NearPup

Israel doesn’t have to shop around, they can just find people who are eligible for citizenship through the law of return.

That one was bad, IIRC the umpire required surgery.

17 seems way too old as a minimum age.

Very nice to see the Turkish GP temporarily return, it will be interesting to see if it’s still a good circuit given the current cars.

It’s the name of the party. It is just a generic centre-right party. The federal Canadian Conservative party also used to be called the Progressive Conservative party before it fused with the further-right Canadian Alliance party.

The Canadian province of New Brunswick (coincidentally my old stomping grounds) is holding snap elections on September 14th, the first election held in Canada during COVID-19. There is speculation that federal parties are looking at this election to see whether or not the ruling Progressive Conservatives are punished for calling an election before deciding whether or not to force a federal snap election this Fall.

Baseball can either implement a mercy rule or they can stop complaining about people running up the score for ever, please.

This is somehow both shocking and completely unsurprising. It feels like the conflict between the US allied Arab countries and Israel have been phony for a very long time. But the symbolism of this move is really striking.

There are a lot of people who get appointed to rando state boards or who are the district attorney for a large city. Very few of them make it to the top of California politics (governor of California or senator from California are among the hardest jobs to get in US politics - heck, being elected attorney general of California is in and of itself a feat) and all that happened well after her fling / sugar baby (call it what you want) relationship with Willie Brown, and well beyond where his power laid.

How to win the Olympics in a few easy steps: 1. Be rich and become a citizen of, say, Dominica. 2. Create the Dominican Curling association. 3. Recruit a bunch of elite Canadian players and pay for their citizenship. 4. Nominate yourself as the alternate on the Dominican Olympic curling team. 5. Don’t play (you don’t need to play a single end to be eligible for a medal). 6. Keep at it until Dominica finally wins gold. 7. Congrats?

There is actually also a skier / cyclist too (Georgia Simmerling has competed in alpine skiing, ski cross and track cycling, winning a bronze medal in the team pursuit)

Oh no, how will Lance Stroll ever recover?

Don't forget Sven Kramer failing to win the 10000m again :D

Sydney 2000: Simon Whitfield winning the men's triathlon Salt Lake City 2002: Steven Bradbury doing a Bradbury Athens 2004: Hicham El Guerrouj winning the men's 5000m Turin 2006: Tanja Frieden winning the women's snowboardcross Beijing 2008: Eric Lamaze winning the individual show jumping Vancouver 2010: Jon Montgomery winning the men's skeleton London 2012: McKayla Maroney's perfect vault in the women's gymnastics team event Sochi 2014: The women's ice hockey finals Rio 2016: Penny Oleksiak and Simone Manuel winning the women's 100m freestyle Pyeongchang 2018: Ester Ledecká winning the women's Super-G

I feel I’m the only person here who would actually like the team sprint in the Olympics. That said, they better not touch the 10000m.

The venue is really the least of the concerns with holding that event in Brazil right now.

Both the Queensland and the Rhine-Ruhr bids are looking really promising.

I would be interested in literally anybody else hosting. Qatar really doesn't have a great record when it comes to major events.

Half the countries you listed already have artificial luge tracks :P Coincidentally only half of the countries you listed appear to have natural luge tracks, too (according to WIkipedia).

Women’s doubles seems pretty inevitable. Natural track less so, but if it ever gets included it will be now.

With few exceptions the people in the bullpen are failed starting pitchers.

There is a minimum of 330 pitchers in the major leagues at all times. So it figures that some of the minor league guys are pretty bad.

The highlight of day 2 for me would have been the debut of surfing.

There are rumors that Malaysia may host a GP this fall, which would be awesome.

This is honestly pretty useful, there were some sports (notably surfing) where I wasn't sure of the exact competition format. Men's and women's doubles in Tennis being two set matches with a super tie-break third set breaks my heart, though.