Grassmarket

Running late today because they underestimated the time the practice rounds would take. This never happened when Walter Hofer was in charge, one event after his retirement & it’s already a disaster.

Definitely have seen it used for CC, though. Teams like to train there because there are lots of different tracks, which you don’t get on every course.

Yes! Very tight game, but really big performances from all four. It’s a 50% new team, so really exceeding expectations.

So close for , extra end!

Anna unleashes the Hammer of Thor, scores 5 in the 9th end! Russians collapse in tears, slink away.

DQF, off to the Gulag!

Actually it was exactly my thought as well.

In your face, Tonga!

Well, China will be doing every kind of Winter Sport for the next three years. They have set up a massive James Bond-style underground secret bunker to teach women’s ice hockey to elite army units.

I also seem to remember that it used to be scheduled one week earlier, but there have been cancellations recently, so perhaps this is why. I also have the impression there is a generally lot more early snow in Europe this last three or four years. When I first started following all winter sports about 15 years ago there were a lot more early cancellations. Or races having to be held in the same venue two or even three weeks in a row because of lack of snow. Now, cancellations are more often due to blizzards, avalanche risks or too much unpressed snow.

Luge World Cup I from Innsbruck, Austria starts today. As usual in Luge, today's B-level non-televised Nations’ Cup races serve as the qualifiers for the World Cup at the weekend. FIL has great online streaming coverage of all the World Cup races - full commentary with expert analysis from one of the competitors - Ice Skating should be doing the same. https://video.fil-luge.org/index.html

Just don’t look at any pictures.

Actually this is wrong, although it was published on the WCF website. Must have misunderstood. Semis are v v To be played tomorrow morning, with the 2 bronze medal games in the evening & the Gold game on Saturday afternoon.

It would be like Women’s Ski Jumping. The first televised World Championships was just dreadful, with only about 4-5 able to do it properly. Took about 6 years to develop.

Freakishly, the Women’s semis are already decided with a game to go. v v Afternoon session on Friday.

No, it’s not quite automatic. Obviously there is the relay which requires a manual reload, but even in magazine shooting you quite often get mis-loads, or failure to eject empties; a result of poor technique which is rightly punished by a time penalty. As I say in the lead shot days in MP you used to see even big names take up to 60 secs to get their 5 targets which obviously produced bigger result swings. But now even a really bad shoot is only about 30 secs.

Thought so: good news for the hotels, not so good for the athletes.

I know it’s possible, but I think Pentathlon lost a bit of excitement since it went to laser. First - no sound no drama! OK, trivial, but more importantly, reloading manually is itself a mini-discipline which is lost with laser shooting. I can think of biathlon races which have been won & lost by fumbled reloads by frozen fingers, and even in MP I can remember some real meltdowns in the air pistol days.

This weekend’s Freeski Slopestyle event in Stubai, Austria has been cancelled. Can’t see an announced reason, but hoping it’s stormy weather rather than no snow., there seems to be plenty snow all around elsewhere.

Snow conditions looking good for all the pre-Christmas World Cup events. https://www.fis-ski.com/en/cross-country/cross-country-news-multimedia/news/2019-20/let-the-snow-begin-oc-s-ready-to-welcome-the-fis-cross-country-family

It doesn’t get used very often for Worlds in CC or Biathlon We sometimes see it when there is no snow elsewhere, or when other courses are rebuilding.

Fake news! There is no way there are seven hills in the whole of the Netherlands, let alone one town!

Very impressed with Japan, their games at the Olympics will be must-watch.

Judging by the decorations on her rifle, Marketa Davidova is seemingly sponsored by My Little Pony this year.

Somebody has very kindly put today's biathlon from Sjusoen on YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg82-Pr2eTGe9Ff_WvfUarA OK, it is all in norsk. but you'll soon figure it out! Just pretend you have a cold.