heywoodu

Same 'wind chill' temperatures here this week, finally a bit of winter

Because the calendar is already pretty full, and you can't move something like the Ronde van Vlaanderen to the center of Bruxelles just because You would need quite a few new races for that (because moving existing races to big cities just because doesn't sound like a good idea), I think that's all going to be problematic. Anyway, personally I don't see problems with road cycling, it's popularity doesn't seem much different than before and the empty places are only when they go play in the desert for a bit because the sheikhs want them there.

The problem is that especially road cycling is a sport that shouldn't have too much 'innovation' in terms of competition format. It's really very simple: go from point A to point B the fastest and you win, and that's how it should be. The bigger options for innovation are in stuff like high-quality cameras in the peloton or something.

Agreed, although I do think a world championships is not that bad to add events even when not completely tested yet. The problem is coming up with some events now and adding it to the Olympics at the very first possibility, but having it at the world championships of a specific sport is no problem in my opinion.

In terms of participation mostly? For me aquatics has the same kind of problem: there's barely anything big outside of the world championships, whereas in athletics you've got stuff like Diamond League all throughout the year, swimming has a World Cup circuit with 5 athletes who care about it. And track cycling has what, 3 World Cup events? Not sure if that has grown by now, but I remember the entire World Cup season existing of only a handful of events.

Characters very much exist especially in road cycling, but yeah, in track cycling it's all a bit smaller in terms of attention. Maybe because there's so few big events, like I get the feeling at half the World Cups it's mostly the C-level riders who even are there.

The way is open for Haase to get to the final

Also, no Kreisel. That track looks so insanely boring.

Still only in the project phase? Seriously, any nation that gets the Winter Olympics but doesn't have it's bobsled track up and running 3-4 years before the Olympics is just being plain stupid. That should be the very first priority in terms of building as soon as you've received the Olympic hosting rights. Beijing got the rights in 2015, now it's almost three years later and they could easily have already had hundreds of training runs on there, followed by 3-4 years of pure perfection in the race lines.

That it'll be nothing compared to Beijing 2022

Finland was well in top-10 contention in the junior men's relay, but Aapo Erkkilä for some reason stopped in the first lap He passed 0.8km, but at 2.1km he was a DNF.

Unsurprisingly, France takes the gold in the junior women's relay, but what else would you expect when your team consists of the numbers 1, 2 and 3 in the Junior Cup? Silver for Norway, bronze for Russia.

Definitely my new favourite youngster biathlete, just look at that name....Martin Bourgeois Republique

Wait, does this mean Sadulaev is not ripping everybody apart anymore? Edit: Wait, I remember he moved up a weight class and lost against Snyder in the world champs final last year..

Oh, that's today? Such an odd, random day they always have for that

Full tennis stadium with everyone dressed in orange, making even mediocre players like Thiemo de Bakker (mostly busy with eating as much fast food as possible instead of training) suddenly rise up and stand and fight, to get close to the kind of levels shown by the mighty Robin Haase. And that's only for the Netherlands of course, but I'm sure the same kind of thing goes for many more nations. Now it will just be yet another meaningless Hopman Cup or whatever, another random World Tour Finals-like tournament that nobody really seems to care about. I'm putting my money down on having the NextGen Davis Cup as well within a few years. So urban. It's like they are the freaking IOC. Yeah, and don't you dare dream this new event will be held in some small place. London, Paris, Barcelona, Rome, here we come. So edgy.

So after losing epic long 5 set battles, we'll also lose one of the main things that make the Davis Cup so good? Being the feeling of really having national teams battle each other, with one team having a home advantage. I guess it will all be some neutral venue now, where people don't care about 17 of the 18 teams... This is so incredibly disappointing. RIP Davis Cup.

Wow, I've seen awful plans being accepted (like getting rid of the possibilty of absolute epic matches since even a 5th set goes to tie breaks now), but this is probably the single worst plan I've ever seen in tennis and one of the worst plans I've seen in the entire world of sports. Where will the regular David Cup ties during the year be held with that plan? And for which goal? Surely not every important match will be held in one week somewhere in November?

Biathlon hurts, but when your hobby is to rupture your meniscus, I guess the pain of skiing doesn't frighten you at all. She'll start in the relay tomorrow, I'm putting my money on Russia with a pain lover like this.

On the bright side, 7 misses for Altair is actually really good

Almost right, but instead of actually betting on them, I meant just seeing the odds (which should still be possible with VPN's nowadays ). But yeah, this is getting a bit off-topic Still waiting for that secret weapon

Well yes, but what I meant is there doesn't need to be an Italian (or Dutch) betting site to be able to at least see the odds in Italy (or the Netherlands), just use a VPN. Plus, surely sites like Oddschecker, where you can see the odds but not bet, aren't blocked? Anyway, my point was: if someone from country X wants to use betting sites for prediction contests, it'll be possible, be it with a VPN or something. And to be perfectly clear: I'm just saying all this as a remark to Pablita's mentioning of those sites, I'm definitely not accusing anybody of actually looking at the odds for the contest

Bet sites are not bound to one nation, it's internet, your country doesn't matter to be able to see them (and yes, during the Olympics, every one of the dozens and dozens and dozens of somewhat serious betting sites - available for all countries - have bets for every single Olympic sport ). Well the Olympics are over, so now I'm curious about the secret weapon

That's not low enough to beat Haase

I forgot one of my main negative points, definitely the biggest one from a personal point of view: seeing Jaqueline Mourão of Brazil not competing at her level, which made it just impossible to not think things like "well, that could have been done better by my girlfriend, who was the 2nd in line for that quota spot and missed out because of being a few seconds too slow and competing in much harder competitions in terms of getting FIS points."