heywoodu

Roughly 365 meters done and that's the first fall of the day.

Oh boy, Mons-en-Pévèle today And it's not the only one.

Meanwhile the women have started in London. Let's go Salpeter

Not knowing the Peace Marathon...for shame sir, for shame!

Only when looking at it from the perspective of a more casual cycling viewer. Out of 16 World Tour races so far, Longo Borghini won two of them, Brown won one and Deignan took a win today, the rest all went to Dutch women, often in a rather dominating fashion. Basically in normal races, the Dutch women are far and above the rest, although that's not really important, since in normal races it's not about nationalities, but about teams. In races with national teams, they mess up because they're even less of a team than Israel and Iran would be.

Oh tomorrow could be epic

Winning Roubaix with an 82km solo

Yeah Vos isn't going to ride to the finish with a 55 per hour average in the last 10k

Vos entering the wet Carrefour de l'Arbre full speed, as if it's entirely dry. Magician on the bike (which is not to say it can't still go wrong).

And another big crash on a straight. Van Dijk, Majerus, Roy going down hard right when Vos has opened the (too late) counterattack, with only Longo Borghini in her wheel.

Deignan with some impressive drifting

This race is.....interesting I think Deignan may be the only one who hasn't fallen yet

That will be resolved when the winter season starts though, no problem. It's not Canada, I believe it's not even really federations but athletes who tried this.

A group of athletes (presumable from unqualified nations, of course) has tried to change the qualification criteria for Beijing. Rather unsurprisingly, that has now been rejected by FIS. If I understood correctly, their main aim was to have more qualifying chances than a single event (world championships a year before the Olympics) and a World Cup nations ranking. I agree partially with them, but only partially: I do think qualifying has been made a tad too hard, but on the other hand, nations with a few at least capable athletes, smart enough to do some basic maths, were able to qualify through the rankings (see Brazil as example, which got an extra ticket that way). Plus we know how shitty the general FIS points system is in alpine skiing and cross-country skiing, as compared to for example the way more fair system of IBU points in biathlon, simply because every FIS race gives points, no matter what the quality is, whereas IBU points can only be earned in serious, competitive and international events with large fields.

Uuuugh just go back to having the events in separate weekends, as had been succesfully the case for many years There is just no single valid reason for the nonsense that is combining these two events.

Lots of wind and rain expected for Paris - Roubaix on Sunday, this could be epic (finally)! Or, you know, it could once again be a dry disappointment, but one can keep hoping

That would be a dick move, to be fair. Decide this 1 year or more before the Olympics or don't decide it, but not when the Olympics are right around the corner. Plus, 'based on the result', how exactly is that going to be determined? Will there be a set value of scores they have to stay within or will it be a matter of some expert saying "Hmm yeah...no....yeah alright"?

A more colorful version of Saw is my description so far after one episode. More colorful and less gory.

If you want to watch some weird shit, Squid Game. That is weird shit Very much looking forward to watching episode two.

That is incredibly likely to be added at some point, but surprisingly they seem to actually take some time to let women's Nordic combined be worthy of being added. It definitely will be, it has been growing fairly rapidly the past few years, but it's still too 'young' right now. Give it a few years of actually having an established World Cup circuit and it'll be fine and added no doubt.

Hamilton and Verstappen were indeed lucky with the rain coming in, but did make brilliant use of it. Huge shame Norris made the wrong call though Anyway, this was Hamilton's chance to deal a big blow to Verstappen in the title fight and he didn't. Not his fault obviously, he can't do more than win, but Verstappen was too good for Hamilton to make a big difference. Might have been a fairly crucial race in the overall picture, but there's a long way to go yet.

Could you add cross-country skiing to your list, por favor?

Ah, that slightly refreshes the memory and also reminds me why this probably won't be missed a whole lot in terms of overall quality

The whatnow?

Apparently a Chinese guy posted a 33.83 500m in Beijing (sea-level!) today (?) Could be Gao Tingyu, but not sure. @Vic Liu Could that be the name listed in 1st there? Just to clarify: 33.83 would be truly insane on a non-altitude track. Shinhama's 34.07 in Heerenveen is already considered an insane outlier...