Werloc

I AM SO EXTREMELY HAPPY FOR SWEDEN I've been waiting for this since Zidek and Ekholm

Gabrielė Leščinskaitė made it in under 125, so we'll have a relay in Rupholding

Well, today Gabrielė Leščinskaitė found additional 48seconds on Kaisheva, so it's a major improvement from yesterday. Although, very sad for those 2 misses in the stand, as one less and she would have went into points and secured the qualification and Rupholding relay as well. Now it's all on the individual in Arber.

Add a +1.3 from Uslugina

What a shame for those two misses from Leščinskaitė I think the qualification points slipped past her yet again.

I could film myself watching darts for one minute, perhaps it would become more believable

I just really don't find darts at all entertaining. It feels like watching bowling or pool to me.

Nope, I was actually watching Eurovision instead

No, I would sadly have to pick up a rifle myself and then train for years, because unlike biathlon, my targets would be moving

They wouldn't dare If they'd ever dare to dare, they'd better look out, because that's my favourite race and I don't know what I'd do if they touched it

Yup, that happened. With our team picking Gabrielė Leščinskaitė for Annecy, she lost her qualification there and Lithuania won't have a women's relay for two stages, unless she successfully pulls off an under 125 in tomorrow's sprint, so she'll be brought in for Rupholding.

He's pretty stoppable this year, Johannes is still on fire on the skis

Damn, this Fourcade, Svendsen and Tarjei Boe battle feels like 4-5 years ago all over again

Welp, Simon didn't stay in IBU cup for long. Gjesbakk with another very solid performance from Norway and should be back in the team unless they're guarding Bjoerndalen.

I remember days where you could skip school, because it was too cold. Nowadays, I don't remember coming close to -20

Yes, this year the Olympic qualification for biathlon is not the best, but the World cup level biathlon system is pretty amazing as new countries are putting in efforts to start building teams. Heck, the IBU cup consistently brings in 100+ athletes in men's/women's races from countries like Mongolia, Brazil, Argentina, Hungary, Moldova, Denmark building a team, Turkey, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Australia, Chile, Macedonia, Greece, Spain and let's not forget the junior cup with 100+ athletes as well where these countries are starting to send in their youngsters and they get valuable racing experiences in the snow. IBU cup had 30 single mix and 26 mixed relays and there's not a single winter sport that could come close to that at the moment.

True that. We in Lithuania are really trying hard to be involved, even though we don't have the winters anymore. During December, there were only a couple of days when the temperature fell below 0 and January ain't looking promising either, since we've only had one day of snow this month accompanied by some rain on other days. Even though we're failing at cross-country skiing, trying to rebuild our figure skating, pretending that we are alpine skiing and forming teams in curling, it's nice to see that we're still involved even if it's very poorly funded. Short Track Speed Skating was on the rise, but after multiple injuries, our skater failed to qualify to OG, but there are a good amount of youngsters with pretty decent results that are training and might be ready to challenge in four years time. What I am impressed the most about is our biathlon. How we went from having 1 woman starter like 7 years ago, to 1+1 woman/man starter 6 years ago, to 3+3 and relays nowadays. It shows how well we embraced the system. Unfortunately, the future does not seem bright as our youngsters are still very young and inexperienced and there might not be anything left of the women's team after this Olympic season, because most of the team is already near at the age of retirement + years of disappointing results and unluckily the middle of the pyramid fell apart as from the five girls that we've had (whom would be capable to qualify to WC by now) there's only Gabrielė Leščinskaitė left, one went to cc skiing and 3 left the sport. It would be miserably sad to abandon so many years of work as our other two girls are not yet strong enough for WC qualifications. (Long rant )

Time to fund the search for an active bilingual Chinese user.

Lithuania sending 5 athletes: The regulars Rokas Suslavičius, Deivid Demkov and Gabrielė Leščinskaitė Then they're sending Ana Jesipionok as well, which makes me think that Dindaitė is sick, because they drive around these two girls everywhere together And lastly, Romanov is brought in from the junior team as I suspect that Linas Banys might be sick as well, since there's no other reason to keep him out of this race unless he's secretly starting in the relay instead of Suslavičius

One of the problems with cross-country skiing is that they're not showing any effort to draw in more nations in the game. That's where IBU has them beat by a huge margin. For example, no quota limitations with endless starters from Scandinavian countries and friends, the score system that only rewards the 30 best, no league similar to the IBU cup that deprives most athletes from the necessary experience needed to make a transition to the World Cup where they usually finish in the bottom 10 if they actually ever make it there. And it's not as exciting anymore to see 5-6 Norwegians in the top 10 of every race, with some Swedes and Finns in between. I think what cross-country skiing still has going for them are the sprint races and the 50k.

OMG, the lists are back!!!! 2018 off to a great start, I wonder which country will win Thanks @Dragon for your efforts.

Well, their dad is a marketing genious

Two 16 and 19 y.o. American boys from California (coming to live in a place that has 5000~ citizens) that are a pretty big deal as their brother is in The Lakers and the 16yo might get drafted in NBA. Also, in the United States they are called The Kardashians of Basketball, so hope that helps paint a picture

Welp, Lithuania is turned upside down with the arrival of the Ball family to Prienai a couple of days ago. They've brought their entire filming crew to continue their reality show and their family tagged along as well. There's 6-7 different articles on our sports website every day, a huge outlash of many different media outlets all over Youtube and the Internet. The ESPN coverage uploads 4-ish videos a day on the Ball family in Lithuania. ESPN basically flew over a guy to live in a 5 star resort simply to follow around the family whilst they are there. Everybody is discussing it here, whilst I'm cringing at our older generation's broken English in every interview and the fact that Prienai even in Lithuanian terms is a village.

Well, it's not like Guigonnat or Jacquelin built strong cases for themselves in this race either. The selection process is still pretty much wide open. As for the Czechs, it seems that this slow start to the season was all a rouse and it looks like they're ready to cause some trouble now.