Werloc

I believe that I didn't, she's not the kind of person that'd be easy to explain to But me and our entire team are going to her place on Thursday for a dinner party, she's 8 months pregnant right now and wanted to see us again before becoming a mother. It's actually crazy when I think about it, 10 years ago when TISC started I was an absolute nobody in our music industry, now it's only this year's Beatrich and 2017 FOJE that I haven't had the chance to talk to in person. 7 years of performing with Jazzu, 3 years with GJan, chatting with Baumila from time to time, talked to Jauti and The Roop on Thursday and the same evening we randomly met Erica Jennings' niece at a bar. Nobody from my friend group had any idea that the entire Jennings family were secretly living in Lithuania, we only thought it was Erica.

Luckily for me, 33 is my favourite number

Montenegro comeback would probably be among those things that would definitely shock me I remember the exit 9 years ago to this day

We probably won't ever have a contest that was as easy and fun to follow as the one that you've hosted. You having experience in coding pretty much explains that When I hosted, I had barely any time to prepare at all, because I had huge workloads as well as uni at the time, so I literally live-counted every scoreboard after every individual country voted I'm proud that I only made a 1 point mistake during the entire day, which I caught during a break. I had 12 minute windows to copy/paste and count, whilst also updating the top 5 score card regularly, thank goodness Mr. Internet was not breaking down on that faithful day Edit: forgot to mention that in those 12 minute windows I also had to post like 75% of the countries' votes, it was a long day

Unironically, the toughest TISC I ever had to judge in. It's a lot lot simpler when you identify yourself with and love the selection, it also reminded me why I'm more of TAISC guy opposed to a TOISC guy My top 2 were generally very solid songs with barely nothing to fault them with, on an island of their own whilst I had hunger games between positions 3 and 16. One song I really enjoy, but the badly mixed drums are not letting me have a good time. One song has a very engaging melody, but it goes downhill later on. One song has a good chorus, but I wouldn't recall a single note from the verse and I listened to these songs a whole lot. One song is nice, but hard to get hyped to, because it was recorded in a well. One song is fun, but hard to vibe to, because it sounds recorded a hundred years ago. So many little details that would've been avoided in this day and age. Many songs really lacked that technical quality that we're spoiled with what sound engineers can provide today. Sadly, the level of production is very important for me when engaging with music, so this year there's been very many unexpected results in my camp Should be a very interesting contest though and I can't wait to see how the top 5 will look. Seeing as I've never missed a TISC, this time I have a fairly good hunch on who I think will probably win, but I've been wrong many times before Best of luck to everyone and hopefully we don't lose anyone during the voting phase.

Rūta Meilutytė was the biggest "what could have been" story from Lithuanian sports, it's really nice she decided to give it another go. Can't say I really believed she would be close to WR times, but it just shows how much of a 50m expert she was, the 100m is going to remain somewhat a question mark probably.

Meilutytė continues to be in fabulous form, with a 1:03.07 100m Breaststroke win. Less than 1 second off from her shared world record with Atkinson

Lol, so I thought I would do another listen after a while, just to check if everything remains somewhat in place and send my final votes. So, everybody between 3 and 12 switched places with only top 2 staying where they were. Save me

Oh, I'm actually thankful for the history lesson, especially with the nepotism part, it's good to know and remember that such things happened. I'm not extremely familiar with our sport pre-2004 and earlier, so the fact that we had a competitive men's pursuit team is actually news to me, I just always thought it was mostly women like Krupeckaitė, Sereikaitė and some lone men on the side, like Bagdonas, that used to start in track occasionally.

They were practising with Baleišytė as their third, so we would've managed if only Simona was younger :/

The only one in Panevėžys, Cido arena. That's why cycling is mostly cultivated there.

Definitely not planning any medals. Lithuania has strong traditions in track cycling, especially in the women's field. With all of the legends retiring, I'm just glad that we can still be seen and be somewhat competitive from time to time. After Krupeckaitė's retirement, the women's team sprint team fell apart, so it's good to see that our coach (Simona's husband) decided to form a men's team as we didn't have enough competitive women to field a team on the women's side.

Chmm, 13th place for our very rookie Lithuanian men's sprint team is fairly okay. The very first time for Lithuanian men in a team event on a World Championship stage, previously only started in the European Championships once. Lots and lots of work left to be done if they want to contend for the Olympics, but I wouldn't completely write them off just yet.

Second listening done just now, feeling a bit more optimistic with some songs, still want to see the potential if some songs grow over time, but already down to 19 songs only. I think I have my twelve points after today (and it was not from the top 2 that I had after round 1) , but not really sure about anything else

Love your positivity, but truth of the matter is that as @kungshamra71 said, the selection of songs doesn't really align that well with my musical taste this time I'm really hoping that these are growers and going to have my second listening this evening. I've ranked two songs 4/5 in stage 1 and I picked another 22 to listen to again with a ranking of 3/5. I'd say I average like 5-8 songs after the first listen that I'm already confident with that'll get points, this time only two songs are safe for now and not even safe, but probably my 12 and 11 points as well, if nothing drastically changes

So, how is everybody feeling about the songs in this edition? I've ran through all of them once earlier today, and of course waiting for Australia if they select their song. For the first time ever in how many years that we're doing this, I don't have a favourite yet

I don't blame them though, the song was vastly different from the one that won aaaand it was also in Lithuanian, so that already kills like 25% chance of doing well just by not being in English, from a country with a non influential European language. You can get away with French, Italian, Spanish, because that's cultural, but definitely not with Lithuanian

Well, half of the champion I still have a huge discography of Leon Somov & Jazzu to choose from if I ever feel like committing them back into the contest.

LITHUANIAN ENTRY BEATRICH - ABOUT

Don't want to be the one to call out the hosts, but this song is 2019, two years above the songs that are allowed in this years' TISC Open.

I'm loving all of these unexpected comebacks so far.

Not even a single final for team Lithuania, this has to be the most disastrous championship performance for us in decades The only saving grace I guess is that only the men's quadruple sculls and men's single sculls were only boats with hefty experience. Karalienė and Rimkutė, 4th in the European Championships double sculls formed a new quadruple sculls boat and this was their very first race. Stankūnas brothers, 4th in the European Championships as well, underperformed here, but came here from a recent world junior championship win, so perhaps they didn't peak here. First competitive season for the men's four and the first competitive season for the newly formed men's double sculls, but I expected more after they took bronze in ECH. Feels like all of this setup is for the Olympic qualification, but it's still rather depressing to go out this way with like 4-5 B finals.

Oh wow, our team is absolutely falling apart... Three boats left in contention, but we already lost our 2022 European bronze medalists in double sculls and Olympic medalist Griškonis imploded as well. And it wasn't even close, both boats were uncharacteristically behind their competition.

@Pabloffo is online. Here's to hoping for a long awaited return of Chile to the contest

I was so confused when I didn't see all of the sports listed, since it was mostly how I navigated this forum, but I was glad to see it still under /forums. Since these categories, threads and discussions are what Totallympics is all about, I would at least try to somehow highlight the forums tab or have an additional way on the home page to access them Right now it feels like the news take priority over the discussions, since they're easier to access and larger on the screen. It helped me that I knew what I was looking for, but I wonder how it is from a new user experience stand point. To make news more accessible, you don't need to hide them under the >discover tab.