heywoodu

Still, there should be some solution to prevent situations where one nation has the two or even three best athletes in the world but can only choose one. It sucks to have the biggest competition in the world, but with only a small part of the best athletes in the world.

Oh and young Rhaick is impressing more and more every time he competes It's already several years ago since the Brazilian coach, Leandro Ribela, told me that Rhaick would be competing on a level never before seen for a Brazilian (or maybe even a South American) and so far he's still well on his way to make that a reality. Small detail: Thomaz Moraes is a young Paralympic athlete, he only skis with one pole if I'm not mistaken, and he keeps getting closer and closer to the regular skiers in Brazil. This dude is impressive (and won a medal at the recent Junior World Para-Athletics Championships in Switzerland).

Alright, 5k free today in Termas, athletes are on their way to the track as we speak. No Jaque Mourão, but Claudia Salcedo of Chile will compete today and so will Maria Cecilia Dominguez of Argentina, to decide who will be the South American distance champion My money is on Bruna, no doubt. No injuries, no illness, in good spirits (which is more important for her than the physical condition), time to show who's the best.

Agreed, mostly. Not unlimited, but that's why I like your suggestion at the end.

Oh wait, Ag2r have withdrawn Nico Denz and Alexandre Geniez now, how pathetic, like they didn't know they did this two days ago

Ag2r cheating their way up the mountains and nobody does anything against it

Meaning the most realistic way for Bruna is by beating Mourão in the rankings. Not entirely impossible, but given Mourão's chances in competitions to score good points (especially North America, where she lives), that's going to be insanely tough. The FIS points system really is a shame, it says nothing about skiers qualities, since Bruna has already shown to be seriously close to Mourão by now and I honestly think in a straight up fight she could beat her (like the 5k free tomorrow in Termas de Chillan, but sadly Mourão is already on her way back to Canada so won't compete there).

That's what I meant Finally, I understand the rules!

Only if she has less than 100 FIS points herself, if I finally understand @dcro correctly Which is not entirely impossible, but looking at the races she'll compete next season...pretty much unrealistic.

Colombians are MAD because Niki Terpstra and Yves Lampaert made a little joke on words (Bom = bomb in Dutch) Not exactly a brilliant joke, but holy Moses, the Colombians (including Restrepo and Betancur) are acting like the most humourless creatures to have ever walked the earth to even get angry about this Like anyone would give a flying fuck if someone says "haha not BMC but Bomb-MC" or "haha not LottoNL-Jumbo but LottoNL-Bombo"

Tomorrow's classic sprint is cancelled, half of today's participants won't start and 3 athletes just isn't enough.

This really gives me some hope Luxembourg might help us by putting up a good fight against Sweden

France - Netherlands 4-0 France - Luxembourg 0-0 Luxembourg

Nothing is over CBDN (Brazilian federation) makes their own special ranking to determine who gets the one quota. What I mentioned earlier apparently wasn't right and it looks like this is correct: - Average of the 5 best FIS points between 1 July 2016 and 22 January 2018, with some subcriteria; - Maximum of two of those results coming in South America - At least one of those results coming in the Northern Hemisphere That is, if I'm translating correctly from the criteria, here. ( @vinipereira @thiago_simoes, am I correct?) Mourão had no results in South America, so came to Chile to correct that. She's still rather far ahead in the rankings, but her points of today actually don't really make a significant difference (I'd say she has 80% chance to get the ticket, just like I thought before today). The 25 seconds mean nothing by the way. There were two very hard downhills, on which Bruna fell all the time during training yesterday (they only got hard after the course was changed slightly yesterday). Today before the competition however, she worked hard on learning the 'drift technique' to get through the corners, and in qualifying...it worked! She was only 2 seconds behind Mourão then, but in the last (short, not hard) downhill there was a hole in the track and her ski got stuck, causing her to fall and lose 20-25 seconds. The final was one big confidence boost, because even though Mourão eventually got the win by basically throwing herself down the downhills like a madman, Bruna for the first time ever saw that on the uphills and flat parts she was actually able to get the better of Mourão And well, even if 2018 doesn't work out, that's all very promising for 2022, which after all was the first main goal when she started skiing. The fact that she's even in the running for the 2018 ticket is more than was expected when she was first standing on ski's, only three years ago.

If you've never seen the definition of being parked on a climb....Adam Yates just gave a demonstration

Ah yeah, our legendary 1973 bronze mixed C2 team, how could I forget.

Has there ever been a Dutch athlete on a World Cup podium in this sport? I'm not sure but I doubt it

Just as much a humiliation as the 4-0 loss of the Netherlands against France earlier this week, 'our' biggest loss since the early 1960's?

I'll definitely write something about Wegman, that should make for a couple hundred readers

Not fair, I'm like one of probably 5 people in the country thinking of watching a live stream of a World Cup in this sport! Cancel the strike now!

That's what half the world would say when you choose an obscure sport like canoe slalom over F1

Cool Watching live will be a bit hard now I think, because I'm focussing on Formula 1, but I will most definitely pay attention

Not long ago there was talk of at least 10 women in these races, last week it would be 7, now there are 6 left who will start the qualifying today (15:00 CET): the 5 Brazilians mentioned above and Claudia Salcedo of Chile.

This!

That explains a lot