heywoodu

For those interested, we have the main elections coming up Wednesday. Weren't planned yet, but you know, political problems and then the government 'fell' and here we go again Of course there's several things making polls, this is one of the most well-known ones and it's from yesterday, so the most recent one I could find. The dates speak for themselves, TK2021 means how many seats (out of the total of 150) the party currently has, 'Verschil met vorige week' is the difference with last week and 'Verschil met TK2021' is the difference to the previous elections i.e. the current situation. Nieuw Sociaal Contract (NSC) is the latest addition, founded a few months ago by a guy who split from the once very big CDA and gaining tons of traction since. BBB is the 'farmers party' which absolutely destroyed the rest in the regional elections earlier in the year, but seems to be somewhat dying off already. Still, going from 1 to 7 seats is of course a success. VVD is the party of current and soon former prime minister Mark Rutte, PVV is the party of fairly far-right Geert Wilders', who has always been shouting as part of the opposition. PvdA/GroenLinks were two parties last time, they merged this year. FvD is our even further right party, with rather significant suspicions of ties to Russia. Scheduled for 5 seats, so going down from the current 8, but still 5 too many I'd say. D66 and CDA are somewhat in the middle, we've got PvdDieren, the animal rights party. SP is far-left, BIJ1 is the extreme version of far-left: where SP is very left and opponents don't really like it, BIJ1 is actually hated because it is basically as extreme as FvD, just on the other side. They are and will remain insignificant, but will keep shouting forever. DENK is the party that shouldn't exist, where the ties with Turkey are so strong it's mostly being referred to as 'the long arm of Erdogan'. SGP is the very strictly Christian party - you know, anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ stuff, anti-everything. Fun fact: SGP is also the oldest party in the Netherlands, over a century old (and kind of still living in that time). Also, SGP is the most steady party in Dutch politicals: you can basically always count on them having 2 seats, sometimes 3, sometimes 1, but it's always around that. Basically everyone who vote on them do so for religious reasons without even looking at their party program and that religious group is more or less always staying the same. Another fact: nationally they are a fringe party, but in the municipality where I live they are usually one of the three largest (in the smaller towns around me they are often actually the largest, by far). Oh well, the only advantage for me is that everything is closed on Sunday and I love the quiet that brings That's basically the main things, I think, for now. Still some days to decide my vote (although my list is shortened by quite a bit already because certain parties I simply refuse to vote for), we'll see on Wednesday

Well he definitely does have a chance for gold, no doubt, although I'd say something like maximum 25% or so - counting the home advantage - is far from safe. But yeah, anything is safer than Goggia I would find it awesome by the way, Ghiotto is a fantastic fighter. A dream would be to have Ghiotto vs Roest in the last pair, that would be fireworks

Surely you're not saying Ghiotto is even remotely a 'safe' gold?

Huh, women's downhill today is not cancelled? What does that mean, they're actually going to race in Zermatt? Wow.

Rumours about Nils van der Poel returning

I had already expected a pretty good race, but this was even more fun to watch than I had hoped

Grid walk is fun here, some nice fun interviews with greats like Terry Crews and Zlatan Ibrahimovic.....but also some brainless stuff with the fakest people on earth, like Paris goddamn Hilton who obviously 'loves the sport so muchhhh'

To be fair, Turkey really was the home team in Berlin today Which is not to say it's not looking great for the Germans of course

Jesus, did Gibraltar sleep with France's mom or something? Although to be fair, Gibraltar had a red card after 18 minutes, you never know how it might have ended up otherwise!

Too bad it's all in Dutch without non-Dutch subtitles, but for what it's worth: the sort of Dutch version of Last Week Tonight had a bit about the Argentinian elections - and Milei specifically - two weeks ago

FIA decided not to have the usual cooldown room in Vegas out of fear of negative feedback from the riders

I am not exactly sure which of the three Chinese riders you mentioned were not there, but their main star Ning Zhongyan absolutely was in the race (it was a last minute thing) Edit: apparently he replaced Deng.

Honestly, do whatever makes it easiest for you. There's not going to be a day where everyone will be able to participate anyway...if you move it to next weekend, there's going to be people unavailable who are available this weekend, but the exact same goes for the opposite. Which leads me to conclude that the most important thing is that best option is whichever option works best for you, as the host. No hard feelings anyway about postponing it, you know; shit happens and I'm sure we all understand that, no worries As for myself, next Saturday I'd be able to help and post for a large part of the day for example, but also a part will consist of going to the airport to pick up a certain Brazilian Totallympian and then undoubtedly hearing tons of stories and such (but the chance of being able to post my own votes is definitely a lot bigger than with any Sunday)

Although I doubt that fainting was as avoidable as the ones in Brazil, thanks to FIS not having a maximum temperature rule

