OlympicsFan

If she has the same material as your ski/snowboard cross athletes, she should easily win a medal.

The fact that 3 German men finished top 8 clearly is all you need to know to judge this event. On the other hand it is nice to see that 17 yo Emma Aicher did quite well today. Would be nice to see a talented German in the slalom for a change.

It isn’t an Olympic event? Won’t there be 11 events in alpine skiing at the Olympics? What will be the 5th individual event?

1) I won’t tell you what you should find entertaining, but are you sure that you meant men’s downhill and not men’s super G? I found men’s super g far less entertaining than men’s downhill. Also with everything I know about entertainment, I find it hard to believe that many people would agree with you. Thanks to the starting order in the combined, the whole suspense was basically gone after the first 5 or 6 racers and the rest was plain boring. Also when I look at the points in the prediction contest it looks as if the results were more predictable than in most speed races and usually less predictable results mean more entertainment. 2) Did you watch the men’s super g today? The course was a joke, it is no coincidence that someone like Schwarz looked so good today. I very much doubt that this is the usual level of difficulty for the speed part of a combined. I think the original idea of the combined is that both speed and slalom specialists have about the same likelihood of winning this event. When you look at the results of recent years that certainly wasn’t the case. Over the past few years slalom specialists (Shiffrin/Pinturault/Vlhova) did far better in speed World Cup races than the other way round, which indicates that it is easier for them to do well in speed events than the other way round. I think the solution to make it fairer would be to make the speed part longer/the slalom part shorter (time wise). I just looked at the results of the men’s combined at the last 2 Olympics and in 2014 when the speed part was 1:54 and the slalom part was 51 seconds the medalists were Viletta-Kostelic-Innerhofer. In 2018 when the speed part was 1:20 and the slalom part was 46 seconds the medalists were Hirscher-Pinturault-Muffat. I think the speed part should last roughly 2.5 times as Long as the slalom part.

1) There is a difference between having no depth and being non-existent (which is what you said). Also they have other good athletes (Hynne, Moen, Grovdal, Henriksen, Guttormsen). Norway could realistically win as many medals at the Olympics as Poland and more medals than France. 2) It is difficult to develope 2 world-class players, they have more/as many world-class players than Poland/ItalyTurkey/Russia/Nigeria/Mexico/Colombia/Chile. We will see how they will do in the future once Haaland and Ödegaard are more mature. 3) Not sure if you are kidding ... you mostly named joke sports. Norway also is good in handball (which is probably the 4th or 5th most popular summer team sport) and chess ... It is obvious that Norway can’t have the same depth as bigger nations, but they are amazing at developing special talents.

Why? Also it would be absurd to consider his performance suspicious.

Wiklund won gold? Seems like an absurd result for someone who doesn’t really follow speed skating. Was she even considered a medal contender? Also the only in the top 20 to set a PB ... Maybe she is on the Ingebrigtsen/Johaug/Sundby „diet“ ...

1) Norway non-existent in athletics? 2) Norway has 2 amazing football players, I think they could qualify for some tournaments in the future. Also i think it is difficult to be good at football when you can barely ever play it outside ... (although Iceland has done an amazing job) 3) There are a lot of other „comparable“ countries that aren’t (much) better than Norway while being much worse in winter sports (Portugal, Israel, Ireland, Singapore, Belgium, Greece). I think for their size Norway is actually doing a good job in summer sports.

LOL @ Djokovic, his injury must be really bad. Very brave that he fought through it.

How the hell would Ertl make the team? Germany didn’t nominate anyone in giant slalom, because they have pretty strict standards. In order to make the team Ertl would have to be good enough to regularly make top 30, which is completely unrealistic. Most nations have the same problem. USA has Shiffrin and Johnson, Norway has Lysdahl and Lie, Slovakia only has Vlhova, Canada has Gagnon, Slovenia has Stuhec and Hrovat, Sweden has Hector, Finland has no one, France has Worley. The only nations with any depth are Austria, Switzerland and Italy. I am not saying that Germany has great depth, but that it is unrealistic to expect Germany to have great depth and that Germany basically never had great depth, except for a short exception in (giant) slalom. Meanwhile the men’s speed team is easily the best it has ever been. In General one of the biggest problems of Germany seems to be the transition from juniors to seniors. Juniors don’t have enough „patience“ and retire, which leads to many great juniors never amounting to anything at senior level. This isn’t really a sports problem, but more of a political problem. You would have to find a way so that young people can stick around longer while still building a career.

Yes, really surprising, especially after you said that that German women’s team is a disaster. Now Germany has 3 silver medals while Norway, Italy, France and the US have 2 Bronze medals combined.

French women taking a baby break and then returning with superhuman skiing time ... nothing new sadly.

Disgusting result. Once again a random Eastern European coming out of nowhere right in time to steal a medal. Their dictator will sure be happy about this.

I would like to know how Norway manages to develope so many great athletes. Speed skating isn’t exactly the most popular sport over there and still they produce tons of great talents while Germany hasn’t developed any in a long time. I get that most kids in Germany don’t care about speed skating, but the same is true in Norway and still they develope tons of talents despite having a much smaller population.

