heywoodu

Oh come on. Things happened perfectly yesterday...I had hope, you know

Apparently it's likely to be the last World Cup in Tomaszow, considering next summer a new track in Zakopane - on 1km altitude - should open it's doors. Curious how it's going to be there, athletes are....not impressed, to say the very least, with Tomaszow (in terms of being one of the most boring cities they've ever been to, and the ice this week has often been horrible) Personally I really don't mind: there's a nice atmosphere inside the arena during the races, with a nice audience being there, unlike often is the case in for example the Asian and North American legs. Plus terrible ice isn't necessarily bad, as long as the ice quality is more or less the same between the 1st and last pair of a distance, it's fine. It's not fun if every single track is always a super speedway, you also need tracks that are heavy and favour the distance athletes more than sprinters, who are favoured in the high altitude tracks.

Isn't that what makes things like this fun though? Like TISC, it's fun to realize tons of people actually experience music (or sports, in this case) in many entirely different ways than we do ourselves.

Dutch ladies DQ'ed after the team pursuit (in which they were by far the fastest), because Joy Beune didn't have her transponders on. "Someone had already taken them and I couldn't find them, so I started without them." It's a whole thing in Dutch sports media and sports social media now

Aerials skier/jumper Maksim Gustik of Belarus has died, aged 35, after a traffic collision today. Hadn't competed internationally since the Beijing Olympics, for obvious reasons, but until then he had a very long and succesful career: he finished in the top-10 of the World Cup standings in nine seasons, from 2011 to 2021. Also 2 World Cup wins, 9 podiums in a World Cup career that started almost 16 years ago.

Probably, although I might be a bit biased because I always find comebacks cool and inspiring and in some cases the essence of sports

If I remember correctly, we set our alarms to watch Aline's races in those championships Irrelevant yet fun fact: next month we'll be keeping some of her equipment safe in our garage while they're off to compete in Slovenia, so they don't need to haul everything everywhere

Well, yeah, I mean Tim Singer said it so I didn't mean it was a rumour You can imagine my surprise though, when having missed this news completely and suddenly hearing one of the dominant teams of the past many years is done

I know para winter sports are often not exactly the most competitive, because of the often rather small fields of participants, but...Aline Rocha really should be on the list of suggestions as well, I'd say. World champion in para-cross-country skiing plus two bronze medals...for Brazil, of all places. I'd have said the same if she was Chilean by the way A truly 'exotic' athlete (it's not like she actually lives and trains in North America or Europe or something) winning several winter sports world championships medals, including a first-ever gold....that is something special.

And thanks for the annual reminder that next year I am REALLY going to write down the cool and inspiring and impressive things and performances I see in sports.....just like in the previous 10 years I forgot it entirely, which will make it insanely hard to remember...well, basically just what actually happened

I'd probably just go with 'Best team' and 'Best doubles/pair', instead of splitting it between men and women.

Apparently Eggert/Benecken retired? Wow, had I missed some massive news there And Steu together with.....Kindl?!

Which competition and which athlete? I can't bring myself to watch 2 hours of halfpipe or big air, but am curious (assuming the athlete is sort of ok?).

Nice that finally the ski cross World Cup season has started And Näslund is beatable, apparently. Huh

Given the total amount of zero (0) Palestine boxers in Olympic history, I doubt that's going to be an issue. Unless I'm really missing someone who is qualifying for 2024 and doing so in a weight class with a significant chance of meeting an Israeli athlete.

'Sir' 'Seb' Coe being against this makes it seem being in favour of this is actually the right thing to do.....

Considering there have been biathletes from both countries who made it clear they were (strongly) against the invasion, I'd assume the same goes for some summer sports.

Oh mine is definitely not going to be a problem neither It's just an administrative thing, the system isn't open yet or something, but that'll be solved within a few weeks

Whether or not that's worse than Saudi Arabia is up for debate I'd guess, but yeah, that would not be great neither.

I don't see Moscow 2036 happening yet, despite today's news

It won't wreck it. It will make for a few books to be written, maybe a documentary or even a movie or something (depending on how many nations boycott, which, again, I truly think is not going to be anywhere close to double digits), but that's about it. We've got two examples in the 80's for that.

I was not joking, no. I know it's problematic in head-to-head sports, but aren't there more of those than just the combat sports? Archery, badminton, breaking, track cycling, potentially shooting (of all things), climbing, tennis with and without a table would all potentially have the exact same issue, I'd assume.

Also, Bach falling for Russian propaganda is even less surprising than when I went out in the rain and ended up wet.

How I wish bookmakers were offering odds for this...

Honestly I'd think being able to dope untested for several years is way, way, way more of a positive (no pun intended) influence on one's performance than the lack of international competition being a negative one. Especially in sports where Russians are world class, their own internal competitions are plenty strong enough to make up for the lack of international competition. And as we know, doping effects stay (at least partially) basically for your entire career, even if you've stopped years ago.