heywoodu

How about AS Trencin? I saw half the team is Dutch (well, almost)

Race day! Freestyle sprints today in Termas de Chillan, which might be the only race ever in which all Brazilian female XC skiers* compete against each other (maybe tomorrow's classic sprint as well but that's not certain and definitely not in Tuesday's 5k F, since Jaqueline Mourão will only compete here to be eligible for the Olympics according to Brazil's rules, meaning she needs one FIS race in South America). Really curious how things work out, they made some changes in the course only yesterday on the last day of training, resulting in the two downhills all of a sudden being really, really hard and technical. That might bring a big advantage to Mourão, who is by far the most experienced skier of the lot (well and Mika Picin, but she's less of a threat on the uphills and flat parts compared to Mourão). *Jaqueline Mourão, Mika Picin, Leila Mostaço, Bruna Moura and Gabi Neres

Turkey is also not a strange league, and I wouldn't say the A-League or MLS are For us, Slovakia is more obscure than this actually (like I guess the Dutch league is just as obscure for you )

Looks like Turkey got horribly robbed....2-0 in Ukraine, but both Ukrainian goals apparently should not have counted (one was offside, and in the other goal the ball had already passed the line during the assist)..

[hide] Knockout Round August 30th - September 3rd, 2017 12 Nations, Playoff Round, Quarterfinals, Semifinals, Bronze Medal Match, Gold Medal Match Bronze Medal Match Central European Summer Time (GMT +2) Date and Venue Team 1 T1 T2 Team 2 September 3rd 2017, h. 17:30, Tauron Arena, Kraków Serbia 3 0 Belgium Gold Medal Match Central European Summer Time (GMT +2) Date and Venue Team 1 T1 T2 Team 2 September 3rd 2017, h. 20:30, Tauron Arena, Kraków Germany 0 3 Russia [/hide]

It's a shame there are so many more races now than in the past, no way Hamilton is actually better than someone like Fangio was

Still didn't see any Dutch participants by the way, what a surprise

They've got an FTP server with all results and photos and even highlight videos you can download, not bad ftp://firsftp.enetres.net/FIRS

Timing And cool, Zvejnieks can apparently ski and skate down a slalom

Too bad it looks like rink hockey is the only sport with decent information available, exactly the least interesting sport for me since it's not such an usual thing like alpine skating

Cool, maybe I'll tune in for the fun of it

In the final of what?

49.88 for Naser, what a season

No official website yet, but as always Wikipedia is just as useful (if not more useful) so you might as well link to it in the OP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_UEFA_European_Under-21_Championship_qualification

I wouldn't say clueless, but I do think when waxing your own skis, you learn a little bit more Although in IBU Cups they just drop the skis in the wax cabin and pick it up half an hour later, so not much to learn from that

Unlike Norway, Sweden etc, the Brazilian athletes have to wax their own skis, which in a sense is good, because apart from being athletes, they also learn a great deal about what is actually under their feet At the moment, the one and only Bruna is waxing the new competition skis, only two nights left until the first race, vamos https://www.facebook.com/atletabrunamoura/photos/a.507594329347658.1073741825.134041980036230/1447226832051065/?type=3

[hide] Knockout Round August 30th - September 3rd, 2017 12 Nations, Playoff Round, Quarterfinals, Semifinals, Bronze Medal Match, Gold Medal Match Semifinals Central European Summer Time (GMT +2) Date and Venue Team 1 T1 T2 Team 2 September 2nd 2017, h. 17:30, Tauron Arena, Kraków Serbia 3 0 Germany September 2nd 2017, h. 20:30, Tauron Arena, Kraków Russia 3 0 Belgium [/hide]

Klaus Jungbluth Rodriguez of Ecuador is in Termas de Chillan at the moment, so he'll participate in the races starting Sunday I asked Bruna about who is present there and apart from the Brazilians, it looks like he is the only one for now (I'm fairly certain Argentina and Chile will have a team there, but no word on Venezuela or Colombia).

Much easier, time = time without worrying about shots Which also makes it more boring, like their now former trainer said: "XC is for kids, biathlon is for adults who like adventure"

For a World Cup or major event that's what I would expect as well In IBU Cups the only shooting results I really care about are of course those of Bruna (well, ok, and Gabi ) so when they're shooting I make sure I'm basically standing exactly behind them, so it's easier to see which targets to look at. They already know before the race where they'll shoot, so that's not too hard.

And at the same mountain some dude, apparently pushed by police, all of a sudden came falling right in front of a motorbike. It's like they opened a can of psycho's on that mountain.

I've never seen XC in real, only biathlon. It's a little hard to say, since the competitions I saw were all IBU Cups (Obertilliach 2015/16, Martell + Arber 2016/17), and I imagine at a World Cup at least there's a bit more information available (like a screen, although in Arber there was a screen with the standings and in Obertilliach and Martell I could understand the German 'stadium announcer'). You definitely need to have a printed start list with you to sort of follow who's coming up where and following the shooting can be quite difficult. You can sort of distinguish if a shot is coming from lane 1 or lane 30, but if there are several athletes shooting at the same time, you really just need to pay attention to one specific athlete and when you see their finger move the bolt, see if a target has dropped or not. Live timing on the IBU website works well (shooting hits/misses only appear maybe 2-3 seconds after the shot), but in Martell and Arber the temperatures made my phone stop working, so yeah, that's useless In general I'd say biathlon is fun to watch though, especially because it's nice to see a bit of the 'behind the scenes' kind of thing you don't see on TV Then again, if it weren't for Bruna competing, I would definitely not go to IBU Cups, maybe to a World Cup in Germany or Oslo to soak up the atmosphere.

Still 'one of' the weakest then

I thought E was one of the weakest

So as for the Dutch, we have to hope Montenegro and/or Denmark has less points (minus the matches against Kazakhstan) than NED minus the matches against Luxembourg...