heywoodu

Now I'm curious what's up with him Edit: his Wiki gives some suggestions already...doesn't sound great indeed.

That's the mass start event, which more often than not results in an extremely boring cross-country race and gives a massive advantage to the athletes who are mostly good jumpers.

Maybe also because there wasn't that much else going on at that time for those not too interested in winter sports? I mean, I assume during the Olympics most people are going to choose something else than artistic swimming to watch (not saying that as a judgement of the sport, I just find it hard to imagine it's that popular), plus the aforementioned 'second week tiredness' may not have helped it

No, not change each Olympics. Fencing having had that rotating team thing was already awful enough. 50m's just don't add much. So often we see somewhat the same people in most of the 50m races. It's already enough to have one distance for the odd strokes, no need to have two at all. - A few freestyle distances (since that's the fastest way of swimming, so the most important one), maybe 100, 400, 1500 or something is fine - Either 100 or 200 meter in the slow strokes, no need to have both - One individual medley, 400m probably being the best option - Men's and women's medley relay - Men's and women's freestyle relay (not two of those, no need, so either 4x100 or 4x200) For a grand total of 14 individual events (7 M, 7 W) and 4 relays (2 M, 2 W). In case someone is inclined to see it's not realistic: duh, I am well aware this obviously won't happen

Yeah, it's not entirely impossible to understand, but it's definitely sad to see one of the most classic winter sports disappear (Nordic combined competitions are kind of the origin story of separate big time ski jumping and cross-country skiing competitions, after all). I can deal fine with the summer changes, but the winter program is already quite small (understandably) and seeing so many things I genuinely like go away and be replaced with random stuff or simply changed for the worse...meh

Are there numbers about those? I often forget they exist and people might be active there, but it'd be a shame if that took away activity in the regular sports threads...

Artistic swimming, that is

But a gap of 110 because of one athlete?

Skateboarding down, but the other sports that were added in Tokyo and were still here definitely saw a nice rise!

Massive green numbers for boxing as well, which I don't think had much to do with the boxing itself Golf was absolutely slashed, 130 to 20, yikes.

9 out of 12 teams in the ice hockey are strangely enough already decided even

Ok, this one. This is probably one of my all-time favourite interviews "All the coaches were laughing, because I was swimming out by myself, because I wasn't arsed to swim behind anybody. All I could think was I can't be arsed to get kicked in the face" "After the gold I thought about pulling out, but I wanted to do it because my friends were doing it, but I didn't actually see any of them." What a legend.

Oh wow, that is just awful. Women trying so hard to get into the Olympics in their sport, but instead of being accepted (for which I believe 2026 was indeed too early), their entire sport is being killed

1. I'm going with 8-9, definitely more than excellent, but some disappointments in the bigger picture as well. Hard to say though, of course something like the judo failure isn't magically made up by the rowing success (and vice versa, the rowing success isn't lessened by the judo failure). 2. Biggest heartbreak without a doubt Puck Pieterse in the mountainbike, silver was basically hers, but then she got a flat tire for the first time in her MTB career and it happened like 10 seconds too late to go into the tech zone and get it fixed. Also Femke Bol losing the expected silver in the 400m hurdles and Lieke Klaver in the 400m flat not making the final, especially their devastated reactions. Biggest surprise in a positive sense no doubt the 3x3 basketball, but that's definitely helped by the fact it was a buzzer beater for gold. 3. I would assume so. No idea what the goal was, if there really was anything official, but I'd assume this would have achieved that. 4. No idea. 5. Harrie Lavreysen, again. Maybe some rowers, but they're not really stars since most people don't really know their names

I had almost exactly 3 golds and also almost exactly 9 total medals, so you know, not bad at all

Beforehand I expected 12-13 gold medals and 34-35 total medals, it ended up being 15 gold medals and 34 total medals, so not bad As of course always: not everyone delivered, whether that was due to bad luck or just not being good enough, whereas others delivered unexpectedly, but that's never going to be different in a massive event with so many participants.

Definitely, but also can't understand why they registered in the first place, knowing that it was only a few days after the Olympic final

About time to finally get to see some athletics

Anyone who easily knows when the wheelchair marathon is? Really don't want to miss that because I want to cheer for Aline Rocha

Most of all though I am curious about the first climb, the Maasdeltatunnel. Yes, that is a tunnel indeed. Roughly 500 meters at 0,5% for a grand total of 46,5 altitude meters and an actual mountain jersey point. They go down 26 meters under sea level and then go back up, basically

And tomorrow there's a 67km stage Followed by, I kid you not, a 6km time trial Come on...

Still free from work so I might have gone there, but it's gonna be 30+ degrees today so I'll be hiding inside

How exactly is this timed? Like, is there an official timer that starts at the exact moment you finish your routine and goes down from however long you have to protest?

I often feel the opposite after Summer Olympics: it's barely 1,5 years until the next Olympics and it's my favourite one, so...fantastic

And especially a story that's often big among people who don't really watch the sports that often I dare say I've followed the Olympics insanely intense, basically every single day from 07:30 or so to around midnight, with very limited moments for anything else in between...let's say an average of around 15 hours a day for a little over two full weeks. Yet only yesterday did I realize the 'fight' for top spot at the medal table was actually close, I had no idea As far as it's really a fight of course, I really doubt individual athletes/teams care that much about it....it's probably more like a nice bonus if their country does well in general, but if they had their own competition already and didn't reach their goals, that won't be made up by someone in a totally different sport doing well In the end, overall medal tables are more for the general public in the big media as a fun thing to follow.