to go nuts, let 'em, it's their money. If they let LA have Flag Football, I wouldn't rule out anything if Brisbane pushes hard enough.

Would be interesting to figure out what went wrong. Calgary closing is certainly hurting us (and will get only worse going forward), but it didn't seem like the men were doing very good developing drivers even before. Chris Spring kept being marched out there long past his best before date

On the ISU feed they mentioned the last time she won a 3,000 it was in that same arena in 2019. Nice to see Fish seems to be finding his form again on the mens side after a few years of struggles. But geesh, that Stolz is gonna be a monster in 2026.

What do we need to be, top 20 in Nations Cup? And last year the women were 17th, and the men 22nd... good grief. Top 8 is a tough nut to crack. Top 12 should be the goal... top 15 is just basic competency, and we're not even there anymore. Once you're into the 20's these are countries without even full teams and/or not even competing on the World Cup I think we sat out a couple WC's last year, so that may have been what dropped us into the 20's... but they can't be doing that this year, and Runnalls is gonna have to have a year.

Thru half the Grand Prix season, we're probably about where we were expecting Ice Dance: Gilles/Poirier won Skate Canada as expected. One of the few top teams to stay on their feet for their full skates. Lajoie/Lagha finished second, had a fall for weren't as close as we would have likes. Probably a safe bet we'll see both at the Grand Prix final. I'd kinda like to see Lajoie/Lagha get a big push, but this discipline unfortunately seems more about waiting their turn... imagine we'll see a bunch of retirements after Milan. Pairs: Stellato-Dudek/Deschamps had a rough long program but won easily. Also surely will be at the GP final. Pereira/Michaud had a nightmare of a skate at theirs. They still might be able to sneak into the final if they do well at their second event, pairs is wide open Women: Schizas has two very good skates and almost snuck onto the podium at Skate Canada. Her ceiling is probably a top 8-10, and maybe qualifying Canada an extra spot (or opportunity for a spot). Ruiter had a rough outting. Men: The less said the better. We may not even qualify a man for 2026, and may have to rely on a pity spot for the team event. 2026 Medal Outlook: - Best chance is probably pairs. Stellato-Dudek are reigning World Champs, and while unpredictable the field isn't terrible deep (if they let the Russians back in, that will make it a lot tougher) - Ice Dance is a bit of a coin flip. Politics still overwhelms the event even with the Russians out, and Gilles/Poirier seem to be able to get early season results, but not treated as well come Worlds and Olympics. Lajoie/Lagha will hopefully be nipping at their heels now. - Women's/Men's - No chance of a medal, hell, the men might not even qualify the skater - Team - Assuming the Russians stay banned, bronze will be battled between Italy and Canada. Probably gonna get some home cooking, so I'd give the edge to Italy... but ultimately it will come down to avoiding a meltdown in the men's and women's short programs. Italy has stronger men, but inconsistent... and same goes for the Canadian women. If we can get strong short programs from our singles skaters, that could get us on the podium

Brunelle blasted the field on the penultimate leg of the relay Saturday, it was surprising. Other than Boutin it's a young team, but surprisingly deep. They aren't favourites in individual races, but they contend regularly, it's not surprising to see them get into semi's and finals anymore Nice change from the '98 thru '14 cycles when we might have one strong women, and everyone else just kinda hung on for dear life

Probably a bit too late this time around. ISU didn't officially pull the plug until Oct 25th, and they were still pushing tickets three weeks ago, so it probably was a last minute decision. Weird they didn't have an old set of padded board, but whatever. I guess it's easy in Montreal as they're prime tenant in that arena and it doesn't get used for much else

The short track program has sure became a machine over the last decade. Incredible depth. Especially nice seeing so many good skaters on the women's side after a couple decades of being so far behind the likes of China and Korea. Which is good, cause now there are a lot of countries that are producing really good skaters now

It was quite the ending to that race, the Korean infield skater fell and took out their active skater, then the Canadians the Dutch had their incident on the next turn

Watched a couple skimo world cups on Youtube. It's interesting. I prefer the longer course races, but don't imagine we'll be getting that at the Olympics. Guess we'll see how it goes. It's something different anyway.

The ISU is really trying to push these apparent team names for the countries... extremely cringy

Will be strange watching the World Cup without the Gow's. They were kinda the last echo of the Vancouver 2010 funding boom. It's too bad, by 2014 and 2015 the program was really solid and if we had kept even moderate funding could have been a top 5-8 nation. Sadly, the money was long gone by then, and those athletes started peeling off and we've faded back to being minnows

Don't follow the junior ranks much, but at the Olympics trials there were a couple U20 women sprinters, Jorai Oppong-Nketiah and Alexia Jones, that look to have a lot of potential

Can't argue McIntosh and Katzberg I was thinking they might go with Katzberg and Rogers and save McIntosh for LA28 opening ceremony. With Swimming moving to week 2 for that one, there wouldn't be any scheduling conflicts, and seeing she already went home.

What really impressed me was not just the total medals, but the breadth. We won medals in fencing, pole vault, boxing, hammer... stuff we never done before, or haven't done in forever. And even in a wide variety of stuff that we've had occasional successes in. And the nice thing is there is still room for improvement. Looking forward to LA28!

You're awful sure about a lot of things that have turned out to be wrong I have too. The important thing is remembering that happens

Sanford is baked in. Katzberg, Rogers and Mitton are good bets in athletics. Breaking and Vincent/Mackenzie in C2 as well. So that's at least six highly likelies. Then we have a lot of toss ups too. 3x3, men's basketball, C1, Arop, 4x100, a couple events in track cycling, etc... and a whole mess of minor threats. If the toss ups convert around 50% and one or two of the minor threats pay off, we're there. There will be disappointments too of course, but it tends to average out.

I said 27-28 It's more an indication that our conversion rate in the first half was probably at the high end... it tends to level out over time, so the second half may not be as kind That's also assuming my projections are accurate, and not just an exercise in my willingness to be wrong publicly