Grassmarket

Yay Jess! That was hard work!

Stoch looking good for the three-peat.

Disaster for Granerud, good round for Poland.

Lordy, big shock in the relay as beat up on Bavarian ice!

He has been re-instated on appeal, but with a time penalty that puts him alongside Thailand & Australia.

What was funny was that the English-language ES commentators had just been talking about how the Russian skiers always worked well as a team, unlike the Norwegians etc who were always competing against each other.

In Flanders Engliish-language TV shows are always shown subtitled: in Wallonia they are always shown dubbed. As a result far more Flemish people are fluent in English.

Well, all the on-track incidents would be no more than a routine yellow card. It was his actions after the finish that got him a straight DSQ.

Yeah, but it is all the same English words! I read an article about baseball in Montreal, which is obviously a French-speaking city, and very touchy about it. When MLB started there in the 70s, the French-language commentators were give specially-prepared-by-University-Professors French equivalents for all the English baseball terms. After about a week they just ripped them up & threw them away, because it was just easier to use the English terms.

Ха ха ха! Three Russians take each other out! Cologna profits with second. Don’t quite come to blows, but certainly some ругань.

When I worked at the University, I noticed that International students would often speak English to each other when discussing particular subject. So Indian students would be chatting in Hindi, but when they started talking about cricket, or business, or economics or whatever subject they were studying, they would switch to English. Presumably because the vocabulary of these subjects just did not exist in the native language.

Plus lots more sand.

Yeah, the Russians are always capable of great shooting. I remember years back the women’s relay team shot what was then & probably is still a WR record 41/40 in a relay & then a couple of weeks later, at the next relay, the men did the same. But then ....

Just catching up with the Russian Champs from last week - she is there, representing Khanty-Mansiysk. Will let you know how she gets on in the 15k Individual. 5th after the first shoot - 0 @ 20 secs. Hmm, on-screen graphics following no known logic here. Darya is 0 1 though. Does not help that the commentator seems to think her duty is to imitate a platform announcer at a railway station. Oh dear, dear, not going well - 11th at over two minutes down after 3 shoots - 0 1 1 . Not getting any better - ski speed is there but 0 1 1 2 for 16th & 3:59 back after 4 shoots tells its own story. So at the final - 15th overall. . Will respect spoilers for the winner obvs. Will bring you up-to-date with the sprints when I watch them, probably about late March. Just imagine I am live-commentating from somewhere in interstellar space.

Hill Record for Kubacki!

Another landmark goes. How many hours of my life did I spend installing & updating Adobe Flash for a 40 PC Computer Lab..... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-55497353

Good to see & back in the Nations’ Cup result sheets this morning - obviously with no WC points yet they have to start alongside the Brits, Bosnians & Brazilians.

Swedish women are back, so no more wins for & .

Wrong number! Should be 666.

Yet will not benefit from the restructuring of the competition tomorrow.

Which Champs are you talking about? Belgrade 2022 Indoors - 19-20 March Oregon 2022 Outdoors - 15-25 July.

All these Russian Championship races from Izhevsk are now on the Russian Biathlon Channel on YouTube, so plenty to keep us going until the real thing comes back. https://www.youtube.com/user/russianbiathlon

First slalom win since dinosaurs ruled the Earth!

Quick, change the gate!

Well, all the Poles are rubbish so far, so I hope they are apologizing.