Werloc

As @dcro already mentioned, one of the biggest factors of laser shooting in biathlon is the fact that the wind would not affect the beam. More technical shooters and athletes that read the wind conditions well would be punished with this change. There would no longer be fun in Oberhof and things like the Belgian relay being in first place after two exchanges would rarely happen. The coaches that enthusiastically run with boards to show where the shots have landed would run with less enthusiasm. Gontier would go up higher than 40% accuracy in the relays and a lot of other narratives would be lost.

Sidenote, this whole Biathlon Manager Game would probably offer a lot more diversity if the teams would consist of 1 athlete from 1-6 nation cup pool, 1 athlete from 6-11, 1 athlete for 11-16, 17-21, 21 and upwards. This would prioritise some reseach on smaller nations for your pick. Granting 6 athletes from the Top 10 doesn't leave much to the imagination and I see a lot of similar teams going into this as JTB/Fourcade is probably a must for every team and the biggest diversity point is going to be Vittozzi over Wierer, because you can't have both. Edit: sorry, I'm not good at reading today, 3 athletes in total, not 3 men and 3 women.

I'm a pretty lazy fella when it comes to stuff like this hence, why the Biathlon World Championship prediction contest is the only one I enter at all during the year, gave up on Athletics, Swimming, Nordic champs, Basketball and Football during the years

Don't mind me. I don't know where I got that 24th from

Only five days left. This year flew by really fast.

Seeing Strolia and Dombrovski at 6th and 11th in the B group seemed like pretty good news. I fully expected a middle of the pack performance even amongst weaker athletes. Pursuits are contestable probably.

Vytautas Strolia 36th in the Norwegian championship. Hard to say if it's a promising result, 32nd course time among some really good athletes and also beat Guiggonat, Windisch, Hofer and Moravec in the standings, so perhaps he won't be a pushover in Ostersund. Our junior Linas Banys in 61st looks in a much better shape than last year, especially since he demolished Karol from the A team whom finished 84th. Other than that, Fomin finished 89th whilst Romanov, Jakeliūnas and Mačkinė ended in 126th, 127th and 129th, watch out IBU cup, we're coming and we're ready. Not too eager to discuss the girls when Leščinskaitė manages to be +3.35.4 behind Vittozzi with a 0+1 shooting score.

Lithuanian swimmer Smiltė Plytnykaitė is breaking all of the u13 records that Meilutytė had set. Perhaps someone to watch out for the future? 1:12.28 in 100m Breaststroke (25m pool) from the 1:13.65 that belonged to Rūta. She also holds the records for 50m breaststroke and the 100m medley as well. Interesting to see where all of it will go in a couple of years.

Yup, time runs fast. We've already had 13 TISCS if I'm not mistaken and I've spent a third of my life at Totallympics since I joined before I was even 18 There was once a Totallympics without TISC. Dark times. Dark times indeed.

The page used to load more than 200 Youtube thumbnails at once, which had led to freezes and restarts, so I got what I needed out of that history once and never looked back since If I am not mistaken, it's a bit more computer friendly nowadays.

Ah, that famous list that broke my computer down two times at least

With Netherlands hosting 1 or 2 upcoming contests, Denmark already hosting twice and Lithuania hosting as well in the past, one might see why The Committee had to part ways with an Italian jury that's refusing hosting rights. Idealistic differences.

We were not kicked out, we decided to leave ourselves by giving a strategic 13th place to the winning Irish song. Other than that, our perfect run is still on. Coincidence? I think not.

Excuse me?

Who would want to make such an official and important decision on a weekend? The Committee working hours are on work days.

Yup, that's the one. I remember that I really liked it and decided to read your lyrical translation and was like I never thought this sweet song could say anything like this

Well, technically you'd probably appreciate the OPEN contest song that I have in mind right now.

Well, sadly, I don't see anything changing for Team Lithuania this year. There's really no hope with the women and not much hope on the junior side either Kaukėnas is probably going to continue to underperform, Karol is not getting any faster, so hopes go with Strolia, I guess. The male juniors although are showing promise, so perhaps we can keep the men's team afloat.

I feel you. When Lithuania (to my huge surprise) actually won the Open TISC, I had the chance to relinquish my right to host (as Sweden and Germany have done before me). Knowing that I have zero capabilities in web design or design in general, I knew I was not fit for the task, but @OlympicIRL said that everything would be okay and that I would be guided through the design process. That was the sole reason why I decided to do something that I would have never done and it was the single opportunity that I had to host, because I didn't think that Lithuania could win ever again. I never planned to bid for hosting rights, because I thought that it would be ridiculous for me to do so, if I do not have those skills, I would be mocking the talented people that could have done more than me. Although, having won the competition, I felt it as a right of passage and I could not give up the opportunity. The struggle was real. I was not in a good place, when the competition was approaching. My studies were destroying everything around me and left me with little time to take care of myself, let alone sleep. At the same time I was balancing a career that was really sucking the energy out of me that I had left. Still, I managed to pull myself together for the show. I even had a huge fight with my management where I had to postpone the TISC for a week, because the band's manager decided to approve a concert on the day, which I marked as 'unavailable' two months ago, then proceeding to harrass me over the phone and me not being a capable liar, she started making fun of my 'little Internet contest' and not really in the mood to argue more, I asked the opinion of the forum members and they didn't mind me postponing with something like 2-3 days left until the contest had to be held. The day of the contest was somewhat close to Hell. Although, I already knew what to expect as I took up on hosting the draw game created by OlympicIRL to get the feeling of the process better before the big day. Add to that some connection problems as well as the fact that all of the flags in the templates just kept crashing throughout the entire day, I was just really looking forward to all of the breaks for recollecting myself and I don't believe that I actually ate that entire day Not to mention the fact that I was hosting in the dark times, where the host was expected to update the scoretable after every single voting post (add to that more than 50% of the nations did not vote themselves, so you had to post 6 templates in a 12 minute frame). So, having all that on my plate, I knew that preparing the scoring templates would have been a crazy amount of labour and did all of the counting and score adding live. To my dismay, I made one specific error that night, I gave 1 additional point to Algeria that they were not supposed to have and of course got a huge amount of shit for stealing points from the country when I actually fixed the error. Anyways, even after all that, I was glad that I did it. And I remember @OlympicIRL's congratulatory private message and if my memory doesn't give up me, we had a nice chat about everything after the contest

So, theoretically, I got my first ever points from @dezbee2008

Literally, the forum was breaking down during the day of my hosting, it was not human error that the flags were crashing.

Nah, it was definitely Portuguese with something along the line, get out from your house, you have no life, you hobo, you're missing out on real life and stuff.

Damn @Agger I literally deliberated on all of the same songs with only three exceptions.

I found out that I can vote for any language even if it's just random sounds in my head. What I learned though from Arabic/Hindi entries is that I am nearly always immediately out when I hear that high vocal pitch with 150% vibrato going on for 3 minutes +. I remember one entry from Turkey that I really really loved, it was still the same language, but the woman just sang the song without her sounding like she was being shocked by an electric eel (hey, MGMT )

Oh the inhumanity... With India gubaying off the page, what will Great Britain do now with their twelve points? [ perhaps we'll get @Dolby back next time? ]