heywoodu

Decent Dutch Quite clear that he hasn't been speaking it for a long while and that he's not exactly an expert, but I could understand him mostly without the subtitles, so very nicely done

Best moments of the year: going to the Amsterdam airport to meet, say hi and drink some hot chocolate with the two Brazilian biathletes for 45 minutes during their stopover from Oslo to São Paulo The one in August was one and a half hour, today unfortunately just 45 minutes and it's always shitty to say bye again, but the two meets, short as they might be, will definitely go in my personal top-5 of 2016

We are pathetic Everybody, including the coach, walks and stands around like they don't give a damn, but I guess that's what happens when kids get rich sooner than they reach adulthood.

Zero (correct, 0) Indian media people have gone to Rio to cover the Games and their athletes, that's so sad for the athletes, like a big "f*ck you, we don't give a damn" http://www.parasport-news.com/indian-media-absent-from-rio-games/11100/

Colombia only had one driver in F1 relatively recently and he happened to be insanely talented as well Don't get me wrong, it would be cool to see a talented Argentinian in F1 as well, but my main point is that it all doesn't have so much to do with F1 in itself, but with motorsports. It's fun that Argentina has a big racing culture, but then the big young guys there should move over to Europe or another place where the F1 teams will actually see them race. That's the part that costs money and is much more difficult than when a very talented driver is already driving in F3/GP3/2.

Yet even so, Haryanto isn't very talented, whereas Ocon is one of the most talented drivers around And that first part has nothing to do with F1. Getting into motorsports is a costly hobby, so yeah, you're not gonna see a ton of drivers from Lesotho, Niger or the Central African Republic in the sport. Not because F1 needs money, but because the entire sport is costly to begin with (it's not like you get a good kart to compete with for 10 dollars). If some driver from Niger would somehow get the money to start a motorsports career from a young age (including karting), and would be driving the hell out of the competition in the "talent classes" (like Verstappen did in F3, like Vettel did even more in Formula BMW and like Vandoorne did in GP2), I have no doubt the F1 teams would be very much interested, seeing as what they want is talented drivers.

If he, or any other driver from any random nation, would be 20 years old and driving the hell out of everyone in series like GP3/GP2/F3, he would have a very decent chance of being picked up in one of the development programs that multiple F1 teams have (like the Mercedes program or the Red Bull program) The few drivers that are in F1 mostly because of money are those that aren't that talented. Even Manor nowadays has two drivers that are both very talented and actually deserve a place in F1, unlike Minardi that was going around with drivers like Zsolt Baumgartner, Gaston Mazzacane, Tarso Marques, Nicolas Kiesa, Alex Yoong and those kind of people. And besides all that, motor racing is a team sport, of course it matters for which team you're driving, just like Cristiano Ronaldo won't win the Champions League if he plays for my town's team in the 6th amateur division in the Netherlands

95% car, 5% driver. Well that would fit right into JM Lopez' alley then, seeing as without that insanely good Citroën he'd probably never even have come close to the WTCC title, let alone 3 of them Apart from that, only 5% coming from the driver is of course quite untrue, because if that's how it would be, there would rarely be any difference between two drivers of the same team And last but not least, "having a sponsor willing to pour millions into it" goes for some riders, not for all. There are actually riders who are there because of their talent. It's not like in most other classes sponsors aren't needed.

No real big names in this anymore? I only see The Undertaker of the good old days Back when Stone Cold Steve Austin used to battle with Kurt Angle and his buddies.

Not saying I'm a fan of them, just that it's not exactly good for the chances of an old guy who hasn't shown anything big yet in a major single seater championship Though at least at the moment we don't have that many of those non-talented drivers in F1 luckily.

Dutch championship final

How is point 1 a reason not to have a team competition?

Well NBC changing the swimming schedules wasn't cool, but it's definitely logical that it happened that way I'll ask one of the (hopefully) participants what she thinks about a night race

Well I doubt NBC is going to change the biathlon schedules, like I just said: they're doing this for the European tv-markets, by far the biggest in biathlon

I have no problem with FE staying, as long as it won't in the end replace the real cars Which I think it won't, my guess is that it will develop side-by-side, which would be just fine. Though to be fair I really don't think JM Lopez has any real chance to make it to F1. The guy is 33, even if he wins each and every FE race with 10+ seconds advantage I'd give him like 1% chance for a test drive seat in an F1 car, since first of all there are almost no seats even available (a handful per year if you're lucky) and second, I don't see any team preferring an old guy over a talented driver who might, as a bonus, bring some big sponsors in as well Dominating WTCC is cool and all, but it won't make you a big star. Much as this season has finally been a somewhat fun one, it's just not a truly major championship. Personally I'd place a DTM title above a WTCC title in terms of showing how good a driver is,

It looks like biathlon races at the 2018 Olympics will be held at night, starting 21:00 local time to accomodate European tv-markets (13:00 CET). Not bad, night races are cool

Really cool that he's going to single seaters, a shame though that it's going to be Formula E If only those things actually sounded like a race car..

We don't need it, just like we don't need a multi-sport competition for countries that happen to be situated around a random piece of water (Mediterranean Games). But since it doesn't hurt anyone, why not?

Fantastic day in the Vuelta (sarcasm). 90something riders arrive outside of the time limit, and not just a bit..but more than twice the time limit behind the winner..of course they're not being punished "in the interest of cycling and La Vuelta", according to the organisation. Worse is, the group didn't even try to make the time limit, they just took it easy (according to riders who were in the group) because they knew they wouldn't be kicked out anyway. This time limit rule seriously needs to be updated, because this whole thing by that group today was one major "fuck you" to all cycling fans, the integrity of cycling and the entire sport of cycling. A black day for cycling. The only riders who finished inside the time limit:

How do you see the results there? I click on those things and all that happens is that it expends, no results come up.

And different kinds of falconry They've actually got quite good videos in somewhat broken English explaining the rules, makes for cool watching

I agree there should be an online stream, but that's not Ziggo's responsibility. The organisation could have set up a static camera or something, something that wouldn't be good enough for TV but alright for an online stream. I was talking about Ziggo, which means about it being shown on TV. They have absolutely no reason to show Czech Republic - France or Germany - Spain or something like that, that's not what they're for.

Surprise...an 'obscure' multi-sports event with a crappy website that provides basically 0 results Where can I find them?

Quite weird that they officially name the Netherlands the Kingdom of the Netherlands, since every other federation simply calls it the Netherlands (even though the official name of our country is the Kingdom of the Netherlands, but using that name in sports would be like always calling Mexico the United Mexican States ) Thanks though, I thought MLB had ended, but yeah, I know nothing about MLB

Well to be fair, probably like 5 people will watch the Dutch team's games on Ziggo (which is a paid sports channel and only has quite a lot of subscribers because of Verstappen in F1 and because they have the rights to most top European football leagues, boring as that might be ). I can understand they're not showing the rest because basically nobody would watch it. Do we, as Dutch, even have some decent MLB players who we can use here?