heywoodu

Yes, Pauline van Baarle is having a great ride so far

Women are on the way, Lecomte with a Lecomte attack.

Of course not It's also not even really a statement to help himself, it's just to say what happened Basically his message is "I tested positive".

Nasty, nasty attack by Gorry.

Like USA, in the case of Asinga?

He's a sprinter.....no idea how any sprinter isn't on at least a grey list

A lot less for me now that McLaughlin is out and the race is devalued somewhat Although of course in the end history doesn't really remember who was not there.

In the case of McLaughlin it also kind of feels like wanting to keep her 'unbeatable aura' alive towards the Olympics. Kind of a Bob Kersee thing to keep athletes from competing a lot, especially McLaughlin barely ever competes compared to plenty of other top athletes.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cv0OCQWpWJx/

That's Letsile T. instead of Issam A.

Oh come on Especially points 1 and 2 are very obviously not planned for a Japan vs Sweden match (and 10+ minutes is, luckily, not that rare anymore nowadays, if play is stopped, that time should be added later) Point 3 is right though. I mean, obviously not in a 'FIFA tries to screw Sweden!' conspiracy kind of sense, but no idea why we have a VAR nowadays when a Japanese player simply stumbling on her own - that can happen, but is not a foul of course - still results in a penalty.

'Good' thing the US probably will have plenty of government money available for a massive rebuilding effort (with 'good' of course being in quotes because this whole thing is massively tragic obviously). Especially the aerial photos of Lahaina city, showing like two or three small buildings still somewhat standing and the rest just utterly burned down

Of course not literally every politician can be focused on the defense of the country, there's no sense in that And yeah, the states being geographically closest to Russia and therefore most threatened by an aggressive neighbour would make sense (like the Baltic states), I don't really see many other countries do the same.

Right, it does make a bit of sense then, thanks Another reason to be in favour of one-nation events, I suppose

Yes, the fact that this chance even exists is weird. Group games should not be possible to be repeated until the final.

It is weird though that the chance even exists of having a group match repeat in the semi's instead of in the final

Spain dominated the 1st half, Netherlands got away lucky with 0-0 there. From then on, it was more or less equal (with the Netherlands blowing away Spain for a bit after the 1-0), but my lord the amount of chances missed by Beerensteyn....absolutely unbelievable (that's her own chances, not even counting the many, many times she went for it herself when a teammate was free) It even led directly to the 2-1 in the end. And same thing as NED - ARG in the World Cup last year: NED came back (from 2-0 there), had ARG absolutely on it's knees and ready to be knocked out with a tiny punch, but then NED went back to the way they played that led to being 2-0 behind in the first place Now after 1-1 today, which came after a short period of massive domination, they went back to the lackluster way they played before that...at least it never really went back to the one-sided 1st half, but still.

That sounds cool, but would end up being filled with athletes from big nations which have stricter qualifying criteria than the IF's (like the Dutch for the Olympics, most sports have stricter requirements than just qualifying internationally). Bullshit as it is, countries/NOC's do have a right to choose whether or not they want certain extra tight criteria. And the World Athletics system nowadays is just plain weird anyway, with great performances not being as important as choosing the 'right' place to compete and even hoping that some athletes will not start so the field gets smaller (and you get a higher placing).

2012 and 2016, although the fields were so small there (18 riders, including the continental quota riders) it might not be a great comparison. In 2016 Viviani and Cavendish were 2nd and 3rd in the flying lap and Gaviria, oddly, only 10th. In the 1km time trial Viviani, Gaviria and Cavendish were 3rd, 4th and 6th. Then again, Cavendish and Viviani were 2nd and 3rd in the individual pursuit, so hard to compare But oh my, what a joy that true omnium was (other than Cavendish not only getting away with this shit, but the victim actually being punished if I'm not mistaken). Individual pursuit, flying laps....awesome, that was a track cycling allround event as it should be.

Not exactly sure. Not sure a good road sprinter would do a kilometer from a standing start in under a minute With the massive advantage a track sprinter would gain in the first 100-300 meters and the extra speed a road sprinter would have later, the tipping point might be anywhere between 300 and 1000 meters, entirely depending on which two riders are involved. Taking the Dutch as example: Roy van den Berg would outsprint anyone for 100 meters, but definitely be caught within 500 meters

Short answer Straight sprint from a standing start and the finish line 200 meters away: probably a track sprinter destroys the road sprinter. Straight sprint after a 200km ride: road sprinter destroys the track sprinter

They have that in the Nation's Cup as well: first two events in the first session of the day, the other two events in the later session of the day.

Generally road sprinters are significantly better at straight sprints (assuming you mean on the road), but that might also be because road racing is a way, way, way bigger sport and so the field is a lot more competitive in general. Other than that, it's just entirely different: a massive explosion of 10-20 seconds like in the individual sprint or keirin vs a bunch sprint on the road after several hours of riding. Road sprinters are still endurance athletes really. That being said, quite a lot of the road riders who have success on the track are sprinters. The likes of Mark Cavendish or Elia Viviani have been good on the track, but definitely not in sprint events (think points race, scratch, those kind of things), presumably because of the aforementioned thing of road sprinters still being endurance athletes more than raw sprinters. Either that or time trial specialists (the likes of Filippo Ganna). The only real top track sprinter who was a somewhat decent road sprinter I can think of is Theo Bos, but he definitely didn't become much more than a B-tier road sprinter.

Oh let's not bring London 2012 back in the game, with the absolutely shameful showing of the British team sprint men

No Thiam in the heptahlon due to injury. Which Dutch media has used to come up with 'Historic world title in reach for Vetter after Thiam withdraws', I kid you not. And they actually even mention Hall, but still they thought "hmm, this headline is fine" https://www.nu.nl/sport-overig/6275886/historische-wereldtitel-gloort-voor-vetter-door-afzegging-meerkampicoon-thiam.html