NearPup

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.

Richard Adjei won a silver in bobsleigh in 2010. Probably the only American Football player to ever be on the German bobsleigh team? Their program has gone way way downhill. Doesn't help that they don't have a home track (not sure if Cessana or Cortina are still used?) anymore. I love Simone as a driver but his body just isn't allowing him to be competitive anymore. I was not expecting de Bruin to make it, especially not after all the mistakes she made in the first run and her shaky start to the second run. Made the Olympics by literally 0.16 seconds. She's very lucky to qualify (she only goes to Pyeongchang because Reinbolt wasn't allowed to race last week after crashing four times in training) but I'm still really happy for her, she's had a great season. Sad about the Romanian team, they deserve to go to the Olympics, but the Jamaicans have a strong team and it's exciting to see them qualify. Also, spare a thought for South Korea. They had a very strong bobsleigh program over much of the last quad, but they only qualified in two man as the host. What the heck happened?

Will Dunton, who finished second at trials in the 500m but was not selected, is challenging Speed Skating Canada selection criteria in court. He was left off the team because he was 18th on the special Olympic time ranking and could not beat the 16th time at trials. He argues that since two of the athletes agead of him are Russians with past dopping violations, who are presumably not eligible for the Olympics, he should actually be considered as being 16th in the time ranking, and thus eligible. If he wins it would probably mean I’m not quite sure how it would mess up with the selection matrix, but since Camada already has 10 male skaters and 3 in the men’s 500m someone would be left home.

Does your dislike of Bergsma extend to Heather? xD

If the Olympics where in Salt Lake City or Calgary I think Bloemen wins two gold medals. But as you said, he has never had super impressive performances at sea level.

Canadian team: WOMEN Ivanie Blondin, 1500m, 3000m, 5000m, mass start, team pursuit Kali Christ, 1500m, team pursuit Marsha Hudey, 500m Kaylin Irvine, 1000m Heather McLean, 500m, 1000m Josie Morrison, 1500m, team pursuit Keri Morrison, mass start, team pursuit Brianne Tutt, 1500m, 3000m Isabelle Weidemann, 3000m, 5000m, team pursuit (not sure why five women are in the team pursuit pool) MEN Jordan Belchos, 10,000m, team pursuit Ted-Jan Bloemen, 5000m, 10,000m, team pursuit Alex Boisvert-Lacroix, 500m Vincent De Haître, 1000m, 1500m, team pursuit Ben Donnelly, 1500m, team pursuit Laurent Dubreuil, 500m, 1000m Olivier Jean, mass start Gilmore Junio, 500m Denny Morrison, 1500m, team pursuit Alexandre St-Jean, 1000m

I don’t get why Gracenote is so bulish on Ilka Štuhec winning gold...

Ski Jumping actually doesn’t relly on snow. You can practice it just fine on a dry slope.