heywoodu

Brennan for the one-ski classic style

Althaus keeps her head impressively cool

Ugh, competition going pretty smoothly and then for the very last, deciding jumper, the wind is too strong and she has to wait...

Strøm throws away Norway's silver.

This was a fun competition, 5 teams with some form of a medal chance until basically the last group. Nice Germany clearly the best overall indeed.

Early-season Weng was even among the best over 20km, but that has gone for now with her problems

FIS page has it at 11.30 CET now. Gonna be tight, you know, if it happens at all

I would have found it hard to see Sundling as a real medal candidate in the skiathlon, but Weng...too bad she isn't entirely healthy yet and so simply has no choice but to divide her strength, early-season Weng would have had a real chance indeed.

Today I learned Squaw Valley is in California instead of New York or something

Then again, that was the case long long before Russia decided to invade

Happens to the best. By the way, who do you think will win the women's skiathlon tomorrow, Hanna Öberg or Sara Takanashi?

No worries about jinxing, Altimiras is a well established top-30 athlete for a while now In distance events, that is.

To be fair, Urevc's best chance may arguably be in a distance event.

It was really fun talking to Mr Zaccardi, I was really impressed by the amount of questions and information he had already prepared

Whoever has a Jeanne D'Arc in their family wins the battle in my book!

78th, I can confirm a very happy Bruna

I wonder if Swedish media posted something about it somewhere. I can't find it, but yesterday out of nowhere two unknown (to us) Swedish names donated something on her crowdfunding page, so I wonder where they heard about it

By the way, not expecting too much from Bruna today (neither is she). It's classic style, which she's normally pretty good at, but in classic you do need to kick your foot against the snow fairly strong to get the best grip your skis can offer, but exactly that - pushing down hard with the feet - is still a significant problem with the foot that was partially crushed last year. We'll see what happens, but yesterday she kept 29 women behind her and if she can do something similar today that would already be amazing. I'm hoping for 20 women or so behind her, so top-80 or so today And even much more than in freestyle, the preparation of the skis is absolutely crucial, so hopefully they're done good, but that's out of her control of course.

By the way, 212 FIS points for Bruna today. Not only did she qualify for the 10k (and now we're trying to see if she'll actually compete in it, her boss already said he'll help in paying for the longer stay), 212 is the best ever points result in a somewhat big international race for her She has dozens of South American races, both on snow and on rollerskis, with better points of course, but I'm not really counting those, and I'm not really counting the Balkan Cup races in Serbia of last winter neither, since the Balkan Cup is basically the points farming competition of the world So race one after nearly dying in a car crash, and it's arguably the best race of her career, wow.

Good thing Polona Klemencic keeps it with biathlon.

He already has quite some support if I'm not mistaken, a rather professional team he trains with back home in France (not sure if it's his team or he trains with the team, but I believe the Dutch commentator mentioned a fairly known French coach)

Just missed her call because her boss was calling me (to say free days are no problem if she wants to stay for the 10k ), so I couldn't confirm it yet, but I'm 99% sure I heard a HUGE scream from Bruna in the background when one of the athletes finished a few seconds slower (and so Bruna's top-10 was as good as sure)

Yeah that was cool to see! I don't care if you finish 1st or 25th, if you finish the way Beyrami did, 100% fighting to the limit, you've automatically got my respect

And rightfully so, her finish was fantastic! Diggins-like in terms of going to the limit

Wow