heywoodu

That's the most expected result of the week considering the past few days there

What was supposed to be a great afternoon for Albanian football fans, with leader FK Egnatia playing champion and current number two FK Partizani, ended up a tragedy: Egnatia player Raphael Dwamena from Ghana collapsed, players of both teams and medical help were there within seconds, but nothing could be done and he died on the way to the hospital, 28 years old. Former RB Salzburg and Levante player and 7-time international.

VPN is certainly not a problem Thanks!

Do let us know once there's a link to watch the Swedish races as well

That's an adventure. I'd say they should have a drink on that, but you know

Meanwhile in Brazil the South American Championships are going on in 30 degrees (in the early morning, after 9am it goes way above that, up to 37-39 later in the day). Yesterday were the freestyle sprints, with Victor Santos taking the men's title, ahead of Rhaick Bomfim, who competed in the early 2020 Youth Olympics and then just stopped altogether, but managed to get out of the situation and pick up the training again. Sebastian Endrestad made the podium somewhat international with a bronze medal for Chile. Claudio Gustavo Oliveira was the fastest in qualifying, but in finals had to compete with the juniors. https://www.fis-ski.com/DB/general/results.html?sectorcode=CC&raceid=43871 In the women's qualifying, Duda Ribeira was the fastest, but to everyone's surprise - her own, her coach, her competitors - she was then basically forced to start in the junior's final, where she apologized to the other juniors who were definitely not counting on that. It was also a shame for the senior race, where a nice fight between Duda and our very own Totallympian @brunamoura was expected, but yeah, that didn't happen. https://www.fis-ski.com/DB/general/results.html?sectorcode=CC&raceid=43872

Absolutely this. A short or long finishing straight doesn't make it 'better' or 'worse', the top athletes simply take it into account when making their race plans.

Yes, when I'm on my Samsung it's different. Oh well, personally I wouldn't be a fan of it anyway, unless it's a little outside of the avatar, so not covering part of it.

But you already don't have to check the user's data, it's quite literally in the large space right underneath the avatar already

Good to finally see a Leerdam race without the cameras spending more time focusing on Jake freaking Paul (like at the World Cup qualifiers two weeks ago)

Aren't F7 and F8 simply the current flag, but smaller? Some kid really needs to be taught about international stuff. I know Finland doesn't actually exist, obviously, but come on

What a super weird schedule by the way, the fuck is up with the 500m being followed by the 1000m

They usually appear online significantly earlier than they did now. Usually a list with which athletes in which distance, and then the night before the first races we get the start lists.

@SalamAkhi Would the French 2030 bid that's been in the news this week actually include speed skating in Thialf?

Liemarvin Bonevacia or Churandy Martina. Although I doubt that'll happen because probably they won't be there yet anyway.

Rather unlikely, alright. If Churandy Martina gets a medal I swear I'm not gonna keep my eyes dry Individual medal for Liemarvin Bonevacia would be absolutely amazing as well. Both guys are true gold medal winners in terms of life attitude and overal source of inspiration. For example, I love Bonevacia's answer in Tokyo when, after the semi's (where he qualified for the final), he was asked about his 'prayer' before the race, asked if he was asking for help from above: "Not really, you're not gonna ask God to make other people have a bad race. I just asked, please, if today is my day, let my dream come true, if it's someone else's day, let their dream come true." Just a minor example, they're just overall great guys.

Might be one of the most predictable events in the entire (Winter) Olympic program, with a super-small list of countries with any remote sort of medal chance, but still sad to see it go

In cross-country skiing most World Cups still have most of the top athletes (not always all, no), but also: the cross-country World Cup is a consistent season. It starts in November and until March or so we've got competition almost every week, with always some focus on the World Cup standings (the overall especially). In speed skating, there's a handful of World Cups and that's it, and there's always more big names missing, especially when going to Asia. Besides, there's just never really a focus on the standings. Not even the overall ones, let alone the little globes (if they even have globes for the sub-classifications? No idea)

Irene Schouten and the rest of her teammates have decided to skip the first World Cup in Japan, because it doesn't fit in their schedule. As always, speed skating is the winter sport where the World Cup is by far the least valuable of all, I've been watching it since before I could walk and watch all the World Cups and important championships and still have no clue who actually wins the overall World Cups or something during the season

To be fair, I don't think anyone would really look at results from 1952 to roughly 2015 or so when predicting medals for 2020 I remember actually having 4-5 athletics medals in the prediction for 2020, when looking at all events, so from a personal perspective I was definitely happy with some (of course especially the relay and the marathon), but definitely not surprised by the total number Edit: sorry, of course the prediction was not made at the start of 2020, but in the 1-2 months before the 2021 Olympics, my bad and quite a significant difference

This week Bruce Springsteen announced a new European tour for next year, just managed to get tickets for his show in Nijmegen in June Normally it's a bit of a hassle and a long wait, this time I got in the virtual line with only 1400 people or so ahead of me (out of many tens of thousands) and barely 5 minutes after the sale officially started, I had my tickets Gonna be the 5th time my dad and I go to see The Boss, already looking forward to it again as ever I'm still hoping he goes to Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro one day so I can send my mother in law there, but that seems less likely since his tours are basically just Europe and the US..

Yeah, nobody in the world is going to be anywhere close to Hoogland when it's about 1km, but powerful as he may be, the pure top speed isn't his strongest part (obviously he's up there in the top of the world though ). He got closer to the 9.100 than I thought actually, and of course those three attempts in a few hours are of insane quality. The one I'm confident about in terms of beating that is Harrie Lavreysen, the king of top speed and raw power. I would honestly not even be surprised to see Lavreysen go sub-9 if he'd focus fully on this attempt for a good while.

It's alright, some people never really left the Middle Ages (except for taking advantage of the good things of course)

That would be quite funny. Can't imagine it would have cost that much to buy a website even most diehard sports fans have never heard of?

Surprise surprise, apparently FIFA confirmed Saudi Arabia has 2034 hosts. Obviously entirely expected, but the most hilarious thing is Infantino apparently actually said the following bit of nonsense "Football unites the world more than any other sport. The World Cup is the perfect stage for a message of unity and diversity." Lovely statement about going to a country where 7th century stuff is still the 'law' and local police can kill you for being, well, you. Infantino showing again that FIFA was actually a nice federation under Blatter's rule