Completely crazy result. GB Must have insane Material looking at the results of Davies and Bankes. GB basically has two athletes and still they manage to make two finals while German athletes as always fail in the semifinal.

Absurd World Championships for Germany already. Realistically Germany should have won 0 medals, but now they already (possibly) have 2 after 3 races. Who would have thought that Germany would be the only nation with at least 1 medal on the men’s and women’s side each at this point?

Italian are very nice people, they want to be welcoming and not take anything away from their guests.

Just say that you don’t have any arguments and have to make up fake reasons for escaping the discussion and then we can all live happily ever after.

Ski jumping: Germany has had extremely successful years and both Althaus and Wellinger are still young. On the men’s side you also have Constantin Schmid and Luca Roth (Silver in the individual competition and gold in the team at 2019 junior worlds). The women’s team also won silver at 2019 junior worlds. Nordic combined: Geiger is still very young and for example Julian Schmid won 2 golds and 1 silver at 2019 junior worlds. Alpine skiing: It has been like this for at least a decade. In the past decade Germany never had any depth, but this current men’s team might be the best team Germany ever had. Both Weidle and Dreßen are still young (compared to most of the athletes who dominate their events). You seem to forget that for example Germany always used to be nonexistent in speed events on the men’s side. You need to do one of the following 3 things: a) Stop trolling or b) Educate yourself or c) Check you expectations Germany just had fantastic winter Olympic Games, despite not really being a winter sport country. I don’t really know what your expectations are, but clearly they are completely absurd. How do you see the situation of the US? They have 4 times the population but won 8 medals less at the last Winter Olympics. By your standards this must be the biggest failure in the history of human kind. Also what about Russia? A traditional winter sport country with a 50 % bigger population but 14 medals less at the last Olympics ... ?

You clearly have no clue about Hammerschmidt. There was a time when she was world class and in that shape she would currently be number 2 or 3 for every nation except Norway. I also have no idea what people are expecting in terms of depth. Currently there are at best 2 nations with at least 2 athletes who are able to win on any given day (Norway and Sweden). It makes no sense to compare this German team to the days of Henkel/Disl/Glagow/Wilhelm. Germany dominating like that was a complete anomaly and mainly down to Sweden and Norway completely wasting their potential. If all nations would reach their potential, then Germany should be 4th at best behind Norway, Sweden and Russia (maybe also behind Finland, the US and Canada). Biathlon in the end is just a version of cross-country, so it is difficult to have a lot of depth when cross-country is pretty much nonexistent in your country, which is the case in Germany since basically no one gives a shit about cross-country and I don’t remember it ever being much different (even when Germany dominated men’s cross-country)

First of all: Hettich is only one year older than Carrara and 2 years older than Lardschneider and is having far better results, but for you the Italian girls seem to be some sort of generational talents while Hettich is a scrub. Obviously you haven’t really followed German biathlon for the past decade, otherwise you would know that Germany basically always had the problem (remember the 2014 olympics?) and it only got covered up shortly by Dahlmeier and Preuß. I think every nation would have massive problems when two generational talents (Neuner and Dahlmeier) both retire within a couple of years, despite easily being capable of dominating for another 5+ years. At this point I wouldn’t even blame German coaches if they would have given up. What’s the point of developing transcendental talents when they retire as soon as possible? In the end anything but a Swedish and Norwegian dominance for many years would be extremely shocking. It is only logical that the nations that dominate cross-country also dominate biathlon. I think you can for example compare it with Jamaica or the US in athletics 400 m/400 m hurdles/100 m hurdles. They have an abundance of great athletes in the 100 m (cross-country), so those who aren’t good enough to make the team there will switch to an other event/sport (biathlon). I think only Russia could break/out-dope their dominance. The solution seems really simple and maybe some day the other nations will realize it: You can’t beat Norway/Sweden at their own game (cross-country), so put all your best talents into biathlon. Herrmann has shown that a decent cross-country athlete with minimal talent for shooting can dominate biathlon pretty quickly. Even Gössner used to be almost unbeatable when she had a good day. Sadly Germany seems to prefer producing snails who are good at shooting and then the coaches are surprised when the Norwegian and Swedish girls completely dominate them.

Cool ... junior results don’t mean anything. Right now Italy has one world class athlete in Wierer and she will soon be gone. Germany also produced tons of promising juniors who never turned into anything. Until someone proves himself at World Cup level it is absolutely pointless to make predictions. Of all the female athletes you mentioned none seems remotely special. Öberg is younger than Lardschneider and Carrara and only 1 year older than Trabucchi and is already World class. At that age Neuner and Dahlmeier were already close to retirement.

I hope that you are wrong for Germany, but I fear that your prediction won’t be far off.

I don’t think so. They would get to be part of the World Cup team if they would be talented enough. Even Hettich got a chance and she is slow like a snail.

What? I think Wierer will be gone by then.