heywoodu

One would hope so, it's usually not the best look for the overall competitiveness of swimming when a swimmer is in the medal fight in entirely different distances/strokes within an hour or so

Day of Day's in winter sports, it's Vasaloppet Day We're underway for 15 minutes or so, and the epic start was a view to behold once again! Only 87km to go for the leaders!

The main thing is that he wasn't good enough to make it into the Dutch junior teams back in the day, and so he choose the GB way to compete internationally. Excellent choice, because he's been steadily improving season by season and especially this season is really showing his talent. So much that a bronze is a bit of a surprise, sure, but not even a huge sensation anymore, which says quite a lot about how good his development has been! Lives in Heemstede, I believe, for what it's worth

Travel restrictions and testing requirements, did I dream that we had New Year's Eve and entered 2022 and 2023 somewhere in the past 15 months, so secretly we're still in 2021?

He really has a unique style which makes him have not much of a disadvantage from it. Basically he's the only sprinter (ever?) who is somehow able to sort of accelerate after the final turn, which is where he gains a lot of his time, whereas many top sprinters have trouble even holding the inside lane when they're going fast. Shinhama probably being the best example, he often just hits the brakes in that inside turn. One-race 500m of course remains bullshit, but at least with this race Stolz made it fairly clear he'd have won anyway

One wonders if Slind might secretly hold back a bit to avoid having to go to tonight's medal ceremony, since staying in Kranjska Gora until 21.00 or so would make it even more of a rush to get to the Vasaloppet start tomorrow morning in time

Ok catching up a bit and Jordan Stolz's 34,10 might be the next most ridiculous thing I've seen in a very very long time, but this one is ridiculous in the absolutely most positive sense of the word Wow, wow, wow. Without any doubt one of the top performances across all sports in 2023 so far. There are no words to describe how insane this race was.

I've seen speed skating for most of my 32 years, but I don't think I've often seen a more ridiculous situation than this, damn. Nothing against the Canadians of course, but I guess they know they got the gold on a technicality and not because they were the best. Not like the rule in itself is necessarily a bad one, but it's always odd to have situations where there's either no punishment or a straight-up DQ. Rules are rules though.

World Cups can have a schedule that makes sense as well A North America trip, a Central Europe part, a Scandinavian trip and possibly some sort of Asian trip could all definitely fit within a season, but it would make sense to have all of those planned as one part. Instead of, to make it a bit more extreme: week 1 in USA, week 2 in Norway, week 3 in Canada, week 4 in Austria I don't think anyone means to challenge the existence of North American World Cup events, they should obviously be on the calendar.

I do agree a trip to North America should be either the first or last part of the season, both are fine of course, but the 'Aspen is a snob ski resort so I don't like it anyway' is entirely irrelevant to that discussion of course Lake Louise being killed off is a crime by itself.

Not like St Moritz or Davos or Chamonix are not luxury ski resorts for snobs, and those aren't reasons not to have World Cup events in winter sports there. In other words: not really a relevant thing, yesterday was more of an unfortunate thing than anything else - and still better than what we've seen in all of Central Europe this season in terms of having some white snakey thing through the otherwise green landscapes.

The track itself looked pretty good, to be fair. Not in these conditions of course, but I mean the layout. I've seen significantly worse, like, you know, the Olympics again and again

Nice, those thumbnails on AllAthletics TV literally showing athletes carrying their flag in celebration.

Well he did finish 6 minutes behind the winner and was already far behind after 2.5km of skiing, so he might indeed be better off with a switch to ski jumping

Fun little thing in the Dutch Cup this week: FC Utrecht, a long-time mainstay in the top-level competition, was kicked out in the quarterfinales by the amateurs of SV Spakenburg, 1-4 (yes, Utrecht played at home) Probably the largest upset in Dutch football in a long time. Fun side fact: Spakenburg is a rather religious village, and they don't play on Sunday (they're in the amateur Saturday competition for that reason, like my own town's club). However....the Cup final is on a Sunday, so if they make it, they'll have to break their own rules (the club rules specifically state they don't play on Sunday). The coach was clear though: "If it's up to me, obviously we're going"

@hckošice At the Continental Cup in Eisenerz today, the Provisional Competition Round was won by super young Hektor Kapustik https://medias3.fis-ski.com/pdf/2023/NK/4268/2023NK4268PCR.pdf Sure, it's only the PCR and only jumping, but there's quite some well-known names in the field so anyway it is an excellent (and judging by his age, promising) result! Edit: I had missed that the actual competition round in ski jumping had already happened as well and he won that too, by a bigger margin even! https://medias4.fis-ski.com/pdf/2023/NK/4268/2023NK4268RL.pdf

To be fair, Ghiotto is the kind of rider who needs a fast start. He could start a bit easier, but most likely wouldn't go faster in the end, so this is quite likely the way he gets to the fastest finishing time. And let's be fair to Ghiotto man, it was a sensationally good race from him, again! Such a shame Eitrem wasn't there, but still with Ghiotto and Roest we saw two fantastic races. Wiklund was great as well, too bad the team sprints like usual felt like a bit of a flop

Finally... https://istanbul23results.european-athletics.com/en/results/athletics/daily-schedule.htm But you have to log in to see anything other than the schedule itself And they changed it to that weird system where every single heat has it's own page. And where it's harder to first go to the start list without seeing results. And somehow I feel that this is the system where the medal winners are spoilered straight into the schedule as well, so if you're not watching live: absolutely do not press F5 at any point..

Do we know he doesn't use asthma medication though?

Ghiotto vs Eitrem can be a fantastic race though, both have shown they can start fast and hold on strong. And yep, this time Roest goes later. Unlike in the Olympics, where he was basically the one who had to set the challenge for the rest of the favourites in both the 5k and 10k. Not sure if that smiley suggests foul play, but just to make clear that every top skater sometimes goes earlier and sometimes later Bad draw in the Olympics, good draw now, in the case of Roest.

The generic English-language commentator on Eurosport seemed to genuinely not know that Adamczykova is the same person as Eva Samkova "She has the bronze medal from two years ago and here is the world title!" (the bronze was as Adamczykova, but as Samkova...you know, world title, Olympic gold... )

Which is odd, since Skinder (together with Marcisz, more than with Kaleta) definitely seemed very promising not that long ago. Still fairly young though, not even half of Mourão's age, so there's hope

This is the one in English, I think other languages might have a voice-over (Dutch Eurosport doesn't for English, German does, for example). https://www.eurosport.nl/langlaufen/wereldkampioenschappen/2022-2023/wk-planica-moura-verongelukte-bijna-onderweg-naar-winterspelen-maar-is-helemaal-terug_sto9437225/story.shtml

The Brazilian federation asked for a short statement from her about Sunday's team sprint, we kind of had to remind them that she nearly died a year ago, because no word about a comeback or anything was mentioned in any article or something from them...so at least now it's mentioned in their team sprint article (because we reminded them about it) https://cbdn.org.br/brasil-participa-do-team-sprint-no-mundial-de-cross-country/ I think they are rather underestimating the whole thing

76th out of 80, that's four positions better than expected, and an awesome finish with all the emotions of an awesome world championships coming out Going home tomorrow, but what an amazing week this has been!