heywoodu

5th in the GC, Ayuso goes on despite being positive.

The Russian super-accidentally-falling-out-of-windows-epidemic struck again: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/chairman-russian-oil-producer-lukoil-dies-after-falling-hospital-window-source-2022-09-01/

Does anyone have a clue why a ton of matches aren't mentioned in the schedule? https://www.usopen.org/en_US/scores/schedule/schedule9.html For example I looked up Botic van de Zandschulp there, but he isn't there, even though he most certainly played yesterday. There's a whole bunch of other matches missing as well, maybe even dozens.

Another fall...I really hope he'll be alright. I think this Vuelta for him was entirely meant to help Evenepoel and/or get back in shape towards Wollongong, judging by his results, but this won't help at all. Any news on injuries yet?

Probably because you're not really going to visit a country, but a city, in their case If your only goal is to visit Prague, it'd be good to prepare some knowledge about Prague, but why bother with Brno or Nove Mesto or something?

This makes me sad (100m freestyle heats).

Simon Yates, 5th in the GC, didn't start today: positive COVID-19 test and he was getting sick. Pavel Sivakov, 9th in the GC, didn't start today neither: positive COVID-19 test, no word on whether or not he's actually getting sick. Three riders from Kern-Pharma didn't start today due to positive tests. Again, no word on whether or not they're actually sick. Ugh.

Evenepoel does what he was expected to do, plus more: blasting away the field in today's time trial, stage 10. And with that, really solidifying his position as top favourite for the Vuelta win.

I would be so pissed to miss the chance to play against a World Cup team (even if it's only Qatar) because of some lame festival in my tiny village

Meanwhile the South American season is well underway, with Argentinian championships in Cerro Catedral at the moment. Sunday there was the classic distance race, but that can be discarded at least in the women's category: the main athlete wasn't there, and it was only juniors. Yesterday Ceci Dominguez did participate in the freestyle distance race and she won the title there, which is nice to see after the whole drama around the Olympics, where she - despite being quite clearly the best Argentinian - was snubbed by the federation. Main thing though, as far as I know it is the first time ever a women's race in South America goes under 100 points for the winner! https://www.fis-ski.com/DB/general/results.html?sectorcode=CC&raceid=41391 That is a fairly big deal when keeping an eye out for the Olympics, because hello A-criteria and so the right to compete in every single individual event in Cortina. I know someone who is not going to skip the South American snow races in the upcoming years, when recovered enough to compete

Gaming (as in, PC/PlayStation), not gambling

Thanks @dcro for the reaction, that reminded me I wanted to update this a little Langelotti has had an excellent Vuelta a España, with a few days in the mountain's jersey. Obviously he's not exactly the best climber, and he has sadly retired from the Vuelta by now. Still an excellent performance though! And I happened to read about his past a few days ago: not long ago he was 15kg too heavy (!) and absolutely addicted to gaming, barely going anywhere even to train. Magically he kept getting contracts though, rich dad might have helped. This sounds rather bad, but the good thing is that he genuinely seems to have turned it around. He's not overweight anymore, he's actually training instead of just playing games, and it's paying off with good progress lately, and results that might not be enough for a World Tour team, but definitely make him a worthy part of a squad like Burgos

Ah, how peaceful and tolerating

No thanks Although I wonder if she has her smoker voice there as well

And still there are people who might see this as mere practice or a warmup for the Swiss Ultra In that event, the 'main event' is a tenfold Iron Man distance triathlon, non-stop (other than moments where you decide to take a break of course). So yes, that is 38km swimming, 1800km cycling and 422km running. This year's edition finished last week I believe

Dutch sprinter Solomon Bockarie, who surprisingly is apparently still active, tested positive for GHRP-2 (growth hormone) in the beginning of July. He is saying it's because of contaminated chicken meat. Luckily, he apparently still has some of the chicken meat left...two months later. Other than the possible smell of rotting chicken meat, that reeks like an easy matter of preparing an excuse 1. Buy chicken meat and doping 2. Infuse the meat and yourself with doping 3. Freeze the meat, train like a madman with your newfound doping power 4. Get caught 5. Explain it by saying "it was the chicken!" and showing your old but doping infused piece of chicken meat 6. Not guilty

This means Attila Valter will probably be working for some riders like Primoz Roglic and Jonas Vingegaard instead of going for his own chances in big races, but with a big chance of huge improvements and eventually getting his own chances. First in smaller races, and if that goes well, in big races I think he'll already get his shot in some of the 1-week stage races at the highest level, since he is not some up-and-coming rider, but somehow who has already shown that he is capable of riding excellently in the mountains and such. Tratnik will probably be more for classics and one-day races, he is definitely a good attacker, and Gloag is an excellent young rider coming up through the U23 ranks. Good step for all of them, especially Gloag, but I think Valter will be the best of these three

Don't look at it....aaand problem solved

Yeah, because it says a lot about the general world today when some senile guy on TV, who says whatever he needs to say to get into the lights of attention and who basically everyone is annoyed by nowadays, says something about some idiot thing he did 50 years ago

I'm positively surprised by the names indeed, it's almost like a World Cup (almost, mind you) instead of a bit of a B-event like it often is And yesterday's men's super sprint was a fantastic race The women's race was a bit boring quickly, but alright, can't have everything

On the other hand, they avoided the unfortunate thing of having a player in their lists who was fantastic and then ended his career in a way that made him be known basically mainly as 'that headbutter' around the world

Shocking. Shocking, I tell you! Also not true, but you know. Shocking!

Tour de l'Avenir is going on, one of the main stage races for juniors. Wednesday we had stage 6, and this was a rather scary and weird fall right at the finish, with the bike of Ethiopian Welay Berhe bouncing into two others At 1:35:25 or so.

I thought this was about those recent 800m runners But yeah, I remember this.

Last of the junior women's qualifying heats is going on and would you look at that, @hckošice