heywoodu

Last year her best result came in her last weekend, where she had 244 points at the sprint in Obertilliach (which was the 3rd time any Brazilian ever shot clean by the way) She has improved incredibly much so I am very confident that, with good shooting, she is capable of systematically going well below 200 points..

Aren't those lists of NeveItalia only for this season's World Cup and World Championships? Qualifying a quota place for the women's WCH should be quite easy: all Nations Cup top-3 nations get at least one quota and then there are 10 tickets left for countries outside the top-30, which last year would have meant that almost every nation with an athlete with IBU points (so who competed in WC/IBU Cup/Open European) would qualify at least one quota, with Georgia and Croatia being the only exceptions I think. The bigger thing there is that there are individual eligibility rules. Getting a total of less than 180 points (and so qualifying for the WCH) is arguably Bruna's biggest goal this season: Which by the way leads to the following situation: World Championships --> Getting a quota for your nation is easier than being eligible to compete Olympics --> Being eligible to compete (same as above, part a needs 2 results of 150 or less points) is easier than getting a quota for your nation Bourguignon and Lutz have indeed been biathletes for quite a while now (I think together they have combined 15+ biathlon seasons in their pocket), but I'm not sure they'll do it again this year. If they want to have any chance of qualifying for the Olympics, biathlon is simply really not going to work. All due respect, but after years and years they're still all the way in the back of IBU Cups...so cross-country is basically their only chance. Based on the past summer, physical tests and rollerskiing competitions I'd say Lima and Bomfim are at least at the same level, possibly already higher. I'm not sure if they'll be given the chance for 2018 or if the Brazilian federation really wants to focus on Victor Santos, but they might actually be Brazil's top-2 athletes if they keep going like this for another year

Trouble for Nicaragua...possible tsunami on one side, hurricane on the other..

There's quite a few sort of big earthquakes lately...half an hour ago a 7.0/7.2 hit off the coast of Central America.

And it's even worse when it's mixed.. I mean, in some sports it works ok, like in a relay kind of event. But all these purely individual sports don't need it...if there's one sport where a team event has no place it would be shooting (well and archery, and fencing at least in table tennis there is a doubles event instead of only individual)

Ah come on...more events to be cut in favour of mixed events? I didn't expect shooting would be the next victim of the modern "everything has to be mixed!11"-urge

Turns out it's Snejana Tiseeva, 21st at last year's JWCH sprint and individual...for Ukraine http://ibu.blob.core.windows.net/docs/1617/BT/SIBU/CP01/SWSP/BT_C51A_1.0.pdf

Since my ability to recognize sarcasm is even lower than Ireland's ability to lose a TISC, I'll just ask: that was sarcasm I hope, right? (I feel like Sheldon, asking if it was sarcasm )

I don't have some special interest in Algiers, but I do like remote places (like I don't know, maybe towns and cities and places in the south part of Algeria, far away from other places..somehow I always found remote places very interesting ). So if you're gonna show us a lot about the remote and "unkown" parts of Algeria, I'm voting for Besides, I trust bestmen's GIF/photoshop skills to make it a show that makes everyone laugh like he did several other times with stuff like Algerian vote announcements

I sincerely hope we can do a vote (anonymous if people prefer that) instead of just a random selection. Why bid if it's random anyway?

A very smart dude on Twitter made some sort of magical Excel thing for me I can import IBU's documents with IBU Qualifying Points for every race and it automatically converts it, makes the calculations and presents the current list. Qualification quota depend on it, yet IBU never even publishes it...so we had to find another way If I'm not mistaken, the 5 or 6 highest ranked athletes from countries that didn't already qualify (e.g. countries that are outside the Nations Cup top-22) will earn a quota for their country, with a maximum of 2 per NOC. After last season, the ranking of athletes from non-top-22-countries looks like this for the women:

Last season there was a young Serbian girl who competed in somewhere between 5-10 competitions and had a shooting hit rate of 12% if I'm not mistaken...she made Slovakia's athletes look like sharp shooters Ah, found her, young Inesa Zekic: http://biathlon.com.ua/profile.php?lang=eng&id=4774 I remember a Serbian user here on Totallympics saying that it's all a bunch of "who is friends with the boss" in Serbian biathlon..obviously it's hard to judge for me as outsider, but maybe @dareza or @DaniSRB knows more about that Bruna is definitely giving everything she's got for the 2018 Olympics, she's fully focussed on making that instead of the original plan of 2022. The only "negative" thing is that it seems a little more likely that she'll qualify in cross-country, because the qualification for biathlon has been made extremely hard for small nations. The document still says "not applicable" under "Reallocation of unused quota", so if unused quota places aren't reallocated, that would make it incredibly hard. I know biathlon is her big love though and she will try everything she can to qualify for the Olympic biathlon next season..which I think she can do if she keeps focussed By the way, I'm still hoping Lucas Lima and/or Rhaick Bonfim (you can look them up on the FIS website if you want to see their results) will try biathlon within a couple of years..in recent months they have been growing so much and even though they're only from 2001 and 2002, they are very quickly becoming Brazil's best XC skiers, which is amazing!

