JockCartier

I’m not sure it’s going to have much shelf life. They’ll get some attention at first to see the trainwreck of it… but after that, not sure it has much allure. People care about the Olympics, not so much records. They’d need to build it to something beyond a freak show element, cause when you go down that road the only way to keep an audience is keep pushing it further and further

The descent continues 🤦‍♂️

The men's side of cross country was pretty good in the 2010's, the Harvey/Kershaw generation, several World Cup results just no Olympics medals (through there were a couple close calls) Even biathlon was on the cusp of being a contender, they had a really good core and were knocking on the door by 2014 They were the dividends starting to be paid from the investment leading up to Vancouver 2010, trouble is most of the funding had dried up and they were all running on fumes... if we had stuck with it and kept funding those sports and giving them the coaching and development they needed they could be like long track and good for 1-3 medals per cycle each, but it died on the vine. If they want to sustainably grow the medal count, they need to be looking at a 20 year horizon, each generation building on the last. Throwing money at it for one cycle only gets you a sugar high.

And when combined with it's cousin, canoe/kayak sprint, it's absolutely massive

This is why in the Winter Olympics I think we'd really benefit from getting serious about cross country... between that biathlon and NC, almost 25% of all medals involve cross county skiing (and even if NC gets the boot, it's still over 20%). Gotta go where the medals are, not to mention the crossover potential for athletes

I know there is an ebb and flow to results, and the program has had turmoil recently... but still, holy crap this is bad. Even when it was bad before we typically had a full slate of boats and made a lot of finals, and now we can barely manage a half slate

Evidently at least three serious injuries resulted and there are serious concerns about the jumps. At least three major injuries happened, many sat out, and Poland has rethought their plans to move their training there https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2025/09/23/olimpiadi-2026-trampolini-salto-sci-predazzo-infortuni-test-allarme-preoccupazioni-news/8135751/

Fuuuuuuuuuudge... except I didn't say fudge. Feel terrible for her

Can anyone remember them ever allowing teams to rerun the 4x400? Seems like WA is making it up as they go again to keep the American's happy

Leduc really stretched out that last zone, almost too far, just barely got the pass in! Was nice to see them do that though, often her exchanges are giving up 2-3m to the rest of the field, so while she makes up 3-4m running a lot of it is only netting out... today they didn't lose that ground, so not surprised it resulted in a new NR. If they can iron out theirs passes a little more and benefit from a little chaos in the other lanes, they could challenge for the podium

Yeah, it's not unusual for people who ran NCAA to run out of gas by time the international season rolls around. They run the hell out of them during the school year.

Seems like any Canadian running 400m is dying out there this week

Malleck sneaks thru to the semi with a late kick!

Looks like the men and women both made the semi's... so that will send them to World's in 2026 with a chance at one of the first three qualifying spots

Yeah, did not cover ourselves in glory in that one. Looked like we were about three seconds behind the field at the first exchange, it was already over

Pretty much what one would expect.

Playing with house money now. Great experience for all those there, all of a sudden we will have some depth heading into 2028!

Archive.org I've found has a lot of stuff. Seem to have a lot that was torrented from 2012 on backed up there, so it's a good resource for more recent stuff. Also have some neat older video from old tapes https://archive.org/details/1992-winter-olympics-day-07-pt.-2

What are we looking for? I have a large of Olympics coverage that I've scoured over the years from online and old VHS tapes. A couple of my holy grails I've never been able to find was the 1992 women's individual biathlon and 2002 women's aerials (the collection kinda started with going for Canadian medals, and grew from there). Probably more Winter stuff than Summer, but lots of each. Ceremonies, events, full day tv coverage, docs, hell, I even have most of Roy and HG’s The Dream episodes.

I've joked someone needed to beg him to comeback! Might bring a team event medal back into play potentially... and after the nightmare he had getting to Beijing and missing the team event, it would be nice for him to get the chance to take part in it. I remember in 2018 I think he was in the team box for every single skater, just soaking in the atmosphere and cheering on the others

Ruck put up some great splits this week.

Would have been interesting to see what Asemota would have ran if he hadn't turned sideways and started jawing at the others

Been an interesting year for the women. New coach, and he’s definitely giving different players some reps. And with Grey evidently taking the summer off, O’Reilly injured and Van Ryk sitting out week two, it was certainly a radically different look You could really see the younger players progressing in Turkey, but going into the last week of VNL we have to keep an eye on relegation and be careful Sounds like Van Ryk will be back, so hopefully we can comfortably avoid relegation.

IIRC they had a hard time prying guys away from their NCAA teams last year, and had a bunch of restrictions on the ones they did. Perhaps that was part of it, or maybe injuries, or maybe they just didn’t feel they could qualify. I guess at least they wised up this year and made the mixed a priority. Hopefully the men will keep progressing

It's too bad OTP never realligned their focus when it was continued after 2010. They have such a backward facing funding formula. It was one thing when when it started, cause it was only like 5 years out from Vancouver, at when looking to maximize medals over such a short term funding like that makes sense (to a point anyway, some of the decisions still seem to be highly political, but I digress)... but when it was continued after they should have became more forward facing and investing in sports with better potential ROI