heywoodu

On the bright side after all this nonsense, EBU seems to be very busy buying some other countries back in. Bulgaria, Romania and even Moldova, which didn't even have money for their own selection process, are now back. Talks still going on about Canada and Kazakhstan, apparently

EBU pulled a very, very nasty one there. First there was a vote about the new rules, which were made/changed after Israel's voter fraud of this year. However, they actually tied that vote to the Israel vote: if a majority was in favour of the new rules, which was the case, the Israel vote was not even going to happen. It's like they thought "Israel's fraud is the reason for the rule change, so if people accept the rule change, they'd accept Israel's entry as well, no reason to vote". Too bad, even looking purely at Eurovision and not the Gaza situation, Israel (or more specifically, their broadcaster KAN) should already have been in doubt after their nasty behaviour in 2024 and the incredibly shade business of this year in which they nearly succeeded in buying the win. Luckily Austria managed to get it, at least. This whole thing was already decided days/weeks ago by the way, judging by the form that was sent out somewhere stating there'd be 35 countries competing, which is what we're likely to have now.

That is odd indeed. It's already gone, it seems? https://www.fis-ski.com/DB/v2/quota/list/owg/cc/2026 There's no way he is making the Olympics, unfortunately. He would need to score top-8's in the World Cup and that seems like somewhat of a stretch I'm afraid

No idea actually There's absolutely no way 10 NOC's are making it in the women's events, not sure about the men, but I would assume every NOC with a somewhat realistic shot would have already appeared in Ruka.

Since AIN is in reality no different than RUS, surely countries who boycott with RUS competing would also boycott if AIN competes?

And the Olympics cancelled, yada yada yada, but not gonna happen. Personally it would not at all be bad for me/us, since a bunch of European countries withdrawing would rather strongly increase the chance of Brazil getting a 3rd ticket

Oh damn, Wierer crossing the line there with 0,3 seconds faster than Leinamo is one of the biggest ever moments of "ah goddammit!" despite an amazing result I don't often react physically when watching sports, but here I had a good strong disappointed punch on my leg at that moment Too bad, so close...but still, 2nd is just absolutely amazing beyond words!

Ecuador's Klaus Jungbluth did so by 5 seconds, nice The athletes from Peru and Israel came up less than 20 seconds shy of qualifying, for now at least. It should be somewhat promising for the later races.

What if those 10 quota aren't all filled up, will they be added to the reallocation pool?

Third place for / Mika Vermeulen, impressive start of the season!

If I am not mistaken, 30:57.2 was needed to get under 300 points today, Klaus Jungbluth-Rodriguez had 30:52.7 and so should have made it! 28:32 for Claveau-Laviolette, so he's certainly in.

No idea, I'm generally more familiar with the women from the 'exotic' nations than the men (with a few exceptions, like Klaus Jungbluth)

If Stenshagen wins, Attila Kertesz will likely have made the Olympics by 0.2 seconds. Although I do think Stenshagen's time will be broken. Chance for is alive, is very likely in! In the women's race Chanloung made it, Flores and Thekkada didn't get close, unfortunately (but not necessarily surprising).

World Cup starts tomorrow with the 10k classic in Ruka, we immediately see the result of the new FIS rules for non-qualified nations (for the Olympics) having a chance to qualify through the World Cup. Three of those in the women's race: Martina Flores of Chile, Karen Chanloung of Thailand and Bhavani Thekkada being - I presume - India's first ever athlete in the World Cup, so that's cool. If Chanloung has her pre-Beijing 2022 level, she might stand a chance, I fear Flores and Bhavani simply aren't going to get anywhere near it. Hopefully Indians won't be too disappointed at that, she recently filled up all of social media with a historic first ever Indian podium finish in a FIS race. I mean, it was cool, but she did finish 3rd in two Chilean races where the best Brazilians and Argentinians were not racing, and was far behind...well, Martina Flores. All due respect and since she's a good friend of Bruna, I sincerely hope she somehow makes it, but literally dozens of posts about the 3rd place was a bit much I think

Penny Oleksiak joins the "omg how on earth do you fill in your whereabouts wrongly three times in barely 8 months?!" club and is very lucky to have her 2 year suspension be over in time for LA 2028.

Does it have every song? That would be amazing, I've always struggled to get a Spotify playlist complete, usually there's like 1-2 countries that pick a super obscure song that can't be found anywhere but a specific YouTube video... Edit: I mean....I could have simply clicked on the link first before asking it, sorry I see 34 songs and we have 34 nations, thank you

I know this is never going to happen, but with the team sprint being there nowadays, I feel like they should make the team pursuit more of an endurance race. Longer, that is. Especially with it being a one-off race, instead of heats/semis/etc, 5k would be absolutely fine.

Those are three excellent reasons on why we just really, really do not - at all - need the mixed relay in long track speed skating. They tried, it never got interesting, none of the top skaters has really cared at any moment yet, let it go. A great leader is one who is willing to go back on earlier decisions

And then it ends up being one of those Decembers where Christmas is like 10-15 degrees, meh.

Once again a shining example of what a nonsense the mixed relay is, at least in it's current format. Doing it based on times is just nonsense, no top country takes it serious and it's just outright dangerous. But the main issue is this thing with making the ranking based on times, despite the races being done in heats instead of 1 vs 1 races. Hungary profited from that obviously, and that's cool for them

Plus 21st place, not even 2,5 minutes behind, by 15 or 16 year old (depends on who you ask) Thelma Falk in her very first weekend of official FIS competitions, wow. DNS for our Totallympian due to leg and ankle issues, unfortunately.

Andersson and Ilar looked fantastic though. Destroyed the race for everyone who was there for good points

Thanks, YouTube seems to be the only option, although it is somewhat tragic that suddenly we need to depend on YouTube to have the actual schedule - they simply had that in their PDF for years, I have no idea why they took it away or what even would be the advantage of not giving fans the full schedule anymore.

Am I just missing something, or don't they have the actual schedule in the preview PDF anymore? It's already weird one always needed to go find the news article and then open the PDF to get the full schedule, but now that is gone too? https://www.ibsf.org/fileadmin/user_upload/News/imported/Images/2025-2026_Winter_Season/1_IBSF_World_Cup_Cortina/IBSF_Press_Release_Preview_World_Cup_Bob_Skeleton_25-26_1_Cortina.pdf Anyone has a clue where one can find the full schedule? And to be clear, this is not a full schedule, this only says when run 1 of each event starts. Surely somewhere there is an official full schedule that says when each run starts, like there has been for years?

Gällivare tomorrow (classic sprint), Saturday (10k classic, which Bruna has decided to also include in her program now) and Sunday (10k freestyle). However, especially tomorrow and Saturday are in doubt. Decision about whether or not to hold tomorrow's race will be made no later than 09.15h, due to the intense cold it may be cancelled.