NearPup

Drama - US Speed Skating officials considering letting Jackson re-skate.

World number 1 in the women's 500m Erin Jackson is OUT of the Olympics after finishing third at US Olympic trials! Same top two as in the 1000m, Brittany Bowe first and Kimi Goetz second.

…in hindsight, they were sadly right.

In an investigation about doping which lead to all her Olympic medals being stripped. The US government did all that legwork, not the IOC or WADA.

…Marion Jones literally went to prison.

Alysa Liu has tested positive for COVID-19 and has withdrawn from US championships. She was in third place after the short.

I love how much respect the team event gets :P

Video evidence (requires a US VPN):

This is basically the hangover from a golden generation. Canada won world championship golds and Olympic medals in every single disciplines last decade. Everyone involved is retired, except for the least exciting and most problematic skater from that group (Radford). So this is a deep rebuild for sure. Still a couple fun battles to watch, and there is an infinite amount of drama around James/Radford for the people who like that kind of thing. At least the final flight in ice dance is going to be good xD That being said, I don't think Canada will ever have a group as special as Chan, Osmond, Duhamel / Radford, Virtue / Moir and Weaver / Poje. At times Canada has had a lot of depth in one discipline (mostly men's) but there was never a time where Canada had medal contenders in all four events at roughly the same time.

The Canadian Championships (and de-facto Olympic trials) are happening today and tomorrow. There is a free live-stream on gem.cbc.ca, and it does not appear to be geo-blocked. Good lineup of commentators, too (Ted Barton, Kaetlyn Osmond and Elladj Baldé).

Perks of being America’s lapdogs I guess.

will not send any athletes to the 2022 Olympics. One might think it’s because they didn’t qualify anyone because no North Korean athlete has left the country since the pandemic began, but officially they are not attending the Olympics in order to protest the United States-led diplomatic boycott. https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2022/01/767355f07da3-urgent-n-korea-vows-not-to-participate-in-beijing-winter-olympics.html And directly from the North Korean government, because this sounds too much like fake news: http://www.vok.rep.kp/index.php/Data_detail_common/NewsDetail/ien220106006/18/en Mirror not hosted in North Korea: https://kcnawatch.org/newstream/1641532218-850353137/dprk-olympic-committee-and-ministry-of-physical-culture-and-sports-send-letter-to-their-chinese-counterparts

Olympic Trials, day 2 (1000m) Both track records were broken today. On the men's side, 17 year old Jordan Stolz destroyed the field with a 1:07.62, which is a top 10 low land time this season. He is officially qualified for the Olympics. Joey Mantia skated 1:09.00 for second place and a likely spot at the Olympics. On the women's side, Brittany Bowe skated 1:13.63 to guarantee herself a spot on the Olympic team. Kimi Goetz, who was a favourite to make the 2018 short track team before suffering an injury, finished second and will likely make the team.

Hopefully making Olympic trials for various countries available on the Olympic channel outside of said country becomes a trend.

And the winning race in the women's 3000m (again, required a VPN outside the US):

Well in the end the IOC dodged a bullet there...

Olympic trials, day 1. Mia Manganello-Kilburg won the women’s 3000m, likely qualifying her for Beijing. The men’s 5000m was a great three-way battle with only two spots available and only 0.17s between first and third place. Ethan Cepuran made up a second on the final lap and won by 0.04s to guarantee his spot at the Olympics. Casey Dawson finished second and will likely be names to the team. Emery Lehman, who was unlucky to not be in a competitive pair, misses out in third. Edit: link to the very exciting fourth men's pair in the 5000m (required a VPN for those outside the US):

Djokovic’s visa has been cancelled and he is in deportation proceedings.

Huge breaking news: Novak is officially out of the Australian open due to health problems!

So he’s in secondary inspection? I used to get send to secondary all the time when entering the US, you can’t leave until they let you and you aren’t allowed to communicate with the outside world.

Oh, if Tennys thinks Australian can't host a grand slam because Australian customs and border security are prone to unreasonably and arbitrarily denying entry to people, sometimes even for political reasons, then we may want to talk about cancelling the US Open too xD I like to joke that I became an American citizen to limit my interactions with DHS. It's only really half a joke.

The final climb is literally the only good thing about the Tour xD

Also worth noting: the women are currently looking like they will miss the Olympics entirely. Their first athlete is currently ninth(!) on the reserve list. The American men will qualify two or three jumpers, meanwhile.

Like, they should require vaccination or they shouldn’t. I don’t care that much either way. What is unacceptable is letting one crybully be exempt from the rule because he’s a big name.

At least it's not a sub-tropical city this time :P This will certainly be a very unique looking Winter Olympics.