Grassmarket

Alimbekava pays the price for an over-enthusiastic start.

Just caught up. Completely brilliant win for Svendsen, at 400m to go everyone else was messing about like cycling track sprinters, so he launched a big attack & held on!

Norwegian meltdown! Nobody can take advantage!

JT Boe meltdown 1 1 4!

Tarjei currently leading the Boe Family Championship.

True enough, Norwegian people think he’s a bit of a maniac because he behaves so un-Norwegianly.

Yeah, but there were athletes who had bad years long before COVID came along.

Ski speed is a bit of a worry though - even though she was fourth out of the final shoot, we just knew that she’d finish behind all the others in that little group.

Oho! Game on! Doro fourth!

TV director Dorothy Weirer, we have seen all her shots.

Gives everyone a little hope....0 1 Hanna Ö on a bad day 1 2

Ledecka goes second, but still over a second down. Goggia’s “Miracle run” from the stadium announcer. Tippler now... I’m learning a lot of German words from this stadium announcer. “Miracle run” “Super nice” - German has become a lot easier since I tried to learn it at school.

Sofia Goggia with a big early statement.

Good to see a decent turn-out - 18 sleds - in the women’s Bob today. It’s been embarrassing to see only 7 or 8 before Christmas. Only the Asians missing now.

Have been watching Winter Sports on Eurosport for over 20 years now, and I don’t remember a week in which every single venue in all sports has had so much natural snow. Usually there is at least one with brown grass, concrete & a thin ribbon of snow or ice.

Sorry mate, it was a joke. Norway’s three biggest exports are oil, gravadlax & cross-country skiiers.

Not often you see Denmark in sliding sports. Or indeed any winter sport at all apart from Curling & people with suspiciously Norwegian-sounding names in Cross-Country. Must have a kind of isolated sub-tropical climate south of the Kattegat.

Crikey, Katie Uhlaender back! Well done her!

Fans of eccentric and slow British sports will be delighted to know that today is the beginning of the World Indoor Bowls Championships 2021. It’s basically curling on a carpet, not like the vulgar, noisy & hard-to-understand-the-scoring American 10-pin bowling. Can also be prescribed to new mothers having trouble getting new-borns to sleep. Sadly, because of COVID, this year it is a World Championships in the same sense that the Baseball World Series is a world series, but still at least four nations are represented, possibly even more if any players from the Channel Islands have qualified. All live on YouTube. No spectators, who generally represent a cross-section of the very highest-risk COVID percentiles. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN9-c2EDRAjclRkUXk1TuBA

Reading the article, may just be a de facto retirement, so not doing the paperwork.

Musgrave & Clugnet have withdrawn - no point in continuing when you are bang out of form. Are heading for World Cup points here? Have checked, in fact he has had points a few times with a PB of 16th. Wow de Fabiani! Aw, lost out on the sprint. PB & NR for Maloney-Westgaard, 9th!

There’s really deep fresh snow: if you don’t get the line right you’re in trouble.

She’s just having a terrible season.

Early lead for Tiril Eckhoff, looking very...relaxed...after her break. And goes 0 0! Hanna Öberg also 0 0, but >20 secs down.

Lindvik has the advantage of being one tooth lighter, of course. Not really enough for Geiger....