NearPup

Pretty good comparaison as to what to expect in handball, ya. And just like the UK, the US is finding all sorts of dual nationals who play professionally in Europe, like Pál Merkovszky, Jonas Strömberg, Alexander Chan Blanco, Benjamin Edwards, Sean Corning, Paul Skorupa, Dániel Hunyadi, Aboubakar Foufana, Ian Hueter, Lukas Larlskov Hansen, Douglas Otterström, Rodrigo Campos, Patrick Hueter, Samuel Hoddersen and Domagoj Sršen. The US men's national team is sort of like a situation but without anyone being naturalized (everyone above is a US citizen either by parentage or due to having been born in the US). The women's team seems more homegrown, but it's definitively weaker too.

Those US teams won't be *that* bad. Like, ya they will finish last by a decent margin, but they are still serious national teams that will be well prepared.

Rich Ruohonen qualifying for the Olympics as an alternate is kind of a cool story. Old school curling guy who's been in the American scene for decades, with a ton of runner up finishes at US nationals, making his Olympic debut at 54. Also very happy for my fellow Washingtonians Luc Violette and Ben Richardson.

keeps its perfect qualification record in women's curling definitively gave them a lot of gifts today. For their sake hopefully they can draw better against the tomorow.

Hopefully this team continues on.

The Short Track Olympic team will be announced on Wednesday the 17th.

Obviously impossible to know in advance but in 2022 all ten skaters Canada qualfiied skated individually, and 9/10 competed in a relay as well.

Unfortunate for and but def a relief for us. The added flexibility with the relay is definitively useful.

I do think they have a point, the selection criteria that , and have now are completly unecessary in an era of limited quotas and they only serve to make Olympic competition worse. Not that there aren't circumstances where rejecting quotas make sense (retirements, injury, some continental quotas in particularely weak continents), but fundamentally, if you qualify for the Olympics you should get to go.

Oh I assure you FIFA dodger a bullet with Israel not qualifying… But ya that’s kind of the thing, shut up and dribble is a mantra anti LGBT people have used often. I don’t think it’s hypocritical to remind them of their position

Well ya, which is why the Egyptian and Iranian teams can shut up and dribble :P

This is absolutely ridiculous. If you aren’t willing to celebrate Pride then you should simply not come to Seattle. You have to respect local customs. https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/articles/c208392884jo

That was known from the start for and will be planned for. Sadly just the reality of sports in North America. Canada and the US are both huge, a flight from Vancouver to Halifax or from Seattle to Miami is north of five hours. Every sports league in North America has to deal with this kind of travel logistics on the regular, so none of this will seem particularly unusual to a North American player.

That’s not a long distance, it’s barely a 2h flight and there is no difference in timezone. Easily doable for fans as well.

The ISU just really loves the sexual abuser supporter pair. Full support for Papadakis, she’s awesome, but I don’t want to see either Cizeron or Fournier-Beaudry ever again.

No, the two best countries ( ) sat it out. But I do think this demonstrates that SkiMo isn't very deep at the moment.

And we lost to someone who had literally never done skimo six months ago xD

I don't think he'll mind too much

He lost, what, 15-20s in the transition? Pretty brutal.

Correct. Countries are limited to one team in the A final

Vladimir Semirunniy dropped a 12:28 in the 10000m B division, which qualifies him for the Olympics as the fastest time this season (with the big asterisk that it was done in a quad start). Must be a real relief for the Polish team given he isn't looking likely to qualify for the 10000m (or the 5000m) by ranking. Really problematic that they rank pair start and quad start times together, but whatever. Also, the Wikipedia page for qualification is updated through the second day.

Wikipedia qualification page updated after day 1. The women's 5000m time ranking is very funny, the first two Dutch women on the list do not earn a quota for their country (because slower Dutch athletes are already qualified by points).

It’s literally the easiest group in the history of the World Cup >.> TBH I don’t think any of the hosts have room to complain.

How did Qatar put on a better show? Embarrassed to be a Canadian *and* embarrassed to be an American at the same time watching this xD

Wait have you never heard soccer pronounced before? xD Anyway, blame the Brits, they invented the word.