Werloc

Probably last update from the Lithuanian championships as it's unlikely that anything crazy is going to happen. Greta Karinauskaitė broke the Lithuanian U23 record in the 3000m Steeplechase with 9:50.26, you're likely to see her in the European Championships, she was also very close to qualify to the World Championships as well. 400m had two good news today: Tomas Keršulis won the race with 46.45, this will probably be enough to qualify him to the European Championships through the ranking system, whilst Lukas Sutkus came second with 47.57, qualifying to the World U20. 0.26s off of the Lithuanian U20 record, which might still be broken this season.

Updates from the Lithuanian championships Rugilė Miklyčiūtė (2005) goes above and beyond. She broke the Lithuanian pole vault NR a week ago and today she smashed it! 3.60 XXO 3.75 O 3.95 O 4.00 O 4.10 XO And then she stopped jumping. First ever Lithuanian woman to jump 4 metres, becomes the third best European U18 vaulter this season, qualifies for World U20 championships. Another very respectable result came from Jogailė Petrokaitė with a clean 6.76 jump. That's her PB and she's having a season of her life. Might be enough for ranking points to get quotas in both the World and European championships. We'll know next week.

Lithuanian athletics championships opened today with the Discus Throw 1. Mykolas Alekna - 69.00 PB, remains the 5th best thrower even with the PB, really shows the quality of throwing this season. 2. Andrius Gudžius - 65.21, really couldn't handle the pressure today, only two valid throws. 3. Aleksas Abromavičius - 59.93 4. Martynas Alekna - 59.70

Weird, I remember always hating the fact that the Olympic Games don't count towards the World Cup total score. Since we're not a medal winning nation, the World Championships are going to be reduced to funding games for us, which is sad, because we usually got quite a few world cup points since we were timing our form for the championships every year. Now, those rare top 20s won't feel that much special without any points behind them.

You can think whatever you want, this is one of those rare cases where it is quite evident, if you know some very undelightful details, that she used this ban as a form of escape. You have absolutely no idea what she lived through, the fact that she came back like this is astonishing. She was one of the most tested Lithuanian athletes from 2012 to 2018, instigating that she used doping when her results got bad and after she already won it all is pretty stupid. Is it good that she purposefully missed her doping tests? No. But she was done, she thought she would never swim competitively again and she used the safety net of the ban so that she wouldn't have to make that choice herself and that the federation & media would stop pestering her about the upcoming 2020 Olympics. You don't know what it was like for Meilutytė when she stopped winning gold and immediately the journalists and many many sports fans turned on her, made fun of her body, harrassed her and all that.

Meilutytė was retired, she started swimming again this winter, she participated in two 25m course local competitions, Lithuanian 50m course championships and one swimming meet in Stockholm. These World Championships are only her 5th appearance in a swimming competition since coming back.

Can't put into words how absolutely insane and unprecedented this comeback is. She told everyone to not expect anything of her and that she is only swimming for herself now. She is not pushing herself too hard for results and she's only been training for half a year after a three year hiatus. She is no longer dealing with the bullshit of journalists that were one of the primary reasons she fell into depression and decided not to pursue professional sports. And now she is back, with a bronze medal at the World Championships, only 0.09s away from the gold. We don't know how long we'll have her, she might even say that she quits swimming again tomorrow, but as long as she's in the sport, I'm going to continue to support her, because she is capable of so many great things and is an absolute fighter. I'm hoping she'll go for Paris OG, but I definitely understand if she decides not to. I'm just happy that she gave us the comeback that many of us Lithuanian fans were secretly hoping for, especially when the rumours started flying that she's swimming in Kaunas again. What a star.

Yesterday and today, we've held the Lithuanian u18 championship. 4 additional athletes qualified to the u18 ECH and we should have a team of probably 20 athletes there. The highlight of the competition was Rugilė Miklyčiūtė breaking the Lithuanian NR in Pole Vault that was standing since 2012. The new NR is 3.92 and it's the fifth best performance in the European U18 field so far. Rugilė is also the very first Lithuanian pole vaulter to ever qualify for an athletics championship in any age group, we were always hilariously bad in this event, especially in the women's field.

Oh please, bring Madona into the circuit, we've held over 10 national championships and other events there since we didn't have our own functional course up until this last season. Though home advantage is unlikely to help our young "talent"

Congratulations, you just cursed everyone. They'll find a way to round it down to 10000 now Can't wait for Squid Game to become an Olympic sport in 2032

Woah, Modesta Justė Morauskaitė just broke the Lithuanian NR for 400m by half a second at a meet in Spain. The new record is now 50.49, which was also good enough to qualify her for the World Championships. It is also the second best time in the World this season and the best European time this season, placing her as a possible contender in the fight for the ECH medals. Often plagued with micro injuries and such, she smashed her 2019 outdoor PB by nearly 2 seconds and more than a second off of her indoor PB that she ran this winter.

