phelps

Gold: Aksel Lund Svindal Silver: Didier Defago Bronze: Matthias Mayer gold is a no brainer...as good the other skiers might have been (might be, for those still active), Svindal is on another planet compared to them...

voted for men's Hockey, of course... but you know, I'm interested in almost all the Olympic sports/events... the only discipline I'm not going to follow at all it's Figure Skating (I tried...but I just can't)... then some events won't touch my heart as others, but still, I'm not going to miss at least the decisive moments/finals of those competitions as well... my priority list (of course any Italian fighting for the medals could change that for a while) might look like this: 1.men's Hockey (for what concerns women's Hockey, I'm only going to watch USA vs CAN and the Gold Medal match -even if it's a different match-up) 2.short track (especially the 500m and the relays) 3.snowboardcross/skicross 4.biathlon 5.speedskating (the longer distances more than the sprint races) 6.alpine skiing (especially the speed events) 7.snowboard PGS 8.luge 9.cross-country skiing (especially the women's 30k/men's 50k) 10.skeleton 11.snowboard slopestyle & halfpipe 12.freestyle slopestyle & halfpipe 13.moguls 14.curling 15.men's Bobsleigh (and maybe 2-woman Bobsleigh 4th run, if the fight for the medals is still really on) not going to watch at all: Figure Skating, both Snowboard and Freestyle Big Air, Aerials, Opening and Closing Ceremonies

no, in the early years of the discipline 3 athletes ( Pontus Stahlkloo 2001, Xavier Delerue 2004 and Drew Neilson 2007*) already won 3 consecutive races in the same season... *and in all those 3 races, Nate Holland was the runner up... moreover, in 2001 Jasey Jay Anderson won the last 5 races of that season one after the other... in recent times, however, there have been quite a few doubles (and also some "3 wins out of 4 races") by a bunch of athletes ( Alessandro Haemmerle being the guy doing that the most times), but nobody could deliver the "triple" until Martin Noerl did it yesterday...

Tottenham glory Gary Mabbutt was also one of the first pro athletes to admit publicly he had diabetis through his entire career... nowadays, New York Rangers' Finnish player Kaapo Kakko plays despite having diabetis type 1... and many more high level athletes have the same problem... modern medicines allow people to keep it under control with not too many counter effects, so also being a pro sportsman is possible without too many restrictions...

Norway and Austria with 3 Gold Medals each...

didn't know that April's Fool was anticipated to late January...

don't forget that many "speed girls" do normally ski also GS, which is the first women's event to be contested in a week's time... not to mention the covid/quarantine/risk of injury issues so close to the Games...

None, I fear

ROC, Figure Skating, Team Event Nils Van Der Poel, Speedskating, men's 10km Irene Schouten, Speedskating, women's 3000m Francesco Friedrich, 4-man Bobsleigh Chloe Kim, Snowboard, women's Halfpipe

my heart is, as always, with Slovakia and Switzerland (for different reason, of course)... by my pick is Sweden my full top 8 prediction (btw, I'm really famous for missing badly all of my predictions...so, don't get mad if I didn't pick your team...and start touching wood if you're a Swedish fan )... Gold: SWE Silver: FIN Bronze: SUI 4. CZE out in QTFs - CAN - USA - SVK - ROC

OMG!!! reading just now about this scary accident... my thoughts to the man who lost his life and his family...RIP and of course I also wish @brunamoura a quick recovery good luck also to @heywoodu stay strong, my friend... hope that all of you can get by this difficult moment as soon as possible...

Wilfredo Leon inked a new deal with his current Italian club, Sir Safety Perugia... It looks he's going to get 1.5 million €/year for the next 3 seasons... where did they find all that money is a mistery to me... source (in Italian): https://www.repubblica.it/sport/volley/2022/01/27/news/volley_perugia_blinda_leon_triennale_da_1_5_milioni_a_stagione-335473888/?ref=RHBT-VS-I0-P3-S1-T1

poor Brandon...we'll miss you!

ah, those non-rectangular arenas! another thing I really hate, even more than those needing to remove a full stand to adapt to the ice rink... worse than this, only the fully rounded arenas you can find especially in Brazil, thanks to the influence of the (in)famous architect Oscar Niemeyer...

