heywoodu

Plus as far as I remember, the Torun events are often more than excellent, in terms of organization as well as atmosphere.

Or Adrie van der Poel explaining it with "I ate my father-in-law's pigeon and those pigeons were given strychnine, so yeah" You know, there's always the tiny tiny chance these things are real and then it really sucks if you're that one athlete with a highly unlikely story which is actually true but nobody believes it, but...yeah

About time, IBU has already had it for a while now (with countries being penalized as well for breaking this rule....yes, hello Brazil when IBU saw a bottle of fluor standing in your wax cabin ) I believe in the Toblach World Cup FIS was busy testing everyone's skis, specifically saying one would not be penalized yet if fluor was discovered, because they wanted to test their detection methods. Seems like it worked

The snow was absolutely awful, but the location itself and the track and everything was really nice Definitely worth a repeat in that sense, and significantly better than the tight tracks in Dresden and Drammen.

The world of doping excuses is a lovely one to read for entertainment You know, unless you're the one athlete with the highly improbable excuse that you know is actually true, but yeah....generally these are not very likely

Don't forget Sara Errani's "my mom's cancer medicin fell in the pasta sauce and that's why I was caught", Erik Dekker's "it's because the thing around my arm was too tight and so the blood values got higher" and Alex Schwazer's "it's just that everyone is conspiring against me"

Cedars must be a super easy track, considering some of the athletes who are participating there But yeah, this thing with 140 points is one of the main reasons why it's good Olympic qualification isn't solely based on FIS Points List anymore

Quick question about the preparation of the skis: the Dutch commentator was saying that Swix was preparing everything, with their own team, but that's different than what was originally announced. The original announcement seemed to suggest teams were not allowed to bring their trucks and stuff, but they (the team's wax people) would all work in one tent. So what was the actual situation? 1. Swix people preparing everyone's skis (without fluor, but also without the legal fluor alternative, like Swix did in the World Championships, which lead to pretty awful skis for the people who had no choice but to let Swix do it since doing classic without the fluor alternative is terrible) 2. Team's waxers preparing their athletes' skis, but with universal stuff provided by Swix ?

Oh wow, that is some next-level messing up Thanks for the clarification!

I've been to Spa twice, which was kind of fun, but it was hellishly warm and Spa is notoriously awful in terms of infrastructure around the track, especially at the height of the Verstappen-hype it was just....too much. Tens of thousands of people and basically one little road towards the one highway. I'm not sure about the support program in the North American races. If it's F1 only, I wouldn't go, personally I'd be more happy to see F2 and F3 as well since they usually have a bit more action. In terms of visibility: there should be big screens on several places to follow the race, but once pitstops have started, it might be a bit hard to really keep track of how things are going. I know this all doesn't sound too positive But it is still a nice experience overall, especially Montreal does seem like a nice place to go to for a race.

Too bad, they choose the fairly boring one instead of the one with the hummingbird Thanks for the news though, always good to stay up-to-date on the world's flag changes

This whole thing shouldn't have been in place the way it is anyway. What the federation should have done is say they're not going to support anyone going there, but athletes who want to focus on their sport instead of the politics are free to do so. Not like it's new for federations to be busy with entirely other things than sports though...anyhow, this will probably be worked out eventually, I doubt this will result in her being out of the team forever.

Lovely drive by Perez, took his chance at the restart brilliantly Too bad Aston Martin fucked up Alonso's podium by having a piece of equipment touch the car during the 5-second penalty, but also rather bad of race control/the stewards to wait until after the race to give Alonso the 10-second penalty, which they could very easily have given right after the safety car. Something NASCAR does way better than F1, pit stop infringements and such usually result in a penalty within a minute or two.

And with such a catchy tune as this one has, it's still stuck in my head

Which are the biggest ones in terms of top athletes competing, mostly Rome I think?

Meanwhile Trump has said, on his social media thingy (Truth Social), he expects to be arrested Tuesday. Also called for protests. https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/18/politics/donald-trump-manhattan-da-arrest-protests/index.html I highly doubt it, but who knows

Not only in the US, ultras like the Marathon des Sables (which are insanely hard!) are widely considered peanuts compared to the infamous Barkleys

Aaaaand it's done Congratulations to Italy, very nice song to have as winner

Italy's song would be an absolute fit in the Eurovision as well, really that kind of song where the crowd would really get going

Right, Ukraine closed this thing with their 12 points for Italy

I should hope so, since often that's not a lot due to riders waiting in the slipstream/draft

Aaaaand Italy is back in the lead

Ciao ciao!

Not sure yet if I should give this a positive or negative reaction, it depends on where Italy is