heywoodu

Right, now of course the big question is who gets the first 12-pointer of TAISC 2023 Hint:

NETHERLANDS PORTUGAL 11 ITALY 10 FINLAND 9 NORWAY 8 INDIA 7 BRAZIL 6 GERMANY 5 USA 4 CZECH REPUBLIC 3 IRELAND 2 SWEDEN 1

NETHERLANDS ¡Hola! Good morning Totallympics, the Netherlands calling! It is our honour to be opening this year's Annual Contest, and we hope it will set the tone for another wonderful day of good old TISC! Goedemorgen Totallympics, dit is Nederland! Het is onze eer om de Annual Contest van dit jaar te openen, en we hopen dat het de toon zal zetten voor weer een echte klassieke TISC-dag! ITALY 10 FINLAND 9 NORWAY 8 INDIA 7 BRAZIL 6 GERMANY 5 USA 4 CZECH REPUBLIC 3 IRELAND 2 SWEDEN 1

This one, and orange, of course

Good morning everyone

So he waxed his own skis and still manages to sound like someone who barely follows the sport he commentates on, that's a quality in itself Seriously though, if you're in a small team waxing them yourselves may definitely be the best option if you can't find someone to help you out. I know a certain Totallympian who might be doing that as well next season if needed, it's an excellent way to improve oneself as an overall athlete because you really think about all the details and conditions.

It's more a matter of not wanting to do that than not being able to implement it I mean, for smaller nations it is the norm to choose one's own skis, it is not rocket science but it is/should be definitely part of being a good athlete.

Actor Lance Reddick has apparently suddenly passed away at age 60, he was found dead at his home this morning.... RIP Phillip Broyles

Too bad, but cancelling the unfair pursuit is still a way better decision than moving that one to Sunday and cancelling the mass start Surprised they went for the good decision.

Exactly. It's really not that difficult, there's the official training the day before the race to do that. Plenty of time.

I'm still fairly confident about Eder continueing. He said he'll stay in the team as long as he isn't pushed out by younger guys who surpassed him, and so far he is definitely still one of the 4-5 best Austrians and so in the team on merit. The moment other guys pass him and he's the 5th or 6th Austrian is the moment he retires, I think.

This is some of the very best news ever in cross-country skiing, something that should be adopted on a large scale! Next thing is to somehow limit the number of skis per athlete for a competition. It is bullshit for top athletes to have the option of 40-50 pairs (!) of skis per race, that immediately neutralizes any chance anyone from any less rich nation has to ever be competitive. Great step with the wax though! In Planica the race organizer already limited some of the resources they could bring. Like, Norway wanted to bring three equipment trucks for stuff like waxing, which is way way over the top of course, so they were only allowed to park one Edit: a bit further reading, and athletes can register 2 pairs of skis for the race the day before! I guess they can still bring a gazillion and then choose 2, but still, that's a good step!

Why cancel, exactly? I mean, other than a protest, which ends up only hurting every single fencer now (because they lose a competition), instead of only those from Russia and Belarus, and thus mostly seems to be a silly thing to do. It's not like FIE's decision would have changed the competition in any way, since the RUS and BLR fencers wouldn't have been able to get there anyway.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, the most insane running event in the world has happened this week. The infamous Barkley Marathons, where nobody knows exactly when it'll start, the athletes hunt for pages in books, the race consists of 5 laps for which you've got an average of 12 hours per lap and which, in more than three decades, only 15 people had ever even finished. With finishing being the goal, not 'winning'. It's been a few incredible days, with four people (!) entering the 5th and final loop and a historical day...three of them finished! Aurélien Sanchez finished overnight in 58 hours and 23 minutes, followed by John Kelly roughly 20 minutes later (until last night, Kelly was the last finisher, when he got there in 2017). Belgian ultrarunning legend Karel Sabbe, who holds all kinds of insane records, finished in his second attempt with 6,5 minutes left on the clock! For those who aren't aware of the Barkley, read about it, to grasp how insane the act of finishing the race even is. Just....RIP to everyone who's invited to compete next year (roughly 40 well-known and very much proven endurance/trail runnners), because the organizer makes the course a bit harder every time there's a finisher, since apparently it was too easy. Let alone the year after a triple finish, that hasn't happened before...

'Determined to destroy women's sports', lol.

But it's not a secret most of her problems of last year basically came from the COVID infection and the problems that came with that. One can imagine mental problems also arise when you start doubting if your body will ever be able to do what you want it to do again...

This really saddens me. Struck super hard by COVID-19 and that basically has now cost her her career...

So if he ends up failing it, it's not exactly going to be a major issue for him, no

I do hope you're joking with that last part and he has to put the effort in for his education like anyone else? Must be pretty cool though, one of your classmates being one of the country's biggest stars but just like you having to answer whatever geography or maths question or so

Oh well, could be worse First off: we have 1-10 as notes, with 5.5 or higher usually considered as 'good enough' to at least pass. I can't say exactly what my notes were in the final exams, but in the Netherlands you have a week of usually 1-2 exams a day and you need a certain average to pass and graduate school (middle/high school, it's always hard to translate really correctly, anyway it's the one where you finish where you're roughly 17-18). A quick look suggests this: - You need to have an average of at least 5.5 on all of the final exams - Out of the the three 'core subjects' (Dutch, English and maths, apparently), only one can be a 5, the others need to be at least a 6 And some other stuff that I find too complicated to explain in Dutch, so yeah Anyhow, I made my exams, several weeks later everyone was called with the results. Sadly, I heard I hadn't passed, and I had two options in terms of retaking an exam: - Retake chemistry, for which I'd need a 5.4 - Retake mathematics, for which I'd need a 3.x or something (remember, 10 is the maximum, a 3 is not a good note at all) Either of those two would make my total average high enough. Knowing how badly I sucked at maths, I thought a 3 was entirely unrealistic, so I decided to go for chemistry. Did the exam, a while later I was called....I got a 5.4, exactly what I needed

So if you're lucky, the entire maths part of your exam consists of one single question? There's not a separate maths exam, Slovak exam, biology exam etc?

What are the topics of this exam? I mean, we had an English exam only for English, but not for the other subjects Props for that one student choosing Italian

Yeah, the whole Desmet thing was a rather shit move... For those who hadn't read it anywhere: the Desmet's had been training with the Dutch team for years, they have basically been as much a part of the team as the Dutch skaters. Then, a few days before the world championships, they (Desmet) were told they wouldn't be coached by the Dutch coach in Seoul, so out of nowhere they had to fall back to the Belgian coaches. According to the Desmet's, there's not much against the Belgian coaches, because they seemed happy with their help, but the thing of being punched in the face so shortly before a big event...not good.

Funnily enough except for the guy who actually won the gold

Those first dishes sound like some tasty meaty dishes And a very interesting city, it seems!