NearPup

Breaking: has banned and athletes from the 2022 Paralympics. They will not be allowed to compete even as neutrals.

Looks like the neutral team will win the curling competition without having to play a single game. They should be incredibly proud of their achievement.

Ya I'm guessing the attendance for Park & Pipe at worlds next year won't be as good as the two previous worlds in Park City and Aspen.

Given Mazespin is by most accounts the least popular driver both on and off the grid I doubt this will create much of a splash. This might doom Haas financially, but it's not like the sanctions weren't in danger of doing that anyway.

^ this is important context I feel. Russia has gone through basically every "intermediate" level of sanctions already for unrelated reasons this half decade. The IOC has nowhere to go but a full ban because they used every other option already for doping related violations.

ISU is banning all and athletes and officials from participating in any event until further notice. https://isu.org/isu-news/news/145-news/14024-isu-statement-on-the-ukrainian-crisis-participation-in-international-competitions-of-skaters-and-officials-from-russia-and-belarus?templateParam=15

I think “war of conquest” is a pretty decent line. In Crimea there was conquest but certainly no war (it was more a bloodless coup than anything else). If Putin had just done a “peacekeeping” escapade in the Donbas I think most of the world would have waved their fingers but not have reacted too strongly. But invading a country that quite clearly does not want to be invaded for the clear goal of annexing it (Putin sort of discredited any plausible deniability with his speech)? Wherever the line is, surely that is beyond it?

I do think that part of the problem is that Russia and Belarus were both already on very thin ice with the IOC (for state sponsored doping and the government messing with athletes respectively). For Russia in particular the IOC is out of ways to register their displeasure short of a ban.

Listen, Canadian prime minister Erin O'Toole will announce the Canadian team will boycott and that will make everyone else realize that they need to boycott, too, because obviously a world cup without Canada just isn't credible and nobody will take it seriously.

Well, ignoring the war and the political situation for the sake of this comment, Istanbul Park would certainly be a big upgrade over Sochi. Even though the Sochi race last year happened to be exciting thanks to rain.

Who in their right mind actually expected Ukraine to join NATO anytime soon? The only think Putin is achieving right now is making it more likely Sweden and Finland join NATO. There was no appetite from NATO to accept Ukraine as a member (keeping in mind it requires a unanimous vote to accept a new country). Like, Canada would probably be all for it for domestic political reasons (Canada has the second biggest Ukrainian diaspora in the world, so the government is very pro Ukraine), but there are plenty of countries in Europe who are absolutely opposed.

What is there to negotiate? This is a war of conquest, Russia can just stop at any time.

Her grandparents are all from Armenia.

Also worth remembering that the consensus in the US is that the 2003 Iraq war was a colossal mistake. The people who cheered it on at the time were very wrong to do so. Feel free to learn from our mistakes.

Would you rather they have a world cup race with only Russian athletes.

The technical controller of doom is back :O

The animals were obviously Nazis.

What is he supposed to do?

I wonder why the athletes even bothered starting, this is just incredibly embarrassing.

So really just by the time Putin is done.

And assured us that the invasion would be on February 30th.

Since this is in my fantasy world where I run the IOC and can change the 2900 athlete cap, I won't take quota reduction into account. Alpine skiing The team event needs a seeding round. If I had my way the combined would stay and there wouldn't be individual parallel races, but ya. Biathlon I would still like a qualification sprint for the pursuit that is separate from the sprint event. I would also equalize distances between men's and women's events. Bobsleigh I would add men's monobob and women's four-man, with reduced quotas in both two and four man. Monobob would take the brunt of ensuring diversity. Cross-country skiing I would remove the men's 28.5km event and replace it with the 50km event. Increase all women's distances. Curling I would increase the mixed doubles field to 16 teams. Figure skating Changes to the team event: increase the number of teams that make the free skate to eight, change the number of points given in the free skate to increase it's importance. Also singles judging needs a complete overhaul but that is outside the scope of this thread. Freestyle skiing Make the per NOC quota equal to 4 x the number of individual events (also applies in snowboarding). Increase team size in mixed aerials to two men and two women (and allow two teams per NOC). Add a mixed team dual moguls event. Add a men's, women's and mixed ski cross team event. Add a rail jam event, with the same athletes that compete in big air and slopestyle. Hockey 3 on 3 is totally happening in 2030 so I won't mention it here :P Luge Add women's doubles. Nordic Combined Adding women's individual normal and large hill events. Short track speed skating No change. I would def like to see the ISU explore some new race formats, however. I would also change the false start rule - each skater gets one false start over an entire distance (across all rounds) before being penalized. Skeleton I would add a mixed team event. Ski Jumping I would add a women's large hill competition and a women's team competition. Snowboarding I would add the parallel slalom, a men's and women's team snowboardcross event and a rail jam event. Speed Skating I would remove the women's 3000m and replace it with the 10000m. I would add the team sprint and make both the 500m and the 1000m a two run, best time counts event. I would also outlaw breaking ties beyond the hundredth of a second and change the false start rule so each skater has one false start.

