NearPup

I registered on my way out of the citizenship ceremony. There was a voter registration booth. I actually got a voter card that was valid from the last week of November 2019 to the end of 2019 (since Texas registration cards are always valid for a two year cycle), which is kind of amusing since there was literally no election of any kind anywhere in the state during that time. I got my voter registration card for 2020-2021 in the mail without having to do anything. Texas has an open primary (but you can only vote in one party's primary for any given cycle). The only complication there is that for all offices other than the presidency there is the potential for a primary runoff in May, which will almost certainly include the US Senate race on the Democratic side.

I get to vote in my very first US election next month (all the primaries in Texas are on March 3rd, not just the one for president). We'll see how voting machines compare to the good old paper ballots they use in Canada. The biggest difference, though, is the huge number of elections going on. I have to figure out who to vote for in the US senate primary, the state house primary, the board of education primary, the railway commission primary (despite it's name, the Texas Railroad commission has absolutely nothing to do with railways but rather deal with regulating the oil and gas industry) and various judicial primaries. No US House primary (my district has a Democratic incumbent who is running unopposed in the primaries) or state senate primary (my state senator got elected to a four year term during the midterms - in Texas during the midterms half the senators get elected to two year terms and the other half to four year terms, determined by lottery).

This will look so bad if an athlete has a major injury this week-end.

I think it’s laudable (and overdue) for the IOC to go on a gender equality kick, but I really fail to see how having a mixed relay accomplishes this better than by having a men’s relay and a women’s relay. I think that their obsession with mixed events kind of misses the point, though I do like them being introduced in sports that would likely otherwise never get a team event (like triathlon, luge or figure skating) or in sports where mixed events really do have a different dynamic than their gendered equivalent (curling, the racket sports). But when it comes to sports that already have gendered team events, they feel redundant. I don’t think anyone was really clamoring for a 4th event for 100m freestyle specialists. I don’t really mind them as long as they don’t take the place of the existing gendered team events, though I think their addition in swimming and track are wildly excessive (if the IOC really wanted mixed events in those sports they should have done the mixed relays in open water swimming and race walking). Oh, and the judo mixed team event under the current format is a giant joke.

What’s wrong with the men’a and the women’s relay? Why has this thread turned into a “should we remove the individual and the relays from the Olympics”?

If that ever happens the IBU would probably switch to those stupid laser riffles and Biathlon will become as boring as Modern Pentathlon’s laser run :/

Random linguistic question: are the words “rider” and “skater” the same in Dutch?

Great duel for (provisional) third place between Blondin and Weidemann.

finishing 1-2 in the 10000m would have been unthinkable ten years ago. Even discounting Bloemen Canada’s long distance program has improved dramatically. At this rate Ted-Jan will move to the Netherlands for a better shot at making the Olympic team. Edit: seriously, with Jordan Belchos also lurking in the background the Canadian 10k team for 2022 may actually be harder to qualify for than the Dutch one.

This is the first ever world championship title for Bloemen.

Under current rules Puerto Rico couldn't get an NOC. They are grandfathered in from the old rules (from when there were a lot more colonies).

Canada has officially qualified with their victory over Sweden.

Canada has qualified in Football, Volleyball, Hockey, Rugby Sevens, Softball and Water Polo (and will qualify im Basketball, short of a disaster). So no, not only the USA can match that :P

Canada qualifies with an unimpressive 1-0 victory over Costa Rica. Happy Canada qualified, but not happy at all with the performance.

Get a VPN for outside of the Americas and search YouTube for "CONCACAF".

Because this qualification system was designed to increase the number of “meaningful” international games for each teams that will compete at the Olympics. Apparently this was a request of the national federations themselves.

Denis Morison has announced his retirement.

Pretty often? The Green Bay Packers are one of the most popular American Football teams. They also have NBA and an MLB teams in Milwaukee. This is also the oval that hosted the 2018 US Olympic Trials.

Sure sounds like they only have themselves to blame tbh.

Yes and no. Ebola doesn’t spread nearly as easily.

The ICF has found Laurence Vincent-Lappinte did not commit a doping violation and has lifted her suspension effective immediately.

I was on a domestic flight in Canada, the first thing anybody said when we touched down was that Kobe had just died. A bunch of us, complete strangers, started talking about him and reminiscing for a couple minutes. We lost an icon today.

Hey now, you are talking about the only country to go undefeated at the 2010 world cup :P

I think 16 is the only number that allows both a fair competition and a good TV product. I basically want the same format alpine snowboarding used before they went to this one run nonsense.

Canadian cross country skiing has been on an incredible decline. Incredibly sad.