heywoodu

The gap got large enough, now it's safe for the motorbike to go behind Nibali instead of helping him

I can't feel too bad when they lose or something, but this kind of potentially neck-breaking crashes...nah, I'd rather not see those for anyone to be honest. Not even for professional cheater and racist Moscon, for example.

Nibali in front so, surprise surprise, a motorbike comes up right in front of him

Well, that's what you get when you've got an organization that's not paying attention to safety.

Jesus, obstacle in the middle of the road and there was no official or anyone there to show it, leading to Cavendish having a horrendous fall

Better a cold war than a real war (and seriously, after all these years, why always those empty spaces and 'Enters' in your posts? )

Let's go Poggio, hopefully this will lead to something interesting.

Come on peloton, wake up, do something. This is supposed to be one of the main monuments in cycling, not a boring race.

Well, that was a disappointing and boring Cipressa.

Ski cross World Cup finals in Megeve have been cancelled today and will, as far as I can see, not be replaced tomorrow. I hate snow in sports like skiing.

That's where you stopped reading or what? Exactly one sentence further:

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.