Kevin Love scores 34 points in the 1st quarter against the Trail Blazers, a new NBA record. Incredible to watch, he just can't miss

Croatia already did have Nika Blazenic last season, but she was not very impressive yet (278th and last position on the IBU Qualifying Points List actually). Yeah, Serbia had Sara Lucic last season, but with all due respect...she was shooting rather bad and when I saw her ski in Obertilliach..let's just say there was not a whole lot of speed in it. It'd be nice if they find someone who can ski at a decent pace and shoot alright Brazil is absolutely going to be seen again this winter! Bruna Moura has been training like crazy all summer, increasing the intensity enormously compared to last summer and more than doubling the number of training hours (she's now at the same kind of weekly training hours as teams like Germany), apart from moving to another city to live in an appartment paid by the national federation so she can be a full-time athlete Brazil won't compete in the 1st IBU Cup semester this time, mostly because of the locations. Starting the season in Beitostoelen, then travelling to Ridnaun and Obertilliach would be too expensive, so they'll start in Martell in January, then go to Arber (both of which I am planning to visit to stay and travel with the team for 2 weeks) and the Open European Championships in Poland. That doesn't mean there's no Brazilian biathlon next month, because Gabi Neres, Caio Moreira and (new name!) Lucas Martins will compete in the IBU Junior Cup starting in Lenzerheide Bruna is too old for the Junior Cup, so she'll practice her skills as staff member there

That feeling when you're writing some words in the Google Chrome bar, and Chrome doesn't automatically complete them or give suggestions...you know something has gone horribly wrong then

Yep, just heard it is indeed Angela Bandur/Banduri who is back, that's awesome

It is interesting by the way, to see how incredibly dependent we are on internet nowadays. Imagine the entire internet being down for a day, worldwide...people will die (literally) because of the chaos

Well yeah, but I was talking about the rest of internet I mean, one can browse the internet perfectly fine without Google, right? I don't know why I wouldn't be able to look on all the forums, news websites and so on

But just to be clear: it was just Google that was down right? I mean, the rest of the entire internet still functioned?

Imagine when all internet is down

The range allocation for Friday's IBU Cup sprints in Beitostoelen has been published, which gives an interesting insight in the participating nations. For the women, here is the list: http://ibu.blob.core.windows.net/docs/1617/BT/SIBU/CP01/SWSP/BT_C45C2_1.0.pdf I see Moldova is on it, which would be cool, because last year there were no Moldovan women in any competition that gives IBU points Some other interesting nations are for example Turkey (Büsra Günes I guess), Bosnia & Herzegovina (Tanja Karisik, Dejana Kosarac, Sanja Kusmuk), Greece (Maria Tsakiri who seems to have improved a lot) and Georgia. That last one can almost only mean Angela Bandur will compete again, which is cool Last year she competed in the single mixed in Ridnaun but a full-on shooting drama meant her partner barely even skied.

The man does know how to make some comedy.. I would at least have some respect for people like him if they just say "Yeah, I made a stupid mistake and I'll accept the consequences"

It is indeed a little worrysome that almost 30 seasons (all seasons of these athletes combined) didn't result in even one season with a 85% average I hope the new generation/Fialkova can bring some change to that..

Susanna Kurzthaler has announced her retirement: http://www.tt.com/sport/12283913-91/die-struktur-ließ-meine--karriere-nicht-mehr-zu.csp Yep, that's right. The 21-year old Austrian who won gold (individual) and bronze (relay) at this year's junior world championships. If I'm reading it correctly, the training centre/"Stutzpunkt" in Seefeld has been cancelled and everyone's basically forced to move to Hochfilzen. That raised a ton of problems, ÖSV didn't manage to solve it (they say they tried everything, Camp Kurzthaler says they only gave false hope) and in September she decided to call it quits. Interesting detail: She sent a letter to the national doping agency to be removed from the testing pool, as retiring athletes do, but a few weeks later they came to test her anyway. Which she decided to make no problem of - smart decision, otherwise there might have been a shadow over her with rumours like "she refused a doping test and then quit..".

Meh, one of the few new tracks that are actually quite nice. I guess motorcycling works a lot better in Malaysia than car racing, seeing as in Moto3/2 and the other classes they actually have very talented drivers (basically thanks to the existence of Sepang).