Told you, dream team

Closing off the Brazilian rollerski races with the events of Tuesday and Wednesday. Starting off with the classic sprints, where our own Bruna double-poled the entire qualification - including the climb - and set the clearly fastest time, followed by a very dominant win in the final, ahead of Duda Ribera and Gabi Neres. https://www.fis-ski.com/DB/general/results.html?sectorcode=CC&raceid=43864 In the men's event Sebastian Endrestad of Chile was fastest in qualifying, but Victor Santos won the final....until he got disqualified, which is one of the most surprising things to ever happen in the national rollerski circuit. He had made a skating move in the final sprint, which is obviously not allowed, but earlier in the year he did the same in one of the races and nothing happened (despite clear video evidence). This time there was apparently a protest, he got DQ'ed and explained it by saying his rollerskis were so bad they drifted off to the side (the classic rollerskis used were - dangerously - bad for everyone, but nobody made skating moves, so that didn't fly). Organization/federation talked busily about how to avoid a DQ there, but considering the fact there was video evidence, that seemed like a bad idea...so the DQ remained. Endrestad won, ahead of Martin Flores and Thiago Silva. https://www.fis-ski.com/DB/general/results.html?sectorcode=CC&raceid=43863 The event was finished off with a skiathlon, two times 5k for the women. Bruna made a big gap in the classic part, had a fluent exchange, but after barely 2km in the freestyle leg she got very dizzy and pretty unwell due to the extreme heat. She told some guys next to the track to have the ambulance ready at the finish because she was definitely going to faint, but she managed to calm down enough - and have her dad throw enough water on her - to make it to the finish. Despite Bruna going at barely 70% by that time, Mika Picin didn't manage to close the gap down from 40s and remained stuck at 20s and silver, with Duda being a minute behind. https://www.fis-ski.com/DB/general/results.html?sectorcode=CC&raceid=43868 The men finished it off with two times 10k in the dangerously hot open air oven, where it had gone to well above 35 degrees once again. Tight finish, where young Rhaick Bomfim outsprinted Victor in the final, Endrestad finished third ten seconds behind. https://www.fis-ski.com/DB/general/results.html?sectorcode=CC&raceid=43867 That's it for Brazil for this year, other than a handful of athletes becoming unwell and fainting due to the extreme and dangerous (code red) heat, everyone managed to survive the event at least.

Without young Bente Kerkhoff, who beat Schouten in the World Cup qualifiers in October (although the mass start wasn't a World Cup qualifier, there it's the national coach who decides). Schouten will continue the dream team with Marijke Groenewoud, her teammate. Her immense 6:42 in the 5k a few weeks ago suggests Schouten's shape is excellent though

I love how Dutch commentators aren't able to interprate basic lap time information even after decades of commentating. Roest had the fastest time, Ghiotto was attacking it and started faster, but with two laps to go Ghiotto's lap times had slowly gone up and entered the 30+ seconds, whereas Roest had finished his race with low 29's. Two laps before the end their times were basically similar, but the commentators still somehow talked as if it was going to be tense/tight

Pretty sure Leerdam is feeling worse than you though Mostly because last week she already didn't really care about her win due to her mom having some serious health issues, so win or lose doesn't really matter for her at the moment. In interviews one can also clearly notice she's just really not 'there' at the moment.

By the way, like last weekend it seems there are no live speeds and time gaps being shown...finally, not having that improves the viewing experience a lot

Nobody except for everyone saw this coming.

Jutta Leerdam has been beaten in the 1000m for the first time since she took Olympic silver in Beijing almost two years ago. Both Miho Takagi and Kimi Goetz were faster today. https://live.isuresults.eu/events/2024_CHN_0001/competition/13/results Later today it's the men's 5k, with a fantastic draw: Sander Eitrem vs Davide Ghiotto could be a truly epic race to watch, both are excellent riders who get even way more excellent when they've got a straight-up fight.

I did just realize I'll probably miss the entire event. Somehow I was kind of....dumb: I had first read 'Saturday' where it said 'Sunday' and then also missed the (obvious) 'local time' bit, so with the start being at 18:00 CET or so and Monday being an early working day (waking up at 5), I can't really afford to stay for longer than just the first bit So if using the leaderboard thingy, I won't be able to help out with that sadly

If formatting is turning out to be too much of an issue to even use scoreboards, an online leaderboard might actually be useful. It obviously won't have the formatting we're used to, but considering that's an issue anyway, it might be less of a problem, and it would greatly help in following along with the contest. After a quick search I found one that might be useful, and I set up a dummy leaderboard and entered two rounds of 12, 11, 10....1 points in it: https://leaderboardhq.com/mk0nxjdg Some things: - It was free and I didn't need to create an account whatsoever, it's click and go, but I can't guarantee that will stay that way with 30+ entries (I assume it will) - The name can be changed easily in the settings, so whoever steps up as admin here (which I assume can also be multiple people) can for example change the name to reflect how many rounds have been done so far, as I did in my example. - Entering the number of points obviously needs to be done very carefully, but is definitely very straightforward, and then you just click and it updates the standings I've been toying with it for a bit just for this example, so I might definitely be missing things, but let me know if you think it might help in providing you and all of us with a way of following along with the standings

Probably because of the amounts they can 'afford' to spend on better and more lawyers