heywoodu

Honestly I am enjoying watching the World Cup next to the Christmas tree

Well, that anthem was entirely out-of-rhythm between the audience and the players and the music

What is this actress' connection with football, if I may ask? Don't really get what she's doing here

42 year olds dominating the competition with 36 and 38 year olds completing the podium, if there's any event where some new blood would be good.... Don't get me wrong, I think it's awesome to have the oldies battle it out

Yara van Kerkhof won, although not because of the fall: she was in 1st coming out of the last turn and would have won anyway, everyone behind her fell

Training a lot, with rollerskiing, running, strength training and nowadays also kickboxing The physical and mental effects are definitely still there, and both are being worked on hard (intensive EMDR therapy sessions are...well, hard, but they are helping, she's pretty open about it on Instagram for those interested btw ). It's of course not a 'regular injury', the broken bones were the smallest problem and it's a matter of waiting to see if the pain in the foot will ever really go away (it's a real possibility that it'll stay forever). All in all: she's able to train on a daily basis and improving a lot, so that's good, and she has plans for this winter in terms of competitions (the world championships mainly) and a training camp on snow. It's all very far from over though, the road to recovery is built on hard work, a lot of help, but also a lot of frustration. Makes you kind of see the behind-the-scenes part of athletes who sustain a long-term injury, and publicly are of course generally positive about it ("I'm working hard, it's going well, looking forward to being back"), but privately they too must be facing tons and tons and tons of doubts and frustrations... I don't know if this sounds positive or negative, because I'm not sure if it should sound positive or negative It's been a year filled to the brim with very mixed feelings both ways, let's say it that way.

Which then confused his opponent a bit later as well Oh well, better a lap too long than too short. It's not like he'd have gone more than half a second faster if he had started his final 'sprint' a lap earlier

Damn, Bloemen with a 12:33 in the B division (starting with four instead of two, so that's an advantage, but still), third fastest time ever

I've seen ski fuck-ups before, but this Fischer mess was quite something Persson even double-poling half of the climbs and not even being able to simply ski straight (!) at the finish area anymore, unbelievable.

Ghiotto - one of my favourite skaters - with his first World Cup win after a fantastic race in 12:45,10 16 years after Enrico Fabris won a 10k in the World Cup, it's been a while for Italy

Sven Kramer moved the world junior record into a new era: And now Henriksen shattered it, as expected, but what a race

It is of course easy to see it as 'they wanted to make us lose'. I wanted Croatia to win and still I was glad it wasn't a penalty

It was a bit of a odd minute. First Morocco should have gotten a free kick on the edge of the penalty area and half a minute later there was the situation on the other side. With one nog being penalised, I'm fine with the other not being penalised neither, otherwise it'd have been weirder..

Hakimi going into the tunnels and trying to intimidate Infantino himself because he didn't get a free kick

Neither, mostly just an unfortunate moment definitely not worth a penalty.

Huh, what a goal

And talking about talents, 15-year old Anton Kemppi in his very first FIS race destroying all the 16/17 year olds in Finland in a 10k classic https://www.fis-ski.com/DB/general/results.html?sectorcode=CC&raceid=43407

Looks like Thailand is expanding their program with a bunch of teenagers https://www.fis-ski.com/DB/general/results.html?sectorcode=CC&raceid=42364 https://www.fis-ski.com/DB/general/results.html?sectorcode=CC&raceid=42363

Who knows, but it'd be dumb to not at least think she's worth keeping an eye on in these races

Yeah, the people who made that 'song' were most likely blackout drunk when they did so anyway..

Three seconds in and go Croatia.

Once again Milla Grosberghaugen Andreassen is a class above the rest among the Norwegian juniors, despite being from 2005 whereas basically everyone else is from 2004 or 2003. Superb talent. https://www.fis-ski.com/DB/general/event-details.html?sectorcode=CC&eventid=52229&seasoncode=2023

She will very likely go to the world championships I assume, as she did the previous four times, so if Bruna goes as well, I'll ask her to see if she can find her somewhere and talk a bit. I'm curious about people from non-traditional countries in cross-country skiing

Hopefully the absence of some big names won't make the competitions less exciting, because so far this year they have been fantastic. Especially Beitostølen was one of the better weekends of competition of the past year

Also the first ever Iranian woman starting in a World Cup race (and the fourth ever Iranian World Cup start overall, after two men's starts in 2014 and one in 2010) I'm fairly certain this isn't the biggest Iranian sports news in history But still a mention for @MHSN for this little factoid.