heywoodu

Schedule 50km classic, the king of all XC events

Not even Goggia when finishing is the clear favourite, although I do agree that if she keeps her DNF'ing under control, she could very well go home with 3 or maybe even 4 medals (then again, 0 medals is just as possible for her when having 3-4 races with a big mistake in each). As for biathlon, in the individual races Dahlmeier is the favourite basically everywhere and you've got Makarainen and Dorin Habert (and if fit, Koukalova) above the first Italian. Not saying Italy winning medals is unrealistic, obviously it's possible, but if a bookmaker would give 50/50 odds for "Italy to win over/under 1.5 medals in biathlon", I'd definitely go for under. But again, it's much more realistic to look at the chances as a percentage and then add everything together. It's not realistic to expect an Italian medal in men's biathlon for example, but it's wrong to count them out too because they do probably have some 10% chance or something. Anyway, I wouldn't expect that many medals, because most likely that's going to end up in disappointment, although I wish the Italians all the best (especially the Südtiroler alpine skiers, somehow I like them)

Russia being in alpine skiing will make Kostner be further away from the figure skating podium? How?

But now you are counting every potential medal chance is an already counted medal. It's not like all of them have 100% or even close to 100% chance to actually happen (for example biathlon, I'd say 0 medals is much more likely than 2 medals). Don't forget the way Gracenote makes these medal tables: if country A has the 4th-best athlete in 100 events, that will result in 100 4th places (ig no medals) in their prediction, even though with 100 4th-best athletes it'd be pretty likely to get several medals. This is the main problem when creating a medal table by giving one specific team or athlete the gold, silver and bronze and discarding everyone who's not in the top-3 of the prediction. For France 1 gold medal is definitely not impossible, but neither is 6 gold medals. Same sort of thing goes for Italy: 2 medals is not unrealistic, but neither is 10, since basically nobody is one dominant favourite, but there's a lot of outsiders.

Like is the case for every country in every prediction ever

Far from impossible, but it will depend on Martin Fourcade a whole lot Fourcade in epic shape could help France to potentially 6 gold medals, Fourcade in terrible shape could go home with 0.

Interesting to see Johaug being put up for gold and bronze. Obviously the fact that her suspension only ends after the Olympics is nothing but a distracting detail that won't stop her

Gracenote has published their first 2018 Virtual Medal Table. Usually the main reaction is that everyone of every single country disagrees and think they will win less medals than predicted, so, let's see everyone's reactions http://sportsdemo1.gracenote.com/documentation/vmt

The season's barely underway and we've got ourselves the first fight of the season in Dutch speedskating It's about the mass start, where the plan was rather clear: Jorrit Bergsma and Arjan Stroetinga would be the two skaters in the Olympic mass start. They're team mates (with trainer Jillert Anema, guy who became 'famous' with an interview on American TV), Bergsma is the guy for the early attack or to keep the pace high for Stroetinga to finish it in the sprint, all fine. However, at the Dutch champs it was Koen Verweij who beat Stroetinga in the sprint, raising all kinds of questions. Verweij has nothing to do with Anema's team and would like to ride the mass start with former team mate Sven Kramer, who still have a good connection (judging by Kramer's "If Koen needs me, I'll be there"). The national team coach of course has to make the decisions, but that's going to be tough, because choosing one rider from one team and one from another team doesn't seem like the best idea ever. In fact, Anema has pretty much literally said that if for example Bergsma and Verweij were to team up, there's no way Bergsma would do any work to help Verweij. It all started in the 2014 Olympics, where Bergsma wasn't selected in the first round of the team pursuit. That hurt his little girl's heart, so he refused to be the reserve for the rest of the tournament, which got Kramer, Verweij etc rather angry. That has not healed https://www.ad.nl/schaatsen/verweij-haalt-oude-schaatswond-open-op-massastart~ae08d399/

No, just no to those sprint events! Go away! And women's doubles?! For fuck's sake FIL, 2022 is only FOUR years from now! Women's doubles is not even remotely a 'thing' now, if they want it at the Olympics, they really need to start developing it right now and maybe, just maybe, think about adding it to the Olympics in 2030 or something...this is one of the worst winter sports ideas ever, I'm a bigger fan of X-Games events at the Olympics (which I don't like), than women's doubles (at this moment) or all those sprint events.. Natural track would be cool though.

David?

No disguise, we don't really have anything with Halloween apart from shops trying to push it through to sell more stuff

Damn, Italian winter sports is getting blow after blow these weeks...3rd season-ending injury for Olympians (or potential Olympians) I think with the luger and Gaspari included?

Voted

Alright, points given, reserves chosen. Now the last details: matching the numbers on the playlist with the correct country, since the playlist doesn't mention the country of the song

I know strictly speaking the deadline has passed, but I'm in the last stages of voting, just deciding the right order of the top 13 songs

This taught me that Leonard Cohen was Canadian, I had no idea. Still not sure what to think of this entry, I'm probably going either very high or very low (because I love the song, but it's a cover, but I love the song, and so on). Guess we'll have to find out what it's gonna be

Yeah and scare everyone away from TOISC forever...no thanks

How is Hallelujah by one k.d. lang eligible for this contest?

I was just on my way here to say I've had some delays today I am definitely trying to finish my votes in the next hour and a bit..

Game 5

Wednesday I have a rather important (and tough) exam, but hey, who cares, time to listen and give notes to 34 songs Priorities

Time for DJ Hardwell's show on start/finish

Absolutely perfect drive from Verstappen, from literally the first corner on Respectable drive from Vettel as well to come back to 4th after he gave away his chances at the start. And Hamilton world champion, so that fight's over now.

I would know 0 reasons for Eindhoven to be interesting