heywoodu

Yeah, you've decided to keep going on this ultrapessimist streak? Alrighty. I honestly don't think any Italian skater can even get into the top-6 in any event at all, it's a miracle they qualified

Whoops

3:50 incoming for Beune

34.14 for Sebas Diniz, wow After a, for Dutch sprinters, unreal 9.48 opening.

The usual frustration of realizing that big events, like the Olympics, still have the unfair one-round system.

They're very likely going to give Leerdam a 1000m spot no matter if she qualifies in another distance or not. A skater who is picked like that would, in the 'matrix', be placed in the first spot for that distance, which would push Schulting to the spot for 3rd place in the 1000m. That's the 15th and last spot on the matrix, and would mean she is out if there are more than 8 different skaters above that position. Verkerk has, realistically speaking, no chance at all of going to the Olympics (unless by a miracle she qualifies for the 500m).

Makes it extra tragic that she's still quite likely to not actually make it due to Leerdam most likely making it anyway despite falling...seems like everyone there just automatically assumed her 2nd place will be enough and started celebrating

I don't think the Junior Cup has ever given IBU points. Unless I'm very mistaken, it's always only been World and IBU Cup (plus their respective main championships). Edit: apparently nowadays the Junior Cup does indeed give IBU points as well. That should count then, I don't think it's specifically about events X and Y, but about the top-12 athletes from non-qualified countries on the IBU points list. It would be super weird if they base it on an available list, but then for the decisions, take off certain results.

Ugh, saying bye to your partner on some inhumanely early time on Christmas morning, meh. But oh well, races have to be done and one prerequisite in order to do cross-country skiing races is, you know, snow, so not much of a choice Hoping to have a "I arrived safely" message right around the time my parents and I start our Christmas dinner, that would ease everyone's mind Merry Christmas to everyone and as always, enjoy the undoubtedly exaggerated amounts of food and stuff

Of all the valid points one can make, I'd say someone's mastery of the English language shouldn't really be one on an international forum like this. I think at least 80% of us don't have English as native language, and there's logically going to be a difference in levels. Again, not disagreeing with the actual contents of what you and people here are saying, but attacking one's language skills (other than an innocent joke here or there, for which this isn't exactly the right place of discussion I assume) feels unnecessary and kind of takes away from the actual content

Yes, a local 56-year old woman who likely became unwell. There were no drugs or alcohol in play.

Let's not act as if this is a thing for this season. If it didn't result in performance drama last season, it shouldn't now.

Yeah, there's certainly things to complain about from an athletes' perspective, but snow should really not be much of an issue indeed. Mostly things like the enormous geographical spread and it's consequences like there not being one big opening ceremony and everything being spread around a bunch of small Olympic 'villages'/accomodations - so not really the Olympic feeling and atmosphere for the athletes since they'll mostly just stay around athletes of their own sport as in any regular competition. We'll be going very near to the Olympic area in a few weeks (Coppa Italia in Falcade), let's see what things look like by then.

Yep, the amount of emergency services I heard at some point was a little extreme (for our little town), so I checked what was going on and saw they were all being called to a specific location. Until then I thought maybe it was part of a parade of trucks and agricultural vehicles that was on it's way from the next town over, decorated with lights and stuff. Since I knew it was on the parade route, I was sure one of those big vehicles had hit people somehow (there were, besides the many vehicles, also two helicopters on the way, meaning it certainly wasn't about a single victim). We picked our bikes and went to take a look, absolutely chaos in the area. Never saw so many services combined together, fire trucks from 20km away, ambulance after ambulance came racing by, people frantically trying to make way for them (the roads weren't really closed yet). While there we heard someone who had been close say that the parade hadn't arrived yet and what seemed to have happened was that a car from the other side came onto the roundabout and simply never turned. "It's a massive drama over there, unbelievable", he said. Quite quickly rumours started spreading of course, the first one turned out to be true: a middle aged (local) woman was behind the wheel and seems to have become unwell. Local security camera showed the car going at high speed right before the roundabout. Plenty of rumours going around in terms of who were involved of course, and people keeping each other up to date to see if they know this or that family and such... Never expected my little town to be big news in the Netherlands, even including some breaking broadcasts, live reporters and everything, damn. By far the biggest thing to happen here in my memory

Not religious, but I do celebrate Christmas because it's the time of excessive and delicious meals I can't really think of any Dutch Christmas songs though, basically we hear Mariah Carey and WHAM! half the day and a collection of others the other half of the day