First, every single one of our canoeing specialists had to change their discipline, European and World Champions had to forget about sprints and learn longer distances, jump into different boats, never having canoed in doubles or fours. Then, this whole modern-pentathlon shake up in which we have a long and successful history. It feels like this is a master plan to sabotage Lithuania, with many of our strategic sports under fire. I don't care about making Olympics more hip with the youth, I was young when I fell in love with the Olympics and I don't particularly feel that the event catered to me, because it didn't have to. Rollerskating, skateboarding, wall-climbing, golfing, breakdancing, 13yo gold medalists... it's just ughhh making this a joke for me. Don't blink, they'll find a way to ruin Athletics, Rowing and Swimming for me too.

The conditions with which he threw this 69.39 were appalling and I don't know how much we can look into this result. There was no proper throwing sector there, no net and the grass wasn't cut properly.

Aaaaand it's getting worse...... Polish ESC fans started targeting Ukrainian jury members on social media. Why? BECAUSE THEY FOLLOWED THE RULES OF EUROVISION AND TRIED TO VOTE PROFESSIONALLY I'm so done with this stupidity. Ukraine is fighting a fucking war, ESC fans are becoming more and more insane every year. Death threats to the specialists that were working on Eurovision in Italy, massive cyber-bullying campaign against Switzerland for just fucking singing his heart out. But yeah, TIX got death threats last year as well, only because Keiino didn't win. I'm honestly hurt that such a contest breeds so much toxicity. I got attacked on Twitter for not liking Spain and Serbia this year, people need to separate the fact that disliking a song doesn't equal your country is trash and I hate it.

Another interesting thing that's developing in Lithuanian athletics right now is that there are two sprinters: Adas Dambrauskas (2005) and Danielius Vasiliauskas (2006). Every time that Adas Dambrauskas breaks an age group record, Vasiliauskas breaks that record the following year. Danielius started the season yesterday with a 10.80 and a new Lithuanian 100m u17 record I wonder what time is Dambrauskas going to answer with, because he looked very very good this winter indoors. Both already have qualifying marks in the 100m and 200m in the European U18 Championships.

Not gonna lie, I am actually starting to get worried that Mykolas Alekna is progressing too quickly He sent the discus flying to a huge mark of 68.73 and improved a bunch of Lithuanian and international records yet again. I just hope he doesn't burn out like Meilutytė with such strong results at such a young age.

Yeah, that article, I was reading it and I couldn't believe what I was reading Not to toot our own horn, but I think that the Lithuanian jury lately has been doing a pretty good job. Though I guess yesterday kind of discounts my point a bit, but I remember many years when I was very proud of our voting and it usually aligns fairly well with my music taste.

Well, for starters, EBU should really REALLY crack down on some of these juries. Hire some statisticians, look if there are any common trends in voting every year. Crack down on those countries that keep inviting the same jurors every year. More younger faces, less old faces, could possibly lessen the amount of neighbour point trades. Diaspora and viewers are not really things that you can control, but the amount of shit that juries get away with is just fucked.

Yeah, the clothes shortage of 2022 really hit a lot of the entrants this year. Most countries were able to dress their main vocalist, but the dancers, oh god the dancers. So many shirtless men on stage. Is this the equality that we strived for??? Men can no longer afford a shirt and many were even shopping in the women's section.

Well, it worked for the Belgian boy with "Dirty Diana", so I can't blame you for trying.

If anybody wants to know anything more about the "Macedonian budget award", well, all I can say is that Macedonia doesn't need to do anything, they just get it by default every year by doing nothing. But sometimes other European countries want a taste of that sweet sweet Macedonian ESC budget. If you need another example of a "Macedonian budget award" look no further than our very own Jurijus with a black T-shirt and jeans from probably Zara back in 2019. Ooh look, pretty shiny golden lights in between the close-ups.

Just rewatched Franka out of curiosity and holy shit did they leave her out there to die with no choreography and no scenography. She had great live vocals, but this is what I call the "Macedonian budget award"

Yeah, the whole let's get inspired by Taylor Swift's "Willow" borrow the melody, the vocals and bring an acoustic guitar on stage didn't work out too good this year. But in any case, you guys qualified to the final in 2018, didn't you? I REFUSE to believe in an alternate reality where people didn't vote for Franka.

Everybody gets only a single vote and you have to vote through the app where your passport gets ID'd to battle diaspora voting and the closer that the country you're voting for is to the country you're voting from, your single vote loses a percentage of validity. Let the absolute chaos shitfest begin

On top of that, I just read an article where the Ukrainian minister of culture apologised and said it was shameful that their jury didn't award any points to their best friends Poland and Lithuania and hopes that they don't take this personally, because the televote showed their actual gratitude with 12 to Poland and 10 to Lithuania. Adding the fact that Cyprus and Greece has this 12 year point exchange, it's weird that six juries get in trouble for voting infringement, but Cyprus and Greece are chilling for a third decade in a row. Geopolitical voting is going to be the death of me... too bad there's like no chance to combat that effectively, because it's impossible to hide nationalities.