heywoodu

And there it is. For a moment it looked liked Wade had managed to bring Smith's level down, but that only took a short while Definitely the best player so far this entire tournament, Smith

And then Wade missed some clear darts to stay in the set aaaand it's 4-1 Smith Wade is playing better than he has been this tournament, but Smith still isn't giving him too many presents.

A rare Shanghai 19 finish

If Kramer goes into the breakaway, it'll be curious to see if he can stay ahead of the Bergsma-led chase

Wade is as mediocre as he has generally been so far this whole tournament, the difference is that unlike every single one of Wade's previous opponents, Smith isn't really playing terrible

Let's go

The other one disappeared into oblivion I think, Lais Souza got paralysed...that was a horrific story to follow back in 2013 (?), right when I was really getting into following Brazilian winter athletes Something that shows how obscure aerials is: the calendar is eerily empty. There's the World Cups and some national championships, and other than a few random competitions here or there...that's it. Even bobsleigh and skeleton have a significantly larger overall calendar outside of the World Cup.

Well yeah, you do still need more than just fast sprinters Just like for aerials you still do need people with actual talent for it than just good gymnastic skills.

To be fair, any good sprinting country can get a decent bobsleigh team, just need finance & coaching & learning the handful of tracks there are in the world

Sad for Ntab and Snel, but yeah....this is the result of a system like this and simply having too much quality overall Although the reason for Kramer's mass start selection is somewhat laughable, to say the least: "A big name like Kramer entering the Olympic mass start might 'startle' the other riders." Sure. Granddad without his final sprint will surely scare the likes of Swing, Giovannini, Chung, Lee or Mantia

I know I don't It's cool for Nilsson, but I had hoped for Brorsson and especially Skottheim.

Where did Tim Singer go?

I wouldn't say that so easily. There has been only one team pursuit this season where the Dutch did not start with a random selection of riders put together to form a B/C-team, and they won that one (and were significantly faster than the USA's top team, including Mantia, in the B group). No way Snel has a chance in court, if he'd try to defend his potential 8th place or something against a potential gold medal chance. No matter how you look at it, Roest - Kramer - Bosker form a team which has way, way, way more of a medal chance than Snel in the 1500m. Which is nothing against Snel by the way, I feel sad for him if he doesn't make it, but if they go for medal potential above anything else, they really should select Bosker over him.

Dutch team will be announced at 17.30 CET, live on TV The biggest question is which of these eleven names will be left out: Krol Roest Nuis Verbij Bergsma Scheperkamp Otterspeer Snel Ntab Kramer Bosker Personally I think Ntab and Snel.

Not great, not terrible result for Mika in today's 5k classic in Imatra, 249 points. That lowers her total a little (her 290 gets pushed out), but if Serbia and Croatia happen, it will end up not counting anyway. New situation, with again the reminder that due to Mika still lacking the sprint criteria, as of yet it is still only between Jaque, Bruna and Duda for the two tickets: All in all, the trip to Imatra improved Mika's total points by 100 points or so, which is all not too much of a big deal and doesn't really change the situation much.

With the race of his life, that is I mean, 36 World Cup starts. One 11th, one 26th place. A whopping 17 (!) DNF's, that's nearly half of all his World Cup races, all of them were in the first run. The other races are all DNQ's in the first run.

At least he's a classy loser!

Bully Boy kicks Price out What a match!

Yet Smith wins the set by reacting immediately with an 11-dart finish and a 130-finish in the next two legs This is truly a brilliant match!

Nine dart finish for Gerwyn Price, and of the many that have been thrown on TV by now, this was only the second ever where the finish did NOT start with T20 The only other one so far was John Lowe in 1984, the first televised nine dart finish ever. He went T17, T18

Callan Rydz is absolutely tearing Peter Wright apart, holy crap. Sure, it's only the first set, but that's how you want to start your first world championships quarter final

Yeah, St Ulrich ain't looking fantastic neither. It does seem to be getting a bit colder in a few days and maybe some snow falling in the second half of the week can save the races... At least for now cancelled races would not at all be a disadvantage for Bruna, especially if the cancelled races are those where Mika would basically have her only chances of getting her sprint average under 300 points And there is a bit of a backup for Ravna Gora for them: Bad Mitterndorf on 15 January, a 5k classic. No sprint.

Mika had an excellent sprint result in Finnish Imatra today, 339 FIS points. That improves her points position on the national ranking, although it doesn't help her get her sprint average under 300 and so, as of now, she is still out of the fight. She's got sprints in Minsk, Zlatibor and Ravna Gora (and possibly St Ulrich between Minsk and Zlatibor) to fix that or else it's done as far as her chances go. Zlatibor and Ravna Gora will definitely be her biggest chances. Her result of today slightly changes the ranking, which now looks like this: Tomorrow is a 5k classic, where I suspect she'll replace that 290 distance result with a 220 or so. Which, again, only matters if she manages to get her sprint average under 300 in the next two weeks.

What are your actual traditions for these days? So not the "People traditionally eat bread and say hello" kind of thing Wikipedia says, but things you actually do and many people in your country actually do (and presumably don't do in other countries) Here one of the big things is listening the 'Top 2000' on one of the radio stations (which people only listen during this time of year for this reason). Started in the year 2000, people vote for their best songs ever and in the end a list of 2000 best songs ever is compiled. They start playing them on the first day of Christmas (25th of December), starting at position 2000, and then go non-stop until the last minutes of the year, ending the year with playing the number one song of all time (usually Bohemian Rapsody) We're at number 26 at the moment, Metallica's One https://www.nporadio2.nl/top2000

That's what I thought in 2021 about 2020! Happy new year to you as well!