NearPup

There was no way to make this uncontroversial once trials got cancelled.

will be represented by defending champion John Morris and 2018 Olympian Rachel Homan.

I think it's a big problem that Alpine and cross country skiing have to bear all the weight of universality places. My approach would be to offer all otherwise unqualified NOCs up to two universality places (one per gender) across all individual sports, as long as the athlete meets the basic requirements, and make those places available outside the sport's quota (set aside like 100 quota places for it overall, which can be taken from Alpine and cross country).

What the IOC should be doing is having floating tripartite invitations for countries who's best athletes aren't Alpine or cross country skiers. I'd rather see someone like Frimpong compete than some random skier who went to some dodgy FIS race.

There is a decent chance Jasey-Jay Anderson will qualify for his seventh Olympics :P Anyway, Alpine snowboarding is sort of it’s own niche and has been for a long time, it really doesn’t have anything in common with cross or park & pipe anymore (there used to be crossover between those disciplines but that’s very much a thing of the past).

In their defence Novak Djokovic is undeniably an asshole.

Team Canada Goaltenders Ann-Renée Desbiens Emerance Maschmeyer Kristen Campbell Defence Jocelyne Larocque Renata Fast Ella Shelton Ashton Bell Erin Ambrose Micah Zandee-Hart Claire Thompson Forward Rebecca Johnston Laura Stacey Sarah Fillier Jill Saulnier Mélodie Daoust Brianne Jenner Sarah Nurse Natalie Spooner Emily Clark Emma Maltais Marie-Philip Poulin Blayre Turnbull Jamie Lee Rattray

I don’t think it makes any sense for anyone going to the Olympics to compete at Europeans (or four continents). It’s too late to risk a positive test.

...is she literally going to be the unvaxed athlete going? I guess we should find out pretty quickly who they all are given the isolation period.

Snowboard cross mixed team before re-allocation: Two teams: One team: First reserve is (for a second team). If you read the original qualification document you may be confused by this. FIS changed it so that if less than 16 teams qualified countries with two male and two female athletes can enter a second team, though those entries are always lower priority than a country’s first entry.

Removing the best event in the winter Olympics (the men’s and women’s relays in short track) should not even be discussed :P Ski jumping and nordic combined can probably be cut to four by country, but that’s a bit of a cut on paper only since big countries will still bring an alternate anyway. Edit: we can fix all the gender equality issues (including doing things like adding four women in bobsleigh and having 12 women hockey teams w/ 25 players) while slightly increasing the athlete quota in sports like speed skating and figure skating while keeping the athlete quota under 3200. The IOC's insistence on keeping it to 2900 is sort of an issue at this point.

At some point I want to sit down and figure out how many athletes I think are needed for the winger Olympics, but it’a absolutely higher than 2900. They are likely adding a women’s team event in ski jumping for 2026, too, which will likely require more quotas in that sport too.

I should mention for full disclosure that the list on Wikipedia is of my doing :P

The ISU just does not have enough quota spots for speed skating or figure skating (short track could use a little more room but it’s not egregious). That being said, the problem was entirely foreseeable and they could and should have written the document clearly.

I feel like cross country skiing is having a real identity crisis right now. Especially with the increased popularity of biathlon.

China is famously... flexible when it comes to dual citizenship (when they want to be).

Is it clear to anyone how the ISU interprets the qualification rules? I legitimately do not understand how they got the quota and reserve lists they got... I wish the Spanish federation had gotten the CAS involved just so we could get some clarity. And hey, ISU, hire me to write the qualification criteria next time.

US Speed Skating Olympic Team Men: Ethan Cepuran Casey Dawson Austin Kleba Emery Lehman Joey Mantia Jordan Stolz Ian Quinn Women: Giorgia Birkeland Brittany Bowe Kimi Goetz Erin Jackson Mia Manganello-Kilburg Breakdown by home state (for fun): 4 skaters: Florida 3 skaters: Illinois 1 skater: Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, Utah, Wisconsin

If I were Malinin I'd start asking myself if I wouldn't rather skate for Uzbekistan tbh...

Team USA Men's Jason Brown Nathan Chen Vincent Zhou Women's Mariah Bell Karen Chen Alysa Liu Pairs Alexa Knierim / Brandon Frazier Ashley Cain-Gribble / Timothy LeDuc Ice Dance Madison Chock / Evan Bates Kaitlin Hawayek / Jean-Luc Baker Madison Hubbell / Zachary Donohue

Kind of wild that the three Americans who have a real chance at winning an individual gold medal in Beijing (Jackson, Bowe and Mantia) all come from Ocala, Florida, population 60k.

Not surprised. A very similar thing happened in Canada after the 2014 Olympic trials. Denny Morrison fell in the 1000m, but Guilmore Junio gave up his spot in the event (he was also qualified in the 500m) so Morrison could compete. Morrison ended up winning a silver medal.

It actually got called as a 4A<, so this is technically the first landed quad Axel landed in competition.

Canadian National Championships, final results Men's Single (2 quotas available) Keegan Messing Roman Sadovsky Wesley Chiu Women's Single (1 quota available) Madeline Schizas Véronik Mallet Gabrielle Daleman Pairs (2 quotas available) Kirsten Moore-Towers / Michael Marinaro Evelyn Walsh / Trennt Michaud Deanna Stellato-Dudek / Maxime Deschamps Ice Dance (3 quotas available) Piper Gilles / Paul Poirier Laurence Fournier-Beaudry / Nikolaj Sørensen Marjorie Lajoie / Zachary Lagha The Olympic team will be announced tomorrow, but with one exception it's almost certainly already decided. Keegan Messing and Roman Sadovsky will likely get the men's spots, Madeline Schizas will likely get the women's spot, Kirsten Moore-Towers / Michael Marinaro will likely get one of the pairs spots and Piper Gilles / Paul Poirier, Laurence Fournier-Beaudry / Nikolaj Sørensen and Marjorie Lajoie / Zachary Lagha will likely get the ice dance spots. The only remaining question is the second pairs spot. Vanessa James and Eric Radford withdrew before the long program and are petitioning for a spot.

I would say that Carlijn Schoutens is in serious contention to be considered the luckiest medalist from the 2018 Olympics, from being born in New Jersey (her parents were there for school and moved back to the Netherlands before she was one), to the US getting a re-location spot in Team Pursuit, to being put in the semi-finals as the US wasn't trying to win the semi anyway and wanted to rest Bowe, to her teamates barely upsetting Canada (they almost had a fall on the last turn) in the bronze medal race.