NearPup

Women’s ski cross world number 4 and Rio bronze medalist in track cycling Georgia Simmerling is out of the Olympics after breaking her left leg in the last world cup before Pyeongchang.

Kingsbury took some beating. Horishima's run was just incredible. Kingsbury actually had a very good run, with just one visible error.

This Kevin Koe team is stupidly stacked, on paper it's debatable whether it's the best or second best team Canada has ever sent to the Olympics (the other in contention being Kevin Martin's 2010 team that went 11-0). Obviously they aren't the only strong team (Edin and Ulsrud especially have very strong teams) but if they play to their potential they should win.

I think you could definitively package field events a lot better in particular. Having some made for TV events in more intimate settings than a giant athletic stadium without other stuff going around at the same time would certainly help with the TV packaging of things like the long jump, the high jump or the shot put. I'm also not particularly opposed to getting rid of the track 10000m and replacing it with a 10km road race and to also include the half marathon in all major games (without getting rid of the marathon, obviously). If you want a gimmicky event that actually makes sense why not have a 4x10.549km (quarter Marathon) road race relay? You can work at making athletics more TV friendly (which I do believe is needed) without turning it into a farce.

The Canadian mixed doubles trials where kind of insane, Morris / Lawes isn't really the team anybody expected to make it out. Still, they are both going for their second Olympic gold medal and I think considering how well they played by the end of trials they have to be the favorite. To highlight just how good Kevin Martin's 2010 team was, the three players that are still active (Morris, Kennedy and Hebert) are qualified for Pyeongchang. They are three of the only four male players to ever qualify twice for Canada's Olympic curling team, the first being... Kevin Martin.

This reminds me of a Survivor challenge, but worse.

What a joke. How can you possibly integrate unknown players lesd than a month before the Olympics?

So the US got the top 12 (!) places at the final pre Olympic men’s ski half pipe world cup. Granted outside of the Americans it was a very weak field, while every American of any note showed up as it was their last internal Olympic qualification event, but still xD

That's bizarre. Was any explanation given?

You think they deserved gold?

Ya, I really like James and Ciprès. Wanted them to win but they where clearly outclassed today. Would have been nice if they at least got a silver.

0.02 actually, first tie breaker is the free skate.

I am shocked, SHOCKED I say.

I don't mean to bash either, it's not like Ireland and Israel make buy athletes, they just have very permissive citizenship laws. I have no issues with their citizens living abroad taking advantage of that. It's just that when you see a winter athlete from Israel (or Ireland) and you wonder how they practice X sport in Israel / Ireland, the obvious answer is "they don't".

I mean almost all of Israel's winter athletes come from either the US or Ukraine, so...

In Nordic Combined the athletes are the target, clay pigeon shooting style, during the ski jumping portion.

The selectors didn’t have a very hard job xD And thanks, I feel this is a team that can realistically produce a medal. Would do the sport a lot of good in Canada to have a role model who isn’t a dumpster fire like Bédard...

Canadian Olympic Team Women: Sarah Beaudry Rosanna Crawford Emma Lunder Julia Ransom Megan Tandy Men: Macx Davies Christian Gow Scott Gow Brendan Green Nathan Smith I believe this is the biggest team Canada has sent (previous high was 9 in 1992)

...pretty sure that’s not how that works xD

I don't think age is going to be a huge disadvantage in such a short tournament. Canada only really needs to show up for 3-4 games (the pools don't matter that much and Canada can win theirs without having to play super well).

What are you talking about, a lack of superstars? NBA legend Michal Jordán is a huge star! I don’t think we can really predict how the tournament will go, too many unknown. The Canadian team especially is a huge question mark for me. I think the US might be the second favourite behind Russia purely because of goaltending.

The US has lost it’s top three seeds, Stephens, Vandeweghe and Venus Williams, within four hours of the tournament starting. This is going to be a very different top 4 than at the US Open...

For some sport yes, but there's no reason Brazil couldn't in theory develop good athletes in biathlon / cross country skiing / nordic combined / ski jumping / freestyle skiing with a combination of roller skis, dry slopes and water jumps. While the competition in those sports are on snow you can do almost all of the training in warm weather and then have your elite athletes make the adaptation to the snow. For a lot of winter sports most of the athlete's development actually happens in summer. As for ice sports, if you look at the US for example quite a few of their skating athletes come from warm climates. The best American Ice Hockey player is from Arizona, they've had Olympic gold medalists in speed skating come out of Florida, figure skaters come from all over, some of the best slopestyle athletes in the world grew up skiing on plastic "snow"... It's more of a cultural (if ice hockey was as popular in Brazil as it is in warm weather places like Arizona, Texas and Florida then Brazil would eventually build the infrastructure for it and good players would naturally emerge) and resource problem than a "Brazil can't ever be competitive in winter sports because of the climate" problem. Alternatively get more Canadians to immigrate to Brazil, we'll build ice rinks. I suspect the Curling club in Dallas, Texas (where I live - not exactly a cold climate) has the highest concentration of Canadians in the metroplex, with the exception of the Canadian consulate. There's also a very healthy recreational ice hockey scene here, even though it's over 40C in summer more often than not and it barely ever freezes, all as a result of a professional team setting up shop here.

The commentators mentioned it might have been the best men's half pipe contest ever, and I don't think they are wrong. Any of the top four would have won just about any half pipe competition ever held with their runs. The women's contest was also ridiculous, something like five women landed a 1080 which is unprecedented. It seems like every Olympic year there is a big step up.

They had two top-20 teams last season.