heywoodu

A first x km is always worth writing about  

Vollering is fine, as SD Worx communicated today. They could have done that earlier...
 
Anyhow, during the weekend Puck Moonen - who is totally not getting yearly contract renewals because of her semi-modelling but totally because of her results - actually finished an international race for the first time since 2019, instead of DNF'ing everything.
https://www.procyclingstats.com/race/zlm-omloop-der-kempen-ladies/2022/result

Moroni kicked out Lopez in qualifying. With that, Lopez' insane streak ended, this will be the first time since the 2002 (!) Australian Open that we'll have a Grand Slam main draw without Lopez in it. Yep, more than 20 years ago. Moroni had just turned 4 when there last was a Grand Slam without Lopez in the main draw.
 
Andreas Seppi lost as well in the qualifying, the first time since the 2005 French Open he'll miss a main draw at a Grand Slam. The longest and third-longest streaks in Open Era history have now ended.

Pauliena Rooijakkers takes the win in the Durango Emakumeen Saria in Basque Country. Worries about Demi Vollering though, who over the weekend won the World Tour Itzulia stage race in the Basque Country by winning every single one of the three stages. Yesterday she crashed (before TV coverage started) and was taken to the hospital, but there has been not a single word about her from the team other than that. Nothing on Vollering's social media, where she usually is very active, nothing on the team's social media, just...silence. Which is not at all putting minds at ease considering the Amy Pieters situation.

First cyclist to be taken to the hospital after he injured himself while trying to open the bottle on the podium I guess 

Maybe at least the rap guy with the pink hat can fix his hat a but so it's not hiding his entire face...

Well, for starters, EBU should really REALLY crack down on some of these juries.
 
Hire some statisticians, look if there are any common trends in voting every year. Crack down on those countries that keep inviting the same jurors every year.
 
More younger faces, less old faces, could possibly lessen the amount of neighbour point trades.
 
Diaspora and viewers are not really things that you can control, but the amount of shit that juries get away with is just fucked. 

Yeah, the clothes shortage of 2022 really hit a lot of the entrants this year. Most countries were able to dress their main vocalist, but the dancers, oh god the dancers. So many shirtless men on stage. Is this the equality that we strived for??? Men can no longer afford a shirt and many were even shopping in the women's section. 

Everybody gets only a single vote and you have to vote through the app where your passport gets ID'd to battle diaspora voting and the closer that the country you're voting for is to the country you're voting from, your single vote loses a percentage of validity.
 
Let the absolute chaos shitfest begin  

On top of that, I just read an article where the Ukrainian minister of culture apologised and said it was shameful that their jury didn't award any points to their best friends Poland and Lithuania and hopes that they don't take this personally, because the televote showed their actual gratitude with 12 to Poland and 10 to Lithuania.
 
Adding the fact that Cyprus and Greece has this 12 year point exchange, it's weird that six juries get in trouble for voting infringement, but Cyprus and Greece are chilling for a third decade in a row. 
 
Geopolitical voting is going to be the death of me... too bad there's like no chance to combat that effectively, because it's impossible to hide nationalities.
 
 

Yes, the fanboys/girls flooding social media. Nothing new.   
   
The average voter already went to bed and doesn't care anymore.

yes, in the end we got graphics with domestic votes
 
 
i guess our jury gave 0 because in 2004, 2007 and 2012 we fought with Ukraine for 1st place so just for any case 😂

no, Moldova got 12  from televote, Ukraine 7 or 8

People always complain about jury voting but the televoting is far more of a shambles

I've read a lot of comments saying people have had their TV on mute, but still knew Spain was the best
 
 

I've read a lot of comments saying people have had their TV on mute, but still knew Spain was the best
 
 

My personal order (so not what I think the order will be, just how I rank them):
 
01 POR
02 FIN
03 NED
04 NOR
05 GBR
06 SUI
07 GRE
08 MDA
09 SWE
10 UKR
11 AUS
12 ROU
13 FRA
14 SRB
15 ISL
16 LTU
17 AZE
18 ARM
19 EST
20 POL
21 BEL
22 ESP
23 ITA
24 CZE
25 GER

Albania would have made it just by having a semi-erotic show, I guess? Because the singing just didn't work, at all  
 
Austria was the most disappointing I think. Their song sounds excellent in the studio version, but the live performance was....not good. I guess the singer just isn't experienced enough yet and got sort of stuck with having such a huge audience.

Actually to me something that is always very impressive is that we are a lot of people voting on a lot of songs (almost 40), and still we manage to never leave any competing song without at least a few points.
 
its really awesome and shows the musical diversity of everyone here

Should be fixed now, there was an update which failed, but it works fine for me now.

Lampic Will miss  world championships at home next year. Why? She becomes a biathlete

@konig luckily managed to escape the law recently!  

One of the main thing about non-South-African African riders in general: they often lack any sort of situational awareness in terms of riding in a peloton, we've seen that for 10+ years now, especially since the emergence of the Eritreans.
 
Which is not something they can be blamed for, by the way, since it's something you do really need to learn and you can't learn in relatively small races in Eritrea and such. It is improving, so that's good. And to be fair to Girmay: his team this Giro is just...not good, at all. They could have fairly easily made sure Demare wasn't even in the sprint yesterday, but other than going to the front for a few minutes in the long descent, they didn't do much. Then Girmay had to find his own way once again and lost way too much energy.
 
In terms of positioning, it was drama, much like Van der Poel. He didn't even really get to sprinting because he was face-first in the wind with 700m to go already. Mass sprints are not his thing, and not because of the legs.

One of the main thing about non-South-African African riders in general: they often lack any sort of situational awareness in terms of riding in a peloton, we've seen that for 10+ years now, especially since the emergence of the Eritreans.
 
Which is not something they can be blamed for, by the way, since it's something you do really need to learn and you can't learn in relatively small races in Eritrea and such. It is improving, so that's good. And to be fair to Girmay: his team this Giro is just...not good, at all. They could have fairly easily made sure Demare wasn't even in the sprint yesterday, but other than going to the front for a few minutes in the long descent, they didn't do much. Then Girmay had to find his own way once again and lost way too much energy.
 
In terms of positioning, it was drama, much like Van der Poel. He didn't even really get to sprinting because he was face-first in the wind with 700m to go already. Mass sprints are not his thing, and not because of the legs.

Albania would have made it just by having a semi-erotic show, I guess? Because the singing just didn't work, at all  
 
Austria was the most disappointing I think. Their song sounds excellent in the studio version, but the live performance was....not good. I guess the singer just isn't experienced enough yet and got sort of stuck with having such a huge audience.