NearPup

Team Jones as it currently exists will not continue after this season. https://twitter.com/teamjjonescurl/status/1503526404067102720?s=21

IMO this is actually one of the most impressive achievement ever in the sport.

Team Gushue, who represented Canada at the Olympics, become the first team to win the Brier (the Canadian championship) in the same year where they represented Canada at the Olympics (they are the first ones to have the opportunity to compete in both IIRC). What makes this especially impressive: third Mark Nichols tested positive for COVID after the round robin, so Team Gushue has played with only three players during the entire playoffs.

One of the best women front end player ever. Def a big loss for Canadian curling.

Looks like it will be the Mottolino resort in Livigno, which is hosting all of park & pipe. The bid book mentioned all of freestyle skiing and snowboarding in Livigno. You don't actually need a dedicated permanent venue like Beijing built in 2022 (...literally the only one that exists in the world). You can build a big air ramp, but you can also just use a slope and build a jump out of snow (which is what the X Games do).

Literally nobody does this competitively anymore. I don’t even think anyone still make the ski poles for it (acroski requires specialized poles). Acroski is unfortunately extremely dead.

Clearly the solution is to feature all Canadian athletes in the Sobeys commercials.

A certain bobsleigh pilot is very happy to see this letter being published.

Clap skates weren't used in high level competitions in 1994, and that probably accounts for most of the technological advancement in that sport since then (other than the ice making getting better).

The Western world is in shambles, as all criticism of China have been debunked by "thrilling" Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics: https://www.chinadailyasia.com/article/261860 (I really love Chinese propaganda because it's always so incredibly over the top, like it's target audiences are elementary school kids)

Literally who is Cameron Alexander?

van der Poel really just showed up, broke two world records and won two Olympic gold medals to make a point, then just dropped the mic and peaced out. Legend. “When you’re a professional athlete in a sport that sucks as much as speed skating sucks, you’ve got to find a way to make it suck a little less,” van der Poel said at the Olympics. “I did 20 ultras, 1,000 skydives, I served in the army for a year, I do a lot of parties. I went snowboarding a lot. I went ski mountaineering. I biked the whole of Sweden. I made it adventurous, because I knew there was a time when I would lock myself up, enduring it. I had to build up a mountain of motivation.” TBH I wouldn't be shocked if he showed up again in like November of 2025 in monstrously good form.

Canadian ski jumping is having a shockingly good year.

https://twitter.com/devin_heroux/status/1499281414583615489?s=21

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.