heywoodu

Excellent decision.

Rintje Ritsma, one of the best ever, had enough of skating for the national federation (which didn't exactly provide much of a living) and said goodbye to them in 1995. Eventually he/his manager started the first commercial team (Sanex), which eventually became the famous (in speed skating) TVM team, with the likes of Kramer. TVM stopped a few years ago and the main team now is LottoNL-Jumbo, which I believe was the second commercial team in 1998 (as SpaarSelect). https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanex_(schaatsploeg)

Because it worked and everyone thought "hey, this works, let's keep doing it"

They skate with their names on the suits, that's exposure. They train as a team and function as a team, which is why you often see people from one team all perform good or bad roughly at the same time. The exposure is them skating with the suits of sponsors.

Which I think is odd. Why force everyone to start in national colours in cross-country or biathlon? I much prefer for example the cross-country classics (Worldloppet?), like Marcialonga and Vasaloppet, where they do have commercial teams. There's commercial teams in track cycling too, or in cyclo-cross, which is definitely both very much individual. Having professional teams increases exposure for the sponsors = sponsors win Having professional teams makes it easier for athletes to train together = athletes win There's no reason why it should all be national teams (imagine Sven Kramer and Jorrit Bergsma in one team, haha. They'd rather die)

Xi Jinping has been chosen as Chinese president Wow, didn't see that coming.

Something with trains and/or Boilermakers?

The same as in any sport: financial profit through exposure, basically, which is why the commercial pro teams are mostly in the Netherlands. It's also not track cycling by the way, it's speed skating

The World Cup is the smallest 'thing' in international speed skating. There's world sprint championships, world single distance championships, world allround championships and now the same things in European championships, which all count more than World Cups. I've lost track of which championships are there every year and which aren't (anymore) and so on, but there's way too many championships. Apart from that, speed skaters put way too much focus on them, although it's not as bad as swimming, which really is just dead outside of championships.

Japan is doing really well today

What on earth did Brorsson have under her skis?

Krista

No. I mean, surely he's capable of doing so, but it's not really in his repertoire (yet ) and he didn't do it at the junior worlds.

Speed skating World Cup This weekend is the World Cup final in Minsk of all places. Nobody cares because all world titles and important stuff have already been decided, resulting in for example 7 women in the 500m, 8 men in the 'mass' start and 3 teams ( ) in both team pursuits and team sprints http://live.isuresults.eu/2017-2018/minsk/ Saddest World Cup Final ever

Not exactly the meaning of dictator, as I'm sure you're aware. Nothing fine about that. Or better yet: kicking Al-Qaeda's ass was just as good as Russia kicking terrorist asses in Syria. Nope. Both of the sides you mention are definitely responsible for war crimes. Sadly nothing is done about that. Obviously Srebrenica is (rather clearly) an act of genocide. Millions dead in Congo was one of the worst crimes in human history, but strictly speaking, not genocide: they didn't die simply for being Congolese, but they died because the Belgian rulers had absolutely horrific conditions for them to work in. Yes, it's all just as bad as genocide, but it simply is not the same thing, just like the millions of dead Chinese under Mao is a huge crime, but not genocide. No problem with a military presence in an 'allied nation', just like at least in the 'big bad West' there's basically never anyone serious who has any problem with Russian humanitarian centers in Serbia. Never heard anything bad about it and don't see any problem with it. Most people who would have a problem with something like that are the "oh my god everything is a big conspiracy" kind of people.

Why on earth was Nepryaeva disqualified? I've seen that stuff with Fähndrich a million times and can't for the life of me see anything she did wrong there.

That's like saying North Koreans working in China or something are not allowed to vote in the North Korean elections, like that's gonna make any difference in Kim Jong-Putin's win

I have no answer to your question, but I did make a thread for MotoGP so we don't have to have it in an auto racing thread anymore

The new MotoGP season started today in Qatar, so I thought I'd open a thread for it and it's support classes. Some interesting stuff this year, with five rookies moving up to MotoGP and all of them actually coming out of the support classes: 'old' Thomas Lüthi after a million years in Moto2, Moto2 world champion Franco Morbidelli, promising Japanese rider Takaaki Nakagami, Belgian Xavier Simeon and the first Malaysian MotoGP rider in history and well-known rain specialist Hafizh Syahrin. Nineteen weekends of racing in the next eight months, with Thailand as the new addition in the MotoGP world, after already hosting the World Superbikes in recent times.

Yes, for the athletes

To be fair, as long as he likes it, even if the results aren't there anymore, why retire? He didn't even keep anyone out of the Olympics, so no problem there.

Yeah, same number of world class athletes, just as much media attention and available live streams, basically it's just as big. And the most important thing I'm forgetting, it's a perfect rehearsal for the time schedule of Tokyo 2020 and it's time difference with where I live...

I could have spent 5 seconds on Google first, my bad I read the name Coria and thought of that immediately. Still one of the highlights in Dutch sports so it's on-topic anyway

Is that the one where eternal underdog Martin Verkerk reached the final? That was the last time 'all' of the Netherlands (relatively speaking, of course, there's always exceptions) was really up and about when it came to tennis, I sort of remember those were two amazing weeks for Verkerk. Odd guy, but awesome guy. And a legend in Dutch sports because of those weeks, in which he went to the exact same Japanese restaurant for two weeks and ordered the exact same every night: sushi, sashimi, fried shrimps and three beers

Nah, not really. Although Gerard van Velde's gold in 2002 definitely would be in my list, but none of the gold medals this or last Olympics really 'did' something for me, it was mostly like "oh" Probably because as a child I cared completely about simply wanting the athletes with the same flag to win Whereas now I'm mostly interested in the athletes I actually like. Tom Dumoulin winning the Giro d'Italia last year was absolutely huge, the Netherlands reaching the World Cup final in 2010 was the single biggest 'thing' in Dutch sports that I can at least remember from my lifetime. The Euro 1988 semi final against West Germany was arguably the biggest though: beating the (back then still very much 'hated') arch enemy, on their home soil....it was before I was born, but from what I heard our always quiet and calm neighbour was crying on his knees in front of the TV The final was nice, but the win in the semi's was the main thing.