OlympicsFan

Cross-country should have less weight -> Longer penalty laps/shorter races in general. I am sure there would be a lot of other options, maybe you could for example make the targets smaller or increase the distance to the targets (not sure how expansive that would be?).

I think back then it was only one of their athletes at best, now you have 2 or 3 on every side. Also no one cared when Berger dominated cross-country but never won any races. One nation dominating is bad for the sport/product. Edit: Also Eckhoff isn’t exactly a sharper shooter but still wins tons of races. I fear that biathlon will turn into a second cross-country.

Absurd skiing time by Eckhoff once again. I hope that IBU will start breaking the Norwegian dominance, sadly I have no hope that they will change anything until their product is dead.

I think you are asking too much ... even for Greis the polish team is a hopeless case. I think if you only care about results and have no problem with doping, you should try to get Pichler.

I think this way it is more fair for the medal contenders, but obviously it is very unfair for the athlete who was 16th for example. The best solution probably would be the following: First run: No changes Second run: Highest bib goes first (no matter how he is ranked after the first run) Obviously this would be very confusing and anticlimatic.

I don’t think Strassers performance had anything to do with bad conditions, he just reversed back to his normal level after 2 or 3 amazing performances. I wonder if he did anything differently when he made those two podiums. Very hard to believe that it was just „luck“. As a fan I take a medal in downhill any day over a medal in slalom. Downhill is just more interesting and more competitive. I hope that Germany will continue doing great in speed events, even if it means doing worse in (giant) slalom.

Incredible results for Austria in alpine skiing and biathlon, I hope for the sake of their athletes that the Austrian fans won’t expect their athletes to repeat those fluke performances at the Olympics. Also every race without a Norwegian gold is good. I can’t deny that it is funny to see Sweden and Austria doing so well with German coaches.

Yes, not a random winner ... He is 18th in the giant slalom World Cup and his results this season were 26th, 8th, 20th, 16th, 17th and 15th.

Once again shows that you can’t really take the results in technical disciplines at world champs seriously, especially outside the top 10. The US had one 19th place as the best result of the season and now they have two in the top 15 ... Germany had a great start, but the last 4 events have been bad, Schmid threw away a 5th medal for Germany. I guess Strasser got back to his normal level, would be interesting to know what he did differently during his amazing run.

Norway with the worst shooting of the top 4 and still 1 minute ahead ... IBU should apply the China strategy, otherwise they will ruin their own product.

Really fascinating performance by Germany. They keep losing time despite perfect shooting.

Why so complicated? Just call them by their Name: Red Bull Union sponsored by Red Bull.

I am an „atomic engineer“ myself so maybe I don’t know more than „them“, but also not less ..

Not true. I think for example many Europeans are very proud of Marie Curie.

1) I didn’t talk nonsense 2) What do the splits matter? If you think like that you can make up a gazillion reasons for why person X should/could have won. No one knows who would have won if everyone would have had a perfect run and I very much doubt that you can judge who was the most likely to win that day. Maybe Liensberger made that mistake because she took more risks/maybe the other racers didn’t make a mistake because they took less risks?

Agreed. As a European I am really proud that he represents us!

What a bittersweet day for Japan. On the one hand Osaka won her 4th slam, but on the other hand Watanabe got murdered ... I think Osaka started way too late to come close to Serena, also I am not sure if she is good enough on other surfaces. Maybe one of the young american girls can also reach her level.

Yeah ... and if my grandma would have wheels, she would be a bicycle ...

Really sad to see how weak slalom has gotten. I just looked at the results of the 2014 Olympics and back then you still had 10 medal contenders (Shiffrin, Holdener, Zettel, Kirchgasser, Schild, Höfl-Riesch, Maze, Hansdotter, Poutiainen, Pietilä-Holmner). Will be really interesting to see if a) Shiffrin can bounce back for the Olympics b) Austria will keep their massive material advantage.

Today would have been her big chance. So far she has 12 2nd places and 13 3rd places ...

I don’t like Shiffrin, but she is truly a magician, she will probably end her career as best female alpine skiing athlete ever.

Weird comparison ... In the 4 x 100 m relay you can make up a lot of time with great exchanges, something similar isn’t possible in biathlon. I would rather see it like this: France/Sweden have many athletes who are inconsistent, but can make the podium on a good day without other athletes failing. Ukraine on the other hand has 4 consistent athletes who can’t make an individual podium without other athletes failing. France/Sweden win more individual medals, because they only need one of their athletes to have a good day, but in the relay Ukraine wins more medals because Sweden/France almost always have one athlete who messes up and destroys their medal hopes. I think this is usually the reason, not sure what happened today with the French women in the cross-country, maybe they had bad material. Hettich was incredibly slow, hard to imagine that France was even slower ...

I know that you like to troll, but maybe you should drop it if you want a serious discussion. I never said that Hammerschmidt is world-class, but she certainly has been world class before, which is pretty obvious when you look at her results. Hettich was incredibly slow today, hard to imagine even someone like Voigt would have done worse.

It feels as if Ukraine almost always overperforms in the relay. Normally they shouldn’t beat Russia/France/Sweden that often.

Wow, really weird. Usually French ladies are very good in cross-country, certainly better than Germany for example. At least their men make up for it.