Werloc

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.

I felt literal pain when Vaidotas from the Roop just shuffled through all of the dance moves just to look relevant. I'm honestly getting annoyed by how much they're milking every opportunity. When they released their first post-Eurovision single, they wrote (Eurovision 2022) in parentheses to bait every one that they're participating again, every media outlet was writing about it and when they got their views and trending nr. 1, they just said lol, no we're not participating and changed the title. Also, they got to perform three songs in our national final. After that they released a song where they had green screen costumes on in which they showed Ukrainian people suffering, singing about love just to be relatable to get to trending nr. 1 Then they released their next song one week before Eurovision, again, to milk the time period, because they don't get enough attention any other way, went to multiple Eurovision pre-parties, went to Italy as ambassadors where they were mingling everywhere and trying to overshadow Monika Liu at every step. And of course, he even got to present the votes. Hopefully they won't be able to milk Eurovision for the fourth year in a row, because it's getting ridiculous.

Yeah, you basically just need to hope that they have natural charisma and can be funny unscripted. But still, nothing is ever worse than vote presenters trying to be funny. Only time it worked was JAJA DINGDONG, but still it got ran into the ground.

Petra Mede and Mans Zelmerlow showed us what peak presenting is and it's only been downhill from there

Here to share a couple of thoughts on yesterday's final. Italy were my nr. 1 favourites coming into the competition. Never in my wildest dreams could I ever imagine that they would deliver the very worst vocal performance of the entire evening. They were so off-key, it was very painful to watch and to listen. Mahmood butchered every single chorus like it was a piece of cake. Other countries that struggled with vocals a fair bit were: and I don't know if I can put Serbia in here, because that song was like half-talking and I don't even understand what that performance even was, so I'll avoid this topic. My personal top 5 of the night: and special thanks go to Sidenote: did not expect Lithuania to grow on me Am I okay with Ukraine winning? Looking at the statistics, if all those points didn't go to Ukraine, then the winner would've been Spain, so I'll be okay with Ukraine for today Anyways, pretty good average quality of Eurovision this year, there are songs that I don't like, but not that many where I could say that I utterly hate them. Lesson of the day: don't plan huge tours right up to your Eurovision marathon, because you'll end up like Italy (I was surprised there were so many positive comments, because you can literally hear that every single Brividi from Mahmood was a semi-tone if not more lower every time that the backing track joined back in, not to even mention all the other parts that were a semi-tone off)

Nah, I have this feeling that if Ukraine win, then the UK and Germany would just battle it out for hosting rights as they would do in the case of Australia ever winning.