heywoodu

First pins have been traded already (that was a present from their lovely cross-country skier Rakan Alireza) That's already three, my wish list is still long though

Whoah, that's a name I haven't seen in a long time Welcome back!

He also took on Mika Vermeulen and James Clugnet in their podcast, where they kind of trapped him in the small nations vs relays for big nations discussion, but he held his own very well.

Yeah there is no way it was not going to be Matthew Smith

I don't think there's a specific thread about the village, right? This is a pretty cool thing the Brazilians have hanging there, a big poster where all events are mentioned and they can write down their final classification

Give it 40 minutes or so and we can add +1 skier in the Predazzo Olympic village Accreditation received as well, and now we understand what the team manager meant a few days ago with "I have no fork and knife"....that's the symbol on the accreditation to show you can use the dining area (which Bruna has, of course)

Plus after so long of competing for Lithuania, one might obviously assume she speaks the language by now at the very least to some extent. Cool choice!

But in Predazzo.. It's cool but it's such a shame it's all so spread even for the athlete parades and such At least we already know Bruna is going to Milan for the actual opening ceremony, but it would be so cool if there was only one ceremony and so most athletes were there.

It depends on exactly how they do it. If it frees up space for additional sports in general, or bigger fields in sports with a ridiculously low amount of quotas, I'd be ok with it.

It does cost money to send and accommodate athletes at the village, the NOC is expected to pay for their stay and so on, so I am ok with some sort of extra criteria. It's just that requiring top-8's or something is too much.

Trust me, we absolutely want to know

This caused so much outrage on Brazilian social media last night. "Why will she carry the flag and not a winter athlete, ridiculous!?" People....the Olympic flag, not the national one, just...read

Finally made an overview, and if I looked correctly, this is what we have tickets for: 10 feb – Cross-country skiing (Bruna, classic sprint) My dad, my sister, me, Bruna's employees, Bruna's parents 12 feb – Cross-country skiing (Bruna, 10k freestyle) My dad, my sister, me, Bruna's employees, Bruna's parents 14 feb – Biathlon (Baiba, sprint women) My dad, my sister, me, Bruna's employees, Bruna's parents, Bruna 15 feb – Biathlon (Baiba? Pursuit women) Me, Bruna 18 feb – Cross-country skiing (Bruna, teamsprint vrije stijl) My dad, my sister, me, Bruna's employees, Bruna's parents 21 feb – Biathlon (Baiba? Mass start women) Me, Bruna 22 feb – Cross-country skiing (50k classic women) Me, Bruna So if anyone is at any of those events, let me know We have a large Brazilian flag, a large Dutch flag, a small Brazilian/Dutch flag stitched together, orange hats, Brazil hats, my parents in law and me have bright blue Brazil jackets, it should be clear

People invented ways of transportation once, it's astonishing.

Cool to see a photo my dad took on the Olympic website

Where would one find it?

NOS shows it as well, although....yeah, you know, 'our focus is the story' so they'll have lots of talking while there's sports going on But as always, the Olympics for me is never a one-stop-shop in terms of where to watch. Some sports I'd certainly prefer on HBO (cross-country skiing, ski jumping, for example), others certainly on NOS (speed skating, 100%) and yet others might be on German TV (alpine, perhaps). It all just really depends on who is the commentator I like most or am used to the most for a certain sport. Like I always hate it when watching and enjoying sports year in, year out with a certain commentator (Martin Haven, for example, for bobsleigh/skeleton), and then suddenly at the biggest moment of them all there's someone I'm unfamiliar with...I find that really distracting. I've grown up with speed skating on NOS, and the commentators nowadays are somewhat worse than they used to be, but it still feels super weird to watch it with the commentary of someone on HBO or something where you just know they are not generally involved in the sport.

Are you sure about that, mate? If the cross-country World Cup would end with a 50k in March in New Zealand, you're absolutely certain there were not going to be questions? No people raising an eyebrow and thinking 'huh, that is odd'? I beg to differ, awesome as it'd be to see the World Cup go to Mount Hotham, Ushuaia/Bariloche or Portillo/Termas de Chillan

That's just the usual pre-Tour de Ski break that we see every winter. Quite normal to have three World Cups weekends, then an off-week and then continue the World Cup with the Tour de Ski Awesome to see the Tour de Ski going back to being a little bit more of an actual Tour de Ski now with three countries Hopefully we'll also get some of the cool stages back like we used to have (like a long A to B race between towns and such).

This is somewhat unfortunate. Like, I like the bright colours, but why put them in a spot where they will largely be covered by bibs? It's like so many countries always completely forget that there are...you know...large bibs covering large parts of the design. Same with Brazil all the time, they so often go with some boring white stuff that has some blue/green accents but then they put those in a place covered with a bib so nobody sees them. Didn't see Brazil's choice yet but I'm putting some money on 'largely white, unrecognizable as Brazil and with blue and green little triangles', meh.

Finland. Meanwhile, the designers for the French jerseys were told they had to design one and had 2 minutes to complete the task or what happened there?

No.

To anyone going to any cross-country skiing, have you made or thought out your travel arrangements for race day yet?

Due to countries registering skaters for distances they aren't going to skate, but that give them a reserve spot. Like registering a sprinter for the mass start, and then later exchanging them for a distance rider - but because the sprinter is there anyway, they can then do the 500m where they originally didn't have a quota spot for. Something like that, there's a story about him being - in his words - fucked due to countries circumventing the rules like that. Tragic story.

Biathlon: Baiba Bendika, Darcie Morton, Anna Weidel, Anika Kozica Cross-country skiing: Obviously Bruna Moura , Ariuntungalag Enkhbayar, Samaneh Beyrami, Delia Reit, Gina del Rio, Nahiara Diaz en Agustina Groetzner, Rosie Fordham, Stevenson Savart, Sara Ponya, Jenny Axisa Eriksen, Regina Martinez, Rakan Alireza, Sophia Velicer, Karen Chanloung Speed skating: Merel Conijn, Femke Kok, Vladimir Semirunniy, Timothy Loubineaud Surely plenty of others also in speed skating but biathlon and cross-country skiing were the easy ones to do off the top of my head so for now that's that