Dennis

https://nocnsf.nl/olympische-spelen/beijing-2022/kwalificatie-eisen For every sport you'll find one link to a document with the international criteria and then directly below it a link to the criteria of the Dutch NOC (all in Dutch though). Section A2 of the documents include the national criteria. For some sports like biathlon and cross-country skiing, the national criteria just state that there is no athlete who has any chance of making the Olympics and therefore no further criteria were determined. As everything is in Dutch, let me know if you need any help with translations.

Figure skating is the only sport for which the Dutch NOC has not published their internal selection criteria yet. There's a very realistic chance they won't accept the quota yet though, as the philosophy is that every athlete that will go to Beijing has to prove that they have a realistic chance of finishing top 8 in Beijing. I don't think a top 16 here is sufficient.

And our only competitive fencer Bas Verwijlen qualified for his 4th Olympics in men’s epee

Wierer

Britt Eerland won her group and therefore meets the international qualification criteria. However, she hasn’t met the Dutch criteria yet, so she’s not sure of Tokyo yet. She has to be in the top 16 of the world ranking counting max 2 athletes per country. She’s currently 18th on that ranking. She’s the best Dutch player by far and placed 28th on the world rankings at the moment. At times I really don’t understand the Dutch NOC’s criteria.

Third gold medal of the day for

2nd, 3rd and 5th place for in the men's 400m final. Good sign for the 4x400 m relay tomorrow.

Standings after day 1: Women: Suzanne Schulting - 68 points Arianna Fontana - 26 points Courtney Sarault - 24 points Selma Poutsma - 16 points Xandra Velzeboer - 15 points Sofia Prosvirnova - 13 points Kristen Santos - 8 points Hanne Desmet - 2 points Cynthia Mascitto - 1 point Nicole Mazur - 1 point Men: Charles Hamelin - 36 points Shaoang Liu - 36 points Semen Elistratov - 34 points Itzhak de Laat - 21 points Pietro Sighel - 13 points Sandor Shaolin Liu - 8 points Dylan Hoogerwerf - 8 points Stijn Desmet - 5 points Luca Spechenhauser - 5 points Maxime Laoun - 3 points Konstantin Ivliev - 3 points Exciting tournament on the men's side. On the women's side Schulting will probably win if nothing weird happens, but the battle for the other two medals seems to be wide open.

Hamelin wins the 1.500m

Schulting

The men's 1.500m semi-finals were a mess with three penalties in the first semi-final. This is why I love short-track speed skating.

Men's 1.500m finals - Starting lists: Final A: Charles Hamelin Itzhak de Laat Luca Spechenhauser Maxime Laoun Reinis Berzins Semen Elistratov Shaoang Liu Shaolin Sandor Liu Final B: Adil Galiakhmetov Andrew Heo Christoph Schubert Denis Nikisha Nico Andermann Pietro Sighel Vladislav Bykanov

Women's 1.500m finals - Starting lists: Final A: Arianna Fontana Courtney Sarault Hanne Desmet Selma Poutsma Sofia Prosvirnova Suzanne Schulting Xandra Velzeboer Final B: Cynthia Mascitto Ekaterina Efremenkova Florence Brunelle Kristen Santos Martina Valcepina Petra Jaszapati Petra Vankova

Schilder a new PB in shotput (18.69) and is now qualified for Tokyo

The three semi finals of the men's 400m have just been won by three Dutch athletes. Now watch them finish 4th, 5th and 6th in the final.

Van der Poel

To some extent. However, Nao Kodaira will also turn 35 this year. Jenny Wolf was also still world class at age 35 and skated her personal records on the 500m and 1.000m when she was 30+. What Fatkulina is doing here is impressive, but not exceptional.

So are Brittany Bowe and Martina Sablikova for example, who are both older than Fatkulina.

Wiklund!

And the final distances of the tournament. There have been no international competitions on the 5k and 10k yet this season, so this should be interesting. Women's 5.000m: Martina Sáblíková Natalia Voronina Irene Schouten Isabelle Weidemann Carlijn Achtereekte Marina Zueva Claudia Pechstein (unless her back still bothers her, then she'll finish last) Valerie Maltais Nadezhda Morozova Ragne Wiklund Francesca Lollobrigida Anastasiya Grigoreva (weird choice when you have skaters like Sokhryakova/Lalenkova/Golubeva) Men's 10.000m: Nils van der Poel Patrick Roest Jorrit Bergsma Patrick Beckert Ted-Jan Bloemen Alexander Rumyantsev Davide Ghiotto Timothy Loubineaud Ruslan Zakharov (no Semerikov?) Peter Michael Jordan Belchos Michele Malfatti (I would have expected Tumolero here)

