heywoodu

To be fair, I doubt this can really be compared with the real, professional kickboxing though? The likes of K1 and later Glory in it's top days and such. Even in those top days, I doubt kickboxing on an Olympic level would have been interesting for many people to watch, since they want to watch the stars of the sport (think Rico Verhoeven, Cedric Doumbé, Badr Hari, Murthel Groenhart, Serhiy Adamchuk, Robin van Roosmalen and such....and before our Polish friend comes with names from the 50's, I'm just talking about a few years ago ). Just like pro boxing has a high level of popularity, even here in the Netherlands where we have nobody in it it's quite decent at least for the heavyweights, but the Olympic boxing, with the athletes people don't know....nah, nobody will watch it anyway. It's more about the stars than about the sport itself in these cases I think, and sports like boxing, kickboxing and MMA have stars that made or make them popular, but in a shortened Olympic version with a whole different level of athletes....I doubt it'd be a success (and a real, top-level MMA tournament with the big stars isn't going to work within a two week period I'm afraid ).

I think that is made even clear by one simple thing: even in the Netherlands, the absolute top of the kickboxing world for many many years (both with athletes and with tons of the world's best foreign athletes training in the Netherlands), kickboxing is behind a poorly-visited paywall nowadays. There used to be a Glory event more or less monthly, a few years ago, and they were watched well on regular open TV, then on a still regular but paid sports channel (which also had F1, so a lot of people had a subscription anyway, and they showed the entire event live no matter where in the world it was). Then it moved to a channel which only showed highlights in random order and it went downhill very fast. So yeah...not good.

Looks like the whole results system website is down at the moment?

Great, the one day with a Dutch taekwondoka in the quarters (+87kg, Monday) and it's the one day of taekwondo that was apparently not shown on the broadcasts on EuropeanGames.TV

Lewis Hamilton has said it's 'unfair' that Red Bull Racing can focus on the 2024 car so much earlier than the rest, and wants that work on next year's car can only start on 1 August of the year before. Golly, why did he never say that in all those years Mercedes was at least equally dominant! Verstappen with a golden reaction to Hamilton's nonsense: "A lot of things in life are unfair and we have to deal with it."

Apparently Chicago simply had the third-best chance of getting the number one pick though? https://www.dailyfaceoff.com/news/2023-nhl-draft-lottery-standings-which-teams-have-the-best-chance-to-select-connor-bedard Not that odd to get it then in a lottery where the single highest chance for any one team is still only 25%.

Even if things aren't fixed, if a big player gets out of something well, people are going to say it's fixed anyway.

So it's mostly just a anti-Blackhawks thing by people who are fans of their main rivals? I didn't know also in things like NHL people so often think that whoever they don't like is being favoured by the people on top And about the assault case: since that was apparently made public in 2021, shouldn't that have resulted in a draft pick or some form of punishment for last season, instead of for a season two years later?

Right. So you've got to be able to do prone and kneeling as a matter of survival to get into the 50m one position final To be fair, the whole thing is a bit anti-climactic for a TV broadcast, since you don't actually see anything happen at all (unlike the shooting in for example biathlon, where you can see the actual targets being hit and such, here you basically see a guy stand for a bit, then hear a click, and see a dot appear on a virtual target). Well, I gave it a try, next up to watch is the skeet and trap and such I believe, which is a whole different cookie and actually shows action

Now I'm curious why

So Bedard is already surpassing Slafkovsky in being the big guy of this generation?

It's still scheduled on Discovery/Eurosport, but they don't actually have any idea yet if or when they'll get any footage, according to one of the commentators. For now it's basically just there as a sort of placeholder spot. Yeah, women's cycling is expanding greatly, it's just the Giro Donne organizers who seem to have dropped the ball massively the past years (just like the French Pyrenees race recently, where they couldn't even provide a somewhat safe course....safe as in, not having all kinds of regular traffic on the course).

Since I usually watch a bit of shooting only once every four years I am sure I am missing something, but here goes: what's up with the entire gold medal match in the 50m rifle 3 positions being done in standing, which as far as I can count is one (1) position? They start at zero for the gold medal match, so after an entire three positions competition, it suddenly ends up with a one position final?

The Giro Donne, starting in two days, was about to be cancelled last minute, although it seems it will start. The organization seems to have no idea what they're doing, they're missing 750k and it seems like things will barely even be broadcast anywhere. Besides, riders are still waiting for the prize money of last year (!), so it's a classic mess in the organization. Without TV images, the race would probably be taken out of the World Tour next year, and honestly, deservedly so. It's always felt a bit messy, and the women's Tour and Vuelta have really dwarfed the Giro Donne in recent years anyway.

One can only hope that this was somehow pulled out of context...

A country not starting in an event at the team championships doesn't lead to disqualification, does it? Especially US media is talking about Boumkwo as 'saving Belgium from disqualification' by making sure they had someone do the 100m hurdles... Sounds like typical US overdramatization, surely? As far as I know it would only cost them points (which might lead to relegation of course), but not an overall DQ. I know it's a bit old, but just managed to catch up with the Boumkwo thing It was good to watch on-demand from AllAthletics, once I figured out how to avoid the incessant spoilers, somewhat. With the results documents including the team standings at hand it was pretty doable. And 6th place for the Netherlands, best ever result despite Aggard's injury in the mixed 4x400m (would have been 5th or even 4th without that, but it would have been 7th had he not finishes, so props to him).

The women staying behind in distances is kind of like the athletics world believing women weren't ready to race 1500m or longer until not even that long ago The debut of the women's 50k at the top level was actually a great race, much better than the usual men's 50k even, where most of the time it's just a matter of staying together for 48km and then sprinting. Women are also more than capable of doing a 15k interval start though, but that's not urban enough for FIS, IOC, etc and all the other old men deciding things.

I can hardly imagine aerials having any serious following anywhere in the world at all, but at least it's....urban?

So now it's a men's and a women's team event in alpine? Duo's of one speed and one technical specialist are at least better than the parallel teams, where technical specialists always get an extra medal chance for whatever reason (although I guess that will stay as well, so technical specialists will be cheering as always ). And the cross-country thing is just awful, largely. Women doing 50k like last season, fine, and finally....but the men having to do the 10k interval is just laughable and way, way too short

Are Brabcova, Sollazzo and Ceccarello all that tiny, or is Frantisek Smetana such an absolute giant of a human specimen? Watching the 10m mixed air rifle bronze medal match, for context

Question is exactly by whom, but yeah. And/or Prigozhin must have gotten quite a nice deal. 'Battle of Moscow (2023)' Wiki page can go back to non-existent

Lol, looks like Prigozhin has said they're turning back and it's over Fail.

Eternal traitor Turkey doing it's thing. Meanwhile

That is useful, I've tried growing some cucumbers but they just ended up a tasteless bit of nothing... Meanwhile rumours are appearing that Kadyrov and his TikTok scum of the earth is moving towards Rostov. That's going to be quite something if true, two groups full with some of the most horrible pieces of shit on earth fighting it out (and lessenning the number of those monsters who can go to Ukraine). Excellent, I do only hope our Russian Totallympians aren't in Rostov.

On the bright side for the Russia fans: Russian fighters last night/morning captured the biggest city they've captured so far in this entire conflict. Sure, it's Rostov and it's inside Russia, but alright Oh and shit ain't over in Rostov yet