The deal was between Ukraine, the US, the UK and... Russia.

For : overall a disappointment, mostly because of the freakishly low gold medal count (lowest since Lillehammer, where there were significantly less events in sports Canada is good at). Though, of course, given how big the Canadian delegation is we really have to look at it sport by sport. Alpine skiing: meet expectations. James Crawford had A+ Olympics across the board and won a medal, though of course the combined is the least prestigious podium on offer. The rest of the team had fairly average results. Biathlon: exceeded expectations. The women's team had bad results, but the men's team had their best ever individual and relay finish and qualified four starters for the pursuit and three starters for the mass start. No medal, but that doesn't deter from how well Canada did in biathlon at these Olympics. Bobsleigh: bellow expectations. The medal count itself isn't bad, and winning a gold was always going to be difficult. The main thing that made these Olympics disappointing is some of the non-medal performances (Kripps in the two-man, Austin in both his events, Appiah having some horror runs, Lotholz). Cross country skiing: above expectations. Cyr and Ritchie finishing fifth in the men's team sprint was a very promising result. Curling: disaster. Figure skating: bellow expectations. Schizas and Lajoie/Lagha are promising, and seeing Messing skate is always a delight. But in terms of results it was very meh, and expectations were not high. We are likely getting a team medal that is, frankly, unearned. Freestyle skiing: bellow expectations, bordering on disaster. First time without a gold medal since 2002, when there were 4 events, compared to 13 now. Only two real bright spots: the very young aerials team performing well, and Cassie Sharpe putting on a heroic performance a year after what should have been a career-ending injury, while the other Canadians in the women's ski half-pipe also did as well as could be expected. I'll also give the women's ski cross team some kudos because they meet expectations. Everything else went badly. Most alarming is our moguls team which is both old and shallow (it's basically Kingsbury, who is ancient by moguls standard, and nobody else). Ice hockey: meet expectations. Women's won and the men did okay given the talent pool available. Luge: meet expectations. The young singles sliders look promising, but the team was obviously in a rebuild phase. Short track speed skating: meet expectations. The women's team was disappointing, but the men winning the relay with relative ease makes up for basically all the other disappointments. Skeleton: meet expectations. A top 20 is actually a good result on the men's side (as pathetic as that is), and Rahneva on the women's side did very well, the only reason it felt disappointing is that she would have won an unexpected medal if not for a disastrous second run. Ski jumping: literally salvaged the entire Olympics. Snowboarding: meet expectations. Speed skating: bellow expectations, mostly because of disappointing results on the men's side. That being said, Laurent Dubreuil's silver medal in the 1000m is going to be one of the few moments at these Olympics that will be added to Canadian sporting folklore. What were the ups and downs, what were the highlights, what were the biggest disappointments? Highlights: Winning bronze in ski jumping. Winning the men's 5000m short track relay, in what is Charles Hamelin's final Olympic race. Women's hockey. Biggest disappointments: Every curling match I watched. Mikaël Kingsbury losing the men's moguls event. The women's short track team. What were the most emotional events for you? Who made a suprisingly good result? Laurent Dubreuil coming back to win silver in the 1000m after a disappointing 500m. Max Parrot winning a gold medal after surviving his battle with cancer. Cassie Sharpe winning silver after her injury.

"Canada matches it's standing from the Summer Olympics" is never a good thing when talking about the Winter Olympics xD