Predictions for tomorrow: Women's 1.500m: Antoinette de Jong Brittany Bowe Ireen Wüst Evgeniia Lalenkova Elizaveta Golubeva Natalia Czerwonka Nadezhda Morozova Melissa Wijfje Ragne Wiklund Daria Kachanova Karolina Bosiek Francesca Lollobrigida Valerie Maltais Ida Njåtun Nikola Zdráhalová Yekaterina Aydova Ekaterina Sloeva Béatrice Lamarche Sofie Karoline Haugen Abigail McCluskey Tatsiana Mikhailava Mareike Thum Sandrine Tas Linda Rossi Again, Bowe is the favorite here, but De Jong is probably on a high after her first world individual world title, the title on the team pursuit, and I think the tougher conditions favour her. Men's 1.500m: Thomas Krol Patrick Roest Kjeld Nuis Hallgeir Engebråten Sverre Lunde Pedersen Bart Swings Connor Howe Joey Mantia Andrea Giovannini Sergey Trofimov Allan Dahl Johansson Vitaliy Chshigolev Daniil Beliaev Gabriel Odor Demyan Gavrilov Aleksandr Podolskii Marcin Bachanek Dmitry Morozov Victor Rudenko Conor McDermott-Mostowy Stefan Emele Ethan Cepuran Cornelius Kersten Francesco Betti Roest will benefit from the tough conditions, but not sure if he'll try to save some energy for the 10k where he has the best draw.

There's a lot of potential in Germany, but the development of skaters has been very poor in recent years. Claudia Pechstein's husband has a lot of power within the German federation and keeps making poor decisions. One example: https://www.sportschau.de/wintersport/eisschnelllauf/eisschnelllauf-vertrag-mit-sprinttrainer-nicht-verlaengert100.html However, despite the poor developments in German speedskating, there are some talents coming through. The top juniors are a bit unlucky that there is no Junior World Championships this year as f.e. Anna Ostlender would have been my favorite for the title on the 500m based on her times skated in recent months. Victoria Stirnemann, Emelie Vogelsang, Isabel Kraus, Maira Jasch and Sophie Warmuth are also solid talents with great potential. Norway doesn't have such talents coming through on the women's side (besides Ragne Wiklund). On the men's side, you have Felix Motschmann and Finn Sonnekalb, but yeah, Norway does have more talent there. I think overall, the number of talents in Germany is more or less equal to the number of talented skaters in Norway, with Germany leading on the women's side and Norway on the men's side. What helps Norway is that Norway has 41 different 400m ice rinks, whereas Germany has 10, including the tracks in Berlin-Wilmersdorf, Grefrath, Crimmitschau and München which are barely used anymore. In Norway there are competitions held on a weekly basis on most of the 41 tracks and talents are spotted in an early stage of their development.

Japan is not here, but they are currently skating in Nagano and some of the times skated there are ridiculously good, especially if you consider that the track in Nagano is slower than Heerenveen. Miho Takagi skated 1:13,21 on the 1.000 metres and 1:52,78 on the 1.500 metres, which are the fastest times ever outside of Salt Lake City and Calgary.

And predictions for the 1.000m: Men: 1:07,76 - Thomas Krol 1:07,86 - Kai Verbij 1:08,24 - Pavel Kulizhnikov 1:08,69 - Laurent Dubreuil 1:08,73 - Wesly Dijs 1:08,73 - Joel Dufter 1:09,01 - Ignat Golovatsiuk 1:09,07 - Håvard Holmefjord Lorentzen 1:09,25 - Marten Liiv 1:09,36 - Viktor Mushtakov 1:09,58 - Nico Ihle 1:09,70 - Piotr Michalski 1:09,78 - Connor Howe 1:09,87 - David Bosa 1:09,91 - Ruslan Murashov 1:09,95 - Odin By Farstad 1:10,26 - Artur Nogal 1:10,28 - Roman Krech 1:10,46 - Cornelius Kersten 1:10,60 - Artur Galiyev 1:10,67 - Conor McDermott-Mostowy 1:10,80 - Demyan Gavrilov 1:11,15 - Peder Kongshaug 1:11,15 - Alex Boisvert-Lacroix Women: 1:13,92 - Jutta Leerdam 1:14,05 - Brittany Bowe 1:14,23 - Jorien ter Mors 1:14,72 - Angelina Golikova 1:14,84 - Olga Fatkulina 1:15,00 - Suzanne Schulting 1:15,39 - Elizaveta Golubeva 1:15,50 - Natalia Czerwonka 1:15,57 - Yekaterina Aydova 1:15,62 - Vanessa Herzog 1:16,29 - Heather McLean 1:16,40 - Kaylin Irvine 1:16,52 - Karolina Bosiek 1:16,72 - Ida Njåtun 1:16,74 - Nikola Zdráhalová 1:17,15 - Hanna Nifantava 1:17,15 - Kaja Ziomek 1:17,30 - Béatrice Lamarche 1:17,81 - Katja Franzen 1:18,09 - Ekaterina Sloeva 1:18,93 - Ellia Smeding 1:19,00 - Josephine Heimerl 1:19,42 - Stien Vanhoutte 1:20,29 - Anna Ostlender Bowe is the big favorite here based on the world cup races this season, but her laptime on the 500m was quite disappointing, whereas Leerdam surprised me positively. And Bowe quite often flops on big occassions when she is the big favorite, like she did at the World Championships last year.

My predictions for today, starting with the mass start: Men: Arjan Stroetinga (surprising everyone) Bart Swings Livio Wenger Jorrit Bergsma Andrea Giovannini Jordan Belchos Joey Mantia Haralds Silovs Peter Michael Stefan Due Schmidt Women: Irene Schouten Ivanie Blondin Elizaveta Golubeva Marijke Groenewoud Linda Rossi Francesca Lollobrigida Karolina Bosiek Claudia Pechstein Marina Zueva Mareike Thum