Werloc

Hogberg on an official team Sweden list??? This has to be fake news.

I'm probably not watching enough sports, because no one comes to mind.

don't break my heart, I just want Makarainen back

I can attest to that. The only thing besides a victory in basketball that Lithuanians cared about was Meilutytė's Olympic gold. After that we started building swimming pools in every city, our national broadcaster actually started showing Swimming championships, the funding bumped them up into immediate second place that year after basketball of course. Danas Rapšys is becoming popular, but definitely not at the height that Meilutytė was. Laura Asadauskaitė is probably one of the best if not the best modern pentathlete among women, but not many Lithuanians ever cared about any of her victories and literally took out their pitchforks and started hating her when she asked if she could use her OWN MONEY to upgrade from the car that she got for Olympic gold to a larger car in which she could seat her children.

Imagine having the priviledge of cheering for athletes. We have to cheer for everyone who's starting. Even the doped up athletes get quickly forgotten if they start performing well again.

I just always wonder what is the feeling of being from USA and watching stuff like Athletics or Swimming, where you probably win something like 10 gold medals. How do you even remain excited with all of those victories, when a single bronze for Lithuania literally drives the whole country insane for a year.

Well, Leščinskaitė even through her years of depression and even during a mononucleosis season managed to hold her own and not be beaten at IBU cup. I've been told that this was the first year since 2016 that she could train as much as the rest of team A without health issues restricting her. So perhaps we're going to see a different Gabrielė this year. Edit: she was even told to quit for a year, but couldn't since we needed to field mixed relays.

The Biathlon world is so condensed, it's like a small village in which you live for half a year with a dating pool so small, you wouldn't be surprised that everyone screwed around with each other at one point or another

Excuse me, Ana Jesipionok and Raminta Dindaitė

I know you did, because Lithuanian names came up in your analysis

It's probably a larger nation syndrome. I'm happy when there's new countries joining the sport, but I can't say that I ever openly cheered for those smaller nations when I sometimes feel like a smaller nation myself with our juniors racing for 80th place

which married man or woman did Dorothea date?

Throughout the years of watching biathlon I usually had a rule of supporting the Swedish, Finnish, Italian, Austrian and German teams, that's why Ekholm, Makarainen, Henkel, Neuner, Gossner, Zidek, Sumann, Peiffer, Birnbacher, Doll, Eder, Ferry, Oberhofer (and I could go on with this list forever) are just some of the favourites of mine. Recently, I started enjoying the personalities from some of the Norwegians, Tiril Eckhoff and the Boe brothers take control of the press conferences with their charisma, though I like Tarjei more than Johannes. Harder to cheer for Finland, because I have only Eder now and I guess Seppala is coming up, but it was hard to support Finnish men, since they almost took 4 WC spots from the Lithuanian men After that I even started noticing that the German women are not as charismatic and interesting as they used to be, so it's more likely that I'm rooting for German men. Supporting Italy became a bit tougher when I started liking Wierer less and less, but at least I still have Lukas Hofer, Sanfilippo is cool too. Oeberg sisters, Persson, Brorsson and Hogberg are cool, if Stina Nilsson joins in on that action, more of a reason to support Sweden so ignoring the Lithuanians if I had to compile a top 10 of athletes that I currently like most, in no particular order: Benedikt Doll, Simon Schempp, Lukas Hofer, Tarjei Boe, Hanna Oeberg, Mari Eder, Arnd Peiffer, Mona Brorsson, Katharina Innerhofer and Maren Hammerschmidt. Hard to get attached to the IBU cup athletes, because they get close to zero coverage, so you don't really know them until they come up to the World Cup, unless you have insider info. But my insider info is limited to WC mostly :/

Yes, I know that Baiba is not the biggest one at fault, though there is absolutely no denying she knew he was married. Even after this whole drama she usually eats at the Lithuanian team's table But I imagine that Diana is not very fond of Baiba, so I'm being that distant supportive "friend", because I understand where she's coming from. It probably really sucks and fucks with your head when your husband that is ten years older than you starts dating a woman that's ten years younger than you, working in the same place as you and chatting it up with all of your team members

Well, probably told this story here before, but she might seem nice to you and I don't mind it, but One of the reasons why Diana Rasimovičiūtė kept coming back to biathlon year after year is because her then husband Ilmars Bricis was known as a ladies' man and since he was still actively coaching the Lithuanian team, he would have been on the other side of Europe, whilst Diana would've been stuck back home. She didn't trust Ilmars by himself and probably for a good reason, because Ilmars started fucking around with Bendika whilst still married to Diana. So yeah, it's not like I wish sickness on anyone, but if someone were to skip the first few stages of the World Cup, Baiba would be on the top of my list, since Rasimovičiūtė is a major reason why I became a biathlon fan.

I'm sad for Tomas, he's been chasing for a redemption season year after year, but things are just not going his way. Have my reasons to dislike Bendika though

And just as I wrote it, yep Tomas Kaukėnas has covid. It's projected that he'll probably come back in Hochfilzen, but if his tests show negative next week, he could be allowed back in the second stage of Kontiolahti. Baiba Bendika probably with the same situation, so she is going to be late to the Olympic Qualification train.

For Lithuania it's going to be: MEN: Vytautas Strolia, Karol Dombrovski, Linas Banys, Maksim Fomin WOMEN: Natalija Kočergina, Gabrielė Leščinskaitė There's a chance that Tomas Kaukėnas might have caught the virus, but if he hasn't, then he'll replace Fomin. Kaukėnas has decided to return to his old coach Ilmars Bricis and he is training with a couple of other Latvians as well as Baiba Bendika, whom are all at risk of missing out Kontiolahti. Rastorgujevs is not from that training group as far as I know.

How will he ever come back from this?

Yup, that's I thought would happen although Latvia, Vietnam and Switzerland are below three participations, so it's a bit easier to have a good record. The huge surprise for me is that Germany is so high up and @Vektor really pulled through for Hungary there is the newest contest already added to this?

I usually am fairly patient when it comes to TISC, but I'm really feeling a compulsive need to rank something and I wouldn't mind if we had the songs for next TISC right now I know it's impossible and it might come from the fact that I don't have much to do these days.

His preferences look pretty good to me

How do you feel about @Olympian1010 not sharing your absolute love and devotion for Bulgaria?

Sees how many silvers Netherlands has: pretty accurate Cool that Lithuania is so high up, but makes you wonder if that's mostly because of our perfect attendance.

Yeah, I was browsing the TISC history thread and thought about it. It's clear that Lithuania was only gunning for the winning positions once in these 15 contests. There's a 7th place, three times 8th place and a 10th place for the top finishes of Lithuania. We've never broken a top 5 since our winning entry. Would love to make this achievement before the 20th TISC