heywoodu

Wouldn't be surprised to see the same this time. The men's 500m has basically on or with luck two medal chances, but certainly not three (semi-realistic) ones. With Beau Snellink for now not exactly on his way to an Olympic ticket and Patrick Roest still questionable, that might only leave Chris Huizinga, Jorrit Bergsma and Marcel Bosker, and that is not exactly a group one would want to have in the team pursuit.

Gonna be interesting Olympic qualifiers again in the Netherlands. Only 9 spots available per gender, we'll have 5 days of anxiously filling in the 'matrix' table As almost every speed skater says, more intense than the Olympics itself and every skater absolutely hates it, Fun for people to watch though. I do think they should have made some rule like 'if you win three World Cups in a single distance before the OQT, you get a spot', but they didn't and obviously you can't just add that now.

Whatever the rules and qualifying procedures, if you're skating 6:57 at sea level, you so much deserve to be in the Olympics...hopefully she makes it.

Yep, , and made it today! came closer than I expected in the women's race, one chance left next week. It's kind of mixed: obviously I wish her the best and hope she does well, but also, every quota that is not gained by a nation is Brazil being one spot closer in the already near-impossible road towards a potential 3rd ticket, which I would selfishly welcome above everything else in terms of nations qualifying because that would take away such an infinite amount of stress

I only kinda know Wayne Gretzky by name, don't think I ever heard or saw him really do anything, but man, for someone called 'The Great One' that sure was an underwhelming performance by him Pronounced half the countries like he had never even heard of them (which I assume is correct), and made it seem as though reading a card with a grand total of 4 countries on it was super difficult. Shaquille O'Neal and Aaron Judge at least clearly practiced the names in their pot. The full 'Islamic Republic of Iran' by Shaq for example, I feel like Gretzky would just have said 'I R Iran' and thought the I and R were a typo.

This is such an annoying thing at events like this. Like that guy who came on the podium with a speech in Spanish. I mean, no blame at all if you don't speak English, there's no real shame in that and that's fine, but if you don't....then don't go on a global stage and give a speech even if you're asked to, unless someone is there translating sentence by sentence.

I guess there's some ice hockey or baseball thing going on or some weird overseas thing like that.

Andrea Bocelli is lucky, he doesn't need to watch this.

Well this was the most cringey speech humanity has ever seen.

Draw starts around 19.00 CET, commentator here said.

And there's the biggest criminal in FIFA history "Simply the greatest event the world, humanity has ever seen and will ever see." Hahaha, he is talking Trump's language

Scratch Curacao, just realized Turkey is also an option, oh dear Lord

I want maximum controversy or Let's go

Ukrainian diver Lyskun switches allegiance to Russia, loses all medals | Olympics News | Al Jazeera 'loses all medals' I would assume Al Jazeera could have been a bit clearer and mention this would presumably only be national medals. I mean, it's not like the Ukrainian federation, or any single federation for that matter, has the power to strip her of her world and European championships medals I hope (not for her sake, but because that would be a super weird precedent)

That's what I'd plan as well (except for MelFest), but I also know I am hypocritical enough to still want to watch the show and have a fun evening

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!