I'm pretty sure they've been granted to win at least 10 gold medals... remembering Beijing 2008, I expect biased judges in all kind of freestyle events, figure skating (even if they might not need it in that case) and short track...

if everything goes according to plan, 100m Olympic Champion, Marcell Jacobs, will make his season debut in Berlin, on February 4th... last week, instead, Larissa Iapichino (May) made her comeback in the women's long jump after the injury that made her miss the Olympics...she did jump 6.59 in a meet in Ancona (ITA)... in the same meet, 3 Italian sprinters ran the qualifying time for the Indoor Worlds in the men's 60m (Luca Lai was the fastest in 6.56)...

I think it's both because of a cultural thing (most ice rinks in Europe are just ice rinks, normally they are not multi-purpose arenas, the same for the handball/basketball/volleyball venues...they are built without having in mind to host ice sports) and because of cost managing...usually the European arenas are smaller and a lot less expensive than the US's... just look also at big stadiums...there's no chance that in Europe anything like the newest US stadiums is going to be built...and I'm talking of the Minneapolis/Las Vegas stadiums, definitely not the So.Fi in L.A., which is out of standard also for North America... but since I'm used to watch NHL and NBA on a daily basis, I just don't like the "European style" to build sports venues...I'd like our Continent (and especially my Country, of course) to invest a bit more in the spectators' comfort...but it's not gonna happen, I fear...

the neverending story... TAPPARA TAMPERE – RED BULL MUNICH SEMI-FINAL ON 1 FEBRUARY After the Covid-19 related postponement of the single-game Semi-Final matchup between Tappara Tampere (FIN) and Red Bull Munich (GER), the game has been rescheduled as follows: Tuesday, 1 February 2022, 19:00 local time (18:00 CET) at the Nokia Arena in Tampere The single-game Semi-Final between the two teams on 25 January was cancelled after the Finnish authorities put the entire Tappara team into quarantine as a precautionary measure after several team members were tested positive for Covid-19. The originally scheduled Semi-Final games between the two teams on 4 and 11 January were cancelled after the German authorities put the entire Munich team into quarantine as a precautionary measure after positive Covid-19 tests of a number of team members were confirmed as cases of the Omicron variant. Therefore, the CHL Covid-19 committee decided to reschedule the matchup as a single game showdown.

final update... these are the 7 men chosen to enter the Alpine Skiing events: Luca De Aliprandini, Christof Innerhofer, Matteo Marsaglia, Dominik Paris, Giuliano Razzoli, Tommaso Sala, Alex Vinatzer

I voted for the option: "one"... but in the deepest part of my heart I still hope she can pull out a miracle Antholz 2020-alike (when she was on the podium in 3 of the 4 individual events and the mixed relay, with 2 gold and 2 silver medals)... I know...I'm dreaming...but don't wake me up until the Games are over...

among the ugliest hockey stadiums in the Olympic history... I really hate those spacings between the ice sheet and the stands in the Nat'l Indoor Stadium...and the Wukesong Arena is even worse...it looks like the Barclays Center when the Islanders used to play there...a non-hockey arena with disputable make up to adapt to something it doesn't own to it...

no need to use the Slovak TV channels...she's always on TV all around Europe with her advertising of the Slovak Tourism Ministry (or whatever it is)... p.s. beautiful landscapes, really...

naaa...she was only referring to those who asked her why she wasn't skiing in a "conservative" way (like Gut and Shiffrin) in the last races... she did reply that she can only ski in "her" way, always on the edge, at 100% and that she trusts God and accepts what she calls "his plans for me", whatever it happens... she has already started all the treatments, trying to get ready in time for the Olympic downhill training runs...she doesn't give up so easily...